When I signed up for the 2020 version of the Lighthouse 100 it was with the idea of cherry-picking (Michigan pun intended) a win in a hundo. Not that it was a given by any stretch, but a road course with winning times in the 17-18 hour range seemed like a place where I might finally score an overall at the 100-mile distance. A lot has happened since then.
Most pertinent, in the intervening two years of deferrals for COVID and then heart surgery, I've picked up three wins in other 100's. The heart problem meant no quality workouts for over six months, so my endurance is great, but my road speed is off. And, I'm not getting any younger. So, finally arriving at the start line in 2022, it's with the simple goal of running "well" and I don't bother refining the criteria beyond that.
Kate, who has been to northern Michigan in June before, decides that crewing a 100 is a reasonable price to pay for turning this into a vacation so we head off to Traverse City a couple days in advance with lodging in Charlevoix booked for after. I make her a google map of all the places we'll meet; basically every five miles. We are up at 4:30 to head to the start at Mission Point, taking along Michael Eriks who will be met by his crew on the course.
The start is at 6AM which, through combination of Daylight Savings Time and oddly drawn time zones, coincides with sunrise (the asymmetrical sunset not coming until 9:30PM). The morning is pleasantly cool and the lead group of eight knocks out the first mile in 8:50. When the second mile comes up in 8:40, I decide that I should forego the company and settle into a more sustainable pace.
Kate and I have agreed on a system where she will text me the mileage of where she is stopped and I'll text her what I need so she can have it ready when I get there. For our first meeting at 8.7 miles, I'm mostly concerned about where the bathroom is as my insides are definitely not responding well to the effort. Fortunately, this stop is at a small grocery that opens at 7AM, so I can take care of that while she refills my water bottle.
By the aid station in Traverse City (mile 20), I'm in trouble again and cut across the park lawn to go straight to the bathrooms where Kate is waiting with some Imodium. I run back out to the parking lot, but can't find the actual aid station among all the crew vehicles. I decide to just press on. I ask one of the other runners where the aid station was and he says, "right by the timing mat". Oh crap, I had forgotten that there was a mat at this one. Now I have no choice but to go back. Back at the parking lot, I finally do find the aid station; if one could dignify it as such. It's just a card table with no sign or canopy. I hate giving volunteers crap, but this is really bad; especially given that missing it could mean disqualification. I grumble a bit and get on my way. I'll be running 101 miles today.
One could argue that, in the context of a hundo, an extra mile won't likely make a difference, but that hasn't been my experience. Sure, I've run a handful of them where there was nobody within half an hour ahead or behind, but in the vast majority of them, I've been in a dogfight at the finish. Still, there's nothing to be done about it and trying to get it back by knocking out some fast miles would be suicidal, so I just try (with limited success) to put it out of my head.
Balancing the frustration of losing 15 minutes to intestinal issues and extra distance is the fact that it is a very fine day on a very pretty course. The run down the peninsula has been glorious. As the course turns east, we leave the water for a bit and the scenery becomes a bit more bland. Not ugly, mind you, just more like what I see every day running backroads to and from work. It starts to make the whole thing feel more like a training run (albeit a long one) and the next 25 miles to the "halfway" point (47.6) at Elk Rapids go smoothly.
Kate, who has never crewed before is fully into the rhythm of it now and our stops take mere seconds, usually followed by a short walk break while I consume the contents of the bag she hands me. While the forecast calls for rain, it's still quite sunny and getting warm. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of keeping my fluids up and I'm not yet fighting my usual second-half nausea.
Shortly into the second half, we do get some relief from cloud cover. We also get a wooded section along Torch Lake which gives plenty of shade for about 6 miles. Kate gives me a water handup and then heads to Charlevoix to check into our lodging there. I'll go through the next aid station uncrewed and then meet her about an hour after that.
At least, that's the plan. Leaving the aid station, the course turns onto Michigan Highway 31 for a truly dreadful section. The highway is open, exposed, and busy. It's not dangerous - the shoulder is plenty wide - it's just soul-crushing to be running slowly while so many cars blow by.
There's a light drizzle that comes and goes. It feels good, especially when accompanied by a breeze, but it also causes the little stones in the shoulder to stick to the bottoms of my shoes. Inevitably, one of them gets flicked into my other shoe. There's no chance of getting the shoe on and off without sitting down this late in the race. I run with it for about a quarter mile and am about to resign myself to having to stop and sit down in the shoulder (which won't be easy with my current range of motion) when I come across another crew which is happy to lend me a chair. They offer me water and food as well and, while I need neither, it's another reminder of why I keep doing these things. Sure, it's a competition, but it's also a collaboration. Nobody wants to see a DNF. I know of no other sport that operates this way.
By the time I get to our planned rendezvous at mile 63, the hour of running on the highway has turned my brain has turned to mush. I haven't seen any course markings in several miles and I'm wondering if maybe this isn't just bad course design; maybe I'm not on the course at all. I have the GPS track loaded into my watch (the only reason I wear one as I always do my pacing by feel) and it seems to be lining up OK but, as I pass an intersection that looks like it might be the spot, I panic when I don't see Kate and the car. I text to ask if she really is waiting on Highway 31, and she says she is, at the Eastport Market. The sign I just passed said Eastport; I must have missed her. I text her saying I must have passed and then come around a bend just in time to see her pulling out of a parking lot to find me. I text again and call her back. No time is lost, but I can feel my emotions are teetering on collapse, which is pretty much what always happens around 10 hours into these things.
