In the world of ultramarathons there are a couple races that are feared… even a newbie like myself knows that the hardrock 100 and the hurt 100 are considered two of the toughest 100 milers. with Krissy heading to Oahu to race in this years hurt 100 miler i could not resist the temptation to give their 100k (62 miles) race a try.

Saturday morning at 4:45am Karl Meltzer, Krissy Moehl and i packed up the car and headed to the nature center. 98 of the 100 registered racers lined up with us on the bridge. i felt kind of weird up front with Karl, Krissy, Matt Estes and some of the other guys with team jerseys on. a Hawaiian song, a blow of the conch and we were off into the darkness of the first lap on trails i had never stepped foot on before.

100 mile race had 24,935 feet of elevation gain
100k (62 miles) race had 15,000 feet of gain

the hurt loop is a notorious 20 miles with 5,000 feet of elevation gain. i had heard so much about how hard the course was before the race i wasn’t sure what to expect. “unrunnable”, “worst sections of rooted trails I’ve ever seen”, “mud that will suck your shoes off”, “root sections where you will not touch the ground”, “nowhere to stride out”, “impossible to get into a groove on these trails”. the direct quote from the hurt info packet was good too - “You will be running on very uneven, rocky rooty, and muddy type of trail where footing is at best adequate. Be careful when traversing wet rocks and roots. Some trails run along cliff sections with serious drop offs… There are very few sections where you can run with consistent stride for more than a few hundred yards at a time.” the 100 mile racers run the loop 5 times, the 100k racers 3 times and then a 2 mile short loop. the course is a big loop with out and back spurs in three locations. this was great for seeing who was ahead and behind you and gauging if they were making time or not.

my strategy: my first 50k ultra race was in October. this was my first 100k, so i really had no idea what i was capable of… however this info is a bit misleading if you know me. anyway - so i planned on running around 4:30 laps and was going to try and do that basically from the start, knowing the first lap would be fast. i thought if i could stay up front with the leaders of the 100 mile race i would win the 100k.

As we started out Karl and another guy named golden (i think) took off the front. i felt good and started running conservatively at first, my comfortable uphill pace, running where i could, hiking where i couldn’t. two weeks of non activity (tapering) had me ready to jump out of my shorts i wanted to run so fast, but on this course that would be a very bad idea. running up hogsback to begin i found myself behind David Goggins (eventual 5th in 100 miler 27:49). i followed him for a bit but knew he was running the 100 miler and i was antsy to get moving fast. so i passed him and headed up into the darkness. with no one to follow i had to stop a lot and look around to figure out which way to go. the course was well marked but i just didn’t know my way around. after 45 min of this I figured I’d simply wait for the next group and tag along with them. the next group of two guys included Jamie Gifford, a fellow Washington ultrarunner (he’s won cascade crest 100 miler). we chatted and i followed, but as it got light out i was moving a bit faster and they fell behind, no doubt running smart races for the 100 miler.

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