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The calm before the stupid.
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The
conversation went something like this…
Chris:
"So I'm thinking of finally running the Katy Trail."
Mom:
"Oh, I've always wanted to bike it. I could do it with you!"
Chris:
"I plan to run over 100 miles per day and not stop to sleep…"
Mom:
"I think I could do that."
This
is the woman who's idea of no-nonsense parenting could be summed up with the
following catch phrases: "quit your bitchin", "tough
shit", and, my personal favorite, "life's a bitch and then you
die." Yeah, I think she's got what it takes to bike 238 miles non-stop
without sleep!
The
Katy Trail is one of the premier rail-to-trail projects in the country. A
stretch of crushed limestone spanning most of the width of Missouri along the
old Missouri-Kansas-Texas railbed, connecting multiple rural communities and
traversing endless agricultural fields and Missouri River flood plains and
bluffs. From the moment I moved back to Missouri in 2019, I knew I wanted to
eventually go for the Fastest Known Time on it.
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| Somewhere in Missouri. |
There
are long stretches without any services, making a speedy effort particularly
tricky. After a few loose discussions, the idea of sharing miles with my mom
seemed pretty cool. She could serve as a "rolling aid station" and we
could meet up every 30 miles or so for access to the next round of calories and
gear. Have some meals together, take some photos, enjoy an adventure! Call it
"quasi-self-sufficient".
Well,
then my sister, Courtney, got roped into the works, on account of my mom
starting to get concerned about the problem of sleep, or lack thereof. And the
next thing I knew, there'd also be in-laws in an RV! An over-the-top crewing
proposition, of which I had no intention of maximizing its usefulness. But if
it offered my 69 year old mom -- with her engineered joints and a history of
sleep issues after decades of hospital night shifts -- the opportunity to forge
ahead of me a few times to nab a couple hours of shut eye, well, then I was all
for it. Also, it meant I might be able to push a bit harder! Spoiler alert on
the crewing front: my mom never once stopped to sleep, but we did get around 8
solid bouts of support, some of which may or may not have included a niece
smearing sticky bomb pop juice all over the legs of an exhausted, crabby
runner.
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My mom ringing the bell to start the journey.
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Fine. I'll waste some time and ring the bell 3 minutes after we'd already started the clock.
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Fast
forward to Mile 215 or so, somewhere near Who-The-Fuck-Knows, Missouri. Dead of
night. Sleep deprivation taking its toll. I am wracked with intense levels of
déjà vu, constantly. I've been here before! I've seen all of this!
This
isn't your typical every mile looks the same kind of déjà vu. This is
much different. At one point, I start to have … pre-visions. I am a
precog in a Running Man crossover film. I know, for a fact, an absolute fact,
that in a couple of miles we will cross over the highway we're paralleling, at
a pedestrian crossing angled at 45 degrees to the roadway. I know this because
I've been here before. Even though I haven't. Ever.
I
inform my mom of the inevitability of future events. She has no response. And
then, a couple miles later, it happens. Road crossing at a 45 degree angle.
Just like I'd pre-visioned. My world is turned upside down. This kind of
thing must have happened a half dozen times, but that roadway crossing is the
one that really breaks me down.
Reality
is an illusion. I must be dead. Is this some sort of after-life test or replay
of my life? My mom must be dead too. Are we in Purgatory? Does god really
exist? What the fuck is happening?!
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Hours of nothing but this.
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The
crippling uncertainty of reality shakes me to my core. The déjà vu I can
understand. My brain is tired. I can convince myself that something unique
is just up ahead, and then I see a rock or a tree by the trail and think yup,
there it is, that's unique, wow, so crazy! The fluidity of time is breaking
down. Neural pathways are going haywire. The feeling of déjà vu can be
explained. But not the foresight. I don't simply feel that I've been
here before, I know what is going to happen before it happens.
And
then, eventually, with maybe 15 miles to go, deep recesses of my brain open up
and everything makes perfect sense.
Last
year, Google released a "trail view" of the Katy Trail. I'd sat down
and thumbed through stretches of the trail, particularly the final sections. I
knew what was about to happen because I'd fucking seen it on the internet! One
less existential crisis to worry about!
As
we near the end of the trail, though, the déjà vu keeps popping in and out. And
I eventually realize that while checking out that Google trail view last year,
I'd also been trying to envision myself running the Katy Trail, what it would
feel like running those final miles, straining to break 48 hours or whatever.
And, I think, I may have even had dreams about running the Katy Trail. This all
comes ebbing and flowing, memories and dreams and feelings mixing and
conflicting with reality, getting stronger as the end nears.
