The Mogollon Monster 100

This is me at the start of the Mogollon Monster 100 Mile Race in 2019. To be perfectly clear, I didn’t run 100 miles, I ran the 35K (22 miles). And to be perfectly crystalline clear, I didn’t run the entire 35K, it took me 8 hours (3 mph on average, yeah, that’s walking speed). And to be absolutely perfectly crystalline clear, I welcome your laughter and then challenge you to do this race. It’s around 4,000 vertical feet of climbing, and the going down is as tough as the going up.

In the theme of “New Beginnings,” this race marked the new era of being an “athlete” over 50. This marked the beginning of learning that the rest of my life will be playing with the limits of what my body can handle. That every day is constantly being surprised at the body’s fragility and gristle toughness.

Side note: this photo was taken Saturday morning, which was when the 100-milers started. They would do nearly 40,000 vertical feet of climbing and descending over a day and a half of running. When I actually stepped up to the line for the start of my race on Sunday morning, I felt the refreshing schadenfreude knowing those world class athletes had been running for more 24 hours at that point, while I had slept and eaten and relaxed the day before. Indeed, I’d end up “running” next to some of them, as the two courses merged. It was quite obvious, with my non-runner’s body, that I was running the short race.

The Mogollon Monster race is named for two things. First, the Mogollon Monster is the local term for Bigfoot in central Arizona. The race is a play on those words, as it’s a monster of a race. Second, the Mogollon Rim as a geological feature is a dramatic and steep miles-long cliff that defines the southern end of the Colorado Plateau in Arizona. It splits the state in half. Look at a weather map of Arizona, and the line in the middle is formed by that Mogollon Rim. It’s a breathtaking beast of a thing that creates weather and biomes and legends.

This all started because my sister called me, a bit worried that her son was going to run this crazy race. She wanted me to talk him out of it. I looked into it, was hooked at the absurdity of running up and down the Mogollon Rim, and called him up to give my approval. By the end of the talk, we had decided to run it together. We signed up and started training.

He lives in the flat plains of southern Minnesota, and had to find the largest hill around to train for the elevation gain. The hill was a meager 300 feet.

I had the advantage of being able to drive up to Payson and train on the actual steep route of the race, and get to know it intimately. I had the privilege to throw my medically-designated-morbidly-obese body up against the rock-scrabble switchbacks on these cliffs. Sections of these trails go 2,000 feet in two miles. That’s a 20 percent grade. On average. The Rim destroyed me.

During the week I used the Nike half marathon plan, which was recovery runs and various sprints and speed workouts. On the weekend I substituted the plan’s long run for as much of the trail as I thought I could handle. I wanted to get to know the trail, and take the fear away. I wanted to adjust my body to the higher elevation: Phoenix is around 1,000 feet above sea level, and the Mogollon Monster goes from 5,500 feet to 7,500 feet — twice. I also wanted to prepare my body for pure stair step climbing for miles. Call the entire thing an altitude adjustment.

My body broke down in a few key ways. First was my hamstrings, which are my Achilles heel (pardon the pun). I tend to pull a hammie on sprint workouts, and while I didn’t fully pull a hamstring, I ran up to its limit enough times that I ended up just abandoning the sprint and speed workouts.

Second was exhaustion. I’ve been a runner, on and off again, since I was in sixth grade. I’ve trained all sorts of ways formally and informally. I’ve been gifted with an endurance that replenishes fairly easily. No more. This training session taught me I need at least twice the recovery time. My physical exhaustion in the moment of running was the same, but the after effects were much harder.

Thirdly was crashing. I tripped fairly often on those trails, maybe once every three runs. Our body is tuned to millimeters. I can think of times where the frames of my glasses have clipped something. And our feet brush over things a hairs width away quite often, just think of going up a set of stairs. And when you’re tired, you don’t clear that millimeter and when you’re on a trail as well, your foot has caught a rock and you’re tired legs just don’t have the juice to fire off that burst of recovery balance rocket booster and down you go, quite ungracefully. It’s most ridiculous when the fall happens over four or five pinwheeling Marx Brothers steps.

