11 days and counting....

Year of the foot-2010

2010 started off quite well. I ran a bunch but quickly realized 50 miles was a bit different animal than 50k (31 miles). I had to adjust my schedule to running the Rucky Chucky roundabout 50k in March, the Silver State 50 in May and then the Tahoe Rim Trail 100 in July.

I trained hard, but by myself. I ran a lot on the mountain by the house, and I ended up at the Rucky Chucky race in the best running shape I’d been in to date for an ultra distance race. The Rucky Chucky race was one I really was excited for. This would be my first time on the Western States Course. This particular race takes us from Foresthill to the American River crossing (miles 62-78 on the W.S. Course), for the most part its 16 miles downhill and then you turn around and go back up to where you started.

The race started well enough, I paced myself like I normally do on the downhills. Pacing while going down to me means, run as fast as you can to make up time because I suck at running up hill. At the time I was about 210 lbs and still carried quite a bit of muscle and fat from my skiing years. About 8 miles into the descent, I started to feel a weird sensation in my left foot. It did not hurt but it was going numb. My experience at the last 50k taught me that I did in fact need to eat and drink so when I got to the turnaround I stuffed my face full of everything I could handle. As I left the aid station, one of the staff asked me how I was doing. I thought this strange since no one ever asked me that before.

I said “oh I’m fine I’m really enjoying my first time on the W.S. trail, thanks for asking”.

The person who asked me the question was an ultra running legend who at one point was the oldest woman to ever finish the Western States run. “No problem”, she responded, “I noticed you were limping a bit and just wanted to make sure you were alright”.

I am? I thought to myself. I waived at her and started running again and sure enough I was limping a bit, nothing serious just favoring the left foot. I started climbing back up, and eventually reached the finish in my best time ever for a 50k. I was an hour and twenty minutes faster than my first 50k and I was super stoked. I got into the car with my girlfriend and we drove back home.

I woke up the next day in quite a bit of pain. I got out of bed, took my first step and realized something was very wrong with my left foot. I took my sock off to inspect it and to my surprise the second metatarsal was bent like a boomerang towards the outside of my foot. Now my toe has always been a bit crooked, but this was a whole different matter. It looked broken and hurt like hell. I also had this nasty pain on the inside of the ankle, most likely from over compensating for the toe.

That is my little piggy in all it's splendor, still bent like that to this day.

I've never really had great experiences with doctors so I’d not been to one in years. I went to the “doc in the box" urgent care center near my work and they told me I’d broken the toe and torn a tendon in my ankle. He told me I’d be out 6-12 weeks and I was not built to be running those kinds of distances. He offered a solution, “you look like a bike rider and maybe you should try cycling”.

“I can’t ride a bike on the Western States trail” I told him.
“well there are many other trails you can ride a bike on” he said .
"I want to run, how can you help me run", I asked him.
"I can’t", he told me. 

Based on my X-rays it was clear my toe was actually bent long ago but the impact of the running broke it. I've speculated that it was actually from shoving my foot into 2 sizes too small of ski boots and shoes for so many years. It was not until after my first 50k in 2009 I found out I should be in size 9 to 9.5 shoes. I ran that race in size 7.5 (like all my shoes at the time) Salomon XT Wings, and predictably got a ton of blisters.

The doctor then told me the only two procedures were to cut the toe off or insert a metal pin. Inserting a pin would render the toe unable to bend backward (something needed to walk or run uphill), and cutting it off might allow me to run but might not.

I was devastated, once again an injury was keeping me from what I wanted to do and once again a doctor is telling me I’m not going to be able to do what I want. This was the first time since I’d hurt my back that I’d let the “issues” I took from that experience surface. I was a complete mess emotionally and not much better physically.

I spent a couple of days moping around realizing I would not run 100 miles this year and generally feeling sorry for myself. I recalled the army doctor and his mantra. There must be a way I thought. Then I thought of my uncle, who for my entire life has been without a leg and arm which he lost in a motorcycle accident. He played so many sports with me when I would visit growing up. We shot pool, we played basketball, ping pong and he was able to do all those things with two limbs and usually he kicked my butt doing it.

I thought of all the disabled skiers I once knew and how they overcame great odds to ski. Then I looked at my toe and decided if I needed to cut it off, that’s what I was going to do, but only as a last resort.

