Ozark Trail 100

One day this summer I got really excited about running Western States, I thought the course looked beautiful and that it would be an epic adventure. One thing I didn’t know was that I needed a qualifier. The Ozark Trail seemed like a good one, although it might have been smarter to opt for any number of the easier/closer ones. Regardless, on November 5th I toed the line with 83 other runners hoping to make it the 100+ miles to the finish.
On the Thursday before the race my friend Joel and I headed down to the middle of nowhere for an adventure in the wilderness. The ride was long and rainy, which was a bit concerning knowing that I would be out the elements for hours upon hours. Fortunately the next day it cleared up and Joel and I went out and did some cave exploring as well as some hiking. A very fun day to have before a fun/brutal day.
The night before the race I got about 4 hours of sleep and woke up around 12:30am, the positive thing about this was that it gave me much more time to over prepare. After a long bus ride and a while sitting around a fire the 83 of us sang the national anthem and were on our way into the dark Mark Twain national forest.
The first few miles were easy going and rather fun as I settled in about 30 runners back, I remember looking back some 5 miles into the race and seeing a snake of headlamps coming down a large hill. By the time we made it to the first aid station I had ended up with a group of the younger runners, you know the 35 and under crowd. The sun had come up by this point and the aid station was more like a pit stop than anything else. Throughout the first half or so of the race I was able to maintain a sluggish pace which is probably the only reason I even finished. I bounced back and forth between about a dozen other runners, enjoying conversations with people from all over including Cath Todd the stud Australian from Dubai that won the womens side of the race ad Dale Holdaway who got second at the Hallucination 100 this year and won it in 2009. At about mile 15 my legs started to become fatigued but by mile 30 they somehow felt better than ever. This would continue to be the theme for a while, legs full of pain, brand new legs, legs full of poison, legs full of vigor. I was told by Brad Bishop, resident race expert that miles 51-68 were very runnable so I hoped my legs would cycle to feeling good by then and boy did they ever. Once I made it out of mile 51 I picked up my pace and ran probably the fastest 25 miles of my day up to mile 76. For some reason I felt the need to push it hard from 68 - 76 and while doing this I kind of wrecked myself. When I arrived at the aid station everything was slightly shaky, so I took a seat and chowed down for a bit. While at the aid station Pete Kostelnick made it up there, I was really happy for this because when I had passed him earlier had been trying to take a nap in the woods. Unfortunately while I was sitting at the aid station recovering my knee was tightening up. When Pete and I headed out together my knee decided it was done running. From here on out it was power hiking and everytime I thought I would try and run agan, my knee quickly told me no. I did make it to the finish although I would have liked to do it in a little more style but for my first 100 I was proud to be one of the 42 that finished the race and okay that I missed the top 10 by 1 place. Maybe I will head back down next year, I think I can knock off a good 3 or 4 hours and be well under the 24 hour mark.
Big shout out to Joel Maslin who single handedly crewed for me and made the experience much better. I passed out hard as soon as I got in the car and I don't know how I would have made it home in the shape I was in if he wasn't there.