Kevin Sayers – the race director for Catoctin – makes it pretty clear when describing the course for Catoctin that it is probably not well-suited for first time ultrarunners.  He describes it as a “rocky, slow, difficult and demanding (but yet run-able) trail”.  I’ve made a habit out of treating most such pronouncements much as I do those little chili peppers that are printed next to dishes A-3 and A-7 on your neighborhood Chinese restaurant’s menu.  You just know that whatever the restaurateurs’ particular – original - definition of spicy is has been so radically modified by the phobic eating habits of their customer base that the only heat you’re going to get out of those dishes is gonna’ be with a microwave and Bunsen burner.  Basically, I’ve managed to get through much of my life discounting tales of pain, of heat, of agony as so much exaggerated, overblown hoowie.  And, of course, most of the time I’m absolutely right.  So much of the time, I’m absolutely right, that when presented with a similar situation I don’t take the time anymore to consider additional variables.  Like, for instance, that the big cliff I seem to be running towards, the one with the series of signs painted in rough red letters on pine planks crying “Danger, Danger”, the fingernail claw marks starting 50 feet back, the lack of any noticeable horizon, and the distinctive sound (or lack thereof) of a gravity well ahead, might in fact be a cliff that I don’t want to actually run off.

Which brings me squarely back to the Catoctin 50K.

Catoctin is run on a trail through two state forests.  I’ve run lots of trails; I run lots of trails.  I’m good at going up and down, down and up.  But Catoctin’s trails are trails only in the most liberal sense of etymology: a break between trees.  My experience with trails tends to also include a running surface that is rough, bumpy, slippery, and even occasionally unrunable.  I now consider all of my pre-Saturday trail running as a meager footnote to whatever the hell that was at Catoctin.  I remember thinking 12 or 13 miles into the run, “I’m pretty well trained-up, just not for this”.

What makes the trails at Catoctin so alarmingly brutal is the apparent practice of forest service employees and volunteers of embedding jagged shale along every part of the forest that looks like it might offer a way between two trees.  That most of this shale – although appearing randomly distributed between you and the horizon – is in fact carefully orchestrated to break both your legs off at the ankle, and then impale you through the eye as your body recognizes only too late, that Wile E. Coyote’s best scenes aside, it’s very difficult to do a trail run with nothing left to run on.  Add to this either the gravity of the downhills, or the thoughtfully installed rock plateaus on the uphills, and it simply isn’t a pretty picture.

Did I mention the hail?

The start was at 8 am(ish), and we snaked down the mountain, in clumps and bunches, enjoying getting underway after hanging about in the low-60s foggy morning.  After three or four miles the chain of runners began to break apart as faster (and therefore probably aliens with antigravity pods) runners seemed to skim over the trail, and slower runners tried to find a good pace that balanced their need to keep moving forward with their desire to actually live until the finish.

As my first official ultra, I had my mental checklist of the hundreds of things that I wanted to keep an eye on: nutrition, pace, technique, what exactely is that chaffing, and on and on.  By the end of the race that entire list had been winnowed down to three commands, reduced in complexity so that they could be understand at the most primeval level of my brain stem: breathe, move, drink.  But, early on, packed full of newbie enthusiasm, I embraced the chance to put to the test all that I’d been reading about, talking to others about, or just jotting down whatever came into my head after a good martini or two.

Making it to the first aid station at Hamburg Rd is easy – it’s early, there are lots of folks to talk to, and at least this year, it was still nice and cool.  The volunteers throughout the race were simply extraordinary.  I never expected the level of genuine care and concern shown towards tired, hungry, and thirsty runners; there was nothing perfunctory, and it was an incredible thing to experience for the first time.

From Hamburg to Delauter was three miles that seemed like five, and I could tell already that I’d taken a pretty big bite.  I spent most of the time between Delauter and Manor (the turn around six miles further on) contemplating whether or not that big bite was going to choke me.  The final descent into Manor is simply brutal, quad crushing, nastiness.  I joked with someone that, “of course I’ll enjoy going back up more…anything has got to better than this”.

