There’s four people in front of me in this odd looking start line. All of us were well spaced apart. In New Ipswich, NH. We’re at the start line of the Midstate Massive 100. At one minute intervals, we start our long journey south with hopes of reaching Wallum Lake, near the MA border with CT and RI. One at a time, we move up to the start line and the announcer tries to strike up some sort of conversation as a count down to your individual start begins. Finally it’s my turn and the announcer mentions that he’s from Roslyn, Long Island which is pretty close to eastern Queens (where I grew up). As I near my start time, the announcer mentions that there is a turn in between 6 to 7 miles. I heard him say it to the others beforehand. I nod, I don’t know about the turn at all but I’m sure there’s a sign indicating a turn. I’ll keep an extra eye out after 6 miles but with 7 years of hiking and plenty of trails races (this itself being my 24th ultra) where I have never gotten lost, I’m pretty confident in my abilities to follow trail markers and race signs. I log onto the app Racejoy and click start. Finally I’m off.
Midstate massive is a 100 miler going from NH border to the Rhode Island and Connecticut border through MA. It mostly takes place on the midstate trail. Of particular interest to me, was that it was worth 5 ITRA points (UTMB points) and closeby. I didn’t really look into any other details before signing up. Later on, I found out that a huge chunk of the race took place on roads (~30%) which is a big downer. I recall how in the Gorges 100k, how my worn legs echoed in pain when hitting the road section on the return of the out and back course. But I signed up already and my stubborn mind won’t let me back down from a challenge.
The trail starts off pretty easy and I move at a steady pace. In less than a quarter mile, three photographers snap a photo of me. I find it odd that they are all there at the beginning. Surely they are most scenic spots to take photos farther down the trail? I quickly see the yellow triangles of the midstate trail and start following them. In less than a mile I see a fork on the trail and make a left in it. I end up no longer seeing the trail markers for a quarter mile and soon go up a bit past a telephone line area with some clearing. Through the clearing I could see the beautiful fall foliage. This path quickly merges back into the yellow trail markers. Okay, no big deal I think. I continued my way south and hit many beautiful vistas. At parts, the trail marker is merely a faded yellow paint but I’m pretty used to trail markers being faded paint so no big deal. I accidentally went off course again and hit an overlook view. Okay, just like .05 extra, again no big deal and I make my way back and continue along the trail. The lack of a group start makes it easy to settle onto your pace immediately. Normally I would start off way too fast.
I pass an intersection where the midstate trail goes both right and continues straight. I start moving straight but am unsure which is correct. There’s no additional marking at this confusing intersection. I’m sure there would have been some sort of race marking if I was to make a right here though. I continue running but I open up the racejoy app to check the map just in case. I catch up to another runner - Josh. We started talking with each other (with masks on). He has already gotten lost twice and added a mile to his time. He was from Cambridge, MA but grew up close to where we were running. I was instantly jealous of his many trips to the white mountains for training. He seemed to have done a serious training block but got injured 6 weeks ago descending the presi range. He has been doing everything to try to heal in time for this race. I could understand the feeling. Six years ago I got injured from running my first marathon. It was the lack of long runs leading to the new distance and doing a half marathon the day before that contributed to the IT band injury that sidelined me for months. I did everything I could to recover - youtube rehab videos, foam rolling, sleeping with elevated legs, taking Glucosamine pills, etc. Doing whatever it takes to be able to run again.
My own training for Midstate Massive wasn’t nearly what I had planned out for it to be. In a non-Covid world, after running the Atlanta Marathon on March 1st as my last chance to move up a wave for the Comrades Marathon, I would switch to ultra training. Nine Trails 35 miler in Santa Barbara in March and Hyner 50k in PA wilds in April would have warmed me up to Rim to Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon (46ish miles) in May. Then I would be ready to go on my first road ultra (90k) - the famous Comrades Marathon in June. After a short recovery I would do the Vermont 100 in July and then have 2.5 months to prepare for Midstate Massive. With all that ultra experience, I would primed to make a serious effort at Midstate Massive. Instead the covid pandemic hit and I got sick for three weeks at the end of March. As soon I recovered, I decided to do the 70 mile Shawangunks Ridge trail section by section to motivate me to get back to training. After completing my first 21 mile section, on my bike ride back to my car, I had a nasty fall that broke my arm. By the time I recovered in June, I lost some fitness but more importantly, the habits that had me easily do 60+ miles of running a week. Luckly, by June, Queens running clubs started resuming so I got some motivation from the group runs to get back to it. I got back to regular mileage around mid July. Knowing that running was not going to be up to par as previous years I focused more on strength training - weight training and core training in hopes it would help fill some of the gap.