But I had one epically bad crash which put a bit too much fear in me. I had topped out on the rim and was resting, when along came one of the serious ultra runners, also training for the race. He was bearded and lean and wore compression socks and a badass hydration vest to which were strapped folding hiking poles. We exchanged a few words and he wished me luck as a true comrade. So sweet!

He took off, and I got up and started my route down as well. To my surprise, I was keeping up with him. I delight in running down steep trails, and am pretty good at it, so I thought maybe this skill gave me an advantage to his superior athleticism, so I decided to see how long I could pace him. I deliriously did so until suddenly I was on the ground, somehow turned around enough as if I had laid down while walking up. I truly don’t know what happened in that crash, except for the instance in which I caught my foot and was going down. From there it’s a black-out tumble my body kindly erased in the instance that it happened. It was a steep section of trail, and I’m guessing I rolled for at least 20 feet at the speed I was going.

In the pain, a strange logic crawled up and out of me, whispering what to do next. I knew I was numb with enorphins and couldn’t trust my body completely. I ran a systems check, mentally and with my hands, starting at my feet. I felt for bones and deep wounds. I ignored scratches and blood, because that was everywhere. All was fine, and I hesitated as I got to my neck. Neck’s okay, and I was so sure I’d touch my face or head and find sticky blood. Gentle pats and rubs came up dry. Thank God. I really did thank God.

Then, get up on my feet. Slowly. Done. Good. I could balance.

Next, drink all my remaining water. All at once. Clear.

Now, it’s two miles to the car, and it’s getting hotter by the moment. The morning cool was fully burned off, and this slope faced south like a solar collector.

I began to walk. One knee hurt really bad, and the ankle on the other leg was about 60 percent.

I then remembered that I’d once rolled an ankle playing racquetball, and had about 30 minutes of playing time before it was absolutely horrible. I figured I had the same here, so I began to trot. Surprisingly, this was less painful. I think my body knew that relief was at the car, and was willing to make the trade off. I run-waddled the easy downhill grades, was extremely careful to walk the steep grades. All good, but I think those crashes added up in my body’s toll.

Finally, and most importantly, was how much my feet ached. I thought it strange that people were tortured by beating their feet, until this training for this race. Now I understood. My feet were pulverized and tenderized by this trail, some of which is made of loose rock the size of Rubic’s cubes that you just can’t help but land and roll upon. I did buy some really cushioned Hoka’s, but it was too little too late.

There was a moment in my training that made me realize how far gone my feet were, and how I was in new and uncharted territory. As usual on this trail, at one point I’d run down 1800 feet, wincing and smarting with each drop of my 220 pound body on each foot. My goal was to tough it out until I got to a stream that ran year round, where I’d give myself the treat of soaking my feet in the cool water and relaxing in the shade for as long as I needed before running back the two more miles to the trailhead and my car with its air conditioning and direct line to a beer and a burger.

I hobbled down to the stream and stripped down my feet and dropped them in the cool water. Profound relief. But then I began to massage them gently with my hands, and the pain was somehow worse than dropping my big body on them. There was something seriously wrong with my feet. I tried again, and the pain seemed even worse. I lowered my feet into the creek, and burst into tears. Not because of the physical pain, but because I knew I had to stop training. I had to stop this abuse of my feet and my body and let them heal. And to stop training meant I wasn’t going to run the race.

I cried because I knew I had hit some point of no return. I had found that my body couldn’t handle this, and from this point on, I couldn’t just throw my body willy-nilly at whatever strange idea I thought of and expect it to deliver. I cried because this moment was as wide as my physical horizons would be, and from here on out, it just narrows to death.

That’s a bit melodramatic, but name one person for whom that is not true.

I limped back to the car. Fuck running. I drove a mile, found another stream, and soaked my feet again, this time with much more forgiveness and gratitude. Thank you feet. Thank you body. You guys rock. Sorry we pushed it. We’ll just take it easy from here on out.