I tend to think a lot, so much so I have trouble sleeping at night. I have, in many instances, been able to use this to my advantage. Generally if I can sit down and really focus, I can think for hours about the smallest aspect of almost anything. I was determined to figure out how I could run on my foot, toe or no toe. I spent days looking down at my foot while I simulated the movements of going uphill, downhill and across flat surfaces. I quickly realized that landing on my forefoot on a downhill was the culprit and extremely steep inclines also bent the toe in an unnatural movement. I quickly deduced that if I increased the range of movement of the toe and started heel striking on any decline, I should be able to make this work.

I spent 2 months in physical therapy and a total of 3 months out of running so the day I got released I went out and ran! I was actually still scheduled to run a 12 man 178 mile race around Tahoe and I had 2 weeks until the race started. I decided there was no time to build up in training so I’d go run the hardest leg that weekend and see how I felt.

I started the run that weekend in great spirits, I was finally running again. I’d been so motivated up to that point to run Western States, I did not realize the passion I was developing with just the act of running. I’ve really never actually like to run, but loved how it made me feel afterward. Now, I was enjoying the run!

This particular run goes up about 1800 feet over 6 miles and then down around 600 feet over 2 miles. A great training ground called Dog Valley, or leg 4 of the race I was slated to run in. I ran up and then back down. I got home and noticed I was favoring my left foot a bit but I felt pretty good. As the evening came I started to get sore, I went to bed early and excited. That excitement would last only through the night, when I awoke I realized I’d broken my toe once again. In hindsight, I was stupid to have run in the first place at that point.

Back again at the doc in the box, and again being asked why I ran. "I’m telling you Brandon you are not built for this type of running. You are a big guy and your feet are not structurally sound to run. Endurance cycling will probably satisfy your need.”

"That’s not acceptable I’m gong to find someone else", I told him. I crutched myself out of the office and began researching everything I could about how I could run with my foot the way it was. I was not quitting this time, I decided even if it took me 10 years to figure this out I was going to do it. I just had to get to the finish of that race.

I spent the next couple of weeks trying to figure out what to do, and then it hit me. Be part of the race, find other people who do this kind of running and seek advice from them. This might seem logical to you, but to me that’s asking for help. I just do not do that, I’ve always been taught that help was a sign of weakness and you do not display weakness in my family. The few times in my life up to that point I had shown myself to be vulnerable or weak in front of others, I'd left the experience ridiculed or scarred mentally in some way.

I decided I’d volunteer at an aid station at Western States. I picked the one with the largest medical unit, figuring someone there would be able to give me some sort of direction. That aid station would be at Foresthill, and ironically was run by a local running group here in Reno called the Silver State Striders.

What I found at the Foresthill aid station was just the medical help I had hoped for, but also so much more. In fact, that decision to go there would ultimately drive key decisions in my recovery and prove to be the reason I eventually got into Western States.

12 days and counting....

March 2009,

I got an email from a college buddy who was asking for donations for a run he was doing. A casino here in Reno has an event where you climb all the stairs to the top of the building. It’s for charity. I sent him $20 and I remember thinking, there was a time when I did stuff like that. I spent 2 days pondering where that guy went, why he went away, and did I want him back in some capacity. I know my buddy never realized the impact that email would have, especially on me. In the end, he was the one giving me the charity. He lit the spark, now it was my job to stoke the fire.

Less than a week later I’d decided was going to run Western States. That is how I roll, some love it, some do not, but there is very little grey area with me. I'm the type to jump into the pool before I know how to swim. Moderation is not a word you would use to describe how I do things. 

I hoped on the internet looked up the website for Western States and to my surprise only 400 people could run it a year, and over 2000 wanted in. Even worse you had to qualify just to get into the lotto. Slightly dejected I wandered my way around and figured out not all 100 mile races were like this.  I immediately formulated a plan. I’ll run a 50k in July, a 50 miler in January and I’ll run the Tahoe Rim Trail 100 in July 2010. Then I'll be qualified for States and will run it in 2011 under 24 hours (shooting high again, gotta love being naive)!

I came home and announced to my better half that I was going to run a 50k. She asked how far that was and when I told her she gave me the  “you are nuts” look. I found a 3 month training program and mostly followed it. I say mostly because the program I got, ended up being a very elite ultra runner’s program that I found on the net. At the time, I  ran at most 6 miles a week, so finding this schedule which called for 50 miles a week from the start was stupid on every level, but that's what I did. I think I made it 3 weeks before I realized there was no way I could follow it to the T.  I did everything on my own and showed up for the first 50k in OK shape.

