2019 Recap: I Did Epic Shit!

What a comeback year! After spending so much of 2018 on the sidelines, it was so awesome to jump back into running and adventures. I felt a new sense of appreciation each time I got to spend a weekend playing in the woods with my friends. And I have never been so happy to have long periods of time with a healthy, capable body. 

Happiness in Kathmandu, Nepal

It wasn’t always rainbows and puppies, but there were some really, really special moments that I will treasure for the rest of my life. Honestly, I haven’t had a year where I’ve felt so much gratitude for the things I have. And for all the rough patches, I will just use those as fuel for whatever is thrown my way next.

January

I started the year off with a New Year’s Day run on Coosa and began working with a running coach.

New Year's Day Coosa Loop

It was exciting to do workouts during the week and I looked forward to spending time on the trails with my friends on the weekend.

With trail wifey on Tray Mountain

Before the sleet storm on Nimblewill with John

It had been well over a year since I had run a trail race and I needed a 50K+ qualifier to complete my Georgia Death Race requirements. I ended up choosing Mountain Mist 50K in Huntsville, Alabama. I camped overnight in my car the night before, raced a muddy and chilly 31 miles, and ended up 5th female overall. 

Mountain Mist 50K finish line

February

Jenster and Angie were coming into town to pace the Suwanee Half Marathon so I jumped into the race. I was hoping that I would strike much closer to the 1:30 mark, but I felt really flat from the gun on race day and worked really hard for a PR of 1:38:54. I know you aren’t supposed to be disappointed in a PR, but I’ve had faster splits in a full marathon. As I went through the month, I felt really good about my aerobic fitness, but then I had some twinges of foot pain and my coach tweaked my workouts to reduce further injury.

Post-race brunch with these badasses who BOTH had run 100 mile races in the previous 2 weeks

March

I signed up for the URE Marathon in North Carolina because it was free, great GDR training, and I knew a bunch of friends going. It was a little nerve-wracking going into the race sitting partway on the bench with my foot in limbo. But for whatever reason, my foot felt okay on race day, I took it easy, and tried to just keep a relaxed effort all day. I recovered well after the race and things seemed to have turned the corner for GDR.

Girl squad

Dude squad

URE Marathon finish chute

Though I really wanted to crack the top 10 at GDR, I also knew that I was entering new territory. I had run further and longer before, but never with that type of terrain. I took it really conservative for the first 35 miles and then allowed my body to just go with the course during the second half. It was really tough, but I was the 13th female and got it done in 18 hours, 19 minutes, and 13 seconds.

April

I went to Raleigh the weekend after GDR and volunteered at Umstead 100 with Jenster, Caitlin, and Laurie. 

Volunteering with Laurie, Jen, and Caitlin

And the following weekend was the Boston 5K, my birthday, and the Boston Marathon. Brad stayed with Adam and I in an Airbnb in Chinatown and it was a fun, low-key few days with running, eating, baseball, and lots of naps. I managed a 3:18:28 for the marathon - my 4th fastest marathon ever and with very little specific marathon training! Guess my legs were just happy to not run another 15 hours. 

Boston 5K

Birthday dinner by Gatorade phone light

Boston Marathon finish line

Brad and I celebrating our Boston Marathon finishes

 May

May, May, May, May, May. The month I traveled to Qatar and Nepal and experienced a trip of a lifetime! I had been looking forward to this for almost 2 years and am still cherishing the moments as I write this. It was everything I had hoped for and more. The people, the adventure, the sense of accomplishment, the food, and the entire sense that I was happy with exactly that moment for nearly 3 weeks straight. I was almost overwhelmed with how calm my mind was when I returned.

The marathon itself was a really cool experience, but I loved the trekking and travel just as much. Our group laughed until we cried each day. Navigating everything that was foreign to me gave me such pleasure, like I was a child navigating the world for the first time. Everything was novel and I had such a deep appreciation for each experience.