And a sweet peace went through my body.

I let my nephew know what was going on, and we made the plan that I’d still enter the race, and just quit and limp out if I couldn’t make it. I would run in very small amounts, find that my feet cried out in rebellion, and go back to resting. Over and over, until the weekend of the race. The scariest race of my life, and I was woefully unprepared.

My nephew was in tip-top shape. He’s a big guy too, but decades younger, and with a physical and mental stamina that awes me. We did a little test run the day before the race, and my foot pain flared up, and I immediately cut our run short. I love him so much for how he made no big deal of it.

The next morning we woke up early, put on our gear, and as we drove to the trailhead he played Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.” For me, it was to be an eight hour shift.

I kept up with him the first 7 miles of the race. Or rather, he slowed down for me. The first section is just a straight up slog. There’s really no running on something that sleep. Then we topped out and did 8 to ten minute miles, which was too fast for me, and too slow for him, and I cut him loose. He disappeared over the trail and the cliff, I stumbled down behind. My feet hurt, but not nearly as bad.

You can think of the race as the letter M. There’s a huge climb up, then a level run before dropping down again to the halfway point. Then back up, across the top of the rim for a bit, and then drop back down to the finish in the town of Pine, Arizona. At the halfway point, I was amazed at how good I felt.

Then came the final climb. Let me say that even the 100-mile runners talk about this particular climb in awe. I won’t try to describe it, except that it’s particularly cruel in how the grade slowly and incrementally keeps increasing, the classic frog being slowly boiled situation.

In my thirty years of trying to run races I’m not qualified for, I’ve had a variety of exhaustions befell my body. I have never before run into actual paralysis.

First, my right thigh seized up. That’s happened before, and I’ve walked it off. It didn’t go away, and then my left thigh seized up. I was now walking with this strange non-knee-bend kind of gait. Then my entire body just stopped.

Mind you, I’m on a 20% grade of a trail, so my toes are well above my heels, my legs are flexed and locked, and I’m occasionally pinwheeling for balance. I can’t turn left or right, and surely can’t turn around. The field of runners is quite spread out, so I’m alone.

My nightmare scenario had been having to limp out. Or at worse, limping to an aid station and having a four-wheeler carry me out. Suddenly I’m in a helicopter situation.

My drinking tube is right next to me, and I sip some water.

Nothing. I’m still frozen. I can’t make my legs move.

I can balance, but I don’t think I can hold this strange position for much longer. I’m now looking for which soft spot to land upon without rolling downhill.

Then magically I shuffle a foot forward. I begin again.

Without boring you, I’ll let you know that after much trial and error, my new method of climbing up the trail consists of the following two rules, repeated over and over.

Rule 1: Your heel shall not pass the toe of the other foot.

Rule 2: Go sideways on the trail as much as possible rather than straight up.

And with that, I inch my way up.

And then I add a rule three: Wherever possible, lean your ass on something and rest. Any stump or rock outcropping that’s a few inches below my ass, well that’s a great place to lean/sit upon. Because I don’t think I could stand back up if I actually sat all the way down.

I have plenty of daylight, and with this method, I can make it to the aid station at the top of the cliff and ask to be driven back.

It’s on one of these leaning moments that I stop and reflect at how fucking lucky I am. I’m in some of the most beautiful country on earth. I’m in nature. I’m friends with my super-cool nephew who actually thinks I’m super cool. I’ve hit a strange new physical wall and somehow figured out a way to keep moving.

And finally—and this isn’t something I’ve brought up yet—is that me and my nephew are doing this for my dad, who passed away a few years earlier. When he died, everyone in the family got some of his ashes to dispose with as they saw fit. And my nephew hadn’t figured out a way to honor his grandpa, and he thought of those ashes every day for months, waiting for the right idea. My dad took my nephew and his brother on quite a few adventures in the wilds of Colorado, and introduced a love of the big mountains to them.

