Every good story starts with a friend saying “hey I’ve got an idea”

13 years ago, I let a friend talk me into a very bad decision. She’s notorious for it, always convincing me to do something terrible. She’s probably reading this right now…you know who you are.

It all started with a text, it always does.

“50 kilometer trail race! You in? Ultra-running is the new thing!”

It was 2012, I was young! You can do anything when you’re young! Everything sounds like a good idea! You’re always looking for a new challenge!

“Heck. Yes.” I said.

I’m here to tell you, you CANNOT do anything when you’re young. Nothing is a good idea. And 50 kilometers of trail running is not a challenge, it’s a death sentence.

Michelle is one of my dearest friends. She has gotten me into quite a few extreme endurance challenges, but she’s also been with me for some pretty amazing experiences. Like a sunrise Easter service on top of a mountain in Colorado, meeting the Arlington Cemetery draft horses and witnessing the military pageant Twilight Tattoo at Ft Meyer, VA, to name a few.

So she pitched this 50k trail race to me all those years ago. When you think 50k, it sounds very far. But when you think 5k ten times, that’s not so bad. We run 5k races all the time. So do 10 of them back-to-back, how bad could it be? That was my logic at the time, and I still stand by it. Sort of.

It turns out, it could be very bad, because as previously mentioned, I was fresh out of college, feeling athletic, and didn’t think I needed to train for this race. I ran a 6 mile loop around a local lake, decided I could definitely do that 9 more times, and dialed in a comfy 6-week taper until race day.

I don’t know if I have the words to describe that day, so here is a gallery of pictures.

I’m wearing basketball shorts and I think those are volleyball shoes. That’s how ill-prepared I was. She gave me those black socks saying they help fight blisters and the compression would prevent cramping. God bless her, that was the only bit of gear I had working in my favor and I wear those things on my long runs to this day.

Michelle finished around 5.5 hours. I finished in…well I finished. I need you to understand how muddy the trail was. It poured the entire night before the race. People were losing their shoes in the mud, you’d run past a random sneaker half buried and think, “man, I hope that guy’s okay somewhere out there.” I had to stop several times, yank mine out of the mud, and put it back on my foot.

I’m a firm believer in the hover method when it comes to public toilets of the portable variety (port-a-potty). I have been pregnant, wearing a child in a carrier on my chest, with a backpack on my back and I will hover over that toilet seat for as long as necessary. This day though, I hit the last 2 miles of the race, visited a port-a-potty and literally collapsed onto the toilet. I could have sat there all day. I didn’t even look to see if it needed to be wiped off. I just slithered down onto that throne like this is where I live now.

Periodically Michelle will text me a picture from this race and say, “remember when I talked you into this?!” For 13 years I have staunchly replied, “NEVER AGAIN.”

You can imagine her shock, 3 months ago, when I texted her a link to a 50k trail race in VA and requested her presence. I actually said, “you owe me a trail race, it’s about to come due.”

What I haven’t mentioned is that Michelle is a military spouse, married to a very legit Army man, and they frequently move all over the country. At the time of this exchange she was dealing with a cross-country move, plus she had a baby like 18 months ago, so we mutually decided this wasn’t the most fair point in her life for me to call in that debt. But she did agree it was a debt she owed and we’re excited to make it happen later on.

All that to say, I’m doing another 50k trail race. I don’t know what motivated me, except a desire to mix up my training. It’s called the Mountain Masochist, so I’m sure it’s fine. I’ve really been enjoying going out in the mountains on all the training runs even though nature hates me. I don’t want to say it’s all about me, but nature has it OUT for me. I’m in a state of constant itch, scrapes and swollen ankles.

I’ll get into the chigger story next time, I can’t relive it right now after the trauma of remembering the mud from my last 50k.

Do stay tuned…