On one of the many iconic suspension bridges during the trek

Overlooking Tengboche

Between Dengboche and Lobuche

My first 18er! Kala Patthar, 18,514' 

Post 18er - feeling crappy from altitude sickness

Hiker's base camp - 17,598'

Everest Base Camp sunrise from my tent

Finishing the Everest Marathon! (no, I didn't win, they put the tape up for everybody)

With my fellow trekkers, head guide, and assistant head guide - (L-R) Kale, Sie, Pam, Miguel, me, Becky, Mo, and Gelu

Trekkers and all our guides

The Himalayan valley is so, so green

Kathmandu, Nepal

Drinking a mango smoothie in a souq at 9pm when it's 110°F

Doha, Qatar - view from my hotel room

June

When I arrived back home, I knew I just wanted to take a bit of time to just really be able to enjoy my big spring and not concentrate on a new goal right away. I ran when I felt like it for a couple of weeks and didn’t worry about my pace or mileage. My coach gave me a bit of structure, but there weren’t any big workouts or long run weekends.

Easy running on the trails

July

I knew going into the fall that I wanted to run a 100 and set my eyes on Javelina Jundred in Phoenix, Arizona or Pinhoti 100 in Eastern Alabama. I had some FOMO when other friends were racing over the summer, but I also knew that it was important to give my body a chance to relax and recover if I was going to attempt 100 in the fall. I had a horrible case of poison ivy that made running (and life) really, really uncomfortable for over 3 weeks. 

Getting back to it (with poison ivy)

Poison Ivy 1, Carissa 0

August

With lots of friends training for fall races, my weekends were filled with trail runs. I actually did a bunch of track workouts on Tuesday mornings, swapping the heat of the evening for the humidity. I enjoyed seeing the gains in my fitness as I transitioned from week to week. It was exciting to see my tempos get longer and faster.

Blood Mountain gang

Track workout

Tempo workout

September

I knew I wasn’t going to be racing Hinson for the full 24 hours, but rather taking advantage of the course as a couple of well-supported long runs. I completed 50K in the morning/early afternoon and took a long break where I refueled and did a few more laps eventually to get food. Then I took a short nap in the evening. I set my alarm to get up around midnight and knocked out 15 more miles of running. I was wide awake when I finished that and felt good so I just kept walking until the race was over, completing 63 total miles.. 

Round and round and round at Hinson Lake

After running 50ish miles, I walked a half marathon in flip flops.

October

I was SO EXCITED to race Javelina Jundred! I had my first set of pacers and crew ever for a race and I felt really, really prepared. Needless to say, it was pretty disappointing when I made the painful decision to DNF at mile 52. Though I was so, so angry at myself that weekend, I also felt really, really lucky to dream the dream and have such a support system with me.

At bib pickup

Chantal and I in our tent before the race

Roger took this amazing pic on race morning

Adam and I right before the race start

Feeling good at mile 22

Feeling defeated at mile 52

My pacers Roger and Chantal got to pace Tom to his first 100 mile finish!

November

After JJ, I recovered a bit and then switched gears to get my head in the game for a road marathon. I reverse tapered, had a few bigger weeks of workouts and then tapered off a bit as I neared Rehoboth. 

Post-run selfie in November

December

My coach thought I was in PR shape, but I had been feeling just flat in all my workouts leading up to the race. I knew how I felt when I had run 3:13 and I just wasn’t feeling like I had the leg speed for that. So I decided to play it safe at Rehoboth and run with the 3:25 pacer - a 10+ minute BQ would likely still give me enough cushion unless things got really crazy with the qualifying times. I ended up running a 3:24:11 and felt great the final 10K.

Rehoboth Beach Marathon finish chute

2019 Goals Report

I made a formal list of goals for 2018 and enjoyed the process so I tried it again for 2019. I’ve decided against doing it for 2020. Sometimes I felt like I was a little too rigid in trying to conform to some of these things that I couldn’t just let life flow - especially the things that I set up to happen on a weekly or monthly basis.

But I do think some of them helped me get into good habits and forced me to manage my time a teeny bit wiser to get it all done.

