(This originally appeared somewhere a long time ago.)
I was up at 5:30 on race morning, two hours before gun time, a half-hour earlier than planned, and later than all of my teammates. I have found that I sleep very well in hotel rooms once I get around to trying. I shoveled back a few ibuprofen and the coffee Ben had generously fetched from across the street, collected my gear, and wandered outside. It was cold (below 40 degrees), but this was unquestionably preferable to the nastyhot conditions I'd been dealing with daily for three months.
We drove the two miles to the elementary school serving as the event's home base, collected our numbers, and glanced over the list of entrants. This roster was only 45 strong, but included one surprising name -- Mike Dudley, a one-time 2:14 guy who'd run just over 2:20 at Detroit last year and had apparently moved to Georgia. His credentials made him the prohibitive favorite; Dave had run 2:57:00+ in 2001 but was shooting for around 6:40's today, Eric only planned to run about half of the race and at half steam, and Ben (second at the National Trail Marathon Championship last month) and I were looking to run 6:00 pace, or 3:06:25. (I had toyed over the past week with the thought of a sub-three but after seeing the course I knew this would take a 2:55 effort and I wasn't ready to provide one.) Most in attendance appeared to be typical ultrafolks in no hurry to do anything other than seek a sturdy weekend challenge by taking part in a roving buffet that would surely last into the early afternoon.
I arranged five 16-ounce bottles of double-strength Gatorade on the grass near the start, planning to grab one after each loop, and downed a sixth during a brief warm-up. Dudley had pronounced himself "washed up" before the start, but at the starter's cry of "Go!" he quickly settled in behind Ben and I, who nominally led a group of about seven people through what might have been last year's one-mile mark in exactly six minutes. I was surprised even this many people came along for the ride. By the time we'd reached the halfway point of the first loop, Ben, Mike and I were alone and clipping along at just under 6:00 pace. An "official" golf cart would take us through the first loop before pulling off the course; I'm not sure what purpose this served, but it was all the help we'd get.
Our first surprise came at around the three-mile point, when we encountered a very large tree lying across the path. It hadn't been there the previous afternoon, and thanks to not bothering with course markings, the race officials in the cart in front of us were also surprised by its presence. Fortunately there was a bit of daylight on the grass on the root side of the fallen oak, so we were able to continue without actually having to climb over anything. We finished our first lap in 30:47, about 5:57 pace. This felt tenable, which meant nothing. I grabbed one of my bottles and chugged away. Ben and I continued trading the lead every half-mile or so while Dudley, about 6' 3" and 104 pounds, ran just fast enough to stay a step behind. We slowed to a 30:48 on the second lap. On the out-and-back section we could see that Dan was about 20 seconds behind us, but no one else was close. Toward the end of this lap we saw a fallen runner covered in blankets being tended to off to one side of the path; we later learned she'd tripped and hit her head but I believe she's OK as of this writing.
By the beginning of lap three it was clear that our hopeful prediction that townsfolk would remain out of sight for most of the race owing to the cold and the hour was badly in error. The fuckers were everywhere. The loop included three or four tunnels about fifty yards long passing under Peachtree City's surface streets, and it seemed that every time we headed into the maw of one of these things, a cart was headed pell-mell into its asshole. A few drivers slowed and pulled their carts off to the side, but most were either unconcerned or, judging from their haughty expressions, scornful of a race they probably had not been warned about. To add to the fun, Mike collided with some idiot's dog; its owner apparently believed his leash required at least five or six feet of slack at all times. We later learned a female entrant was actually bitten by a loose dog. Anyway, we got to the halfway point, still together, in 1:32:25 after a 30:50 third lap.
Grabbing another of my bottles, I noticed that only two of them remained, meaning that some bastard had made off with one. Considering that the official aid station was stocked with enough Coke, candy and snacks to feed the entire town for a weekend, this was especially unconscionable and I hoped the perpetrator was suffering mightily from cramps, exhaustion and various incipient malignancies. Just after the start of the fourth loop, when Dudley had edged a few meters ahead, I had my closest brush with an out-of-control cart driver, in this case a kid about 14 years old who roared around a corner, bleary-eyed as could be. I yelled something novel -- "Get the fuck out of the way, fucker!" sounds about right -- before realizing that getting enraged would not serve me well with over 90 minutes of running remaining. Meanwhile, Dave was pounding on the sides of other, equally ill-piloted carts a mile or so behind.
