Midstate Massive Ultra Trail 100 miler

It starts in New Hamsphire, runs through Massachusetts, takes a few steps into Connecticut and Rhode Island, and finishes back in Mass. In spite of this, there are no Dunkin Donuts locations visible on course.

 

Start to Jewell Hill Road (15.3 mi)

I started in the second-to-last wave with a mere 5 runners. There wasn't the usual hectic energy at the start. It was calm, uncluttered, and we all had time and space to get ourselves ready, and shake out any lingering nervousness. It was partly-cloudy, cool, dry - about as perfect as could be.

The calmest of starting lines. All photos are courtesy of Goat Factory Media. 

 

The race starts on top of an old ski hill in southern New Hampshire and serves up 10 miles of rocky, rooty, rollicking New England ridge running right off the bat. I settled into a groove with a couple of other guys as we danced between dark, mossy pine and spruce stands and wide open granite outcroppings with panoramic views of peak fall color. 

For the full duration of the race, we'd be following the Midstate Trail, marked with yellow painted blazes and the occasional reflective yellow triangle. In the first 10 miles, you're often following a ridge line, but whenever there's ambiguity, you can find little painted triangles on the rocks pointing you in the right direction. I didn't find it hard to stay on trail in these early miles.

Mount Watatic, the final peak before the first aid station, was about as technical as anything I'd run in Boulder. The trail was steeply held together by a webbing of tree roots, interspersed with the occasional boulder or scree field, and I found myself ping-ponging from tree trunk to tree trunk to keep myself upright. 

After the first aid station, the trail got a bit sparse as it traversed some old logging cuts, but as always, we just needed to look around enough to spot a yellow blaze. After passing through a little town on a lake shore, we climbed up and over Mount Hunger. Not sure where the name came from, but it was appropriately ominous, as we had to traverse more than a few rock ledges and clamber over plenty of old cobblestone fences.

 

Jewell Hill Road to Wachussett Dental (23.5 mi)

I rolled through this aid station quickly and pulled ahead of everyone else on yet another hummocky logging road that had long since been reclaimed by saplings. Every trail section had a different riff on what I'd call "New England cobble". This one was studded with lots of rounded, well-worn rocks the size of your fist, hidden under a blanket of dry leaves. Not enough to twist an ankle, but enough to slow you down a bit.

After the first climb, the course hitches a ride on a country road for a couple of miles before crossing under an iconic graffitied railroad bridge. There was quite a lot of traffic on the road and I kept myself safely on the left side, in view of oncoming traffic. As I climbed a steep incline through a rural neighborhood, I got the sense that I was off course. I pulled up my phone and opened the tracking app for the race, and found that...it wouldn't display the course, because I didn't have cell service (what!?). I called my wife and she confirmed I was around a mile off course, and should have taken a hard left after the railroad tracks. After jamming back down the hill, I saw a course arrow pointing the way - but it was on the right side of the road, almost certainly blocked by all of the traffic when I ran under the bridge.

Onward and upward, up and over more centuries-old cobblestone fences. Most of the climbs happen in short 200-300 foot bursts, but there's enough of them, peppered with enough obstacles, that they started to wear me down. I also started feeling queasy, but kept hydrating in the hopes that it'd pass. 

 

Wachusett Dental to Wachusett Mountain (29 mi)

I always hit the lowest of the lows around mile 30, but this was pretty rough. I could tell I had long since passed the point of no return with my stomach. I was expecting a nice jog for the next hour and change. This was the prelude to the big climb up Wachusett Mountain, how hard could it be?

The grind begins. Check out that yellow blaze.

Hard! After a couple of pleasant miles on sandy creekside trails, the course climbed steeply up rock steps and along granite outcroppings. I barfed a few times before the first climb and immediately felt the fog lift. It happens every so often, and I just need to deal with it as best I can. Unfortunately, it robbed me of energy, so I ended up traversing the technical parts of this section like an old man, gingerly meandering along. I could see the ski trails of Wachusett Mountain across the valley just as night fell.

 

Wachusett Mountain to Old Colony Road (37.5 mi)

Dropping felt like the natural choice. My stomach is a mess and I'm shivering in the dark, it's taken me 7 hours to get here, so sub-24 hours is not really an option any more, and I've got the biggest climb of the race staring me down. I parked myself in a chair, drank a couple of cokes while eating a can of ravioli, and told myself all I had to do was get my energy levels back and ride it out. 

I really enjoyed the climb up Wachusett. It's not especially steep or technical, but it felt nice to get at least one massive, unrelenting climb under my belt. I was not prepared for the descent off the backside, though, hopping down 3-4 foot rock ledges, using my hands for stability, in the dark. Within a mile, the descent moderated and I was able to find my running legs, just in time for a long stretch of dirt road through a dark oak forest. Every once in a while, I'd look back and see another headlamp join the conga-line. 

 

Old Colony Road to Barre Falls Dam (45 mi)

This is where I started passing runners from the earlier waves in earnest. I don't have much of a recollection of what happened on this stretch of trail. I was still clawing my way out of the calorie deficit from before Wachusett Mountain, and most of my mental energy was focused on navigating the rocks and roots in the dark. There was a full moon, but it was completely obscured. The brush and forest canopy formed such a tight tunnel around the trail that it was hard to decipher the topology of my route. 

Sometimes, it feels like you carry every mile you've run on your back; as you get closer to the finish, the mental burden snowballs. Whenever it would get hard - once an hour, once a mile, once a minute, I'd palm the button on a bracelet my daughter made for me. I'm not sure what that ritual was doing - whether I was reminding myself that somehow, I'd let her down if I didn't finish, or whether it was just something to do to get my mind out of a tailspin. But it kept me stable as I moved through the middle hours of the night, alone in the woods, getting hooted at by angry owls.

 

Barre Falls Dam to Long Pond Boat Ramp (51.5 mi)

Barre Falls Dam was cold. Really cold. Crisp air from up the river valley was cutting through the aid station. My feet were damp from the dew coating the long grass. I did my best to eat some avocado but decided my time was better spent powering through more gels while ticking the miles off. I threw on my warm pullover and ambled out across the top of the dam, continuing to pick off runners from the earlier waves. The trail was flat-ish, meandering along a marshy shoreline, but hairpin turns and the occasional amalgamation of roots kept my pace in check. At some point, we hit a gravel road and I was able to open things up for a few miles before we briefly turned back on to a rocky, rooty, and mud-pit strewn stretch of double track. In the distance, I could see a blue-green glow filtering through the trees and swore I could hear an EDM festival.

 

Long Pond Boat Ramp to Camp Marshall (58.5 mi)

It's hard to understate the rush of running downhill into a flood-lit aid station in the middle of the woods while a DJ is blasting Avicii. I sat in some muddy grass and ate another can of ravioli, sipped coffee, and took care of some raw underarm chafing. I should have changed my shirt back at Wachusett Mountain; the salt crust it had collected had been grinding my skin for the past 20 miles. 

This section was peak wandering-the-mysterious-woods-at-night. At times, the path from blaze to blaze was completely indecipherable among the blanket of leaves and mounded forest floor. Sometimes, the trail quickly dove 20 feet, crossed a trickling creek, doglegged around a dead log, and climbed back up on to the same ridge, leaving you wonder, why did I have to go down there? Other times, you'd see a blaze in the distance and carry on the well-worn trail, only to realize you should have turned left 200 feet ago, onto the sparsely-traveled game trail. There wasn't any getting lost, there was just a lot of slow-going and how exactly do I move through this landscape. 

We briefly crossed through a small town perched on a hill in the wee hours of the morning. 

 

Camp Marshall to Moose Hill Road (63.5 mi)

The rubber had hit the road. There were a few guys completely thrashed and demolishing burritos, hoping to get their energy back, there were two runners with stabilizing wraps on their ankles and knees, not surprising given the trail surface, and everyone else had that 2 a.m. glaze over their eyes.

I filled my bottles and made myself scarce, leaving with a peanut butter cup in my mouth. After the late afternoon's hydration miss, I was back on track, putting back a double-strength Skratch High Carb and eating a couple of Maurtens during each section. 

After a quick up-and-over on double track, we steeply ascended through another rural neighborhood before peeling off down a heavily wooded trail along a creek. Thick, humid air, infused with pine and moss, was a welcome refuge from the whipping wind on the hilltops. On the final climb up Moose Hill, I basked in a panoramic view of the city lights of southern Massachusetts, far off in the distance. 