Do
I have déjà vu about shitting my shorts in the final hour of the Katy Trail
because I've done that before in other races, or because I imagined it in my race
vision, or because I dreamt it, or because small amounts of diarrhea and
gas are leaking out of me in the here and now and my brain is so exhausted that
it simply feels like it has already happened? Well, I mean, yeah,
technically it did already happen just 1 mile before, but still, you get the
idea. I can't make sense of anything anymore. I just need to be done with this
stupid run!
My
mom and I finish, unceremoniously, in the dead of night, at the Machens
Trailhead, 238 miles from our starting point in Clinton, after 45 hours and 37
minutes of bliss and joy and peace and stress and frustration and cool breezes
and oppressive sun and beautiful views of endless fields and midnight strolls
under towering bluffs and, yes, even a dash of existential crises.
I
stop my watch. We ring the bell to finalize our travels, and then we spend
about 10 minutes struggling to take photos and videos of ourselves as the cold
and the sleep deprivation and the exhaustion sets in. And then we hobble our
asses another mile along a "private" road (that isn't private) to the
imposing barrier local farmers put up to keep cyclists from accessing the
trail, where my sister is parked, ready to whisk us back to the real world
after our 2 day leave of absence.
What
a stupid hobby.
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Glad that's finally over!
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More bell ringing.
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Pretty sure she'll never do anything this stupid again!
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Worthless
details that really only matter to me:
Pacing
strategy:
I
wanted to attempt a 9min run / 3min walk strategy. Why? Because I thought it
closely reflected an optimal 72hour effort and long-term I'm interested in
exploring just how far I can go without sleeping or substantially compromising
running efficiency, and I think it's somewhere in the 60-72hour range.
I
maintained this well for 25+ hours. I occasionally skipped a walk stretch, or
shortened it to 2 minutes; but a lot of times that was to compensate for, say,
a quick bathroom break or a food stop.
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Someone should tell them it doesn't actually take that long.
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In
the 2nd day, that plan disappeared to counter the unforgiving sun and exposed
trail. I couldn't justify walking in the exposed sun just because my watch said
that's what I should do. So instead, I did a lot more running, mostly to get to
the next patch of substantial shade, which was few and far between. It meant
covering more miles with the pointless allure of setting an even more massive
FKT, but I was also tiring myself out.
As
the sun set on Day 2, I started to struggle to keep the daytime pace, and it
began to frustrate me. I eventually decided that I had to give up trying to
maintain pace. The FKT was well in hand, and it truly didn't matter if I
finished in 45 hours or 44, so stop trying to force it! It was a weight off my
shoulders. I could finally start enjoying walking breaks at night and enjoying
the stars like my mom and I did with Night 1. Except right about then my left
achilles became noticeably stiff and achy. Yup, my bad achilles was rearing its
ugly face again. That meant transitioning from walking to running was
absolutely exhausting. It was less painful to keep running and limping along
rather than limp-walk and then try to shuffle into a limp-jog over and over
again. But it was also more exhausting, mostly mentally, to just keep running.
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Selfies with the Missouri River (and a mouth full of food).
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I
didn't kill myself in the final hours, but it certainly was not a cakewalk. And
the final few miles were filled with exasperated sighs and heavy breathing as
my body began to sense the end and desperately wished to finally give up. It
was all normal, I told my mom, as she repeatedly asked if I was okay.
Splits
of note:
First
100M: 19:00
24
Hours: 126M
200M:
37:45
Final
100M: 19:15
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Dobies-style chart showing how awesome I am at pacing
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Fueling
strategy:
I
went for a fairly optimistic, for me, plan of 300cal/hr. It'd be split into
100cal of Hyle in 10oz of water, with the rest of my liquid needs coming from
water whether that was 1oz extra per hour or 10. Then I had 100 cal of a gel or
chews or those Spring wolfpacks or whatever. And then 100 cal of solid food in
the form of belvita crackers, fig bars, candy bars, etc.
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| Organization! |
And
then a couple of regular meals each day, compliments of my sister picking stuff
up from Sonic or McDonalds or gas stations or wherever.
Also,
I tried to down 15-25 grams of protein every 6 hours or so.
The
fueling worked perfectly for 26+ hours. Then the heat and sun had me distracted
and my calories went down a bit. In the final hours of Night 2, I cut way back
on food as my insides just wanted to expel everything out the other end. That
also meant not drinking much of anything for the final couple of hours to try
and shore up my stomach.
All
told, I burned about 24,000 calories, and consumed around 12,000. There's no
other diet on earth that can deliver 4 lbs of fat burn in 48 hours!
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Smoothies and hashbrowns!
