One day in 1997 I casually picked up a copy of Outside magazine at a bookstore, having no idea it was about to change my life. I thumbed through its pages with all the nonchalance of an average 14-year old boy when a particular article stopped me cold.
The headline boasted a record finish of the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run by someone named Mike Morton. The main significance of this event, the article proclaimed, was that the record had been set for the first time by a non-local who didn't have ready training access to the rugged terrain of the course. As a high school freshman, I couldn't have cared less about the record time, nor about the background of the winner of that race or any other.
Instead, I was riveted to the page because I had no idea that any human on earth could, had, or ever would run 100 miles.
I was at the time a runner myself, though only just so: my experience consisted of halfhearted participation in a single season of junior varsity cross country, even that lukewarm achievement coming about by way of avoiding conventional team sports.
Nonetheless, my own 3.1-mile race distance represented the outer limits of human endurance for me, a feat that I had only sometimes achieved without taking one or more walking breaks throughout.
Everything changed upon reading that article.
I bought the magazine and cited it frequently. First out of disgust, then out of judgment at the ridiculousness of such an event, and then, very gradually, out of curiosity.
How far, I wondered, could I go?
I began extending my personal distance record during after-school runs, probing further until one afternoon found me completing a slow 10-mile jog in the suburbs surrounding my high school. For me it felt like winning the Olympics, a watershed event of far greater significance than any of my previous competition races.
This modest event was my first indication that I'd be committed to distance running long after graduating high school. For after completing 10 miles, I began to train for a half-marathon. Once I'd logged a few 13.1-mile finishes, I began to look toward the nebulous possibility of running 26.2 miles in a full marathon. After doing five of those, it was time for my first 50-mile race.
Each doubling of my distance record brought me to a new category of racing that I far preferred to the last. I had never much cared for the speed aspect of running—which was fortunate, because I wasn't fast—but loved the long, slow solitude of distance, and that reward increased with each mile beyond my last personal record.
It was only logical that after a few 50-mile races, I'd try my hand at a hundred miler.
The 100-mile distance, I learned upon completing my first one despite vowing at that moment to never do another, was my favorite race yet. Starting at sunrise and running clear through the night into the following morning was an exercise in physical and mental endurance that dwarfed anything I'd done before, and demanded an acceptance of sheer pain that I came to revere.
Less than three months after my first 100-mile finish, I ran a second one.
This chain of events led me to the starting line at Hinson Lake, North Carolina, on the morning of September 26th, 2010. There I once again awaited the crack of a starter pistol, this time a full 13 years after first discovering the Outside magazine article heralding the existence of 100-mile racing.
Hinson Lake would be another first for me, though it was technically the shortest course I'd ever raced: a scant 1.5-mile loop back to the start point.
The catch was, the race allotted 24 hours to run it as many times as possible.
My goal was to break 100 miles, and this time I had a far lesser chance of success than any previous race.
I had returned from a yearlong deployment less than a month earlier, having patched together a wildly insufficient, haphazard training regimen across various camps in Afghanistan. By the time I returned to the US I had only time for a final, 30-mile training run—during which I proposed to my girlfriend, an event that went every bit as disastrously as that sentence makes it sound—before I had to start tapering down in preparation for the race.
On top of that, the temperatures on race day would be topping 90 degrees for a 5-hour period that afternoon.
I was trying to avoid thinking about any of those factors when the starter pistol fired, and the crowd of runners lurched forward onto the course.
I began making slow, consistent laps around the 1.5-mile loop, grabbing water and food as I passed my truck beside the trail, steadfastly manned by my newly minted fiancée.
After about four hours I reached the 27-mile point and gained my second wind, feeling like I'd just started. By mile 30 I skipped a planned food stop because I wanted to ride the wave of energy as long as I could. I even managed to cross mile 40 before the temperature soared over 90 degrees, forcing me to periodically drench myself in ice water from my cooler.
It wasn't until mile 45 that I began slipping off my pace for a 100-mile finish, and I picked up speed to compensate. After hitting the 50-mile mark at just over 10 hours, I decided to crank out just one more lap before taking a food break.
That extra lap was where my lack of food intake hit me, and hit me hard. My energy levels completely crashed, resulting in an entire mile where I could have laid down on the side of the trail at any point and gone to sleep in seconds, and desperately wanted to do just that.
Drowsy and listless, I trudged onward to my truck where I grabbed some food and a protein shake to drink on the run. It took me the better part of an hour before I felt coherent again.
Throughout the race, I kept getting lapped by a lean guy running so fast that it wasn't even inspirational: he had to have been doing an intermittent speed workout for a marathon train up and would be leaving the course soon, I thought. But I kept seeing him whiz past me—never looking left or right, never speaking, just flying by in a flash.
By early evening the heat began to subside, and I felt home free. Many runners dread nightfall and the solitary experience of running under a headlamp; my greatest enemy had always been heat. Digging in as darkness fell, I thought my 100-mile finish was guaranteed.
That feeling lulled me into a false sense of sleep-deprived, zoned-out comfort until the 83.5 mile mark, when I suddenly checked my watch to find I had fallen so far off my time goals that I would have to maintain my current pace—no slowing down, no muscle cramps or energy crashes—for the next 16.5 miles if I wanted to hit 100 before the race ended.
And no stopping, either.
Somewhere during the panicked rush that ensued, my fiancée joined me for a lap and mentioned that she had overheard someone saying that one runner was trying to break 150 miles during the race—nearly 20 miles over the previous course record. Wondering if this was the mystery runner who had been blazing by me throughout the night, I did something I had deliberately been avoiding up to that point and glanced at the "leader board," where the top 10 runners were ranked.
And there he was, in the number one spot: Mike Morton, winner of the Western States 100 in 1997, and the man who through an article in Outside magazine brought the concept of ultrarunning into an impressionable 14-year old mind.
I didn't have a lot of energy to consider that at the time. Instead I let the panicked state of fear that I'd fall short of my goal fuel me through the early morning hours to sunrise and beyond.
I crossed the 100-mile mark at 23:17, eking out another two miles before a foghorn sounded the end of the race.
I'd like to proclaim a glorious ending to this story, to wistfully recount my remarkable conversation with Mike after the race, how I just wanted to shake his hand but he instead pulled me into a hug and we cracked an ice-cold beer to celebrate his 150+ mile finish which, by God, he completed, and remain good friends to this day.
None of that happened.
It didn't happen because I didn't meet him, and I didn't meet him because I didn't even stay for the awards ceremony. Instead, I opted to seriously consider vomiting in my truck on the way back to the hotel room, where I promptly fell asleep in the bathtub. Then I woke up and, if memory serves, spent the remainder of the day eating pizza like the world would end if I didn't.
And while I wish I had a better ending, that's the true story of the closest I ever came to beating Mike Morton.
Jason Kasper is the author of the David Rivers Series. Read more and contact him at base1178.com.