Here are my grades/assessments on my goals for 2019:

1. 2 weeks of meal planning per month - B - I counted any weeks that I planned 5 days and stuck to the plan of 4 days. We typically would go out on Thursday night and Saturday night so I’d tried to have something planned out the other days. As a meat-eater, this really just meant that I’d try to have the right protein moved from the freezer to the refrigerator and some sort sort of veggie planned depending on the season. Summer salads and lots of pasta helped keep this goal pretty easy.

2. PR in a distance less than a marathon - A - An A only because I achieved it. Even still, all my times for raced 5K, 10K, 13.1, etc are far slower than what I’ve achieved in a training run. But I’m giving myself an A because I did PR in the 13.1 distance and in a 5K in races, but I also PR’d in a 5K and 10K during a training run this year.

3. Call or write Grandma at least once per month - A -Yup! I counted going to see her in person for November, but I did actually write (snail mail!) or call each month of the year.

4. Do something kind once per week - B - I don’t think I went out of my way every week to really make this one special, but I did bring in special treats for coworkers or extra snacks for trail running friends. Sometimes it was just lending an ear to someone to vent or sending a text to someone I hadn’t heard from in awhile.

5. Check-ups at all docs - B - Technically, I only saw the eye doctor when I had some weird floater things and not for my vision. But I did go to the dentist for my bi-annual cleanings and to the doc for my yearly physical.

6. 100 mile trail race or marathon PR - D - I’m calling it a D because I did actually toe the line at a 100 mile trail race so at least I got through the training and made it to the start. Just didn’t actually finish said 100 mile trail race.

7. 1 no spend month - F - Nope. Didn’t happen. Bought all the things.

8. 60 minutes stretch or strength per week - A - I decided to count cross-training too with focusing on strength first. Most weeks I had 60+ minutes of strength alone.

9. 2019 miles in 2019 - A - Never a sure bet, but I finally crossed over the mark in December.

10. Volunteer/crew/pace/spectate at 10+ races - C - I officially volunteered at 3 races and put in 21 hours of official time at races. I volunteered at aid stations at Umstead 100 and Merrill's Mile and swept part of the Bull Mountain Epic course. I crewed/spectated at Javelina once my own race went south. And while it wasn't a race, I did set up an aid station in the woods for a group training run and ferried a few friends back who were having a rough day. 

11. Read 30+ books - A - I had to push myself a little more at the end, but I am currently reading my 32nd book of the year. 

• Top 3 fiction: Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beath Keane, The Power by Naomi Alderman, and An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. 
• Top 2 non-fiction: Educated by Tara Westover and Becoming by Michelle Obama
• Top running-related: Running Home by Katie Arnold

Javelina Jundred DNF: Failure is not fatal ....and other cliche things

I always prided myself on not having any DNFs. Like, I thought was too strong mentally to just throw in the towel. But here I am, a few days removed from the first time I willingly pulled out of a race. It wasn’t because I missed the cutoff and couldn’t go on or had some acute injury that forced me to stop. The short story is that I stopped having fun around mile 30, felt increasingly nauseated, puked my guts up and then some, and wandered for about an hour and a half at a snail’s pace trying to keep sips of water down. And when I finally reached the aid station at mile 50ish, I didn’t want to rally. Honestly, I think if I had been given a pep talk, forced to sit for 30 minutes to get down some fluids and food, and waited for the sun to dip down a bit more, I would have finished. But since that time machine hasn’t been made, I just have to live with those self-loathing pangs of not finishing something.

I feel stupid now that the race is over because I’m playing all the “what if” scenarios in my head as though I can go back in time and change anything I did. I had SO MUCH TIME. Seriously. I had almost 19 hours to finish 50 miles with the 100 mile cutoff being 30 hours. Runner math tells me I just had to complete two 9.5 hour marathons. If I just walked at a reasonable pace, I could have finished. But by the time I had sat down on the cot in the medical tent, I had already called Adam twice, preparing him that I was on the verge of DNFing because I didn’t want him to worry about expecting me. He said all the right things, both supportive of me if I had to stop and encouraging me to keep at it.

I was most mad because here was the first ultra I had hauled not just Adam out for across the country, but I had Roger and Chantal flying in from Denver and Atlanta to pace. The guilt I felt was extraordinary and everything seemed (very dramatically at the time) like a huge waste. As I wavered back and forth in the very appropriately named “Jackass Junction” aid station, I knew the disappointment of letting my team down was going to feel just as bad as letting myself down. I braced myself for the pitying epithets.