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"Drop
Bag" / Crew Plan:
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Mileage
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Distance
to Next
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Start
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0
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38
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Sedalia
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38
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35
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Boonville
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73
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48
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North
Jeff City
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121
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43
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McKittrick
(Hermann)
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164
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37
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Klondike
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201
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37
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Finish
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238
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Deviations
from the crew plan were minor:
My
mom carried an intermediate drop bag from Boonville for me to take at McBaine
(Mile 95), splitting up the nearly 50 mile overnight stretch.
We
made such good time overnight we texted my sister to skip North Jeff City (Mile
121) and meet us later at the next location, Tebbetts (Mile 133), giving her
the chance to sleep past dawn.
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Missouri. Pretty much what you'd expect.
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And
then our Klondike meetup was shifted back to Defiance (Mile 206) where my
sister's family parked their RV for the 2nd night.
There
is one major exception to the plan worth mentioning, so as to let you know it
wasn't all roses and rainbows. In the heat of Day 2, I failed to remember 1)
that there was no trailhead / train station water access between North
Jefferson City (Mile 121) and Marthasville (Mile 187); and 2) that even though
we bought water at the guest house by the Portland station (Mile 149), it was
15 miles to McKittrick/Hermann (Mile 164). Combined with my mom accidentally
misreading the mileage to me not long after Portland (Mile 149), I believed it
was 18 miles between Portland and McKittrick/Hermann (Mile 164), not 15. I'd
only filled up 40 oz and skipped my 20 oz handheld because I had used it all of
Day 1 and it was entirely superfluous and unnecessary then, with the water
access at practically every station on the western half of the trail. In the
heat, I began to panic … and get pissed off at Missouri State Parks shitty lack
of funding allocation (seriously, how hard is it to install a couple of
seasonal water fountains at your premier trail's trailheads?). There'd be no
way I'd make it anywhere close to McKittrick. I'd be out of water long before
that, and screwed. My mom had plenty of water and offered me some, but with my
sun-baked brain I firmly refused. I was fine accepting water at one of our
"aid stations", but taking it from her in the middle of nowhere was
tantamount to muling, and I pull my own weight! She texted my sister and at
some point, on a random intersecting road, I bumped into my niece sprinting down
the trail with an ice cold water bottle in hand … a trail angel sent to save my
day! My pity-party crabbiness is all rather amusing in hindsight, given that it
could have all been avoided if 1) I'd just used a 3rd bottle, or 2) I'd
memorized it was 15 miles between train stations, not 18.
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A trail angel delivering much needed water.
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Gear:
I
started with Craft Nordlite Ultras. I really like how cushy these shoes are,
even if they are 10+ ounces. They're like running on clouds! Except. Well,
their engineers have gone with the new shoe trend of making stupid stiff
plastic tongues that end up jabbing into the crook of your foot. This isn't
something you really notice in normal running, but after a dozen plus hours, it
gets to the point that it starts causing inflammation.
At
Mile 133, I switched to Saucony Endorphin Pros, which are my favorite shoe of
all time. They're meant for speedier running like lameo road marathons, but my
feet never seem to mind 100+ miles on them. When I swapped shoes I accidentally
picked up the pace to well over 6mph until the next train station. I was
flying!
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5-10lbs on my back at all times (I left the remote in the hotel room though).
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I
used my Suunto 9 watch and had tested a setup that was supposed to last 63
hours. A 6hr training run confirmed the battery drain rate. But 34 hours into
the Katy Trail, my watch let me know I only had 4 hours left, and that
switching to the crappiest update rate would only earn me 11 more hours, which
was unlikely to get me to the finish. I hastily began recording on my phone's
Strava app. My mom also called in my sister for an emergency meetup to bring a
charger and power brick -- also, dusk was approaching and she'd forgotten to
pack enough clothes to stay warm for the night, which was kind of important.
When we met right around sunset, I was already over the run and ready to be
done. I was crabby as hell. My sister gave me the charger for the watch but I
refused to look her in the eye and grumbled that she shouldn't even be here,
this wasn't part of the plan, this is unnecessary, I have my phone for a
backup. And then the damn watch kept getting stuck in a stupid calibration loop
when I tried connecting it to the charger, forcing me to wildly swing the hunk
of crap in big figure 8s over and over again. I struggled with this for what
felt like an eternity, all while stubbornly refusing anyone's help. Then I
grumpily jogged on down the trail to begin the longest 10 hours of running of
my life.
I
also had a Garmin inReach Messenger to send a ping every 10 minutes so that my
family could keep track of our progress. That worked like a charm.
