The Battle at Badger Mountain - Finishing Angel vs DNF Devil

Why? A question I asked myself at around 33 miles, on the move for more than 10 hours.

Badger Mountain challenge is race that I would not have normally picked. The course is highly run-able with more road sections than I would like. Those who know me, I try and avoid races with heaps of run-able sections. So why did I pick this race, last year I had a lot of issues with Vancouver 100 and I didn't want this year to be a suffer-fest. When I was looking what was available early in the year the pictures sold me, hint you can't see wind in the pictures. Plus there was no real cut-off for the 50milers, the course is open 36-hours for the 100milers.

Race Weekend

I was excited about my first ultra of the year, I haven't done any real distance since DNF'ing at Bigfoot for going too slow, story of my life. The weekend started Thursday, a little later then I wanted but was on the road by ten in the morning, with the toy-camper* loaded up I was on my way to Richland in Washington state and no idea what was in store for me. The border line was not what I was expecting and ended up spending about 30 minutes in the line up. It was quick chat with the boarder guy and I was on the I5 making good time. Quick stop off to grab some fruit and beer, you know the essentials.

Once on the I90, I was greeted with some amazing views, instead of telling you about them, just have a look.

After crossing the Cascades, things got a little interesting, with the wide open plains there was crazy wind blowing my little donkey around. Lucky for me, my driving skills made up for it. Since I ended up making a couple stops along the way, a gas emergency with the needle way below E, I was running a little behind schedule and I went directly to the pre-race dinner, yummy pizza :) Where I learned there is a detour on the course, Red Mountain had a vineyard construction on at the top, so after the climb up to the ridge, I'd have to go back down across the lower road and back up and over the ridge. Yes more climbing :) After the dinner it was quickly to the trail head and put the donkey in sleeper mode and go to bed.

That night the wind was strong, even through I was parked on the lower lot, the car shook throughout the night and waking me in the process. Since the windows were cracked open a little, by the morning it was cold.

Race morning, I was ready with time to spare but with having trouble swallowing breakfast, I couldn't inhale my food like I normally do and knew this was going to be a problem. Never mind, I tell myself and get my butt to the back of the runners.

Toy-camper

The first climb was up and over Badger Mountain and didn't have any issues with it at all. Within 20 minutes I had to stop and strip off layers since I was starting to heat up. I was in the aid station fairly quickly, had a little food before out towards Candy Mountain. I was originally worried about getting lost but because the landscape was so open, it was easy to see where I would be going.

Once I was on the bottom of the other side of Candy Mountain, I was going to do the loop around the city and would be back at this spot later in the day. Very quickly, I was able to see the aid station in the distance and made my way over for some refueling. Took in as much coke, banana and M&Ms that I could and headed towards Red Mountain.

The climb up Red was pretty much straight forward, you could see the original route which went along the ridge line. It would have been possible to just go straight through even with the construction and normally I would just cut through but since I'm here to finish the actually course it was back down. At the bottom, I had to take the road over the the other side of the ridge before going up and over to the next aid station.

This is where I learned that the entire section to the next aid station will be road, yea me. There was an open winery that I should of taken advantage of but since I was still moving at a decent pace, I kept soldiering on. I maybe ran 1km of the total distance to the next station and kept my walking pace up. I've been playing leap frog with a fellow racer named Kevin and I could see him just ahead of me, time to play catch up :) Once caught up, we stuck together until the next aid station.

I refueled as much as I could get down and Kevin had to have his knee taped up. We were both out of the aid station about the same time. The climb up was short and sweet. If I was doing well it would have been my highlight to climb it fast but by now I started having my coughing attacks.

At the top there was an out and back, were long the way I was able to see Sean and Meg. They were both doing very well. I let them know about my issues and told them not to wait for me at the finish line.

That's Kevin next to me, don't ask what's wrong with my face I don't know. Thanks Kevin for the company.

I have to admit this is when I started really losing track what time of day it was. Some of the highlights of this ridge was the aid station at the end were there was a trailer with a heater inside to warm up and it really looked like a nice place to lay down, but I can't have any of that, I have a race to finish.