Josh was the first one to bring up the heat issue. I didn’t really notice it till then but it was pretty hot and humid. The location of my last two 100 milers - central Oregon and the European Alps taught me that it gets pretty cold in fall. I hadn’t given it a thought that it could be hot during this race. Soon racejoy started telling me that I might be off trail. Then a minute later it said it again. I decided to check my phone but nothing was really loading. Josh realized that we should have turned a bit earlier. Again, I didn’t see any sign for a turn from the race organization. The only sign we passed recently was a sign for the parking lot. Turns out, that was the turn we were supposed to make, the one we were warned about at the start. Would have been great if I knew more details for the turn. Anyway, we got confirmation that runners came this way from hikers. This was actually a pretty big relief as this missed turn was only like .1 away. When I first heard the app saying I might be off course, I was worried that the split where the yellow triangle midstate trails goes both ways was the turn. That was closer to half a mile away. Josh had biked this area before so he knew that the way we were originally heading was up towards Mt. Watatic. It would have eventually merged with the race route but would have added a mountain in the way. Mt. Watatic is the location of the former North Face Endurance Challenge MA start/finish. I did the 50 miler two years ago and I know it’s a tough mountain so glad to skip it if it’s not part of the course.
Josh was doing his first 100 miler and asked for advice. I’m not really in a position to give advice, my only 100 mile finish being dead last. Remembering it, I recalled how I went through having diarrhea around the marathon mark, struggling through loneliness running alone in the dark at mile 55, my quads battered to the point any downhill just hurt by mile 70 and my shins splitting screaming soon after. I remembered zombie walking from mile 85 onwards and seeing literally everyone pass me - yes even that guy that was hiking the whole race and giving up hope that I would finish within the final 30 hour cutoff. Then at mile 97, a volunteer told me that Martha wanted me to finish. Martha was a runner that I met post race at the Volcanic 50k almost two months earlier. She was volunteering at an early aid station (like mile 18) for this race. She was the only one I sort of knew at the race. That volunteer that said Martha wanted me to finish. This simple statement gave me the spark to start trying again and I soon realized that I could run. What I didn’t realize was that by now, my body had recovered a bit. It was my mind that I hadn’t learned to bring back. Thinking of this, I told Josh that no matter what rough patch you are in, ultras are long enough for you to recover from and keep going.
Aid station 1 soon came by. I quickly replaced one of my bottles with tailwind, the electrolytes that the race provided. It’s a common ultra marathon electrolyte. I also grabbed a clementine. I continued through with Josh. We moved steady, walking uphills and technical trails and jogging at the flats and downhills. Still, it soon was clear that Josh was better at uphills than me and I was slightly faster at downhills. I was still jogging the downhills, making sure not to destroy the quads early on. A few people from wave 4 started passing us. We soon came to the second aid station. Here I filled up both my bottles with Tailwind, grabbed a banana and another clementine. The tailwind tasted off and I soon realized it was watered down. Soon Josh and I reached a burned field. A runner passing us recognized the place from a previous training run and guided us to the right turn. I lost Josh a little farther down as he ended up keeping up to the pace with someone from wave 4. I probably will meet him somewhere down the race I thought. I soon received a text from Gemma who was meeting me at Aid Station 3 which motivated me. Realizing I was already behind my projected time, I requested to have nuun and decided I needed to get my night gear. Originally I was just going to wave by at this aid station and get my night gear at aid station 4. Most of my night gear consisted of extra layers for the night. Running tights I could put over my shorts, a fleece I could put over my long sleeve tech shirt and another jacket. My previous experiences at Mountain Lakes 100 and UTMB had me afraid of the cold that the night brings. I was required to have a reflective vest and a strobe light (and of course headlamp). My reflective vest was also a light jacket. I wasn’t prepared for it being hot and humid. On my final packing for the event, I decided to unpack any t-shirts I had. It’s fall in New England, I don’t need these I thought.
Midstate massive had multiple waves going out starting at 8 am with slowest going out first and fastest last. That’s a pretty late start time for an ultra, even for wave 1! For some reason I was originally put on the 4th wave. When I plugged in what times I think I could do for the sections of the race, I saw that I wasn’t going to make aid station 6 (mile 44) and aid station 7 was pretty tight as well (mile 50). After mile 50, the aid station cutoffs become much more generous and you could pretty much walk the rest of it. I requested to be put into an earlier wave and got put into the end of wave 3, giving me about another 40 minutes. The real goal of the race was getting to mile 50 was going to require steady riking (run-hiking). The first 50 miles is where most of the 10k gain of the race is. Then I could just speed walk the rest if my legs felt too beat.