For
a solid hour to start Night 2, I kept looking at my watch and only 1 minute
would pass (or, worse, I'd think that surely 5 minutes went by and come to find
less than 60 seconds had elapsed since I last looked). Time slowed to a halt.
Caffeine didn't help. A little bit of chatting with my mom barely made a dent.
I finally relented and threw on some headphones. Music was a lifesaver.
Dead
time:
At
roughly Mile 15, I came upon my mom, with her bike flipped over. She had a
flat. Already! The tires were pretty new and stiff, so it took us the better
part of 15 minutes to change her tube (it didn't help that her shifters weren't
responding and we couldn't get the chain to run down the cassette).
In
Boonville, the trail no longer goes across the old railroad bridge, instead it
winds through the town to the highway bridge. In the dark, I missed the
terribly marked turn and went on to the dead-end bridge, wasting 10 minutes.
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"Warning. Danger. Bridge Up. Do Not Go Beyond This Point." ... Does this mean I made a wrong turn?!
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Then,
immediately afterwards, I spent 20 minutes chilling at a gas station while my
mom got her affairs in order for the long stretch of night ahead of us.
A
couple other un-rushed stops and photo ops probably resulted in 60+ minutes of
"lost time".
Relative
Stupidity:
When
I moved to St. Louis in 2019 the Katy FKT was above 72 hours. Denise Bourassa
dropped that down to 70:22 in 2021. I don't want to come off as smug … but at
45:37, I think the record will still be in place when I die. Now, somebody go
out there and prove me wrong! (nobody will, because that's a terrible idea and
people have better things to do with their time)
If
I had continued on to 48 hours, there's a half decent chance I would've hit 250
miles. That would've been enough to place me 3rd all-time among US men (if the
Katy Trail were a certified course and a certified race … which it isn't). I'm
starting to get confident that I just might have it in me for a push at the
American Record of 270.6, and become #2 all time in the world. If I can
accomplish that, then maybe I can finally stop all of this stupid flat running
that keeps wrecking my achilles, and go enjoy some forests and mountains!
Memories
or whatever:
I
can't decide how much more enjoyable it would have been if we'd gone at a
slower pace and tried to enjoy Day 2 a bit more with a couple of café stops and
things like that. But on the other hand, Night 2 felt like a death march trying
to get to the finish, and I really don't want to imagine having spent extra
hours out there.
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My niece making sure I was properly applying lube to my toes.
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Seeing
my sister occasionally on Day 1 was pretty cool, and then her family on the
morning of Day 2. It was such an easy going day+. I was in a good mood, all was
right with the world. I wish I'd tried to be more positive on Day 2 though.
I
don't think my mom and I will look back on this adventure in the years to come
and think "Wow, what a great way to bond. Family is the best!" It'll
probably be more like "why the hell did we do that?" and "man,
Chris can be a grouchy asshole when he runs". Either way, I'm super proud
of what my mom accomplished. I'd venture to guess no one her age has ever
completed the trail in that amount of time. Pretty freakin awesome!
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Who's dumber? The idiots biking and running across the state, or the person who agreed to help them?
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But,
here are the good memories I have of the adventure:
- Unexpectedly bumping into
Courtney along the trail in the early hours
- A nearly 4 mile stretch on Day
1 with prairie restoration on either side of the trail -- random bits of
tallgrass and wild flowers, and milkweed, randomly interspersed with sumac (and absurd amounts of
ragweed), separating the trail from fields of corn, soybean, and fallow -- exploding with birds and sounds of crickets and grasshoppers that freely
bounced to and fro (sometimes viciously attacking me). The whole time you could see your destination off in
the distance, as you approached the High Point of the Katy Trail.
- Sonic for lunch in Sedalia
- The incredible starry night sky
as we meandered through the river bottom between Boonville and Rocheport
- Hours of nighttime running,
framed by river bluffs on our left and the Missouri River to our right
- The absurdity of me and my mom
trying to operate our cameras at the finish in the dead of night
Parting
Thoughts:
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Cocodona
250
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Katy
Trail 238
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$1600
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Entry
Fee
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$0
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>$300 flight
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Travel
Cost
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$34 train ticket
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Hot exposed dry desert
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Scenery
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Hot exposed farmland
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A buckle I'll never wear
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Swag
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Rocks in my shoe
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+40K
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Vert
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0K
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Would probably have to put up with
Sensemen
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Crewing/Pacing
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Whatever I wanted
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5+ days
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Time
away from Family
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2.5 days
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According to website, yes.
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Life
altering?
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Debatable
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(Most photos courtesy of The Red-Headed Step Child, aka: my little sister.)