 

Moose Hill Road to Four Chimneys (71 mi)

It could have been because it was 3 a.m., but this section felt much harder than it should have. After ambling out along an earthen dam lit by whimsical pumpkin luminaries, the trail got gnarly, quickly. Sharp drops and descents. Mud pits. Stretches of trail overrun by what could only be called "root cribbing". Overgrown sticker bushes. All within occasional sight of suburban tracts, which added some fun absurdity to it all. Ride run the cozy gnar.

Sublime.

At some point, the course abruptly punched out into a parking lot for what looked like a nursery, and then ran through a little downtown. At 3:30 am. Which, as it turns out, is a wonderfully peaceful time to coast down a road on your own. 

The course rejoined a soft, gently rolling stretch of trail through some pine stands where I was able to keep up a decent running pace. My lack of weekly mileage was starting to become apparent - I was running, but without great form and efficiency. 

In another few miles, we hopped back on some rural neighborhood roads. A few houses had signs encouraging us along. It seemed like every other house and farm was adorned with fall - not even strictly Halloween - lights. 

 

Four Chimneys to Fay Mountain Farms (74 mi)

I ate a handful of candy on my way up the climb out of the aid station. This next section was a gimme, almost entirely on double track, then rural gravel road, and then pavement. I ascended the winding climb up and over Fay Mountain, through a hillside graveyard, just as tendrils of twilight were trickling over the landscape.

 

Fay Mountain Farms to Chase Corp (82 mi)

Late-race hunger was raging, so I powered through a few cups of tater tots and ketchup before heading out. This section was 80% road, and I was eager for the change of scenery. I kept on passing folks from earlier waves as the course angled gently downhill through towns, across highway overpasses, and finally up through winding neighborhoods until it reached an old mining hill.

The most unfriendly 200 foot descent on earth. 

The road transitioned to double track, which narrowed down to single track as it passed through a few thickets. Then it promptly dumped steeply down a ravine alongside some waterfalls, which kept the rocks and roots slick with mist. In any other state of existence, this would have been a scene to enjoy. This far into the race, with appropriately cooked quads, I was wincing every step of the way. I'm sure if it continued for a few hundred more feet of descent, my legs would have adjusted, but it slayed me hard enough that when I hit the soft, flat trails below, I had to walk for a few paces every now and then to regain focus. 

Running through the outskirts of these towns started to elicit a dopamine response, the same you get smelling campfire smoke at a mountainous 100 miler. You know you're close to your aid station friends who will feed you and worry about you. The friends at Chase Corp had pancakes, and you could smell the griddle a few blocks away.

 

Chase Corp to Whittier Farms (87.5 mi) 

I had pancakes. Bacon wrapped with pancake, drizzled with syrup. Pancake with butter and syrup. Pancake in the hand as I walked out of the aid station.

The road skirted a steep hillside, first passing a few houses, then a few farms. The morning sun was shining through golden and red leaves and I could feel the downhill calling out to me to keep trying to run a bit faster. My Achilles tendons were tingly from all of the road running, but I figured at this point in the race I had little to lose if I pushed the pace a bit more.

It was steeper than it looks. Or maybe it wasn't.

Near the end of the section, the road turned into a wide, rocky jeep track that ascended through some mossy woods. It merged onto a one-lane road, near what I could only describe as a stately manor lording over rolling acres of corn atop the little mountain. The road - as should be expected, by now - steeply dropped down into a small town, below. 

 

Whittier Farms to Douglas Road (93 mi)

This was just close enough to smell the barn, but not close enough to throw caution to the wind. And yea, there were barns, and there was a very strong, very cold wind cutting straight through the gap in the ridgeline where the aid station was perched. Spitting rain added to my sensory overload. I ate a miniature pumpkin pie, baked by the kind folks at Whittier Farms, and I shuffled off down the road. 

After maybe a mile or so, the course turned abruptly onto some doubletrack through a golden canopy of oak trees. I figured we had finally entered Douglas State Forest. No more pavement. I managed to go off course twice in the next half mile. It took me 90 miles to realize using golden blazes to mark trees, which have golden leaves in fall, might be a bad idea. At least when your eyes are weary from trying to manage the rocks, and roots, and occasional pothole. 

Douglas Road to Trunkline Trail (96.5 mi)

A lot of folks ran straight through the last formal aid station. I did not. I took a few minutes to eat some cookies while filling my bottles. It only took about 10 minutes for me to catch everyone back up. This penultimate stretch included a lot of rock hopping through gulley trails. The trail would steeply launch up and down shallow crevices between earthen mounds, and clearly acts as a creek during rainstorms. The landscape was a mix of scrubby little oaks and tufted mounds of grass. Mounds of white rock were covered with red lichen. Fractals of mounds abound all around.

At some point, the trail enters taller, older growth. The tree canopy starts to reach great heights, with massive oak branches arcing up to form a golden cathedral. The trail takes on a more looping, swooping character. You find yourself in a silty, pillowy bottom land. And then...

...you turn 90 degrees starboard and see an endless and perfectly straight stretch of gravel sandwiched between two marshes. The rail trail. I told myself that I was going to often believe I was near the end, but would never reach the end. In doing so, I kept the most consistent pace I'd kept the entire race. I think.

 

Trunkline Trail to Finish (101 mi) 

There are no easy trail miles at this race. After scrambling up a stubby, rather densely-bouldered climb, I unceremoniously slapped the top of the tri-state marker. This little rock monument sits at the intersection of the corners of Connecticut and Rhode Island with the broad southern edge of Massachusetts. I wasn't sure if there was some sort of need to physically interact with it, like rounding the bases, but I wasn't leaving it to chance. You feel bad for the other states because while straddling the border, you can clearly tell that Connecticut has the best pizza and beer. Sorry.

As I was lumbering across the top of the final little mountain, the wind started to pick up, and the trees started to creak. This is peak deadfall season, when wind and wet soils cull the forest. That added a bit of urgency. After an abrupt, hilariously technical boulder-strewn descent, I had one last little up-and-over before a final gentle, sandy downhill. I could hear the wind carrying the finish line announcements over the ridge. A jolly man came running up the trail with a cowbell. Okay, we're about there.

Mile 99.5.

 The DJ was hosting a finish line party at the beach. In the wind and rain. With hot chocolate, beer, and food trucks. 

24:18:57, good enough for 8th out of 162 starters. It's the first 100 miler I've finished in years. It's easy to forget that just finishing one of these takes an enormous amount of willpower, even when you're doing well. Yes, there's physical effort, but if you don't want it, you won't get it. I haven't wanted it enough, for a while. Now I do.

  

Red Wing Trail Challenge 60k

I have had some pretty horrible races over the past few years, but I feel like I'm back in the saddle. I just needed to run an east coast 60k in swampy July heat to break the curse.

  

Rambling out of the start through the tall grass. All photos taken by Kris M Lowe unless otherwise stated.

The Red Wing Trail Challenge 60k (38 mi) is four 15k loops through the Red Wing Recreation Area in the foothills above Poughkeepsie with an impressive 6500 ft of gain. Some of the trails are rocky and rooty, some are smooth dirt, but maybe half are mowed/trodden tall grass, which really added some extra friction and footing uncertainty.

It was around 70 degrees at the start. I saw foggy valleys on the drive in. You can figure what that means for the humidity.

I ran tight with eventual winner Stephen Krohley on the first lap, both getting our bearings on a course we'd never run. A lot of east coast ultras are loop style, so you tend to take it easy on the first lap so you can figure out all of the details and use them to your advantage on later laps. In reality it's a great excuse not to go out too hard, kind of a gentleman's agreement to hold the reins until lap two.

The course takes you through a short stretch of mowed grass trail before granting you a few miles of crisp single track through thick woods up the first climb. It's steep, but just before it tops out, the canopy clears and you hit thick grass and the occasional sticker bush - a theme for the rest of the race. 

As we popped out of the woods and into a clearing around a lake, we both joked about "yeah this is going to hurt later". Not like, "lol racing hard" but, "man, this is steamy old field is gonna hurt in the noon sun."

We slammed the second climb and descent and in no time tucked in on the big third climb, with plenty of little false summits and a steep 300 foot booter at the end that pushes you through (what else) thick grass and sticker bushes.

    Coming in after lap one. It ain't so bad out there! 