So when my nephew saw this race, he saw it as an opportunity to honor my dad by releasing some of the ashes as part of the race and “taking grandpa on one last adventure.”

Here I fucking sat, in the middle of such a beautiful thing. And I was being given all the essential of a great story, and my dad was the king of taking a messed-up situation and making it into a fun story and adventure. I channeled him and channeled my nephew and channeled God and channeled the good green earth and took a deep breath and felt it all to be Holy. Dude, you can sit here all day if you need to.

I shuffled my ass up switchback after switchback, being passed by the 100 milers and the 35K runners the entire time, happy to give them exact details of how long they had to go, for I was one of the few who actually had been on this trail before, and they were scared it would last forever. I’m the one who knew nothing lasts forever.

I got over the main steepness, and on the rising land leading to the aid station, was able to lengthen my stride into something somewhat normal, though quite stiff.

The aid station workers greeted me warmly, as if I was a real runner, and I ate watermelon as if it was cocaine. Watermelon magic coursed through my capillaries. I was wondering if I should still ask for a ride out when the Crying Woman came into the station.

Everyone at the aid station somehow knew who she was immediately, and two of the women trotted over to comfort her, walking her away from the others and giving her food and fluids. I picked up the story in whispers. She had come into the station earlier, and when the crew checked her in, they were perplexed that she hadn’t checked into the halfway point station. Come to find out, she’d used her navigation app, which correctly routed her on the quickest route of the course, but which neglected to deliver her a few miles more to that earlier checkpoint. In order to qualify to finish for the race, she’d have to double back and go to that checkpoint. Which meant going back down that fucking trail again. And then fucking going fucking back up that fucker again.

I’m a horrible person to say this, but I also want to be honest: after seeing her, I felt wonderful. My body was destroyed, but my soul was singing like it was Walt Whitman’s harp. She was an incredible athlete, and ran in strong despite her tears. She was far more physically fit in the moment, but I could tell the aid team was both trying to improve her morale and also wondering if they should wheel her out of here.

I thanked the crew, shoved two more watermelon bites into my mouth, and walked away. A quarter mile later, I began to run. I ran all the way down, past my crash point, past the start of the race and down to the highway where the last mile takes you into Pine and the celebration area and finish line. My body howled. My soul sang. My heart gratified.

My nephew and his wife and their son had waited hours for me to show up at the line, and they treated me like a rock star. We went out for beers and pickles and burgers immediately after, still seeing runners straggle down the road, knowing there was no way in hell they’d make it to the finish line in time. Sucks to be them.

And strangest of all, it wasn’t until the next day that I realized my pain was gone. Neither of us was even sore. My nephew actually went out for a run.

My feet had been tender for weeks. I woke up that morning, and it’s as if it never happened. That morning after the race, I felt better than I had for months.

I can’t exactly name or understand the transformations of my body that happened, but my gut feeling tells me it’s all about fear. I was afraid my body couldn’t handle such a thing, and possibly that tension hit my feet and legs and body and made it come true. I really don’t like that manifestation talk—it’s like New Age prosperity gospel, which I also despise—but I feel it was in that moment of paralysis, where I gave into the reality that I was just fucked physically, that I was forced to go back into the spirit and soul of this race, which was to do something fun with my nephew and honor my dad and be in God’s green country.

I was 51 when I ran that race. I feel it was the birth of my Old Body. I learned this is how we do things now. My Old Body is my old buddy, and we make our plans and then surprise each other by rallying when the other is down.

I learned a great advantage of getting older is friending fear. I’m too new to it to explain it. Fear and I are just starting to walk with each other, maybe holding hands, but not making out yet. Maybe you’re not supposed to make out with fear. But since then, fear, specifically fear of a failing body, is the friend that always gets invited on these adventures. Fear is sincerely welcomed, it wouldn’t nearly as fun without her.

I end this with a photo of me a few hours after the paralysis, and an hour before the finish line, right before I entered the tunnel that leads to the final stretch.

No fear. Run to the light.