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The Leadville Trail 100 Run is a legendary ultramarathon near Leadville, CO that's been luring runners to the starting line since 1983.
The goal:
If you're a runner, your main job is putting one foot in front of the other until you finish.
But there's a lot more to the ultramarathon experience than that.
When Leadville 100 competitor and On Running athlete Genevieve Yeakel Harrison showed up to run the race, pacer Lucie Hanes pushed her along through some critical miles and got a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to pull it all together.
Running Is Individual... Or Is It?
Running is selfish. That’s not a bad thing; plenty of good comes out of the strength, understanding, and happiness that we find on our feet.
Runners become the kind of driven and resilient people that give back to the world as much as they put into themselves.
The process of building that strength through running, though, absorbs a lot of our energy. Committing to anything in life usually means sacrificing something else in return, since science hasn’t figured out how to let us clone ourselves yet.
Plus, running may seem like a solo sport on the outside but takes a village behind the scenes...
I’ve been on the receiving end of these favors more and more often over the years as I‘ve grown as a runner, but I hadn’t had the chance to see this sport from the other side of the glass until this year’s Leadville 100 Ultramarathon.
At the upper end of ultrarunning distances, there are certain roles that need filling:
It’s easy to lose track of the many details that piece together a safe and successful ultramarathon, and spreading the load across a team of people makes the undertaking at least a bit more manageable.
My friend and racer Genevieve Harrison drew most of her support from an experienced team.
When I first met up with Genevieve to take on my pacing duties, she’d already covered over half of her total distance.
COVID concerns changed the nature of crewing at Leadville 100 this year, and runners had to wait until mile 62.5 after going up and back over Hope Pass before picking up pacers.
Still, she looked better than I’d imagined she might by that point in the race...
Then the crew went to work...
Despite being surrounded by a supportive crew, the struggle to run an ultra is undeniably real.
Ultrarunning obviously does a number on the body, but the mind may take an even bigger hit. After a certain point, “runner brain” takes over.
Multiply that ten-fold to understand the brain fog that settles in during extreme efforts.
Many hands make light work, and also make sure that every need gets taken care of instead of swept under the rug as a side effect of slipping into survival mode.
Ever wonder what a pacer does during a 100-mile ultramarathon?
So did I...Refueled and restocked, we headed up that climb on her first leg with a pacer.
That term made me think that my job would center around helping her meet goal pace, but it’s both more broad and more specific than that.
I monitored our speed, but let her take the lead for the most part while I handled all the underlying concerns:
It’s much easier to just stay moving, no matter the pace, than it is to stop and start up again.
When the body and the brain are both pushing up against their maximum capacities, maintaining the momentum can be the one thing that keeps either system from shutting down completely.
As long as one foot kept moving in front of the other, we were on the right track...
CONSISTENT FORWARD MOTION.
Stopping that momentum brings in all the risk.
The second that the notion of rest weasels its way into such a tired mind, that drive begins to fade.
The idea is to almost trick ourselves into believing that we could carry on like this forever, that running is our only reality for the foreseeable future so we might as well carry on with it.
Keeping the engine roaring - or even just pitifully mewing - holds the key.
Our two aid station stops together turned into a balancing act of filling up the tank without losing the groove.
And we were off again each time before her legs could feel the lure of that chair.
Speedy transitions aren’t really about saving time as much as they are about keeping the whole rickety tower from crashing down in one fell swoop.
While running with Genevieve, I tried to keep all of my focus on her health and performance. After all, this day was all about supporting her and I dove deep into that goal.
However, I realized close to the end of my pacing section that I hadn’t done a very good job of taking care of myself.
It wasn’t a huge issue since our mileage was low and pace slow compared to my usual training, but it was a good lesson for the future.
No matter how much we care about helping someone else succeed, we can’t give what we don’t have.
If I’d actually bonked or if unforeseen circumstances made our run more difficult or drawn out, I wouldn’t have had the resources to take on the role that Genevieve trusted me with.
Taking in energy gives us more to pull from. This applies during our own efforts and those of our friends.
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Genevieve ended up taking 2nd place among all of the female competitors in the Leadville 100, finishing in just over 22 hours - two hours faster than her goal, and six hours faster than her previous time. She was patient, determined, aware, and - most of all - grateful for the opportunity to chase such a lofty dream. She proved that “effort and attitude”, her race mantra, wins the day.
Playing a part in making her dreams a reality has filled me with more gratitude and inspiration than I’d expected to find from my spot in the backseat. Giving back to her and to the ultrarunning community gave me a sense of earning my place as an athlete when my own time comes to ask for help. I’ll appreciate that support all the more because I know what the effort looks like from different angles.
Running is selfish, yes. But I believe it all balances out in the end, if we rise to a different kind of challenge: taking the valuable time to lift up others.
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