We refilled bottles at the start/finish, but Stephen got the jump out of the aid station while I fumbled getting ice into my arm sleeves. It was starting to get moderately steamy in the field, but the woods remained a welcome relief from the sun. For now.

My legs started feeling a bit heavy during the flat section along the creek and the lake in the middle of the lap. I realized that I was going to need to drink more. I'd put down a little over 1L in the first 9 miles but that wasn't going to be enough in this heat. I slowed up a bit and forced myself to drink the rest of my first bottle going in to the mid-way aid station.

I had caught up to Stephen somewhere around the second climb, and we both kept pushing each other up and over the third. The boomerang climb, midway through the descent and back up to nearly the same peak elevation, was already cooking. It's exposed gravel and breeze for a few hundred feet, a shimmy across the mountaintop in sparse (shadeless) trees, and then a quick descent into the musty bottomwoods. 

Coming in after lap two. All right, it's hot.   

 

For me, this was now all about temperature control. One bottle would become the drencher, filled with pure water that I'd keep dribbling over my head and shirt. The other would be a double/triple mix of Skratch, easily getting me to 800 mg/hour of sodium. I'd go through each set every 4.5 miles.

 

I finally dropped back from Stephen at this point and told myself to keep it steady. Key was to keep shuffling uphill when I could, even if it felt slow, and hoof it on the flats when there was shade, because that was where all the gains would be made. No one was hammering the downhills - they were steep, and short - and no one was going to be ripping it around the lakes - it was so sunny you'd be blowing up.

 

I felt the darkest going down the second descent on lap three, toward the mid-way aid station. I realized I was just feeling nauseated and needed a Tums (ultrarunning food = sugar = acidic stomach), so I popped one and felt better within a few minutes.

 

Cue the belief, as I got to the mid-way aid station, that I could rally up this climb and claw back a few minutes. Nope. The woods were now a hot box, though at least they still had shade. In this heat, the trickling creeks are spiteful, loud enough to inspire hope but too shallow to cool off in. 

 

I was a mess on the third climb. It was hot, I was running out of water, and I had accumulated enough salty sweat that it was starting to sting my sticker bush scratches. You always hit this point with heat, though - you hit rock bottom where every little thing adds weight.

 

 Coming in after lap three. Feeling better, mentally. Physically, cooked.

 

At the end of the third lap, I knew I'd finish. I was in second place, I was still moving with some purpose, and I hadn't puked, so at this point, I probably wouldn't. But I was down on fluids. So I came in, filled a bottle with water, drenched myself, and then sat next to the aid station table and drank a can of Mountain Dew. It took a while. Maybe 5 minutes. Maybe 10 minutes. But then I got up, filled my bottles, and left at a good clip, ready to get out of the sun.

 

Bro, BRO. I don't know how the body works in the heat, but you do hit a point where it feels like your brain is melting and your chest is on fire and then, seemingly out of nowhere...the body decides it can hack it. It can sweat enough. I can balance the internal systems. It's like it finally gives in and says, "Dang, you really need to do this, I relent - have at it."

 

I was wrecked on the first climb, but by the open fields around the lakes, I was hauling. Not fast, but strong. If you make it a habit, picking up your feet even if you're not moving very quickly, your brain thinks you're doing better than you are, and it decides to stop being such a bother.

 

 Ready to finish this thing.

 

I drenched myself heading into the aid station, head to toe. Still didn't help much in this humidity.

 

The last climb was surreal. The heat of the gravel was reflecting back at me, giving me flashbacks to Colorado in summertime. Bugs were starting to swarm. But over four laps, everyone had trodden the grass and bushes enough that it was easy to fly over the top of the mountain. 

 

Photo by a very thoughtful @lecktrishun.

Second place, 6:49:13, pound-for-pound the hardest short-distance ultra I've run. I will definitely come back, the Conquer the World (CTR) community is outstanding and they made this an awesome experience.

2021 Bigfoot 200 mile race report

 

 Photo by Anastasia Wilde.

Travel to the Start
 
I boarded one of the buses for the 2 hour ride from the finish to the start and wondered what the odds were that one of these years a bus would eventually give out on the mountain pass. So of course the clutch blew near the top of the mountain pass. We had to redistribute among the three other buses. And then we were stopped for half an hour because the Forest Service was replacing a culvert under the road. Obviously the race start was delayed, but I embraced this opportunity to transition into the laid back attitude I was going to need during the race.

Start to Blue Lake (12)

Smoke from a fire up near White Pass was billowing into the area. While that took the edge off the sun, it also made for a sore throat as we hoofed it up and over the first climb. I left the start with a 12L Salomon pack with 1.5L of fluid in back and 1L up front in two bottles, plus two hand-held UltrAspire bottles with water for cooling myself off. Every five minutes, I’d dribble water on my head and my shirt. By an hour into the race, my shirt and hair were damp and cool. I absolutely suck in heat and have to go above and beyond to survive in it, and this strategy managed to prevent me from wiping out.

We caught some clouds during the last few miles into Blue Lake, but it was still toasty at the aid station.

Blue Lake (12) to Windy Ridge (30)

I interspersed my bottle/reservoir-filling time with a boatload of watermelon slices, but I didn’t linger long. I was leaving with a lot of real-food-ish gel/pouch things from Muir Energy, Spring, and Huma. Normal gels are nauseating, and these are made with rice, nut butter, fruit, chia seeds, etc., that don’t mess up my stomach. They also tend to stick around a bit longer and behave like real food.

Every year I get lulled into a sense of complacency on the run down to the Toutle River. There’s plenty of shade, a soft trail tread, and some springs shooting out of the hillside. But then as I get spit out into the dusty wash I remember it’s a minor detour on our adventure to the surface of the sun.

 

Photo by Anastasia Wilde.

The air was still along the switchbacks through the brush. I expected a good breeze on the sand dune hillside up to the plateau around St. Helens, but we were gifted nothing but hot, stagnant air. The only breeze I was going to get was whatever headwind I could make.

As I made my way around the north side of St. Helens, there were moments when I had to stop and walk. It was so freakin’ hot, and I had run out of water to douse myself. I kept eating every so often, but that also necessitated that I walk for a while. So much blood was rushing to my skin to try to keep me cool that I hardly had enough left to process anything in my stomach.

95 degrees and sunny with a running pack, no shade, no breeze. When I finally reached the first of several roaring, ashy creeks, I hollered in joy and immediately got to soaking my entire body with cold glacial melt - rapid-fire with both hand-held bottles, like a water wheel about to rattle itself apart. Rinse and repeat, all the way to the oasis, the final water source before Windy Ridge.

 

Photo by Jason Peters.

Photo by Jason Peters.

Windy Ridge (30) to Johnston Ridge (40)

I got to Windy Ridge feeling ✰✰✰ s p a c e d   o u t ✰✰✰. I think it was mostly the integrated time in the heat, and not dehydration. I spent ten minutes squatting in the shade, drinking some beer and soda. Usually I would’ve puked by this point in any race, but in spite of the conditions I was holding everything together. After a short hike I got back into the running groove and scooted on down the sandy, rocky washes toward Johnston Ridge. I really took my time in the swampy brush at the bottom. For one thing, I didn’t want to add water to hot feet. That would be a recipe for blisters galore. But I also knew this was essentially the hottest, most stagnant part of the course, even in the late afternoon. No point in wasting energy.

I think somewhere around the start of the climb up to Johnston Ridge, I felt confident in myself and my running capability for the first time in years. Maybe it was the realization that the sun was close to setting, I didn’t puke, I wasn’t dehydrated, and I wasn’t sore. Yet.

So of course, as soon as I hit the runnable trail at the top of the ridge, I ate some food and immediately went through 10 minutes of agonizing nausea. It still was just too hot. So I walked for a while. Even though it is some of the easiest mileage in the race.
 
Johnston Ridge (40) to Coldwater Lake (47)

I drank another beer, this time with more gusto, and ate a sloppy chicken and avocado burrito. Usually I try to walk through this aid station, but I figured I needed to patch up calorie deficits from the heat before I supremely wrecked myself.

As I trotted out of the aid station I FaceTime’d my wife for a bit to tell her I was fine, hadn’t puked, and was going to finish. Once I put my phone away and leaned into the downhill, I immediately launched half of the burrito onto the side of the trail.

