Well, that did not go as planned.

This race was my first “real” DNF. I have one previous DNF at Sheep Mountain 50 miler, but I don’t really count that one. It was my first post-brain injury 50 miler, and it was a huge success for me. After a very challenging course, I missed a cutoff at the mile 48 aid station, even though I had 90 minutes to run 6 miles down a dirt road to make the finish under the cutoff (the race director has since changed the cutoff time at that aid station). At Black Canyon 100k this weekend, I stopped at mile 20. I quit. I pulled the plug. But mile 20 isn’t really where this race broke down.

Mentally, I wasn’t prepared to jump right back into training after the Leadville 100. I had been going hard without an off-season since September of 2021, and I had been looking forward to a winter of playing without formal training. In an ultramarathon, there is often a point when things get hard, and you question why you are out there. That motivation needs to come from within. If folks are new to the sport, I will tell them that you can’t do it for anyone else; you have to want it.

This was Josh’s race. He wanted to do it, and when I asked how I could best support him, he asked me to sign up and train with him. He has crewed, paced, kept me company on long runs, motivated me to get out, shuttled me, cleaned up after me, and generally supported me through all my races for years. This seemed like a pretty small ask, so I registered, and we started training.

In the weeks (or maybe months) leading up to the race, I felt lousy. I was tired, and I wasn’t sleeping well. My workouts felt harder than they should have, I wasn’t recovering well, and my glucose was highly unstable. Basically, I’m in perimenopause, and I need to make some serious changes in my training as my body adapts. If you missed it, you can read about our experiment with continuous glucose monitoring, and I’ll post more about all that soon.

There has been a lot of quality time with my physical therapist, trying to sort through some issues. The biggest being some pain and numbness down my left quad and shin. I’ve been pretty frustrated and wasn’t sure about even starting this race. If I’m totally honest, I wasn’t sure about starting this race when I signed up in October.

Even as I packed for our trip, made a nutrition plan, and organized drop bags, I didn’t know if I was actually going to start this race. I was torn because I really wanted to watch Josh finish and support him the way he has supported me. I couldn’t do that and run at the same time because he is way faster and would finish hours before me. Then there is all the training I put into this race, which left me conflicted. In the end, I took that indecision all the way to the start line, and that is not a good place to be when things start to unravel.

By mile 10, my legs hurt more than they did at mile 80 at Leadville just a few months before. My left quad and shin hurt, and I repeatedly caught that toe on rocks as the muscles weren’t engaging effectively. I knew I went out too fast last year, so I planned to start slower. I was running a minute per mile slower than I had the previous year, and the pace still felt harder than it should have. Every little hill felt challenging, and I kept thinking I was going to faceplant into a cactus as I caught my toe on yet another rock.

Around 30 minutes out from the Bumble Bee aid station, a guy passed me and asked if I was okay. I told him I was having a rough day. He responded with, “that is why we are out here, for the adversity, right?” At that moment, I realized that, no, I was not out there for the adversity that day. I’ve worked through plenty of rough patches at many races, and that is a huge part of running ultramarathons. Bottom line is that I simply didn’t want to do it. Don’t get me wrong, I had no doubt that I could get myself to the finish. It is amazing what you can push your body through when your mind is focused on a goal. I just didn’t care enough to push through the pain cave, and I definitely wasn’t mentally prepared to do it for 52 of the 62 miles in this race.

Walking into the Bumblebee aid station at mile 20, I saw Josh standing there waiting for me. He started having Achilles tendonitis two weeks before the race and had questioned if it would hold up. Despite a bunch of physical therapy, it didn’t. He was super disappointed to make it through 20 weeks of focused training only to face injury two weeks before the race. As he limped along with his swollen Achilles, pushing through to the finish wasn’t a reasonable option. He didn’t need this one race leading to months of rehabilitation. We hugged and called it a day.

We hitched a ride out of Bumblebee to the Black Canyon City aid, where our friend Anne Marie picked us up and then drove us around to collect our drop bags. At the finish line, we stopped and volunteered some time to organize a pile of hundreds of drop bags into numerical order to make them easier to find.

The next morning we woke to find a bunch of missed calls and tests from race command, checking to see if we were still out on the course. We had checked out with the EMTs and with the aid station captain, but somehow our bib numbers didn’t get written down. We texted back and ended up with a hilarious exchange. This guy went on for quite a while and left me in tears, but I’ll leave you with just a few to enjoy.

Last year, the heat was a huge factor in this race. I pushed through to the finish, and that was the wrong decision. I was a wreck, missing two days of work and only keeping down mashed potatoes, broth, and ginger ale the entire following week. Shortly after that race, I started working with Coach Andrew Simmons. We had a long conversation about the race and my slow recovery. He told me in the future, “if a race is turning into Black Canyon, you need to stop”. His point was that there is a line between pushing yourself and causing harm, and I crossed it.

This year, I wasn’t having any fun out there, and neither my body or mind wanted to be running that far. So I stopped. Running is a hobby, not a job. Ultramarathons are not all fun, they are hard and often involve a lot of pain. But if there is no fun, what is the point? I’ll take Coach Simmons’ advice and carry it forward to a broader meaning. Listen to your mind and body. If a race is turning into Black Canyon, you need to stop.

While I’m fairly certain that a third time on this course will not be happening, I am sure we will be back to Arizona soon. The cover photo for this post is from Spur Cross Ranch, and it was beautiful on a short hike Sunday morning before heading to the airport. We absolutely love the desert trails this time of year. For now, Josh and I will both be working on some rehab and getting our bodies back on track for the next adventure.