As we wound our way around Mr. Big Slain Tree for the fourth time, Ben seemed to be laboring slightly. Dudley looked very good and after a mile in the high 5:40's in which he edged away by several more meters, I took a pre-emptive strike at notions of chasing him by stopping to piss. This 20-second break allowed Ben to catch and pass me, and when I caught him I was hoping we'd be able to run together, but I was raring to keep a steady pace, so I eased ahead. Thus I found myself alone by being the only one of our game threesome to neither speed up nor slow down.
Thanks to my pit stop, my fourth lap was a pedestrian 31:31, about 6:05 pace. Dudley had a 300-meter lead (at least; I couldn't see more than 20-30 seconds ahead at any point on the winding course) and Ben was close to half that in arrears. I felt good, with encroaching fatigue seeming to settle in equally on both sides of my body, always a good sign. I had downed my fourth and, thanks to some larcenous dick, final Gatorade without trouble. The strangest moment of the race for me occurred about a mile into this lap, when I heard a runner coming up from behind. I turned around, assuming it was someone not in the race. But it was Dudley. He'd managed to go off course and lose close to a minute. He explained this as he quickly and easily passed me (I'd just run another 5:40-something on a slight downhill and really couldn't pick it up to hang with the dude), and just as he was finishing with his explanation he very nearly went off course again, relying on my shout from five or ten yards back to pay heed to the faint arrows underfoot to stay the literal course. Soon after he was effectively gone again. In plain terms, I was dealing with a superior runner and I would only win this race if he ran into mechanical failure in the final miles (seemingly unlikely; he looked smooth and had been taking fluids of his own) or got lost again (highly likely, it appeared).
I thought I would avoid all confrontations with townies on this lap, but toward the end of the lap someone was actually walking (or running) a dog from a golf cart headed in the opposite direction, and I actually had to leave the path to avoid this mess. I inquired, loudly and in all sincerity, of the fatties in the cart: "Could you be any fucking stupider?" They didn't answer, but some old folks walking ahead of me and in the same direction assumed I was addressing them for not getting out of the way and began squawking at me in some agitated Dixie-fossil dialectic as I passed. I hastened to mend fences by telling them I WASN'T FUCKING TALKING TO THEM!, or something equally conciliatory. I have no compunction or regrets about behaving rudely toward idiots, but I again reminded myself that yammering at ill-bred, open-mouthed slow-blinkers would do me no good, and resolved to simply be aware of their hazardous presence and evade them wherever necessary.
I ran my fifth lap in 31:14, meaning that I'd held my actual running pace from the previous lap, when I'd stopped to tinkle. Race officials noted with excitement that I had made up some ground and could catch the leader "if I still had some horsepower," and I had neither the time nor the inclination to explain what had actually transpired. I went through the marathon point in 2:37:07; this meant I had a 12-second cushion on 6:00 pace, so with second place seeminglya given, sub-6:00's became my new, primary goal. I was tiring but not in any real distress, and reminded myself that I was, in effect, being paid about $13 per minute to run fairly hard for the next half-hour, a prospect only a true dipshit would fail to embrace. I lapped a woman wearing something on her head a sheik fond of lycra might have admired; she was puking up a storm into the bushes. Nonjudgmentally, I had to wonder -- and still do -- why people who ran in the range of four hours for a marathon going flat-out feel any need to run further than 26.21875 miles. Isn't that "ultra" enough?
Anyway, with a blistering kick, I finished 56 seconds behind Dudley in 3:06:22, 5:59.9 pace. In capping off a 111-mile week with the longest single run of my life, I earned $400 by placing second, and became part of the winning team. Eric, for his part, ran 20.72 miles in 2:20:00, eight miles farther than this one-time 3:43 1500m/1:00:52 20K guy had gone in several years.
Later, I ate and drank and burped a lot, explained to Dave and Eric what the terms "Donkey punch" and "Dirty Sanchez" meant, and overall had myself a blast. The next morning we were able to "run" 25 minutes with no one experiencing problems, so we could honestly say we'd accomplished everything we'd hoped to accomplish, far from a guarantee when a bunch of largely broken-down thirty- and forty-somethings gather for a 50K run.
In speaking with Dudley afterward, I discovered he'd dropped out of Detroit a few weeks earlier at 20 miles after overcoming injuries and a serious bout with pneumonia early in the year to run 14:32 for 5K. His effort today was a perfect embodiment of the sort of perseverance that got him to the line in the first place.
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