I’m something of a puking connoisseur. There’s two types of puking. The uncontrollable, non-stop puking I used to deal with, until I realized I need about twice as much salt as the average person, and then the kind where I’ve just made a minor error and eaten too much. I can’t even begin to describe how easy it is to puke and immediately recover when you’ve eaten too much, versus the uncontrolled, ruined-stomach kind of puking. I finally fixed an affliction I’ve had for years. I found it comforting to drink soda and eat a gel immediately afterward, like it was nothing.

Plus, I really love this section. Not because it’s a gimme - just 6 miles, downhill, with some forested ponds at the bottom - but because of the nostalgia. I had a field trip to St. Helens in sixth grade and walked this same trail with my science class. It’s a bit like a homecoming. Yeah there’s lots of little ups and downs, but to me this section is where I reconstitute myself after the ash wastes.

The only thing that was strange was this feeling in my left heel. Like, a kind of pinch on the side? It wasn’t very bothersome, but I made a mental note to check it at Coldwater Lake. Maybe I was getting a hotspot.

Coldwater Lake (47) to Norway Pass (65)

No, not a hot spot - a full blown blood blister the size of a couple of quarters. I have some callouses on the sides of my heels, and slipping around with sweaty feet for the past 47 miles must have bunched up my skin. What a bummer!

I had it lanced and patched over by a volunteer while I ate a burger and drank a hot chocolate made with heavy cream. Thank you Selina, and every other 200 miler veteran who volunteers at these races - you know exactly what we all need! I spent way too long at Coldwater, but I really wanted to make sure every other part of me was all set because my heel was already getting wrecked.

I never get blisters, so imagine my surprise and angst as I jogged along the shores of Coldwater Lake with a dull sting every step. Somewhere just before the big climb it kind of mellowed out and I was able to put in a good effort up through the trees. I hiked with Mika for a bit and took a few minutes to eat half of a burger, after which point I encountered no one else on the rest of the section.

Usually I get to the top of the climb and feel spent, but this year I was moving with strength. The only let-down was that at midnight, it was still about 70 degrees. There were moments where I would catch a breeze traversing one of the many breaks in the ridgeline. Somewhere a few miles before Mt. Margaret, I took advantage of an unusually steady breeze. I just plopped down in the middle of the sandy trail, looked up at all the stars in the sky, and gave myself five or ten minutes of peace. I’d close my eyes for a minute, and then realign with the stars. Total silence. Total solitude. Brain reset. Let’s go!

As I summited Mt. Margaret I could see some headlights way off in the distance behind me. That was a little kick in the pants to get up some speed on the downhill into Norway Pass. My blister wasn’t super happy, but I figured the pounding would mellow it out again. In spite of the heat, there was still a north-facing snowfield a mile before the aid station. A cool, humid little escape from the mildly oppressive night.

Norway Pass (65) to Elk Pass (76)

Norway Pass, being in a drainage below the little snowfield, collects a lot of cool air. There was an inversion that can’t have been much higher in height than a person is tall, but it felt amazing. Like dipping into a cold lake. I ate a hefty amount of mashed potatoes, had a lot of hot cider, and sacked out on the ground for about 10 minutes. After this drive-by sleep session, I got myself a-rolling out of there just as the folks behind me were trickling in.

This is another one of those sections I love. There aren’t any monumental climbs, but there’s a lot of super runnable trail - you just have to get through the overgrowth, blowdowns, and crappy stream crossing first.

Up and over the first little hump in the trail through the overgrowth and I could tell this was going to remain a warm night. Usually the little valley on the other side is frosty with dew, but tonight it was just dank. I took a hot second at the broken-up bridge to get my bandana wet (at 3am, no less…) and soon began the blowdown dodging. There’s only 10, maybe 15 tops, and only a few present a real obstacle.

I hit the contour trail at the top of the main climb and enjoyed watching as the morning twilight highlighted all of the mossy, bubbling springs spilling across the trail. After crossing the road, I entered the promised land: the far western section of the Boundary Trail, which is certainly the coziest stretch of trail in the entire race. I managed to get to Elk Pass around sunrise.

Elk Pass (76) to Road 9237 (91)

This was a pivotal aid station for me because I realized I was in for some hurt. Not super bad, but bad enough that I was going to need to adjust my expectations. I popped my sweaty shoes and socks off and lo-and-behold, I had some juicy new blood blisters on the bottom of my feet. They were too deep under the skin to lance without inviting an infection. And my sweaty pack was rubbing into the bottom of my back. A great medical volunteer taped my back so well that the tape stayed on until after the race. He also re-lanced the giant blood blister on the side of my heel and built a moat of tape layers around it to take the pressure off. I enjoyed this spa treatment while drinking a lot of coffee and eating a giant breakfast plate.

Hello darkness, my old friend? Not this time. Unlike my past encounters, I enjoyed this section of trail in spite of the dirt bike ruts and swarming flies. It was a hot morning, and my feet weren’t particularly happy, but I think I could project forward that yes, I was going to make it to the finish. So I looked around and soaked up the scenery. Alpine lakes, ridgeline views, giant rock outcroppings. A few dirt bikes passed me somewhere in the middle of this section. I will never understand how they manage to avoid flying off the steep mountainside on these rocky, switchbacked trails.

Things started to get a little too hot once I began my descent down to Road 9237. I’d say it was like descending into hell.

Road 9237 (91) to Spencer Butte (103)

Once again, the air was still and it was over 90 degrees. And here I found myself chugging another beer and eating the most greasy grilled cheese I’ve ever had. Were those good choices in this heat? I again popped my shoes off, and this time found my big toes both had black toenails and were quite swollen. At this rate I was going to lose my feet to gangrene before the finish line. What new horrors would I discover in the miles ahead?

After a bit of quick foot care I was off down the trail and into bright sunlight that beat me into a pulp. I’ve run this section before. It’s great fun. But the heat was so insane that I had to walk. In fact, I walked a good chunk of the descent. It was just. Too. Hot. When I got to the bottom and started the steep ascent up Cussed Hollow, I realized I was overheating. I had tingles on my neck and felt panicky. So I did the only thing I could do. I took off my pack and my shirt, laid down in the bushes, and drizzled some water on my body. I laid there for a long time. Ants were crawling over me. I was so messed up that I only processed this minutes later.

At some point, I realized my body temperature had dropped back down, so I suited back up and eased into the climb. Very slowly. I told myself I wouldn’t run, at all, for the next hour. Even when the trail was flat. So I just plugged along, content in this sauna of a forest, and kept eating and drinking.

After a few quick up-and-overs through several creek drainages, the trail turns abruptly upward and starts a solid 2000 foot grind to the top of Spencer Butte. It’s not particularly steep, it’s just relentless and often rutted. And before the top of Spencer Butte, I ran out of water. But hey, at least it was now 90 degrees without the sun directly overhead.

I was skirting dehydration, and if I didn’t run with good form I was inviting all but certain quad damage on the descent toward the aid station. So I played this game where I’d see how smoothly I could run. When the bottles in the front of my pack would start to bounce around, I slowed down to a walk. I could increase my speed every ten seconds if I wanted, but I couldn’t slow down. Did this work? I actually think it did. When I got to the bottom of the butte, my legs weren’t trashed. My brain, though, had left the building long ago.

 

Photo by Anastasia Wilde. 

Spencer Butte (103) to Lewis River (110)

I speed walked into the aid station and said something like, “Mountain Dew, iced, I’ll just chain a bunch”. The volunteers were rightfully worried, but I knew what I was dealing with: sort of dehydrated, sort of low on calories, sort of overheated. Ice, liquid, calories, all good. I probably drank 4-5 cups of Mountain Dew, ate a chicken and avocado burrito, and promptly shuffled off down the road. Somehow my stomach managed to process all of that and spare me from any nausea. 

Photo by Anastasia Wilde. 

 The descent down to the Lewis River is, objectively, an asshole. The trail turns straight down a river bluff and plunges 2500 feet in something like 1.5 miles. There’s a “rolling” bit at the bottom but it’s more like “tumbling into the butt crack of the hillside”. And it’s overgrown with so much crap that you often lose your footing because you can’t see the trail underneath the brush. I had my poles fully extended, and I was putting so much weight on my hands that they were getting blisters, but I just kept running down and letting all of that nonsense wash over me.