The reality of the DNF is about as I expected. A little like the grieving process, but in a narcissistic, party-of-one style. No one cares about it in the way that I do, nor would I expect them to. And I’m sure anyone in my position has had a similar response. It hurts really, really bad at first. Especially when you are by yourself, stuck in your own thoughts. And then, like with anything, time begins to help you realize this is just one thing in your life (and good God, mine is pretty great so I really should shutthefuckup) and everything will be okay.

The longer version is that I’ve spent the last 20 weeks training for this race. I only took Mondays off of running. I ran workouts I never thought I’d hit. I woke up early Saturday and Sunday to get my long runs in during the summer. I felt ready, confident, fit. I had a crew and pacers. I knew other people that would be running that I would be able to see throughout the day. I trained in the heat. I was EXCITED.

When I woke up just before 5am on race morning and crawled outside my tent, I was thrilled to be toeing the line. There were no real race nerves, just ready to get the show on the road. Chantal was clutch and dropped my bags for me, filled my pack, and found Roger and Adam for me before the start. My body felt good, I got plenty of rest, and the weather on race morning felt perfect.

Photo cred: Chantal Elmore 

The gun went off for wave 1 and I was in the mid-pack of the group. Hoping to have some people help me stay at a conservative pace, but not too far behind to lose time while the temps were nice. I felt great as the sun started to rise and though my first couple of miles were a little slower than I preferred, I was also cognizant that I had a long way to go.

Photo cred: Roger Beutler 

I breezed through the first aid station without grabbing anything as both my bottles were full at the start and I had extra water in my hydration bladder. I was staying on top of eating something every 30 minutes from the beginning and sipping on GU Roctane.

As we climbed to the top of the loop at Jackass Junction, I was in good spirits and feeling happy about the day ahead. The crowd started to thin out at that point and I ran alone for a few miles until I got to Rattlesnake. It was starting to warm up a bit, but I still super comfortable and the downhill miles were super easy. I took a pit stop at Rattlesnake to pee, topped off my hydration, got some sunscreen sprayed on me, and carried on towards finishing the first loop.

I started talking to a fellow runner named William and later, Rick and we cruised for a few miles filling the miles with conversation. It really made the time fly by and I was in high spirits. I spotted Jamie and encouraged him to keep going as our chatty train rolled by - he was 2 weeks out from a killer race at Kona and understandably a bit unrecovered? I was hoping he’d rally by the time he got back to the start/finish.

I wasn’t expecting to see my crew/pacers at Jeadquarters and it was such a happy surprise. I wasn’t really sure if they were just planning to stay all day and was hoping I’d see them again and again (even though I thought I’d be okay without them) because it really boosted my spirits.

Photo creds: Roger Beutler, Chantal Elmore, Adam Liebowitz 

I refilled my pack with nutrition, got my bottles refilled, tied my shoe, and headed back out for loop 2. I was cruising really well until I got to Rattlesnake and caught up with Laura who was in a bit of a rough patch. The heat started to get to me and she smartly doused me with an icy sponge. I filled my Buff and sports bra with ice and then set out to reach the top of the loop again. I don’t really remember too much from Jackass the second time.

My spirits started to drop a bit as I headed back to Jeadquarters and I started to slow down a bit even though I was going downhill. The last 2 miles seemed to take forever and I was feeling very mopey when I grabbed my mile 41.2 bag. I tried to get in some calories and walk a bit to let everything settle. A girl passed by me running steadily and she asked if I had done the race before, if I’d done other 100s, etc. I was in such a funky mood that I really didn’t want to talk, but I stayed behind her about 30 feet when she pulled away and let her pace me for a mile or two.

Back at Cowboy, I was feeling really blah, but still running a bit and dipped a couple of pieces of watermelon in salt hoping for a revival. It was maybe about a mile down the trail that I instantly felt sick. I stepped off to the side of the trail and projectile vomited. Hoping I had just hit the reset button, I actually was happy at first. I thought it might help me feel better. But I took a few steps and did it again, and again, and when there was nothing else left, I was just dry heaving. Runners were stopping, asking if I was okay, if they could help, if they could give me anything. I just shook my head.

