David Decker’s 100 Mile Adventure, Part II

When we last left Dave, he was more than half-way along in his first one hundred mile race. Friends and family had been out to support him from the sidelines or running alongside him for most of Saturday. It’s now early on Sunday and Dave has several more miles to go before he’s done. The final miles can be tough as we learn below.

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So, what used to be a large group was suddenly down to just mGayle and me. It was about to get bigger again because Jen and Jim suddenly charged up behind us while we were heading through the rocky section of the Patriots Path. The funny thing that happened on this loop was when we were in the aid station. I knew that they were going to have soup at the aid station after dark so when we came into the station at about 1am I asked the Boy Scout who was helping out if they had any soup.

The answer was, no…the start/finish aid station had soup. The eastern aid station didn’t have any.

Which is a perfectly fine answer to my question.

Except for the fact that I was staring at a Cup-O-Noodles container sitting on the table in front of me.

I asked further…what about the Cup-O-Noodles soup right there?

Oh, that’s for the volunteers.

Again, a perfectly valid answer to my question. They need food too.

So, I looked at the half eaten Cup-O-Noodles container with about 2 inches of salty goodness in the bottom of that cup and I inquired, “do you think they’re done with this one?”

The kid looked at me like I was out of my mind! Again, a perfectly valid response to my question.

Yeah, you can have it if you want it.

Excellent! I grabbed to cup and headed down the path inhaling the nectar of the gods that would be a cup of Cup-O-Noodles soup.

Somewhere in here my hips and my lower back were starting to get really tired. I’d still trot down the path every once in awhile, walk a lot and now every couple miles I would stop and do a semi-squat to stretch out my lower back and take the pressure off my hips.

Back at the start finish area (these 9 mile loops were taking me just about 3 hours to complete) we picked up Mark. Jen and Jim decided to go out for the third loop with me and mGayle was in charge of getting me to eat. Mark had pacing duties. The pace kept getting slower. My stretching stops became more frequent (but those were probably on 30 seconds or so at a time) and now I took advantage of the aid station chairs and the occasional rock on the trail while they were filling my water bottle.

Jim grabbed some jelly beans and some M&M’s for me and I ate those. mGayle kept handing me some pretzel sticks and I would nibble my way down those getting some calories and salt. But for the most part now I was drinking Coke from my water bottle and drinking down as much soup as we could get at the aid stations. They brought some potato leek soup out to the eastern aid station on the 3rd loop at that was just heavenly.

At the end of the 3rd loop mGayle, Jen and Jim were all thinking about staying out for the final loop with me and Mark but I encouraged them to head home. They all had long drives ahead of them and at that point had been out for about 9 hours with me. The big surprise for me was Kaki, Emily and Amy were waiting at the start/finish aid station to wish me good luck for my last loop. (I don’t think I looked too good at that point and I think I remember muttering something about being really tired over and over.)

Lots of people were coming in to finish at this point but I knew I still had more than 3 hours of work ahead of me. Mark and I headed out and mGayle came along for just a little more. According to his Garmin watch he was about 1 mile shy of running a marathon while he was out there with me so he decided to make it exactly 26.2 miles. Add that to the 5 miles he ran with me 20 hours earlier and he ended up running a 50k. That’s a big day.

Soon it was just me and Mark and we had 9 miles to go…now, this is the part that gets a little “indelicate” so if you want to skip past this…no one will mind! Especially me. How much trouble could I possible get in with only 9 miles to go.

It’s about 6am Sunday morning and I’ve been on the move for 26 hours. My body decided it was time to get rid of some of that junk I had been putting into my body. So I pulled off the trail into the woods to use the bathroom. I got my baby wipes out of my pocket and cleaned up very nicely. (Don’t worry nature lovers…those baby wipes went into my coat pocket to be disposed of later.)

All good so far.

Do you remember me talking about the Body Glide stuff that I put all over my body to avoid any chafing? Well, when I wiped myself with those baby wipes, all that body glide got wiped away as well. Suddenly I had skin on very tender skin rubbing and bleeding. And the kicker…when you run salt gets excreted from your pores…and guess where that salt was located! You got it! Ow. No, really…OW!

“Mark, I’m having some trouble here.” and I explained quickly what was going on. He understood of course…he’s a long distance runner too. Well, the blood and the chafing were making me waddle down the path with VERY unusual stride. So unusual that after about half an hour I suddenly felt this wetness down on one of my toes on my right foot. Uh oh. I know what that means. I blister has just popped on my foot and I have open skin now pressing against the front of my shoe.

We got to the aid station and told the guy my problem. They got out a tool box another fellow popped out of the tent next to us and started helping right away. They gave me some packets of “lubri-something-or-other” and I applied it right away! Much better. Time to look at my feet. It wasn’t a pretty site! Took off my shoes and socks and Mark slapped some tape around the toe with the blister.

We had just wasted some very precious time tending to some very important needs. Suddenly though, we were pressed for time. We had 6 miles to go and about 3 hours before the 30 hour cutoff. It should be mountains of time, but if other bad things happened, we would run out of time and I wouldn’t be an official finisher. We couldn’t have that. Mark explained the situation and we headed out at a power walk type pace.Yes, that’s probably an exaggeration but it just means we were walking more quickly.

The new pace along with “slightly” different stride was making my right shin hurt a lot. I explained what was going on to Mark but there wasn’t anything to do about it. We got down to the turn around and I received my final check mark on my race number. I just needed to get back to the Finish (4 1/2 miles). I looked at the road on my left and saw our car driving by. The girls had driven out to cheer for me and they brought me more soup! Yeah for me!

We kept moving and blew through the final aid station without bothering to stop.We got to the Patriots Path area now with lots of time to spare and headed toward home for the last mile and a half section. I love finding money when I run and I always stop to pick it up. We were about a mile from the finish and I looked down and saw a shiny dime at my feet. It took me a second or two to find the dexterity to pick it up but it was an appropriate finish to the day.

At this point I knew I would finish, new I would finish within the 30 hour time limit and now it looked like I would finish in less than 29 hours as well. I was the last official finisher to cross the finish line. They held up the finisher’s tape for me just like they did for the first place finisher and I crossed the line.

100 miles in 28 hours, 51 minutes and 46 seconds.

I sat down on a bench and instantly my body knew it was off the clock. I barely stood up and with the help of the others I walked the 20 or 30 steps down to the car. We dropped Mark off at his truck and thanked him again for everything. I waited in the car while the girls checked out of the hotel. They kept the room just in case I wanted to get a shower or take a quick nap. I wanted nothing but to crawl into the sleeping bag in the back of the car and pass out. And that’s just what I did.

An hour or so later we pulled into our driveway and Kaki and Emily helped carry me into the house where I collapsed onto the bed for about an 18 hour sleep only interrupted briefly to put some real food into my body. A couple days later I’m almost back to square one. My right ankle is a little swollen and the blisters are all better on both feet.

I really don’t like to use words like “never” as in “never again” but it will be a big surprise to everyone (including me) if I ever run this distance again.

It was so much harder both physically and mentally than I ever thought possible.