When I finally hit the bottom I took a moment to make sure my testicles were still attached. Once I was sure they were still there, I ran the rest of the way to the aid station. The Lewis River trail is mostly flat, often wide, and has just a few short uphill grunts. You’re wasting it if you don’t give it a good effort.

The reroute to the new aid station location up the gravel road is a turd.

Lewis River (110) to Quartz Ridge (127)

I got here early enough that sleeping felt like a dumb idea, but I was going to do it anyway. Two days in the heat and I could barely concentrate anymore, especially after only 10 minutes of sleep. I ate a couple of plates of food, had some hot chocolate and hot cider, and then waddled over to the sleep tent.

Sleep was not going to be easy, even though I was well past tired. It was 8pm and it still felt like it was 90 degrees. An extremely nice volunteer brought me an ice pack to put under my neck. I opened the tent flap, took off my clothes, and slept naked. I did pull a dry shirt over my crotch so that I wouldn’t totally scare someone away if they walked by. Somewhere during the waking up process I realized the shorts I had been wearing, that I had placed next to my head in the tent, smelled like vinegar and hot butt. Rather than re-engage with them, I stepped into a fresh pair. And somehow, despite the absurd heat, I didn’t have any chafing. That’s a true miracle.

I really could not wait to get the hell out of this aid station. I felt like the entire race had shown up while I was sleeping. My first few trots down the gravel road felt terrible, but by the bottom my blisters were punched back down to size.

Having done this race a few times, I was mentally prepared for what was ahead. 6000 feet of gain, with 3000 feet of net gain. Mathematically, that means it’s a big climb but you get robbed of your hard-earned gain along the way.

And in the dark, it’s totally disorienting. You really have no idea where you’re going. Suddenly the trail is going steeply up - so steep you can reach out with your pole and touch the trail. And then suddenly it dumps you down through a thicket of bushes and into a wide creek crossing with lots of boulders, long since worn flat, that water sheets across in a thin layer. And then you meander through a lumpy stretch of forested ground, avoiding giant 5-foot-diameter trees that keeled over ages ago. And then you start going up again. If you come ready to grind, it’s fun. Just trust me on that.

Around the last creek crossing I filtered two bottles’ worth of water. This turned out to be an excellent strategic decision because it was warm and humid, and there was still a lot of ground to cover. When I reached the “top”, where the trail intersects our steadfast friend, the dusty, rutted Boundary Trail, I mentally noted to myself that the “top” was still almost 1000 feet above me and a few miles ahead. A marshy lake more or less marks the “top”. Kind of. The reroute to the new aid station included some (meager) bonus vertical up to yet another summit.

As I kept descending the new stretch of trail, I expected to see the aid station behind every curve. 10 minutes went by, 20 minutes went by - oh boy, I have to march back up all of this? I had a moment of spiritual reawakening when I saw parked cars around the corner and realized the aid station was finally here.

Quartz Ridge (127) to Chain of Lakes (144)

A few things bummed me out at this aid station. One, I realized my sunglasses were not in my pack. Two, I realized my visor was not in my pack. Both were probably somewhere at Lewis River, lost among all the gear detritus. The next two sections had a decent amount of sun exposure, so I needed to figure out a solution. Since my brain was not able to do that, I drank a lot of coffee and ate a few burritos instead.

At some point, I realized I would not be able to summon a hat into existence, so I decided to get going back up the hill, along the road full of parked crew cars, and ask each car full of crew if they had a spare hat that I could borrow. Imagine my surprise when the second car I asked said “yes!” Thank you Mr. Booth, I took the greatest of care with your Bryce Canyon finisher’s hat. It meant a lot to me and saved my nose from certain death.

Hat now on head, I powered up the climb out the aid station as the sun cooked my rear. I wasn’t pissed off, just fiery and ready to lay waste to some ruts. Cruising past the old Council Bluff aid station, I realized - shit, it’s another really hot day! Third in a row! Not boiling like the last two, but hot enough that I’d still put it in the running for hotter than any other day at any other Bigfoot 200. At the top of Council Bluff itself, I took stock of the situation. Toasty. Sweaty feet. Blisters and toenails hurting. Let me just slowly start this rocky downhill. Oof, not good. But on the plus side, I’d rather be running painfully downhill than painfully uphill, and I wouldn’t be running any uphills for the rest of the race.

The gravel roads over to Chain of Lakes were bathed in sun, but because they’re on a gentle downhill I was able to cool off in my own headwind. I poured some water on myself and got my body temperature down a bit.

Suddenly a very large hornet started harassing me. I tried ignoring it, but it actually started divebombing me. Dude, I am running in the road, there’s no way I bothered your nest - what’s the deal? I started running faster. And faster. When I thought I had shaken it, it showed up again. The psychological abuse broke me. I screamed at it and started a full-on sprint toward the final stretch of hot asphalt. Apparently this part of the road was too hot even for the hornet. Pyrrhic victory.

The two miles of trail over toward the aid station really buried me. The trees were locking in the heat and the sun was directly overhead. I walked a bit to keep my body temperature at only a concerning level.

Chain of Lakes (144) to Klickitat (161)

This was another “Iced Coke, I’m going to chain a bunch of cups” moment. I think I drank four big cups of Coke within a minute. Sitting in the shade of the tent, I realized I wasn’t going to spontaneously cool down without some intervention. Volunteers brought me ice packs for under my armpits and threw a cool towel around my neck. I tried eating a burrito, but I realized I was still too warm because I couldn’t produce any saliva. I went back to the Coke.

I think I finished an entire two liter bottle and then entered the most blissful sugar coma. Kicked back on a cot, ice packs all over my chest, drifting through waves of heat and emptiness. Eventually I cooled down, came back to reality, and ate some real food. A volunteer entombed my swollen, black, nail-floating-off-the-nailbed toes in Leukotape.

As I rattled down the rocky, rutted trail toward the first of several creek crossings, I did legitimately worry about what was going to happen to my feet if they got soggy. So I made the decision to do barefoot creek crossings. At each creek I’d remove my shoes, remove my socks, lash them onto my pack, and then wade across with my poles. On the other side I’d scramble up the dusty wash, dry my feet, wick the dirt off with a dry bandana, and then get my socks and shoes back on. This added at least ten minutes to each creek crossing. But I thought it might save my feet.

 

Photo by Anastasia Wilde. 

The first creek crossing had a bridge, but the second did not. It was swift and deep, almost to the top of my thighs, and really cold. It took my breath away, but it did feel amazing to instantly cool my legs down. After getting my shoes in order, I ran most of the plateau and descent down to the Cispus River, where I repeated my barefoot crossing and filtered some extra water for the climb up Elk Peak.

This is where my feet went to shit despite all of this heroic effort. The climb is steep, and that meant I was putting extra pressure on my heel blisters. But if I tried to take pressure off by using my forefoot and toes, it felt like I was ripping my toenails. So I just split the difference. By the time I cleared the last false summit I was hiking gingerly out of necessity. I took a few minutes at the summit to collect my mental strength because I knew the downhill into the aid station was going to hurt.

 

Photo by Anastasia Wilde. 

I spiraled into a spiritual darkness.

Klickitat (161) to Twin Sisters (180)

When I arrived at the aid station I felt like dropping, but I translated that thought from tired-brain into English and knew it meant I had to eat, sleep, and fix my feet. I ate a bunch of meatballs with cheese while airing out my feet. My big toes were weeping a lot of purple fluid, and my blisters had swollen and were deforming the bottom of my heel. A volunteer taped some padding around my heel blisters, and I decided to sleep with my shoes and socks off to let my feet air out a bit.

Bad decision! I woke up and when I tried to get my feet into my shoes, I physically couldn’t. I sat and stewed about this for a while, and then told a volunteer, who out of nowhere procured a set of pneumatic leg sleeves that could progressively compress my toes, ankles, and legs to help drain the excess fluid. So I laid back down on the cot, drifting in and out of sleep, while this contraption squeezed my legs like a boa constrictor. I’d wake up and have some food handed to me, eat a bit, sleep a bit, eat a bit.

After a few hours I was able to get my shoes on, but my feet hurt terribly after 8 hours of rest. I told the volunteers that I was never so terrified to leave an aid station. My feet had taken such a turn that I was worried they’d completely fall apart during this next stretch, which is notorious for its difficulty. So they told me that if, after ten minutes, I didn’t think I could do it, I should turn back. I asked what place I was in. “Somewhere around 40th or 45th”.