26 miles into the Tahoe Rim Trail 50k and I was having the time of my life. Then it hit, the bonk, the wall, the “I am done with this” thought crept in. Being totally honest it might have also been the Jim Beam shot I took at the Hobart Aid station. They were giving them out and I was thirsty, what's a guy who hates water to do? In my training I never ate, never took salts or electrolytes and drank as little water as possible. The next 7 miles were the toughest I’d ever experienced. It was funny how for the first 26 I made fun of the people at the aid stations who were devouring everything they could as I passed them all. You dummy I thought, do you not realize you are just letting me pass you in these aid stops? Well, at about mile 28 each and every one of those dummies passed the “smart guy” who never stopped at aid stations. Many of those dummies gave me water, food and salts while I sat on the side of the course waiting for my body to let me continue.My competitors were helping me....who does that? I'd later learn you really compete with the clock and the course in these things. Unless you have a shot at winning, which is not the case for me, the camaraderie with other participants drastically increases the joy you get from the event and makes the undertaking seem a bit more plausible knowing you are not alone. You are all on the same team trying to beat the course and the clock.

Once finished, I was a mess. I am an hours drive home from the race, but I swear it took us multiple hours. It seemed like after every turn I’d start to dry heave and my gal would have to pull over and watch me attempt to get what was not really in there, out. I’d realized by that point I might need help to do this, but I was not really sure I wanted to do it anymore. I hurt and I was so sore the next week!

I had worked myself up to a good fitness level but Burning Man was on the horizon and I stopped running to focus on that. I started back up in November 2009 set to run a 50 mile race in early 2010. I got myself in shape for a 50k in just months and I was already in better shape than when I started. A couple of months to get into 50 mile shape seemed appropriate.

Much later I would learn that line of thinking and training gets you in big trouble at some point, generally ending in something being busted or broken. Unbeknownst to me, I'd be getting very familiar with busted and broken body parts in 2010 which I call the year of the foot.

15 days and counting

15 Days and counting…..

I bought my first ticket to Burning Man 2 weeks before the event in 2004. While I had no intention of making that purchase a “life changing event”, strange as it is, buying that ticket changed my perspective in ways just as quantifiable as when I hung up my ski boots. Only this time, it was all good.

Sometime around August 2004 my good friend and his gal decided they were going to go to a Festival out in the middle of Nevada called Burning Man (BM). They asked if I wanted to go and I said “Sure, but I’m not taking any time off of work to go out to the middle of Nevada to party with a bunch of hippies”. I ended up going to BM on the Friday before they burn the Man. I originally thought this event was a big drunk & drug fest that ended when a straw man burns. On the way out (about 2.5 hours from Reno) I thought I probably would not go again. I felt I was quite odd and I would not connect with anyone there, especially my camp mates whom I met just a week or so earlier. I mean, I’ve always felt I am just super weird. I rarely meet people who think like I do. I rarely meet anyone who “goes for it” like I do, and lastly, at that point in my life I was still stuck thinking the good parts had already been lived. Therefore, nothing good would come of this.

I spent less than 40 hours at the event. I did not sleep more than about an hour. I took no drugs and drank only the last night I was there. I saw things you could not explain.  The last night when they burned the man our camp marched out to the center of the event and sat down. There is a ceramoney of fire dancing before they burn him. Then they start the fire works and burn him. I was so overwhelmed with emotion, I ditched all my stuff with a camp mate and ran up to the still burning remains and circled them a few times. I was alive. I was living for the first time that I could remember in so long.

Photo by Scott London Burning Man 2011

Upon leaving Burning Man in 2004, I said to my friend, “this was not what I thought it would be, I need to go back”. I got home and called my mom and I told her the last 40 hours changed my life. I told her I'd never felt more "normal" in my life. This was a big deal, I'd always sought to just fit in. Suddenly I was not the weirdest person I knew, in fact I met a lot of strange birds out there.....and I learned to appreciate every one of them. Weird or odd suddenly became so awesome. I started to think being outside of the norm was not such a bad thing afterall.

