I am running down Devil’s Dance, the steepest of 2 declines on the course. My quads are screaming. This is nothing new, they have been hurting for hours and I have ignored the pain. My decision to not use poles earlier may have been a tactical error but there is no benefit in thinking about that now. I try to use them to brake my decent but it is too little too late. The muscles have shifted from sending pain signals to an all out refusal to function. My mind does the math and reports back to me that in this condition I can’t keep making the 20 minute cutoff… I have done everything possible to achieve my goal of pushing through to the last possible loop and have wrung the last bit of energy from my body…
This is my 2nd time participating in the Mid-State Mile in Tennessee.
In 2024 I showed up with lofty goals and visions of winning. Perhaps a bit arrogant, but why show up if you aren’t willing to swing for the fences? You may want to go read that RACE REPORT before continuing but the nutshell is I learned that there is so much more to this event than physical effort and (spoiler alert) I didn’t win.
This year I had adjusted my goal from winning to finding my “Greg Armstrong Loop”. I won’t be redundant and repeat what I wrote on that subject 2 years ago but if you don’t have a vision of Greg Armstrong’s final lap in 2020, just go to YouTube and search “MidState Worthy Opponents”. My only goal was to finish knowing that my soul, my spirit… or whatever it is that is actually me, had remained in control of both my body and mind, forcing them to continually put forth the effort until there was nothing left.
It was somewhere in the early morning after moving for nearly 24 hours that I had the hard realization that the Armstrong Loop would not be the most difficult loop of the day. No, I would actually have to suffer and win the battle with my mind and body for many hours before I would even come close to that loop!! That thought was so overwhelming that my mind started whispering about changing the goal. Thankfully I was able to silence that voice and make it to daylight where I found renewed focus.
The beautiful thing about this race is how frequently you see your crew. While it was only a minute or two out of each lap, they did an amazing job keeping me fueled and focused. We come up with the game plan in advance on how to get 80-100 calories into me each loop. They held up their end of the bargain even when I didn’t want to eat. They patiently coaxed me to eat (they said it was like feeding a toddler) and when that wasn’t working they started spiking my water with just enough tailwind to get a few calories in me while it wasn’t enough for me to notice the flavor. Of course, I didn’t learn of all this until after the fact.
You also get to spend hours on the course with strangers who soon feel like lifelong friends. The shared suffering and common goal has a way of uniting you. With some it is just a lap or two and others it is the majority of the race but in either case they are part of a collective force that moves you forward. Each with different goals but all fighting against the unwavering clock.
Back to my screaming quads…
In an effort to ease the pain just for a moment, I turned to walk down the hill backwards for just a few steps. The relief was immediate! The task of slowing my descent was now handed off to my calves which felt amazing. It was in this moment that I realized I might not be done! As I continued heading down the hill backwards I found that I could almost run! I didn’t think about how goofy it may look or even if it was sustainable. I just knew that it meant I had more to give and that if I focused on making up time elsewhere on the course I could continue to make the 20 minute cutoff.
From this point forward I quickly went into tunnel vision with only one goal… don’t give up! I was no longer focusing on the loop but rather focusing on each short section. The insistence to stop from both my mind and body was more intense than I had ever experienced. Each climb and each flat section was an exercise in will power to make sure I didn’t ease up… keep moving! I needed every second. I had no clue how many laps I went down Devil’s dance backwards or even how many total miles we were at. I only knew that I wanted to honestly give 100% effort until that effort wasn’t enough.
Eventually, the clock won out. Just as it had over runners before me and would over runners to follow me. All but one of us would succumb to the relentless pressure of time. But none of that mattered to me. I had finally found my Armstrong loop… and man did that feel good!