The first few minutes were sobering. I was occasionally having to hobble to take the edge off. Around ten minutes into my hike, I stopped in the middle of the trail. I looked back. I looked forward. Fuck it. What if I try running? Will that really pound the blisters back down and hurt less? Will that actually shift the toenails back into place?

So I starting running. As morning crept through the trees I stowed my poles and picked up the pace. There were all sorts of blowdowns to hop over, but my blisters hurt less with each step. I passed a couple of runners before the climb up to Mission Mountain, and that gave me some extra confidence.

After a quick, steep descent through overgrown ferns I reached St. John’s Lake, where a pile of runners were sitting having breakfast. I kept up a running pace from here until just before Jackpot Lake, passing someone every 20 minutes. Around Jackpot Lake things started to heat up so I dialed back my pace, hoping to conserve a little bit for the climb back out of Twin Sisters. Just as I was heading up toward the final climb, someone behind me started shouting and was clearly getting stung by wasps. A few seconds later I felt a hot sting right on the side of my mouth. As I was operating on pure logic, I instead shifted into an aggressive pace up and over the last climb and down into the aid station.

Twin Sisters (180) to Owen’s Creek (196)

I got into the aid station around noon, devoured a bear claw, a burger, and some fruit, and started a fast hike back up the trail. We finally had a pleasantly cool day and I was going to milk it for all I could. Patchy clouds were rolling by overhead as I trudged over fresh blowdowns on my way to Pompey Peak. These were nastier than usual, still full of needly branches that snagged me as I lofted myself over and under trunk after trunk. The trail off Pompey is perched on an impossibly-steep hillside, so it was slow going all the way down.

I was ecstatic once the trail dumped me onto the six mile contour grade to the aid station, but it was a short-lived celebration. Every 100 feet there was pile after pile of blowdowns. There’s piles of thick young trees lining both sides of the trail. Lots of fodder for wind storms, I guess.

I’ve given this section a name, the “Green Mile”. It’s a logging road that’s slowly being reabsorbed by nature, so it’s exceptionally verdant. But also, like Michael Duncan’s character in the Green Mile, it’s magical: it goes on forever!

I finally cleared the last of the blowdowns and enjoyed three or four miles of uninterrupted running through grass and berry bushes.

Owen’s Creek (196) to Finish (209)

I had no intention of stopping, now. I chugged a cup of iced Coke, grabbed some candy, and jogged out of the aid station. The gravel road tilts slightly downhill, but becomes much steeper once you take a right toward the Cowlitz valley. My feet were all right when I was running down, but then…

…I took my first few steps on pavement at the bottom and immediately started walking. My toenails were wrecked and my blisters were stinging like crazy. I’m not sure if it was the downhill, the cumulative 9 miles of non-stop running for the first time in days, or just the hardness of the pavement, but I had to walk for a couple of miles.

Another runner, Casey, could have passed me, but she decided to walk with me for a bit and motivate me. At some point, the pain started to subside, as if the blisters had shifted around and found a new equilibrium. I announced that I was ready to haul it in, and we started running again.

We ran together for those last five or six miles, taking in the sights and sounds of rural Washington. An old camper trailer with lights strung all around a clearing in the trees. Hay fields with white fences. Puppies running around a pen in the front yard of an old farm house. The trestle bridge over the milky Cowlitz River. People sitting in lawn chairs in Randle, cheering us on as we began our final mile-and-a-half stretch of road under a darkening, misty sky.

Photo by Anastasia Wilde.

It’s good.

83:05:21, 25th, 111 finishers, 199 starters.

Photo by Anastasia Wilde.

 

Gear I wore/used/carried

La Sportiva Mutants
Icebreaker socks
Patagonia Strider Pro 5 shorts
Random shirts from Patagonia, Mountain Hardwear
Moeben arm sleeves
Salomon Advanced Skin 12 set pack with quiver
Leki Mario MCT Vario TA poles/gloves
Steripen
Black Diamond Icon headlamp
Outdoor Research Helium II jacket
Ultimate Direction rain pants
Two Salomon 500mL soft flasks
Salomon 1.5L hydration reservoir
Two UltraSpire Iso Versa hand held bottles
Headsweats visor
Tifosi Slip sunglasses
Straw hat from Dorfman Pacific

What I ate/drank

Skratch drink mix (~50 satchets)
Huma Chia gels (~15)
Muir Energy gels (~20)
Spring Energy gels (~30)

That’s about 11,500 calories of trail food, and I’d guess I ate another 6,000 calories in aid stations. So about 17,500 calories. I estimate I burned about 33,000 calories during the event (running + living). That means I should have lost 4.5 pounds of body fat. A week after the race I was down 4 pounds, so that’s not unbelievable. I think I need to eat a lot more! I didn’t have much gas in the tank past 140 miles. That’s when I slipped from my steady-state ~10th place throughout the first 2/3 of the race.

What I applied to my feet

In my experience, blood blisters are a bit easier to deal with than regular blisters. They’re more of a dull ache, and I think they must be due to frictional sliding over a shorter distance but with more force. I used Run Goo during the race and I think that saved me from the worst of it, although I had to use up most of it during the first two days. I did not develop any regular blisters, even on my toes - just the one blood blister on the side of my heel and the two on the bottom of my heels. The ones on my heel were very deep, almost in the heel pad, so they took a while to become painful - and they still haven’t fully healed.

What I will do differently next year

The Mutants are great shoes for mountainous terrain, but I think they are way too structured for Bigfoot. They have a solid midsole, but it isn’t particularly soft or cushioned, and while they’re built to get the absolute crap beaten out of them on ultra-rocky terrain, that also means they don’t breathe well. I think I might try Hoka Speedgoats next year. While I’ll miss the absurd grip of the Mutants, Bigfoot is not technical enough to warrant the tradeoffs, especially over 210 miles.

More Spring Energy gels. They were so easy to eat and didn’t sour my stomach. McRaecovery, Long Haul, and Awesome Sauce brought me a lot of joy.

Higher carbohydrate drink mix. Skratch makes a 400 calorie/bottle drink mix called Superfuel that is supposed to be easy to digest. I’d like to use that during the day when it’s hot and gels/solid food are unappetizing.

Caffeine pills and more canned coffee. I will put a canned coffee or two in every drop bag next year. I only put a single can in a few bags, but I drank them all. A Doubleshot out on the trail tastes amazing! Caffeine pills for the trail would be helpful, too. At night I would leave an aid station and be wired for a couple of hours from the coffee, but then I’d crash in the middle of a section.

Tetrapaks of cream. The two times I was able to get it, hot chocolate made with whipping cream really settled my stomach - and it’s also an absurd amount of calories.

Pre tape with Leukotape in spots where I suspect I could have issues. Around the heel, big toe, and little toe. The toes themselves, interior to the sides of the foot, seem to be fine with Run Goo. No idea about those blood blisters on the bottom of my heel - maybe a more cushioned shoe will help? Again, Mutants are great but I think past 100 miles they’re a hard sell unless it’s super technical.

Ditch the poles except for Chain of Lakes to Klickitat, and maybe also Spencer Butte down to Lewis River. I had them stowed in my quiver for most of the race, including a lot of the climbs. Bigfoot does not have many steep climbs or descents - the 45,000 feet of vertical gain doesn’t come in short bursts, but instead through steady climbs/descents. I do find the poles slow me down on everything except the steepest, nastiest terrain. The drop down off Spencer Butte, in dry conditions, could be done safely without poles. It’s not scree and it’s not sandy/dusty. But if wet, it could be nasty. I have two pairs of collapsible poles, one of which is barely functional. I think next year, I’ll pick those poles up at Spencer Butte, leave them at Lewis River, and pick up my quiver + good poles at Chain of Lakes. It would be nice to have them for the rutted descents and steeper parts of the climb up Elk Peak.

In the middle of a long race, a lager tastes absolutely amazing. A savory drink is a nice break from hydration mixes and soda. I’ll throw a Rainier in each drop bag next year.

An HDX box for my drop bag at Coldwater Lake/Klickitat. This bag has to hold two pairs of shoes, a lot of clothes, and a lot of food. Both are pivotal aid stations before a long section. It’s too hard for me to manage everything in my normal roll-top dry bags.

Continue squatting at aid stations throughout the race. I did this in the first few, but as soon as the first night hit I gave it up out of laziness. Squatting down to spend time eating/drinking, rather than standing or sitting, prevented my muscles from getting too stiff and gave me a kind of maximum time limit (you don't feel like squatting for 20 minutes 100 miles into a race).

