SPARTATHLON 2019

If you believe in god(s), if you believe in love, if you believe in the need to tell stories to live to our fullest, then you need to experience the Spartathlon. It is magic because you become the story and the story becomes you.

The view of Ancient and modern Corinth from Acrocorinth, a castle on a hill made of the stuff from my childhood dreams.

11 of 17 of Team USA at the start in the shadow of the Acropolis.

King Leonidas waiting for our arrival in Sparta.

One of my absolute favorite classes in undergrad was a Sports Literature class taught by a woman. We had just read Don DeLillo’s End Zone and our Professor had us focus on the novel’s none-too-subtle theme of football as war. The perhaps inherent desire for violence, she challenged us, is captured on the playing field for us all – the players, the band creating the soundtrack, the strategy and implementation, and (perhaps most of all) the spectators. It is a replacement for our warmongering tendencies, perhaps. The entire class quickly leapt to football’s defense. I listened. I might have said something half insightful, but I am still listening to that challenge in my head.

There is something awfully innate that seems to compel my desire to keep getting better at fitness. Running happens to be the type of fitness that has always been a natural fit for me. It makes me feel confident and able. I feel strong and ready when I’ve been training well. Ready for what? A race, I guess. My voice instructor in college used to tell me that she could tell that I was in race shape. So, I suppose it made me ready for other things – sudden and necessary oration or song. One of my favorite moments in law school was to make one of the best off-the-cuff oral arguments I could possibly wrangle up in a classroom setting and hear from my Professor (Bobby Kennedy Jr., in fact) that I had a great voice. So, I guess it’s made me ready for races and oral argument, which isn’t bad in this civil society. Perhaps Socrates would be pleased.

DeLillo’s beautiful and militaristic descriptions of football do not share physical contact as a characteristic with a sport that lacks the outright mimicry of the battlefield – ultrarunning (or any running, really). Yet, running and human foot travel play into our history of war, democracy and freedom much more directly.

 

Waiting for the start of Spartathlon 2019 looking way too calm, content and ignorant given what I was about to do.

For me, the story began at home with a bunch of practical preparation that allowed me to ignore what I was getting myself into at a race so intertwined with our own modern day freedom. Let’s be clear: you can be part of the Spartathlon if you either qualify for the lottery and win the lottery or do 25% better than the lottery qualification standards. 25% better for women is fast: a 7:52 100k, an 85.44 mile 12 hour, a 16:30 100 miler, or 132.04 mile 24 hour. I got in with an auto-qualifier under the 100 mile standard.

And one more thing for the sake of clarity: it’s a race through real places where human life takes place today, not one of Teddy Roosevelt’s midnight forests. So, you’re going to be playing mind games with yourself instead of being on a luxury trail cruise. I know that you trail runners get excited by epic adventures, but you’re just going to have to think of the wild boar road kill that I saw in the last 25 miles of this race as the least of your worries and the people driving the cars that hit that gigantic wild boar as your biggest threat. Remember: you are smaller than the wild boar road kill! Ok. The race logistics, strategy, and the story.

The basics

The Spartathlon is a 246km or 153 mile road ultra with the exception of a well-placed trail over a mountain. You can attempt a finish with or without crew. I had excellent crew who did everything from mixing drinks to finding restrooms and being the voices and faces I needed to see to keep my confidence in place even when I had mostly lost it. There are many challenges to the race, but the first two to give thought to is pacing to beat cutoffs and being able to run after 100 miles. The 2019 US team consisted of a good variety of weathered road, track & trail ultrarunners and only half of us finished, which is actually better than most years. A reasonable goal for the Spartathlon is to finish it no matter how great of a runner you are.

The best crew ever: the Daves.

Sections of the course and strategy

You can think of the course in sections: 0-26.2 miles, 26.2-50 miles, 50- nighttime, the mountain, mountain base-mile 140, 140-King Leonidas.

Only 9,268 feet of elevation gain.

From the stunning start at the Acropolis in Athens to mile 26.2 you have a little runnable climb then a really nice descent to the water and then rolling to flat roadway out of Athens. The roadway is busy, the villages are busy, the mountains and ocean are gorgeous but necessarily industrial (there was this revolution that resulted in industry not too long ago that we’re all not too proud of but completely rely on) with several refineries along the route. You’re settling in and being generally mindful of the marathon cutoff, which is 4:30. I ran it in 3:46, but my goal was 4:00. I used the extra time to take advantage of the restroom in a grocery store next to the crew stop, got a refreshed set of handhelds that stayed ice cold for about 2 minutes and 40 seconds as I settled into the next 25 miles.