About a mile from aid station 3, I crossed a road with the help of two police officers. Then I continued along the road. I soon lost the trail marker but continued along. Eventually the app told me I was going the wrong way. I turned around and again missed the turn. Looked at the app again to figure it out. It looks like I have to refresh the app to update my location on the map. Turns out the turn was in between two houses and there was a small sign by the race, marking the turn. I don’t usually look at people’s lawns so I missed it the two times. At this point I started getting frustrated at the lack of course markings. This added a half mile to my time and it wasn’t like time was on my side. I soon made it to aid station 3 about an hour later than I had predicted. Gemma was there to greet me. I was already starting to feel tired at this point. I got nuun with caffeine and got my head lamp along with my headphones. I switched out battery packs - my anker battery worked great but it was pretty heavy and my three foot charging cable was too long. I needed the battery pack to keep my phone charged - since it’s my only navigation tool. It was hot so I was thinking of not getting my reflective vest jacket but instead my reflective volunteer vests which would have been lighter. I had somewhere in the car. In my rush I completely forgot about getting either. I grabbed a pretzel bag from the aid station but also forgot to restock on gels. I started with 8 but was supposed to grab my second stash of 10 gels. For gels, the plan was to use Spring energy - Koffee (210 calories with caffeine), Mcraecovery (150 calories with 6 grams proteins) and then Canaberry (regular 100 calories gel but taste good). However, I didn’t feel hungry in the first two hours of the race and I went by gels by feel. Probably not the best plan but I didn’t want to eat when I already felt full. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten the pack of plantain chips with hummus two hours earlier?
After the third aid station, the trail got pretty technical. It was a nice stretch of the legs. My core and hamstrings were feeling beat so I reached into my bag and popped in two tynelons. I haven’t used painkillers in a race for years but I guess I learned to accept them when dealing with the pain of my broken arm. I know that pain killers mess with sugar digestion in the stomach so I am wary of using them while running where gels are my main source of fuel. I then put on my headphones. I had created a 35 minute playlist the night before of songs I liked. I also don't normally listen to anything while running. I realized here, at around mile 22 that I really needed to start pushing it if I was going to make it to mile 50 so I wanted to use whatever I can to motivate myself onwards. “Speedgoat” Karl Meltzer says he feels that headphones are kind of like having a pacer so I went with that logic. The headphones were new and I couldn’t figure out how to turn them on. I texted Gemma who brought them for me for advice and she quickly responded. With the music on and my subconscious taking care of the technical trail as I moved, my conscious mind went inwards. Am I doing enough? Am I helping people in the best way possible? Doubts started creeping in my head about my current path in life. As I started pushing on the technical trail and as the trail got narrower, I started using my hands more on the terrain. I soon scratched my hand when grabbing a tree to push myself forward, a lyric soon said “When everything feels like the movies, yeah you bleed just to know you're alive”. I think the mix of music, technical terrain and the painkillers helped the hammy pain go away.
If I had to be honest, my hammies felt a bit sore going into the race. I did a one week taper to midstate. I just did some easy runs Monday, Tuesday and double on Thursday. Thursday night was a tad faster than I expected but nice to stretch out the legs a bit. I also did some weight training and core maintenance. I think science of ultra’s episode on strength training said you could maintain it by doing high weights, one set of reps, like 5 reps, once a week so I followed that. I also did a short, 5 minutes of core to maintain strength there as well. I might have slightly overdid it on the deadlifts though.
Few people from later waves continued to pass. A woman passed by and the trail markers passed a fire road and continued to go straight. However, she, perhaps guided by her phone map, made a u-turn and went along the fire road. I didn’t have service so I couldn't load racejoy. I decided to follow the trail forward as I didn’t have any information to the contrary. About 10 minutes later she caught up to me and passed by. That was a bit of a relief as I really didn’t know what the right way was. It started to get dark, I had forgotten sunset was around 6:30 pm now. I passed an older runner who was running with a bit of a hunch. Crossing a road and reaching a fork he made a turn on the right side. I didn’t see any signs of the trail markers indicating a turn so I stopped and tried looking for markers for both ways. Didn’t see any and tried to load the app but after a minute, I saw a family coming from the left side. Decided to go that direction and luckily soon found a trail marker. Yes, the older runner made a u-turn, I think from my hesitation he also paused to figure it out. A little farther down the trail, I turned on my headlamp and soon reached AS4. This aid station was at a huge parking lot and I was afraid I would have to look around for Gemma but she found me quickly and we went to my car. I quickly gulfed down the sweet potato sushi rolls dunked in miso soup and then drank the remaining miso soup. I was pretty hungry. I was able to only eat two of the pretzels from the small bag I got at AS3, it was too hard for me to chew on. This is something I should have known, those post race bagels and pretzel bags have always been hard to chew on. Now, where I have to keep on running I couldn’t chew them at all. They just became dead weight during the last 5 miles. I got my gels and the reflective vest jacket. Finally, I put my strobe light on my running vest, on the keychain chip attached to the back that once held which country I was from during UTMB.