Haglund's deformity removal surgery (calcaneal osteotomy and bursectomy)

For several years I've battled insertional Achilles tendinosis and bursitis. Or so I thought. In reality, I've had a misdiagnosed Haglund's deformity. I will spare you the details, except the "tells" of Haglund's deformity in a runner:

1. Pain rapidly subsides after activity, unlike tendinosis which usually aches. If I had heel pain after a run, I might have trouble walking for an hour afterward, but by the next morning it almost felt good as new. Even if I race a 50 miler and incurred immense pain by the end, I felt ready to run in a couple of days.

2. A hard lump in the heel that does not go away with icing. Bursitis and general inflammation should go away with a week of rest and ice foot baths. Mine did not.

3. Tightness that does not improve with stretching and targeted bodyweight exercises. Insertional tendinosis should respond to eccentric heel drops, dynamic balance exercises with kettle bells, and light, dynamic stretching. Mine did not.

I finally had enough of the run-around with botched races and constant heel pain, and went to see an orthopedist with some specialization in athletes. I was diagnosed with a Haglund's deformity right away. If you have symptoms matching mine above, I encourage you to seek an opinion from an orthopedist.

What is a Haglund's deformity? In runners, it is probably caused by running through a long bout of Achilles tendinosis, when the calf muscles and Achilles are generally tighter than normal. The tightness puts excess tension on the calcaneous (heel bone), which responds by growing upward and outward, forming a sharp corner in the heel across which the Achilles tendon glides, obviously leading to irritation and pain. It's an obvious solution from the bone's perspective - to relieve tension, grow toward it!

There is no way to fix this condition with conservative treatment. I have run with heel lifts and have removed the heel counters from my shoes, and even that provides minimal improvement, so I eagerly agreed to a surgical approach.

Below, I will document my recovery so you can judge whether you should undergo surgery. As of starting this entry (3 days after surgery), I can say I already do not regret it, but I know it will be a long road to recovery.

Day 0: surgery

I have not eaten since 5:30 am, and my surgery is at 3:00 pm. It's actually not that bad. I spent the day getting the house ready, setting up an air mattress with lots of pillows in the living room. That will be my home for the next 2 weeks while I'm in the surgical splint.

I was taken to the pre-op room where I answered some questions, met with my orthopedist and anesthesiologist, and got my IV set up. The orthopedist is optimistic - I'm relatively young, healthy, and thankfully do not have to have my Achilles tendon detached/bisected, so my recovery should be fast (bone heals faster than the Achilles). Incisions are usually made on the lateral side of the foot, but because most of the deformity is on the medial side, I will have a medial incision. This will require two nerve blocks instead of one. The bursa will also be removed - so no bursitis ever again on the right side, which is a fun bonus.

 In the pre-op room. You can see the bony bulge on the right foot - it's not huge, but this is its fully-rested state with no swelling.

The anesthesiologist gives me a sedative to help me space out as I'm wheeled into the operating room. I'm conscious enough to say "hello" to the nurses and flip myself onto the operating table. The anesthesiologist spends what feels like an eternity setting up the popliteal nerve block - my leg spasms, I feel electric, burning sensations...it's not that fun. The popliteal is required for both lateral and medial incisions, so nobody misses out on the fun. The adductor nerve block is easy and I don't feel a thing. I crack jokes with the anesthesiologist, which I think means the sedative is wearing off. Soon I drift off into general anesthesia...

...and awaken feeling terrible. I'm nauseated and having hot and cold flashes. I can't tell who is doing what around me, but people are trying to get me dressed. They give me some food. Somehow I make it to my car and my wife drives me home. I get queasy, and she passes me a plastic bag. A few minutes later I vomit in the back seat (no big deal, I'm well-trained in vomiting). I get home in a haze, eat a cup of broth, take my oxycodone, and drift off to sleep. I wake up and decide to take the higher dose of oxycodone on the off-chance the nerve block wears off.

Day 1: nerve block wears off, the night of living hell

I'm still in a haze when I wake up and don't have an appetite. I take a Zofran and feel well enough to sip coffee and have a little food. My toes are starting to tingle and I'm beginning to feel some pain in my heel, so the nerve block is starting to wear off after about 16 hours. By noon the pain is setting in, but it's manageable. I try to watch TV but it's hard to focus - I'm still exhausted from the surgery and anesthesia, and the pain keeps working its way into my thoughts. I keep the foot elevated well above my heart, which seems to help the pain a lot.

 The beefy splint, elevated on a few pillows. In the background: Night Court. I am unable to pay attention, which may actually be for the best.

Also, interesting side note - I was sent home without crutches but a very burly splint. I'm only supposed to hobble to the bathroom and to get food. My guess is this keeps the blood flowing and prevents total stiffening of the ankle. I am, amazingly, able to hobble without too much pain.

Toward the end of the evening I can tell the night is going to suck. My heel bone is starting to burn and I can now feel the incision. Up until now, the pain has been dull and diffuse, but when specific features hurt it becomes mentally hard to manage it all. I'm on the maximum dose of oxycodone, so I have no recourse if things get worse.

After sleeping for a couple of hours, I wake up to waves of severe pain deep in my heel. I have to bite the comforter and swing my good leg just to get a grip. I put on some headphones and listen to some heavy music to try to bury the pain, but all I can do is hold on until it's time for another round of pills. Rinse and repeat until the morning.

Day 2: pain redux, dressing redo

The heel and incision pain is fading, but I now feel an incredible tightness above my heel that constricts my Achilles and makes it impossible to hobble. I am now crawling around the house. After waffling back and forth, my wife pushes me to call the orthopedist's office. They tell me it sounds like the dressing is too tight, so we go in to get things adjusted.

 Getting the dressing re-applied so it isn't so tight. I'm amazed at how healthy the incision looks.

The stitching looks healthy! Very little blood and just a bit of fluid. Removing the dressing gives me immediate relief. I was previously wrapped with gauze, surgical wrap, and a stretch bandage - the surgeon decides I can go home with just gauze and a loose bandage, since the wound is healing and I haven't had any work done on the Achilles.

 A closer look - not bad for having the bone sawed down two days ago.

After fussing with the splint I find a setting where I can walk again without pain. While I'm still on the maximum dose of oxycodone, I can tell the bone is settling down.

Day 3: pain subsiding fast

I am now down to the regular dose of oxycodone, and my appetite has fully returned. I can fully focus on tasks - doing a little bit of work, watching some TV, and giving myself a quick bath with a wash cloth. Walking gives a bit of bone pain, but it fades immediately; I can only feel the incision when something presses on it.

Day 5: opiates done, cruising the neighborhood, CBD helps

Totally off oxycodone now, which has lifted my brain fog so that I can get a bit more work done and be there for my family.  I borrowed some crutches from a kind neighbor, and can help my wife walk the dog around the neighborhood. I can put about 30% of my weight on my post-surgery foot on these walks without incurring much pain. The most important tip I have is to keep elevating the foot, keep hydrating and eating to support recovery, and keep moving as much as pain allows. My rule is that the pain should improve day to day - if it doesn't, I pushed it too hard.

Also, once I ceased the hydrocodone, I started to feel some burning pain in the heel bone, especially on the lateral side. Tylenol helps, but doesn't get me over the hump. I've found that supplementing with CBD, as long as I don't consciously focus on the pain, allows me to go about my daily life without noticing anything. To be fair, it might only be a 3/10 on the pain scale, but that gets annoying day in and day out.

Day 7: Boot sucks

Who designed this thing? The rivets for the straps sit right over my ankle bone; even with foam padding the pressure causes my ankle to hurt unless I slide my foot too far forward in the boot. I'm spending time with the boot off and my foot elevated, and it feels amazing. There's also some strange kind of acne/hair follicle irritation developing. Hopefully it doesn't get too crazy before I get this boot off in another week. I do feel like the gauze was wrapped in a way that limits my ability to dorsiflex my foot. Not sure if that is intentional or not, but that also limits my ability to load weight on the foot.

More than the rivets, the boot just doesn't seem to be designed for my foot/leg. I have muscular legs and wide feet, but an ankle as narrow as anyone else, while the boot is shaped for a leg with roughly equal width from toe to knee. Probably fits seniors and the obese, but not me.