From the marathon to 50 miles, it was all business for me. My 50 mile goal was 8:15 and I came in at 8:15. There’s a nice, runnable climb not far outside of the 26.2 aid station that made me wonder if I had predicted my pace well enough, but there are so many easily runnable sections that you should be able to easily predict your times based on the elevation chart and some test races that allow you to test out your 50 mile time in different conditions. In the first marathon, I stopped at exactly zero aid stations. The heat was intense enough from 26.2 to 50 miles that I stopped at every single aid station in this section to sponge off. At one point, a local man working an aid station who spoke no English looked at me, smiled, removed my hat for me and dumped an entire half gallon of water over my head. I was so happy that I didn’t even care that he completely soaked my shoes in the process. It was really hot.

I used three summertime experiences to give me a good sense of what I could do to meet the 50 mile cutoff: a 90+ degree F, humid 24-hour track race (Ethan Allen 24 Hour); a runnable mid-80s, humid trail race with 3700 feet of climb by 50 miles (Burning River 100); and a mid-80s, fairly humid, part-shade/part-sun, crewed 90 miler on a crushed limestone trail where the first 26.2 was a steady incline then it flattened out. In each instance, my goal with the heat was to keep my pace as easy as I could possibly go (least stress) and see where my time was so I could understand how I would need to run (and feel) to meet the Spartathlon cutoffs. I wore, but didn’t look at, my watch in each run so that I could just focus in on keeping things easy, understanding the results and necessary adjustments later, then letting myself race after a certain point when each race started to cool down. I ran each 50 miler in 9:42; 9:15; and 8:11, respectively. Based on my fitness and the course profile, I thought an 8:15 was a reasonable goal for Spartathlon. The cutoff is 9:30 at the 50 mile checkpoint. I would have been comfortable with an 8:45-8:50 if the circumstances required it. I was outright giddy that I hit my goal time right on the money. All the race trials and after work training runs in the heat and humidity had paid off.

I resisted ice for the first 50 miles, but then I started to use it...obviously.

After 50 miles, I was mentally prepared to take it easy. I wanted to take it easy until I was over the mountain and then try to make the most of the cool nighttime. Since it’s still daylight, the course from 50 miles to nighttime is quite stunning – olive groves and stately rural homes dot the landscape. The running is fairly flat and becomes much more hilly with darkness setting in. The hills were all very runnable with a quick stride. Aid stations start to appear at the top of a climb during this part of the course. I’ll note that I developed a great deal of confidence running hills at a low heart rate by incorporating rollers and some fairly steep, long hills into my easy training runs. I think it helped.

The mountain, which is a necessary part of the course, is difficult because it’s getting cold and you’re going more slowly to use a lot of anaerobic muscles. You climb from mile 99 to 100 for 1,000 feet. Then you descend for several miles down a road-width section of loose gravel & stone. Some people were amazing on the precarious scree descent, then there were lots of people like me who couldn’t find footing and held back. It’s worth practicing your descents on loose rock for the race. The more confidence here, the better. It really slowed me down and I wasn’t prepared for it. My quads were fine, but my handling on the loose rock was way off. And if you think you’ll be slow here, be sure to have warm clothes. This is where I started to see my teammates: Zandy, Steve, Andrew and I all got to check in with each other and keep each other motivated. We all experienced the heat, the climb, the difficulty in running after 100 miles and too few calories, and the heat again.

From the mountain base, you can run but there will be hills. Some people say they have no legs after this point, but I was mostly dealing with sugar crashes and battered and bruised feet for the last 50 miles. There are some long climbs throughout that you’ll want to be able to tackle well. Try to stick with it and stay focused with the nice cool morning. It will likely get hot later. It’s completely runnable.

By the time you’re making the last climb before the 13.1 miles to-go point, you have to get ready to let your legs carry you down the descent into Sparta. It’s a long, nice grade that you don’t want to resist. The more you’re able to get your legs up to let you go, the better this section will be for you. For me, my friend Bruce passed me at the very beginning of this section then I passed him back trying to use the hill’s momentum. Bruce later said when he passed me my face was completely white. Apparently 53 miles of sugar crashes & corrections takes its toll, especially after putting in a decently executed 100 miler. I was lucky to have gotten through it, but finishing was my only goal and the focus on that goal washed all the other issues that came up away rather quickly.

Running into Sparta across the famous Eurotas River.

The scenery

I was completely stunned by the mountains, the land use, and the people along the way. You’re running…you don’t see everything, but there is plenty to see and imagine what it might have been like for a warrior-messenger to traverse a similar route during the urgency of war. You’re in a historical hotbed of politics and drama. It’s the storytelling center of the universe. Take a look around no matter how hard things are for you personally. You might even see a wild boar!

