This year, I completed my second 100-mile race called the Vermont 100. It features nearly 17,000 feet of total elevation, 68 miles of rolling dirt roads, 30 miles of horse trails, and just 2 miles of paved roads.
Going into this race, I was nervous. Only two months prior, I had my first DNF (did not finish) at the Riverlands 100 in Maine. I was afraid that I might be stuck in that mindset of DNFs, meaning that I have experienced how easy it is to quit a race, so doing it again would have been easy. In addition, the week prior, I was running 7 miles on a flat easy course—training on a 2.5-mile loop for the Anchor Down Ultra that’s 3 weeks post Vermont 100—and for some unknown reason, I tweaked my Achilles (tendon on back of foot connecting the calf muscle to the heel bone). So, I didn’t run for the whole week before the Vermont 100, praying that the pain would go away, and it did —at least I thought it did.
The day before the Vermont 100, my friend Brian, who was also running the Vermont 100, and I took my camper and drove for three hours to Vermont, where these thoughts were running through my mind: Will my Achilles hold up through 100 miles of rolling hills? I couldn’t imagine that it would.
We had to arrive the day before to collect our racing bibs. There, we met with friends who were also running, but in the Vermont 100K. I was a little envious of them because their start time was 10 am, unlike our 4 am start. We had dinner provided by the organizers, where we joked and laughed about what was to come.
The Vermont 100 had over 500 volunteers, which was more than they had runners—this was great!
After dinner, we drove back 20 minutes to our campsite, where we made our final race preparations before bedtime. Lights out at 9 pm, and the alarm was set to 2 am. I couldn’t sleep much, I may not have slept at all, with thoughts about the outcome of the race running through my mind. I kept thinking to myself that this race was going to be hard and I am going into it with an injury, how in the world will I make it through 100 miles, so every hour closer to wake-up I would look at my watch, until Brian woke-up to use the bathroom at 1:30 am and I just said, “let’s get up. No point in sleeping now with only 30 minutes left before the alarm goes off.”
So there we were at 3:59 am at the start line, trying to listen for the countdown to 4 am start, but it was so loud with excitement that we didn’t hear anything, we just started moving—and the race had begun.
This race is unique because it features horses racing alongside humans on similar routes, although with a slightly less technical course. However, I did not see any horses at the start not until mile twenty or so.
My running form was terrible right from the beginning of the Vermont 100 because I was afraid to put too much tension on my right Achilles. At mile 3-7, I started feeling surges of sharp pain coming from my achilles when I accidentally struck my right front foot a little too hard. Chills ran down my body, I knew this was going to occur, and I still had over 90 miles to go. What was I to do?
I’ve never done this before in a race, but I had taken Naproxene (Aleve™) just in case for this situation. I was nervous taking the over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pain medication because it would mask the pain, and potentially make things worse for me or increase my chances of getting Rhabdomyolysis if I didn’t get enough fluid in me, which would be terrible for the kidneys. Still, I was desperate, so I took two tablets and crossed my fingers.
The terrain was not technical—mostly dirt roads—but extremely hilly. I was putting a lot of my weight on my left foot, compensating for the right, so by mile seventeen, my left foot quadricep muscle was cramping badly. But I kept walking and running with poor form, looking like someone from a post-apocalyptic zombie movie—hobbling along, yet making steady progress.
Mile 50, Pinky’s aid station, a blessing in disguise. As I was climbing another hill approaching Pinky’s aid station, I saw signs posted stating what the aid station had to offer. One of the signs said “Beer,” which I thought was a joke because these signs looked a bit cartoony. So at the top of the hill, there was an aid station worker whom I asked if they were serious about having beer at this aid station, and his reply was, “YES!” This was music to my ears because for some reason, when I’m physically exhausted from an ultra run, I crave beer—it might be because my body needs the carbs or whatever nutrients beer has. So, I guzzled a Shandy, and when I felt nauseous, it gave me a significant boost.
However, the beer didn’t last very long, but it did give me a good amount of energy to mile 60. There, as I was refilling my water bladder, I noticed a pinhole in it, allowing small amounts of water to escape onto my back. Luckily, it was at the very top, so it wasn’t too big of a deal, just a little annoying.