I tried to just walk slowly for a few minutes and even gave running a try briefly, but everything was hurting at that point. I wanted to stop and rest for a moment, but the sun was still powerful and the ice in my Buff was quickly melting. As I crept down the trail, my power walk turned into just a regular walk and later, I started wandering side to side. I was aware of it, but I also felt like I was out of control of it. A runner tried to encourage me to go with him and after I told him I had been throwing up, he said he would let the aid station know I was coming in.

The only cool thing about this was that I was moving slow enough that I plenty of time to pull out my phone to take a photo of eventual race winner and one of my favs, Kaci Lickteig.

The time seemed to stretch on forever. People would tell me how far they thought the aid station was in miles or minutes, but I was so out of it that I couldn’t really compute how much longer I had to go. I called Adam twice and was likely being incoherent. I didn’t want him to worry if I wasn’t showing up on the tracker as expected and I wanted to prepare him for my very imminent feeling of DNF. He showed me compassion, but also encouraged me to just keep going and see how I felt when I got back to Jeadquarters. At the time, I could barely handle going another quarter mile.

When I finally got to Jackass after what felt like an eternity of walking, I was greeted by a girl who led me into the medical tent. I explained my symptoms to the medic and they took my blood pressure and pulse. As time crept on, I couldn’t contemplate going back out and the nausea was not subsiding. I tried to sip some ginger ale and immediately felt horrible. The medic told me he could give me nausea medication and while I know he must of explained it meant that I had to drop after taking it, I was not lucid at the time.

They tested my blood sugar and gave me the nausea medication and shortly thereafter, Laura showed up. She sat in the chair next to my cot and encouraged me to join her in the next section. Unfortunately, it was too late as I had taken the medication. I was 50% disappointed because I was actually feeling a bit better at that point, but 50% relieved that now the decision was out of my hands.

Once I confirmed I couldn’t go back out, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m not sure why I thought I could renege on my pulling out after I said I would drop. Clearly, there was a bit of delirium. I laid on the cot trying to get my stomach feeling okay and managed to get down a cup of broth and finally some water. One of the medics grabbed me a slice of cheese pizza and I ate two bites before curling up with it and my pack underneath a sleeping bag, waiting for what I later dubbed the “loser van” (allow me a little bit of self-deprecating humor).

The “loser van”, aka the shuttle back to Jeadquarters, was running really behind and so I watched people coming through Jackass still in good spirits. Later, I realized I was happy it took so long for the van to come because I had run the gamut of emotions by the time I reach my crew. I posted on FB because I knew people were tracking me and talked to my mom because that’s what mom’s do. And tried to give myself a little grace that I wasn’t the worst friend/wife in the world for hauling people out in the desert to watch me DNF.

The silver lining to it all? I got to go back to these amazing people who cheered me up and then helped Tom get his buckle. In a transformation of events, my pacers were now free for him to use and I was able to experience a bit of the other side of the race. Roger went out with him on loop 4 and Chantal brought him to the finish line on loop 5. Of course I was insanely jealous that he was basically on pace for what I intended and was using my rockstars. Dammit, I’m human after all. But I was also seriously so moved that they stepped in, no questions asked, to run 20 miles each in the dark desert with a stranger. And that Tom had such an incredible first 100 miler - his gratitude for what had just happened when he finished was genuine. There was lots of hugging, big smiles, and though we were all exhausted, everyone seemed to be briefly full of life as we made our way back to the parking lot.

On Saturday, I definitely never wanted to run the race again. On Sunday, I was thinking that I would consider it again, but I was going to have to think about it. By Monday, I was busy plotting my revenge. And by that timeline, I’m hoping that the disappointment, the feelings of guilt and what ifs slowly fade away and that what I remember more about the weekend is the laughter, the friendships, the support of those I know and love dearly, the support of the incredible running community, and how lucky I really am that my “disappointing” day is running 50 miles in the desert.