Originally, I tackled the oddities of the boot fit with some sheets of plush fleece from a fabric store. However, that padding seemed to take pressure off of one region and put it on another, and it didn't breathe so well so the boot got damp. Instead, I've removed all of the extraneous padding from the boot, especially around the heel, so that the heel, rather than being padded tightly in place, is more or less floating in empty space. Way better solution. Awkward to walk in, but a way better solution.

Day 8: pushed it too hard 

In an effort to get to be early, I rush around the house cleaning up, turning off lights, locking doors, etc., and then hop into bed. Not a minute later, I'm greeted with the nastiest pain I've felt in recent memory (much worse than night 2). Burning, ripping, tearing pain and electrical shocks in my heel. I have to pull a pillow over my face to muffle my screaming. And within a couple of minutes - gone, never to return.

I think I'm learning my limits still, but it's quite hard because I can't tell if I'm overdoing it until it's too late.

Day 11: no pain

Basically none, now. I can put full weight on my heel so I don't need to hobble - I just walk with one foot a couple of inches above the other, so my gait appears something like half-man and half-duck. I am getting occasional nerve tingling in the heel and up my leg, but that's probably from being in a splint for two weeks. I've had to pad my heel because I've created a divot in the foam base.


Day 14: stitches out!

Getting the gauze off felt amazing. As the nerves are reconnecting, the skin around my heel and even on the bottom of my foot is very sensitive - the texture of the gauze wrap was almost painful at times. With that wave of relief I barely noticed the stitches getting removed. I think the wound looks pretty healthy, the only issue right now is some latent bruising around my arch and the lateral side of my foot, almost like the bruising when someone breaks their ankle and fluid settles and swells the heel.

Stitches about to come out... 

 And they're gone! The orange lines are benzoin to make the steri-strips, which will go on to ensure the wound doesn't open over the next few days, stick better to my skin. Spoiler: it didn't really work that well. My feet sweat too much.

Day 17: nerve pains, walking gains

I'm able to go on walks around the neighborhood with real shoes on. My lord, my ankle and Achilles are stiff. I'm not hobbling, but I am walking like an old man with arthritis. The foot is still quite swollen, so I'm going to focus on elevation today - but isn't swelling and inflammation the body's healing response? Do I want to really limit it that much? It's like icing - it feels good, but it also limits healing.

Lots of weird electric shock sensations on the bottom of my heel, and when I push my range of motion I occasionally feel a sharp pain. I'm confident this is just hypersensitive nerves readjusting, especially since my skin is extra taught from the stitching. I do occasionally feel pain where there is bruising, but it's dull and doesn't worry me too much.

Just letting this warlock air out a bit. My ankle bone remains buried under fluid. 

Day 18: a breakthrough

Well, I still have strange nerve sensations, but they are rarer and more diffuse. The skin on my heel is desensitizing and I can feel the incision starting to smooth out.

At the back corner between my property and my neighbor's property is a dense grove of Siberian Elm. These are not native to Colorado, but they thrive in dry, cold winters and harsh summers, so even though they grow somewhat disorganized, they're still valuable for shade and wind breaks. A big one was chopped down maybe 10 years ago, but the root system was left intact - and of course, being the amazing tree it is, it sprouted about 20 smaller trees from the old trunk and from the exposed roots. It's looked a bit of a mess for a while - I'd call it a rat's nest of a tree, with branches down to the ground - but I finally had enough and asked my neighbor if I could hop the fence and trim everything up.

So, I popped into some old running shoes and spent 4 hours trimming away the lower branches, thinning some of the canopy, and clearing out leaves and old blown-out wood fencing and trash. It looks great! And I have little fatigue from all that work, and no pain at the end of the day laying in bed. I actually think the isometric loading helped my heel and ankle loosen up and calmed the nerves down. So if I could suggest anything...once you feel stable enough to do some light activity that doesn't require lots of walking, do it!

Day 34: growing pains, no more scabs

All the scabs have now fallen off and the scar is turning pink - a good sign! The skin was initially very hard and lumpy around the incision, in part from the stitches. I've been massaging cocoa butter firmly into the scar twice a day for 5-10 minutes and it seems to be loosening things up. The skin around the incision is much less sensitive. However, I can feel a lot of...reconstruction happening where there used to be a Haglund's deformity. At this point, I'm guessing the bursa is growing back and the body is reshaping the Achilles tendon. There's some latent swelling along the tendon, but I'm getting more and more flexibility back.

Really, even a week ago this still looked like a war zone.

I believe, however, that I developed some peroneal tendonitis either in the boot or while weaning off the boot. The boot required me to walk with my toes pointed outward (otherwise I would be moving forward like a bike with square wheels...up...down...up...down). Now that I'm walking normally, the peroneal tendons on the lateral side of my foot are quite sore, especially near their insertion and near their guiding ligaments. Some resistant band exercises, heat, and elevation for the occasional swelling are taking the edge off. Since the scabs have fallen off, I am officially good to go on hot/cold water soaks.

Day 42: scar tissue, nerve block remnants

I went for my 6 week followup - it's usually 8 weeks, but they put me on an accelerated schedule because I'm a "young athlete". X-rays show complete healing of the calcaneous to the correct, non-Haglund's shape, and the swelling is essentially gone, so they let me loose with the instructions to ramp up activity - hiking right now, and then adding a few short runs to the hike. Swelling will be my guide.

The peroneal tendon pain is waning, probably from the exercises, but I still have some mild tingling in that area and on the bottom of my heel. Apparently the nerve blocks can have some long lasting effects, but I imagine that continuing to floss the nerves and get the ankle active are only going to help.

Whenever I stand from sitting, my ankle is still stiff, but when I stand from laying down, it's actually not too bad (it's generally best in the morning), so I think some of this could be due to the mobility of the entire leg, not just the ankle. I'm going to start doing eccentric heel drops, glute activation exercises, etc., to try to move things along.

So far, even without having returned to running, the surgery has been worth it. I don't feel that achy Haglund's deformity pain when I walk around or squat to get something off the ground; it's a weight that's been lifted from my soul. It has always been this shadow that reminded me that I wasn't physically well and it crept into everything I did - even work around the house or the yard.

Day 95: nerve dysfunction, tight peroneals, running getting real

I'm running up to 5 miles at a time now, with some brief swelling that pops up at random. It seems triggered by sitting for a long time, or running with a tight ankle (see below).

The good news: I can walk normally with minimal nerve issues, I can run normally after about half a mile of warming up, and I can run in shoes with a hard heel.

The bad news: I still have to floss my sural nerve, and I have discovered it is my peroneal tendon that is super tight. Both are slowly improving with some theraband work. The nerve is really bothersome - I can feel its tightness when I stretch my calf or get up first thing in the morning. It is not the Achilles, because the tightness results in tingling on the bottom and lateral side of my heel, well away from the tendon and the former Haglund's deformity. I put my money on some damage from the nerve block, to be honest, after reading about the complication rate (it was quoted to me as "less than 0.02%", but it turns out that complications lasting up to 12 months aren't counted...). I would suggest you refuse the nerve block; mine wore off pretty fast, it was painful going in, and it seems to be causing me trouble months later.

Day 105: hitchin' post

This (the whole experience, surgery to now) is the hardest running challenge I've ever had to deal with. I don't know if the sudden bout of cold weather did it, or pushed slightly too hard, but the nerve pain stopped getting better and my Achilles is still a bit sore near the insertion point. I've taken 3 days off running and feel much better. I think at least a 5 day break will get this in check.

I've started doing eccentric heel drops, which are really helping.

 

Day 365: one year on, lingering strong

 

I still have stiffness when I rise from sitting, and still get the occasional post-run swelling and pain. This is not a "fast" recovery!

 

Day 727: almost two years on, running strong

 

The stiffness on rising has dissipated, but hilly workouts can, at random, aggravate my heel. Lately, the other side of my heel has been hurting - not on my heel bone, but in the "empty" space between my Achilles and my ankle bone where a lot of tendons/nerves run. Some occasional massage and stretching/strengthening work has gotten some handle on it. I think this is maybe a readjustment of other structures to the final state of my heel, which is no longer swollen. All that's left is lingering nerve damage from the incision. I was able to run a 50 miler in Crested Butte in October, a bit less than two years after surgery, with no obvious signs of lasting damage.

So there you have it. It took two years of concerted self-therapy/massage and running for everything to heal up.