by Pat Wheatley

The Wakely Dam Ultra 32.6 miles of mud, forest and water. 

This year turned out to be a fabulous day for a run. It was cool most of the day and the bugs were nowhere to be seen. The course was wetter than last year, which meant more mud and much slicker conditions; this only caused me one fall and many stubbed toes but I didn't lose any toenails this year! 

We were camping close to the start so we were able to wake up at 5am instead of the ungodly hour of 3:00am to catch the bus from the end. That being said I still tossed and turned for a couple of hours before actually getting up. Thoughts of the race filled my head, did I pack everything, do I have enough food, will I have to stop and filter water...have I trained enough. The same thoughts I have before any race, but this time I was sleeping on the ground which of course makes it tougher to roll over and go back to sleep with out rolling onto a rock or off my sleeping pad.

 At the start it was the usual gathering of distance-running weird-os, very nice people and I felt at home. Lots of dogs wandering around excited about going on a long run...boy were they disappointed. The bus pulled up soon after 6 and everybody spilled out and ran for the woods, kind of like the Monty Python skit:

 "Now over to the start of the marathon for incontinent people. There is an enormous entry this year. 44 competitors from 29 countries, all with weak bladders. Ready for the world's longest race and aching to go."   Well, I thought it was funny.

 Eventually we did start and it was a slow meander through the woods. I was purposely near the back so that I could warm up a bit and not feel pressured to keep up with the leaders...not that I could, but I would have tried to and that might have been disastrous. I still do not know how to pace myself properly. The leaders were rumoured to be gunning for the course record and were trying to break 5 hours. I thought this was a little optimistic considering the unsupported nature of the race and the amount of blow downs we were told to expect. Boy was I wrong!

 My race was slower but I was planning for that. My only goal was to finish faster than last year, so under 6h30m and to finish without bonking, cramping or hallucinating. At the halfway point I was 10 minutes slower than last year with a time of 3h11m. This was caused by my running plan: I would catch up to a person and run behind them and chat for a while, which slowed me down but let me recover a bit before I passed them and put distance between us. I stuck to my run-walk plan as well. Every 30 minutes I would slow to a fast walk and eat and drink. This also helped me out mentally, as I could push myself for a while but I would know that I would have a chance to catch my breath in 28 minutes. Of course I wasn't running to win, just to finish strong.

 Just about 4.5 hours into the run Anke met me on the trail from the other end. It was very good to see her, she paced me to the end and found the correct trails for me when the grass got so long that it obscured the trail. She also informed me that I was currently in 7th place. I had never been in the top ten before...so that news added a big incentive to keep the pace. I just hoped I had put enough distance between everybody behind me. At this point in the race I had about 6-8 miles to go and I was still feeling pretty good and I didn't want to get passed at the end. It always seems to happen to me, usually when I am going to the bathroom (curse my small bladder!).  Luckily (or unfortunately) peeing wasn’t a problem today.

 I was able to scramble over blow down with out any cramping which bothered me a lot last year. Just to be safe I made the long detours through the bush to avoid lifting my legs too high, or crawling on my hands and knees when we got to the blow downs. Once we hit the old logging roads I was confident that I could finish under last years time and finish 7th!! At this point another runner came up from behind, it was Courtney, I had run with him earlier but I thought he had slowed down considerably, wrong again. Lucky for me he was content to catch up to me and just run the rest of the race with Anke and me. It was his first ultra ever and he was doing very well considering he was drinking an energy drink he hated the taste of and wearing road shoes that did not perform well on the slippery rocks and logs. He was also carrying a pack that was too big with too much stuff because of the scary race stories of death and destruction for those unprepared for the race and to top it all off he had almost missed the morning bus.

Due to all of that (and my hidden competitive nature) I felt that I needed to finish before him...call me vain, but I couldn't let a whipper-snapper (he is 28) beat me on his first ultra. I was ready to tell him that the rules state that you are not allowed to pass a competitor in the last 2 miles of any trail ultra. If that had failed I was ready to have Anke distract him while I stealthily pulled ahead...but I didn't have to resort to cheap lies or espionage, I just picked up the pace in the last 200 metres and finish 7 seconds ahead (it was a race after all)...I was happy.

 So I was 7th over all or looking at it another way, 3rd in the 30-39 age group or really 1st in the 30-35 age group...so in the end I came in first!!

 After that it was fluids and swimming...or more accurately, standing in really cold water until I thought my body would not start cramping if I dunked myself. We hung out for a while before going out to eat over-priced Mexican food, fortunately they also served a tasty micro brew IPA, so that more than made up for the skimpy fajitas. A tasty end to a great day. 

Next year Anke will be running the race, so I will be doing the pacing, if I am able to run after the Vermont 100 that is...but that will be another story.