On the way back I saw a guy flying a remote controlled airplane, oh and I forgot to mention shotgun shells everywhere on basically every ridge. The way off the ridge was different then the way up, super sandy downhill, wasn't bad but I was starting to fall apart. By the time I was back at the McBee parking aid station the DNF devil was ready making a case for stopping.

DNF devil, “You know you can do this distance, why suffer. If you stop here you'll get a ride back to the start and there's beer there.”

Me, “You make a very good point, I like the way you think”

Finishing Angel, “Do you really want to DNF a 50miler with no cut-off?”

Me, “You make an even better point, let's keep going and see what happens”

I have to admit the next section I wish was along the ridge and not through the orchard fields. It wasn't difficult but I was very low on fuel (inside my body, I still had heaps of food in my bag), I just had trouble getting it down. I wish I made good time here but I just kept trekking. The motto for the evening became:

I've suffered worst and for longer, I'll be fiiiiiiiiiinnnneeeeeee.

Sure enough I was done for by the time I got to the next aid station, it was dark, getting cold and the DNF devil was winning. I had to get as much fuel into me as possible and get the hell out of this aid station. It was still a long stop over since Kevin was chilling out here, I ended up leaving with him.

We both made our way along the road to the culvert, something like 4kms away. It was nice to have the company, but both of us were worried we'd missed it.

When we arrived, there was a nice place to sit down and empty my shoes, but as I tired to removed my shoe, my calf cramped up so badly that I was screaming like a little school girl. Poor Kevin must of freaked out, I had to let him know I'll be fine and I decided I could live with a couple of rocks in my shoe.

Going through the culvert, would be one of the highlights of the race. A very different experience, I could feel the shaking as the semi-trucks drove over the highway. At the end I even chased a little mouse. We'd now completed the loop and on the back leg to the finish line.

Going up Candy I had to let Kevin know not to wait for me, as my coughing attacks were getting serious. It was cool to see the 100milers coming down the mountain while going up. By this time I was passed by the last place 50miler. Yes, best value placing might be mine, as I was thinking that I got a familiar feeling, you know the one deep in your stomach. Well in a couple of seconds I had some impressive projectile mix of coke & stomach acid, yummy. That felt better, time to finish the climb, once on the down hill, although I wasn't moving as fast as I wanted, I was moving and I by the time I hit the payment I had used up all my energy reserves. I rested long the barricade for a bit and then stumbled into the aid station, begging for a seat.

The nice volunteers, provided some coke and I said I got this, even through the DNF devil was saying it's going to take so long to finish the last section. With less than 6k to go, I just had to get up and over Badger Mountain. In my mind, I figured I'd only struggle with the uphill and then it would be smooth sailing downhill to the finish line.

I predicted the uphill suffering correctly but failed to account of how low on energy I'd be going down. As a stumbled along, I was stocked that I was not lapped by any of the 100 miler finishers. I was finally able to see I was close probably less than 700m from the finish line and I here foot steps approaching fast behind me, noooooooooooooooo it was a 100miler, and he looked very strong, no way I'd be able to keep up with him. This guy beat me by 15 minutes and did double the distance I did, well that's a little embarrassing, but at the end I was happy to clench the best value spot. 

One thing to note, when you see the finish line, you don't go directly there, there is a small parade lap around that you have to do. Lucky me. At the finish line I was able to sit down and rest for a bit before getting some chicken noodle soup.

There was one other surprise, a tattoo artist giving free tattoos to finishers, so look what I got :)

Since it was middle of the night and a slight chill in the air, I decided against my shower and I just patted myself dry and changed before crawling into bed.

Next morning after a three hour nap, I was good to go. I had everything packed up and was ready to roll just after seven am. Waiting around to see when Sean would message me for breakfast. I was just about to leave Richland and got the text. Off to Sean & Meg's motel where I was able to use their indoor shower and hear about their race. A quick meal at Denny's and I was off to Redmond to go meet Linda and Shaggy.

Linda and I took Shaggy for a nice walk before grabbing some food to eat. We had a blast talking about president Trump :) and afterwards I had a lovely drive home with my passenger.

* Toy-camper update. So it worked much better then expected. I was sad that I didn't get to use the shower but I will get to soon. Also I've learned I need to be organized in such a small space and need to do some adjustments. I'll provide an update once I get the little kinks worked out and have a dedicated post just on the camper at a later date.