Aid stations

The aid stations are numerous and helpful. They had orange juice, isotonic (sports drink), coke, sometimes other sodas, and water. I found ice and a sponge bath at almost every aid station. Food options included (from my memory) bananas, peanuts, raisins, chips, sometimes sandwiches, sometimes soup and coffee, sometimes watermelon. And every aid station had unique people typically from nearby villages staffing them. They were all so wonderful and helpful.

Runnable hills but battering surface

Other than the mountain, you can run the entire course in my view. But you really need to get your feet used to asphalt and consider your shoe choice very early in your training on asphalt. I used a Nike Pegasus, which worked well, but I wouldn’t have minded a little forgiveness in the forefoot. I ended up with bruises under the callouses of my forefoot on both feet.

The weather

We had lots of people from Florida on our team. They were making fun of me the day before the race for saying it was hot and humid when they felt chilly, but then the major complaint about the race was that it was hot and humid. I think people saw the mid-80s and thought that the temperature would be fine, but with a 50% drop rate, it clearly wasn’t fine. The reason, I think, was the humidity, which was around 76% at the start. That equaled a brutally hot couple of days on the course. I was lucky to have specifically trained for both heat and humidity. I made a point of training around 4-5pm every day in the Ohio summer, which was extremely hot and humid this year. I raced hot races for the purpose of training myself to keeping it chill in the extreme heat. It worked.

The nighttime was a damp cold, which was a problem when I slowed, but fine when I was able to speed up. Some people talk about getting really cold at this race after they ascend the mountain. You definitely need a layer for the mountain. I know that I get super cold and that hypothermia makes me a bad decisionmaker. So, I even took a toboggan and mittens up the mountain. But this year wasn’t as bad as I had heard other years have been.

Being part of a team

One of the coolest parts about this race is that you compete against other countries by finish rate. While I don’t completely understand how each country secures additional entries to the race, I think it’s caught up in the prior year’s finish rate. So, being on the US team should mean that you have additional incentive beyond your own goals to finish the race. You should do it to get the United States a powerful team on the international stage as a part of the story.

Being part of the legend

People often talk about the magic of this race. It’s caught up in the stories (the dramatic and the as-close-as-we-can-get historical) of Phidippides travelling by foot to Sparta to ask for assistance in the war against the Persians where many Athenian rebels lost their own lives, but preserved Athenian democracy. Imagine not only the job of delivering a message of the need for help, but also of being compelled by the desire for freedom to run back for 153 miles to join your fellow soldiers on the battle field. I am lucky to know nothing of war or even violence, but I believe in physical exertion as part of the process to see the sun. I believe that we engage in endurance events in part to find truth and goodness even if part of that need for fitness comes from our inherent need to be at the ready for defense.

It’s the need to tell stories of our past and how we got to this fairly luxurious state that makes this race completely different and compelling. It’s also that so many people from completely different backgrounds come together for the race that make it so interesting. I found myself communicating with people in ways that don’t really require a shared language to keep my chin up during the race. While I do speak Spanish, I couldn’t think through speaking Spanish to the Mexican, Spanish and Argentinian runners around me. But we encouraged each other nonetheless. We were all fighting the same battle for the same team. At a point when I needed a boost on a long climb around 130 miles, an Argentinean runner was passing me and said with a wonderfully heavy accent both: “come on, vamanos!” I had just grabbed two handfuls of salted peanuts and looked down trying to find my strength. She turned around again several seconds later and said with a stop between each word: “You. Are. Wonder. Woman.” I nodded to her in some level of disbelief but also completely floored by her insistence. I occasionally looked up to see her go up the hill with a much faster walk than me. Then I held my gaze starkly ahead and started running up the hill. I passed her back in 5 minutes, grabbed her arm and said “thank you.”

At the mayor of Sparta’s lunch the next day, I found her and gave her a USA team shirt. We had a meaningful embrace, she said “I love it!” She showed her teammates the shirt, and ran to her crew car to grab an Argentina crew jersey for me. It was everything and I wouldn’t give up the low or the subsequent high that built that relationship for much of anything. I can’t think about it without getting teary.

It’s not all thyme and honey

This race is the hardest I’ve ever raced. I had moments when I thought it was fun, but not really that many. It was just hard most of the time even when enjoyable. But there’s something about being worthy of appearing before King Leonidas to a cheering crowd of Spartans, to a crowd that has been able to enjoy the life of a sleepy town because of the heroics of warriors who could run over long periods of time, that makes me feel worthy and grateful of this life I get to live. I left hungry to tell the stories that create pride in humanity and celebrate our ability to pursue what we love.

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So, go to Spartathlon…if not as a runner, as someone’s crew. You won’t become a god, but you’ll be a better storyteller and full of love and the need for a shared, compassionate human existence.