Ozark Trail 100-Mile Endurance Run November 7-8, 2009
By Andy Pele
Jeff Browning, Mizzou alumni, former Tryathletics employee and winner of several 100-mile trail runs told me after the race that it was “the most treacherous race he’s ever run at night.” I agreed with him but just because he was running so fast. I’m sure lots of people behind him had sense enough to slow down and try to shuffle through the leaves so their feet wouldn’t land the wrong way on one of the rocks underneath. But when you add abnormal temperatures near 80 degrees, craters left where the roots used to be from hundreds of blown down trees, and a field comprised of nearly 40% first time century runners to leaf covered trail conditions, you end up with carnage.
I could see it at mile 17.6, the first aid station with access for runners’ crews. Before Jeff Wells showed up, at least two runners had come in scraped up and bloody. Everyone was talking about how difficult the trail was. And at only 10:30 in the morning, they were getting hot. Jeff looked unscathed and so did Allan Benjamin, who planned to run the whole race with Jeff. But they would suffer later as the temperature rose.
After seeing them off, Lisa Wells and I drove to the next crew access point at 43.5 miles. We had time to stop at the little general store in Bixby and get ice for Jeff. I knew he’d appreciate it when he saw us next. And I appreciated the lemon meringue pie they had in the deli. Lisa asked when we would see Jeff next and was pretty surprised when I told her 5 pm. We had a five-hour wait ahead of us but made the best of it by talking to other crews and watching how the experienced ones prepared for their runners. They fretted over the 15 extra yards their runner would have to walk to get to his crew, about whether he would want the Cheetos or the chicken tacos from Taco Bell, about which shoes he might want to change into next. They set up little transition areas with everything laid out on a towel for quick access. One crew even broke out the backpacking stove to fry bacon for their racer. Their concern seemed amusingly excessive until I saw a couple of the prima donnas rush in spitting out their demands like machine gun fire. “I need the Innov 8’s. I need salt. I’m so dehydrated. I need my tights. No not those. The other ones. I need my lights. Where’s the Cheetos? Oh f— it! I gotta go. I don’t have time.” Luckily, I was well hydrated with alcoholic beverages and could still laugh at this behavior.
Jeff was nothing like them. He was mellow as always. We’d get him sitting down and try to ask him what he needed. It usually wasn’t much. He had a plan for each aid station so we had some idea of what we needed to do: refill his bottles with more Accelerade and chia, get his shoes and socks off to reapply the Vaseline, put on fresh socks and dry shirts, get him fed, and make sure he had E-caps and lights. He was rationing his water because some of the aid stations were nine miles apart and that could take over 2 ½ hours. But he still looked good at 43.5.
When he left there it was getting dark. Lisa and I returned to the cabin at Bass River Resort, had some dinner and rested a couple hours before driving back to the 3rd crew access point at mile 68.5. Jeff was planning on being there at 11 pm and this was where I would join him and run with him until the finish. Pacers are usually allowed after a certain point in 100-mile ultramarathons and I was happy to be doing this for Jeff. But I wondered what I would need to do to motivate him. I asked Lisa and she didn’t know. I asked Jeff and he didn’t know either. But he did say that I shouldn’t flash him, a motivational technique that Jenn Shelton employed in the book Born to Run. Lucky for me he never needed much motivation. When he did finally arrive to pick me up as his pacer, I asked him, “What can I get for you?” Jokingly he replied, “A ride home??”
That was the only time I heard him say anything about quitting. All I had to do for 31 miles was keep him and Allan from getting lost and set an example of running the flats and the downhills so they wouldn’t get stuck in complacent walking mode.
Before starting our post-midnight jaunt, I sat by the warm fire and listened to the stories of the racers who were calling it quits. One surprised me cause I saw him twice that day with a huge smile on his face as he arrived to meet his crew. But his mind was failing him. He said his body felt great, but he was getting dizzy and confused and was afraid he’d get lost if he tried to go on. Another just complained about the blisters on his wet feet. Lots of creek crossings! As Lisa and I enjoyed the fire, I warned her not to let Jeff sit by it, not to let him get lulled into its warm comfort. She couldn’t believe that other crews let their runners quit so easily. She was prepared to put up a fight if Jeff balked at going on and finishing. Before he arrived, we discovered that 43 runners had already dropped out of the race, but the radio operators told us he had checked out of the last aid station at 10:42pm so we hoped to see him by 1:30am.
By 1:43am we were on the trail together, about 20 minutes ahead of the cutoff time. I knew there was just one more cutoff to worry about, 7 am at the Berryman aid station twenty miles away. But I was confident that we would make it as I monitored our progress with the Garmin. I think it helped Jeff to know how far he had gone from the last aid station, and how much further he had to go. However when you’re expecting 6 miles to the next aid station and it turns out to be as little as half mile further, it can be pretty frustrating after running all day. Jeff wasn’t very talkative, but from his comments I could tell that he was doing OK. Allan, on the other hand, I worried about. He just seemed to be more confused than Jeff. His legs seemed to be doing better than Jeff’s, but not his mind. He lost the trail a couple times, but even I had trouble following it in spots. At least he remained positive. Jeff’s quads and hips were getting pretty stiff and sore. They were screaming at him before the sun rose, and he still had hours to go. But mostly he dealt with it quietly.
When the sun did rise, Jeff was glad to see it. “That’s a long time to be running in the dark,” he said. And then we merged onto the Berryman trail, a section he was familiar with since he has run that race for several years now. This seemed to lift his spirits too. Finally after climbing what was the longest hill since mile 68.5, we were at the final aid station at 95 miles. It was mostly downhill from there, but even more exciting to Jeff and Allan, in a mere 3.5 miles they would be done with the single track and onto the stable footing of a gravel road. Amazingly, Jeff and Allan ran that last section of the race faster than they had run all night. We kept passing people who were walking. And each time I saw one ahead I’d tell them, “oooh, I smell dead meat.” It was sad in a way, though. I wondered if maybe Jeff felt guilty for overtaking them so close to the end of the race. He sure didn’t want anyone to pass him in the final miles. One man did catch us though, and thankfully he just asked to run with us to the finish. He was limping as he caught us but still babbling happily, amazed that he was going to finish, thinking he was done for fifty miles ago. I don’t know how many times, if ever, that thought crossed Jeff’s mind. But once I saw him at 68.5 and heard him say, “It’s all unknown territory from here,” I knew he was going to finish. And he didn’t let me down.
Jeff and Allan finished in 30 hours and 22 minutes, in 27th and 28th place. Of the 126 starters, only 56 would cross the finish line before the 32-hour cutoff. Most of those brave souls who started this race put themselves through an amazing, grueling, emotional and exhausting experience. And whether they finished or not, they all have a story and should be proud that they even dared toe the line.