Fortunately, we turn off the highway soon after and the return to small roads does help get my mind back in order. Also helping is the fact that, while my emotions may be all over the place, my digestive tract is now behaving and my legs, which have been fine all race, are giving no indication that they need an adjustment to the pace. Given my problems in the first quarter of the race, I had given up on the idea of any kind of competitive finish, but I notice that I'm not seeing many crew cars anymore. Either the lead group has held together remarkably well or I've passed enough of them that I'm into the rarified air of the top few. At the next aid station at the Church in Norwood, the latter is confirmed. They aren't sure because the leaders are mixed in with the tail end of the "50" (which started at noon at the aforementioned "halfway"), but they think I'm in fourth for the 100.
At any rate, I generally don't think about placements until late in the race and there's still more than a marathon to go. Shortly after leaving the church, I catch the end of the 50-mile field, so it will be pretty hard to know where I stand from here in. No matter, my primary goal for the daylight hours is to make it to Charlevoix because, yes this is silly, I've already written the song for the race and the lyrics don't work as well if I don't get there by sunset. That's only ten miles away and I've got two and a half hours to do it, so I don't press.
I get to Charlevoix at 8:50 just as it starts to rain. It's been sprinkling off and on for a while, but this is bona-fide rain. Crew isn't allowed at the Charlevoix aid station because it's on a residential street. Fortunately, I had Kate wait for me at the drawbridge just past the aid so if it's up when I get there, I can at least use the time to do something useful. I bolt down some noodles at the aid station as quick as I can so I can get my rain gear from Kate at the bridge.
At the pre-race meeting, we had been warned that Charlevoix might be rather bustling on a Saturday night during peak tourism season. Apparently, light rain and a brisk wind is all it takes to shoo the visitors off the streets because I have the main drag to myself as I head down to the bridge. I quickly change my shirt, putting on a fresh base layer and also don my rain jacket. I am barely across the bridge when the bells ring that it is going up. It seems that things are indeed going my way and, as the steady rain becomes hard, cold rain, I realize that these are the types of conditions that often bring on a late-race collapse in others whereas I tend to do OK; it's time to make a go of this thing.
I don't up my pace, I just dispense with the walk breaks. That has the effect of knocking my average speed from around 11 minutes per mile to 10. Kate meets me three more times (one being the final official aid station with 12 to go). With five to go, the rain has gone back to a light mist and visibility is very poor. Fortunately, the course is now on a bike path, so there's no danger of getting hit.
I'm passing 50-mile runners pretty regularly, but it seems like there's another light a few hundred yards back that's keeping pace with me. Could I actually be getting caught from behind? That's pretty rare for me, especially when I'm running well, but my arrogance does not go so far as thinking I'm the only person who knows how to finish a race. I text Kate and tell her to go straight to the finish; I need to focus on nothing but running for these last few miles.
I drop my pace to 9:15. That's not going to feel good tomorrow, but right now, the legs comply. I don't dare look back, but I do get to a kink in the path where I can take a quick glance and the light is still closing. Faster than 9:15 at this stage? Anybody that good should already be ahead of me. I run the next in 9:25 and can feel my legs getting wobbly. Two and a half miles to go and the path takes a sharp turn onto the main road. THE LIGHT IS RIGHT BEHIND ME! Wait a minute. It's a bicycle! Who rides 8:30 miles on a bicycle at midnight in the rain?
I jog it in.
I end up in third overall with a time of 18:45. The win was well out of reach (17:55) but, yes, that extra mile did matter as second was only a couple minutes ahead. I don't fret over it. I generally bucket results as win, podium, age group win, finished so, in my mind, it's a distinction without a difference.
As I've written before, there are good results and good runs and the two don't always line up. This turned out to be a fine competitive result, but the run was off the charts. Never before have I run a 100 without having a single bad mile. Sure, there were a few 16-minute miles through Charlevoix with the noodle eating and changing clothes and all. But, that's just it. They were 16-minute miles, not 16-minute stops; forward progress all the time. Every mile that didn't involve an aid station or crew stop was under 12. And, although it turned out to be a comically nonsensical threat, there was plenty there for a fight to the finish.
So, this has to go on the rather short list of races that were great all around.
As for the event itself, there were rough edges. The stretch along Highway 31 being the most egregious. A quick review of aerial photos shows that there aren't a lot of great options; there just isn't much room between Torch Lake and Lake Michigan. However, some creative course setting could have cut the distance on the highway down considerably and there were other places where the course could have been shortened to keep the total distance right. The incognito aid station in Traverse City, well, as far as I know, I'm the only one who missed it (though nobody in the parking lot seemed to know where it was either), so maybe that one's on me. On the upside, the volunteers were great and the some of the scenery was quite nice. I generally don't repeat hundreds, so I probably won't do it again, but I wouldn't talk anybody out of it either.
And, while a lot of the orchards have been replaced with vineyards, if fast road ultras are your thing, this is one Michigan cherry that qualifies as low-hanging fruit.
Link to the Song.