This was the first race I ever had crew for. For 100 milers and longer, crews and pacers are common to support runners. Pacers could run with the runner, usually after 50 miles. They usually just keep the spirits of the runner up, remind the runner to eat and make sure the runner doesn’t get too ambitious about running too slow. I wasn’t expecting to have crew this time around either but Gemma expressed interest in doing it. I hesitated, I don’t like the idea of anyone giving up their weekend to end up watching me fail but after making sure a few times that she was genuinely interested in crewing and not just being nice, I accepted. Having access to my car as storage would have been better than using a drop bag with limited amount of items and crew access occurred more frequently than drop bag access so that was an advantage too. Plus it’s just nice to have someone there.
Having a crew though did force me to think more about the race and come up with some sort of timing expectations. Otherwise, I don’t really think I would have had any sort of plan for the race except to just run and throw gels and a size up in shoes in the drop bag. By paying more attention to the aid station cut off times and reading up on section descriptions that others had put out in the facebook group for the race, I made plans for gel bags, shoe switches and night gear changes. This was probably the most I thought about a race that I haven’t done before. Knowing what I know of the trail now, I would have played around with switching from a belt with water with running poles and the running vest. Think I could have used the belt and running poles to move a bit faster in the technical terrain.
After restocking the gels and getting my full night gear I walked with Gemma to find where the trail continues. Gemma walked with me till the point where a volunteer stood and wished me a great climb. It was pitch dark by now and I guess that the volunteer would be checking to make sure that runners had the required night gear on them. The trail started the biggest climb of the race. I went up pretty steady and strong. After 2 miles of uphill I crossed a road and continued to follow a yellow triangle and blue trail. Think a blue trail and the midstate trail merged at a certain point along the uphill. After the road crossing the trail went downhill and about a quarter of a mile down my app said I might be off trail. I opened the app and saw that there was a turn right before the road crossing. I didn’t see any signs for it but I also saw that if I continued down this trail for a little longer that I would hit the correct trail. So I continued onwards. I also noticed that there was a long road section coming up so I would keep an eye on that. The downhill was pretty technical so I wasn’t able to gain much speed. A little farther down it became more of a woodsy downhill and I was able to comfortably jog down it. I soon passed a woman and said the usual encouraging words that ultra runners say to each - “good job” or “good work”. The trail emerges out to another road crossing but this was what I saw on the map earlier. I see the small sign indicating that the race route now goes on the road. The midstate trail goes through private property and the race was able to secure permission from all property owners, hence the road sections.
Compared to my pace on the trails thus far, I start flying on the roads. A runner named Ryan caught up to me. We exchanged names and he mentioned that he was sick. Like what? Sick? He said not to worry if I see him off to the side puking. He then passed by. Even with speed walking the uphills I was moving pretty well. I missed a turn on the road again and found out thanks to the app. I made it to the fifth aid station in pretty good spirits overall. Of course the aid station had no tailwind so I refilled up on water. No choice here. I also took a buddy fruit pouch, a baby food puree looking thing, and it was delicious. The race went back into the trails and despite them no longer being hilly or technical, I found myself not really being able to run anymore. I couldn’t pick up the feet. I kept up my gel intake, hoping that a little caffeine, calories and some time just speed hiking would improve the situation. After 40 miles I just slowed even farther. I started making 24 minutes miles and I knew at this point I would not make the time cutoff for the aid station 6 at mile 44. Maybe knowing that made me move just as slow. My legs felt as battered as walking on Lincoln wood logging trail road at the end of the pemi loop.
I made it to aid station 6 about 45 minutes after it closed. This officially ended my journey. I got some water and was able to get a ride to aid station 7 from a volunteer. I wasn’t disappointed. I knew not doing shorter ultras this year would put me in a bad position in attempting the race. My goal was to make it mile 50 and then walk the rest. Also, the lack of additional trail markings and ribbons make the race feel unsafe for me. As my 24th ultra I just got used to the idea that races would provide directions. The midstate trail intersects many trails and roads, like any long distance trail would, and I expected at least some sign or ribbon at these intersections. Many of the road sections had you running at roads with no shoulder and even even with the required night gear I didn’t feel completely safe. That just might be my bias of running in a city. Maybe people that run in more rural roads are used to it?
Gemma had a bit of a hard time finding aid station 7 but after waiting 20 minutes she found me. It might have been a good idea to drive to the main aid stations the day before to make sure we knew where everything was. That didn’t occur to me and I guess I don’t really know how to crew at all. That might be something I should look into doing soon.
The Vermont 100 that I got into this year got deferred to 2021. That will be hopefully my 5th attempt at the 100 mile distance. Unlike Midstate Massive, which is in its second year, Vermont 100 is as old as me so it’s been around for quite some time (and thus has more of a community around it). I probably won’t try Midstate Massive 100 again (that’s the first time I’m saying that about any ultra) but might be interested in doing the midstate trail section by section as training runs in the future.