Within a month, I had sold my car to buy an SUV so I could carry tons of …well crap, out to the event the next year (a tradition that still holds true today!). I was accepted into a circle of people (my campmates) who I am proud to say are still some of my best friends. I also immediately started planning for my next “burn” a mere 11 months away. I found a happy place those days on the playa that I had not had for a decade. I realized for the first time in so long there might be more to my life than what I’d already experienced. There was something so pure to what I was feeling, I guess it was bliss.

I’ve been to the event every year since; in fact in 2005 I lived out there in my Saturn Vue for 2 whole weeks! I met a girl there in 2005, we’ve been together ever since and we are getting married in 2013. That will also be my 10^th consecutive year at the event. Through the years I’ve come to really love those “odd” things about me, they make me who I am. I like to push boundaries...all of them. Mine, yours, authority, you name it I'm going to push it to the limit. I’ve learned if you celebrate what is different you’ll actually find there are a lot of people who also celebrate that same thing or at least respect it. Once you find each other it’s that “different” that bonds you. It’s not unlike Ultra running in that regard, we are a bunch of people who love to run really far and it’s the celebration of that action, where we bond.

As the years passed my annual pilgramage out to Black Rock City (BRC is the name of the city we build out there) became my purpose in life. That is not to say, I slacked on my responsibilities, just that if I was awake on some level I was thinking about the event. Every year on the way out I had this thought, crazy as it was, but I really wanted to run there. I’d always appreciated the huge undertaking the participants in the event have to deal with when they must travel for day to get there. I’ve often felt that my experience was somehow limited because I did not have to suffer like so many to get there. For years I dismissed this as crazy talk. Yet, every year on the way out, I longed to be running out on the side of the road.

These thoughts led me to start doing a lot more hiking with my dogs and a little running out on the mountain behind my house. I resumed running with a friend on Sundays and before I knew it I was thinking hard about running that race I saw on TV again. My back will always be a work in progress, I really can not sit upright for very long and instead opt to stand or lay down as often as possible. Multiple times a day everything from my neck to my hips crack like knuckles. As long as I stay upright or parallel to the ground I am good to go.The funny thing about the running, no pain. Walking and sitting, I have some amount of pain, but running, nothing, nada, no dice!

I spent the next couple of years doing my thing out behind my house sometimes with my dogs sometimes alone. I even made the goal to go to the top of the mountain behind my house. It's a 14 mile round trip and about 2500-3000 feet of climbing. The first time I did it in 2007 it took me almost 8 hours. In March of 2009 I got an email which resulted in me finally taking action and deciding I was going to run the Western States 100.

16 days and counting.....

16 days! Holy Crap, I only have 16 days left until I set off on my biggest adventure yet. I am running at 5am June 23rd from the base of Squaw Valley ski resort to Auburn, in the Western States 100 mile Endurance Race. We basically run on the Western States trail, the same one that Miners once hauled the gold and silver they mined from Virginia City in Nevada, all the way to Sacramento. The route is arduous, there is roughly 19,000 feet of climbing and 23,000 feet of descending over the 100.2 miles. On this journey we will climb straight up the face of a ski resort (something I once upon a time made fun of people doing), run through the entire night, cross the raging American River holding on to only a cable, run through multiple canyons where temps could reach as high as 115 degrees and finally....rather hopefully, we will finish running, walking or crawling the last 3/4 of the track at Placer High School in Auburn Ca.

The rules are simple, leave at 5am Saturday, get to Auburn by 11am Sunday staying on the mostly marked trail and you get a belt buckle for your efforts much like the one below. That's a silver buckle, you get that for doing the race in under 24 hours. I will likely not be in contention for that award, you get a bronze buckle for finishing the race in under 30 hours.

There is no money to win, compared to other sports very little notoriety, yet for some reason annually over 2000 people actually are willing to pay a HEFTY amount to subject themselves to this kind of torture. Unfortunately, the race runs through the Granite Cheif wilderness and the man (aka government) has stipulated this to be a special place where no events can be held. However, this race and it's older brother the Tevis Cup horse race were grandfathered in and are allowed to be run at the same participation level they had when the wilderness act was made into law. For this race that means roughly a little over 400 people will have the opportunity to start the race.

If this is your first time hearing of people running 100 miles in a single effort you are probably thinking it's not possible. I know I did back when I first became aware of the race in 1995. I was watching a PBS special or something on these crazy people running through the California wilderness. I thought 3 things, first how many days do they take to do this, second where the hell do they sleep at night and third I need to do this someday. To my surprise, people actually finish this race in 15 hours! No sleeping, some do not even sit down the entire time! That is a 9:00 minute a mile pace....for 15 hours. That may not seem fast but given the hills, rather mountain ranges one must cross in this race that is freaking really fast.