I was wrong.

After the turn around, the real challenge is to go up and up and up for something like 127 miles at about a 53 degree angle.  I was alone for a long time on that ascent, and I entertained ideas about finishing closer to the 8 hour mark than to my 7:30 pace at the turn around.  And then, somewhere around mile 17, after summitting a huge hill, only to find a mountain beyond it, did my carefully constructed, ego-driven surety that I could do it, collapse completely.  I don’t suffer from self-esteem “issues”, I don’t do internal monologue pep talks, I don’t have to convince myself to step up when I need to do so.

The internal monologue moved swiftly into an external monologue which was composed mostly of a raging argument between human-striving Peter and human-animal Peter:

Human-striving Peter (HSP): argggghhh…dammit, just go….

Human-animal Peter (HAP): leaves, soft, sleep…

HSP: No! No! No! One leg, then other, grab that sapling. Pull!!!

HAP: log, warm moss, please stop…

…and on and on.  I think, at least twice, I broke into some swearing that caused squirrels to swoon and rough-looking birds to drop stunned from their slow, gentle, hungry circles above me.

When I came into Delauter, one of the aid station volunteers asked if I was alright.  I looked him dead in the eye, cracked what I thought was a smile, and said, “no, but yes”.  He watched me very closely until I left on up the slope with my popsicle.  I was mostly by myself for the entire distance between Delauter and Hamburg, which is both comforting, and terrifying.

At Hamburg, with six miles to go, I was 15 minutes ahead of the cut-off.  I resupplied, drank some Mountain Dew (which I hadn’t had for 20 years), turned towards the trail, and dug in.  About 10 minutes later the first rolling booms began to find their way through the sound of my feet on the rocks.  20 minutes after that the temperature dropped, the light drained out of the forest, and the wind started. Then, at 3:15, the rain started, a little at first, just enough to be heard through the trees above.  ‘Nice’, I thought.  Then it started to rain.  For real.

There is something wonderful about running in a hard rain; I’ve always enjoyed it.  And this time around, 28 miles into the most challenging run of my life, it saved me.

I could feel energy returning.  My adrenal glands, empty for miles and miles, seemed to flood back to life.  I smiled. Laughed. Ran on.  Enjoying the sound, the smell, the water tinged with salt pouring over my lips.  Thunder, sharp and piercing, nearly on top of me, spurring me on, and on.  And then the hail.

Yes, hail. In August. In Maryland.

I wasn’t sure at first, catching only the slight change in the character of the sound of the storm around me.  The sound of rain drops, heavier and heavier, until they were solid.  Definitely hail, collecting in little piles between the rocks in front of me.  More laughter combined with a slight feeling of hardly tempered hysteria.  I remember wondering out loud, “this is the whole freaking package, isn’t it?”.

At 5:02, an hour after the last drop of rain, after a long descent in the sunshine, I was running on a surprisingly well-groomed part of the trail when I saw a couple walking, hand in hand.  “How long until the Tea Room?” I asked.

“Just there, just five minutes”, he said.

Up, up, and up.  I laughed – again – when I saw the trail level, the Tea House to my left.  I dug in, watching the clock, saw D, got my picture taken, saw the stairs leading to the parking lot, actually managed to run up them, and across the finish line.

I was second to last, but got the vaunted Cat Card. I’ve gone, in the last 36 hours, from, “that was absolutely the stupidest thing ever,” to planning out my strategy for next year.

But, regardless of whether or not I ever return to Catoctin, what I said when I crossed the finish line after 9 hours and 11 minutes, I believe even more with a little reflection and rest: “Catoctin teaches humility”.  I learned that lesson, and trust it will make me a stronger person, and a stronger runner.

Checkout the complete set of pictures.

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