What I like about this part of the race is that once I passed the halfway mark, I get a surge of energy here and there as I get closer to the end—the mileage countdown begins.
Also, there are a lot of ultra running mathematicians—a runner who’s always calculating pace and distance in their head—so at mile 65 I had the pleasure of hanging with one for a bit. Another boost came when he told me that all we need to finish the Vermont 100 in 30 hours is to maintain a pace of 24 minutes per mile, which is essentially a walk.
At mile 70, I sat down for about 10 minutes for the first time. The aid station crew were amazing. They had a chair ready for me to sit in, they had my drop bag ready for me to rummage through, and they waited on me as if I was a customer at a fancy restaurant—this is the power of passionate volunteers, so a big THANKS TO THE VOLUNTEERS WHO ARE READING THIS. WITHOUT THE VOLUNTEERS, I WOULD NOT HAVE FINISHED THE VERMONT 100—SPOILER ALERT!
At mile 70, runners picked up their pacers—a person who helps a runner stay on pace, ensures they are running safely, and tries to motivate them to keep going (probably the most important aspect). If they had one, I was running solo, so I had no pacer. As I ran in the darkness, I realized that I might prefer running solo because it feels more peaceful. When there were runners with pacers behind me, being loud, I couldn’t wait until they passed me. Something about being alone in the darkness felt relaxing—perhaps it was the quiet, or maybe it allowed me to be alone with my thoughts.
Also, without a pacer, I never felt like I was disappointing anyone, and maybe that’s the point of a pacer—to not disappoint. However, not having a pacer gave me a sense of freedom, and nobody was there to interrupt my flow. For me, doing these ultras is a form of meditation. If you think about it, it does resemble meditation—when I run, I’m only in the present, thinking about my pace, nutrition, and the pain.
As I was getting closer—within marathon distance—I would play a game. When I saw a runner in the distance laughing with their pacer, headlight bobbing, I would put them in my crosshairs. I would say to myself, Go on, laugh and watch me pass you because you don’t know me son. Yes, I tap into my inner David Goggins, which motivated me to run faster.
As it was getting deeper into the night for the first time, I was getting some fun psychedelic level hallucinations. One stands out when a runner passed me, and when he was well ahead of me the way his headlamp bobbed it looked like he was doing some sort of Michael Jackson dance moves, the more I looked at his feet the scene was unchanged, his feet were twisting and turning and going all over the place—it was nuts! There was also a zombie coming towards that runner, and for a second, I got really scared, but then I had to get grounded knowing that my mind was playing tricks on me—it turned out to be an exhausted, hunched-over runner, so yes, a zombie of different sorts.
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I had constant issues with nausea, but what I learned that worked very well are those little Gin Gins candies. The aid station at mile 84 had these ginger candies that, when I sucked on them, they tasted terrible but relieved my nausea. They worked so well that when I got home, I ordered a 2lb bag for my next race. Additionally, the Scratch Lab Energy Chews were also effective.
Finally, the sun came up, and I was feeling extremely tired. I felt like sitting next to a tree for a quick nap; however, I fought that off because I knew I would sleep for a long time. I was so tired that when I peed standing up and closed my eyes for a second, I would fall asleep, which almost made me urinate on myself.
With 10 miles left, I couldn’t muster the energy to run. The bottoms of my feet were raw, which reminds me that I need to invest in gators for my shoes to keep small debris out; my quads were sore—I was ready to be done.
I finally reached the signs that said one mile left, runners were passing me left and right, but I couldn’t run anymore. The last half mile was all uphill. I looked at the time and had plenty of it, so I took my time getting to the finish line, but I finally did, becoming the first person to cross it at 28 hours. My exact finishing time was 28:00:37, earning my 2nd belt buckle.
The Vermont 100 was the most challenging race I’ve done to date, but it was also my 2nd 100-mile race finish ever. However, as I write this a month later, I’ve completed another race, 3 weeks after the Vermont 100, a local race called “Anchor Down.” To find out how I did in that race, sign up for the newsletter below and/or keep checking this site for my next posting.
SEE YOU ON THE TRAILS!