So upon watching the entire special in bewilderment I realized they only get 30 hours to be considered an official finisher, they do not sleep and I'm probably never going to be able to do it. Never going to be able to do it you ask? That's not a very positive attitude, but it's the one I was battling at the time, only weeks earlier I had an accident that left me stuck in bed with very little ability to walk. However, I made a promise to one day get to the start and see if I too could make it to the finish like those mega athletes I saw on the TV special.

In 1995 I was an Alpine Ski racer and I took a big fall at a downhill race. I had some talent in skiing but my real advantage was my work ethic. I worked myself in the gym, running and training like a dog. I was relentless in my efforts to make the Olympic team. I ended up busting my back up pretty good, to the point that the doctors I was seeing told me that skiing at a high level again was unlikely. I was probably not going get rid of the issues with walking I'd developed, and I’d need to reevaluate the activities I chose to participate in. I went to a couple of different doctors and they all said the same thing, feel fortunate you have what you have left it could have been so much worse. Basically glass half empty.....not exactly my mantra at the time.

What a shitty thing to tell an 18 year old whose entire life (and that of his family) revolved around athletics. I raced BMX from the age of 4 to 10, going to the US Nationals nearly every year. I ran track, x-country, wrestled and ski raced in high school, now I have to give everything that made me feel alive up to live a life of sedentary hell? You've had a great run kid, the fun is over now deal with your life sucking till you die...that's how I took it. Fuck that noise........

So what did I do? I went and tried to find a doctor who did not tell me those things, no small task given the litigious society we have in America. I did eventually find one, he was a former army doc and his view point was "there is always a way, it's how bad you really want it that determines the way you go". He laid it out on the line for me. You will ski again, you can compete at the highest levels, you will recover from this, your body will never be the same and it's really going to hurt a lot kid. I told him pain was never an issue for me, (boy was I wrong on that) so let’s start now!

It took about 6 months and I was back on skis, a year later I was competing in the same level of racing. From the outside it seamed as though I had worked my body back into great shape, and that was mostly true. However there are 2 aspects to an injury that one must recover from, the physical and the mental. I've always been physically tough, but some of the pain I experienced brought me to my knees and many a time I thought this just is not worth it. There would be times after doing simple push ups, I'd try to get up to stand and a pain would rush through my spine that hurt so bad I was paralyzed for seconds and would fall to the ground crying. Eventually that subsided and what I found out through that experience is the mental recovery is far tougher and takes far longer. Oh and that mentally....maybe I’m more bark than bite. The pain this experience caused me mentally would not be fully understood for a long time, even to this day I have issues thinking about it, and that's as far as we will delve into that.........

I spent the next 2 years trying to ski fast...it rarely worked. Every time I got to a point of almost being out of control (a line any skier must navigate expertly to be fast) my brain shut me down. Unfortunately I did not know this, it just happened. I thought I was truly physically broken, so I did what i aways did and worked harder. To my surprise nothing got better and without any reasonable way to get better I gave up.Quite simply something in my brain became a governor like they have on golf carts and it would not let me go fast. I became an average ski racer, and quite frankly upon realizing that, I lost my identity. If only I'd have realized at that point it was my brain and not my body that was broken.

I ended up skiing in college two years before the allure of making money overtook the competitive spirit I was so badly trying to hang on to. It was the day I finally hung up the ski boots that I lost my true competitive nature and my adolescent identity died. I've skied 1 time since 1999. I turned into a new man...some might say boy given some of the antics I pulled, but whatever I turned into I just never really liked it. I made one statement to myself that I will forever always regret.....I will NEVER again put everything I have into a single endeavor because I can not take this kind of failure ever again.

I'd finally succumbed to what I always hated....I just let life happen and was content to take what I was given. I was now a glass half empty kind of guy just like the doctors I swore off so many years ago. I spent the next several years spectating life, not really participating in it. I got my degree, went to work full time at an advertising agency and resigned myself to the fact I was going to be a desk jockey in a cubicle until I retire.

I stayed this way until 2004, and then as fortune would have it I ended up with a ticket to the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City Nevada and my life as I knew it then, changed forever.........