The Wasatch range soars to more than 10,000 feet above sea level, with half of that reaching from the floor of the Salt Lake valley to the highest peak in the range, Mount Nebo, reaching 11,928 feet. Stretching 160 miles from the Idaho border to frame in the Great Salt Lake and its requisite valley to the east, the ridge reaches south past South Salt Lake. I was here to help one of my good friends run from Kaysville to Midway, traversing some of the most wild and remote portions of the range, for 100 miles. And I’m happy I was.
I was initially going to title this piece Wasatch Warrior, or the Beast from the East, but with some reflection I believe either of those monikers would be an injustice to the events of the weekend. And it was just that, a weekend in the Wasatch.
Or maybe more correctly a Fraturday.
While Elizabeth and Jack got out there on Tuesday, I arrived Wednesday. On that day and the next I got two micro-adventures I’ll share in a different post. But the Wasatch 100 didn’t actually take place over the weekend, more correctly on Friday and Saturday, and considering the days blended together, Fraturday.
The race specifics are this, the race begins at 5am on Friday, and you have 36 hours to traverse from East Wilderness Park, north of Salt Lake, along, over and down the ridge, until you get 100 trail miles to Soldier’s Hollow in Midway, on the eastern side of the range. The course not only has some wicked elevation, it tends to gain it and lose it, in fits and spurts. This makes it one of the more difficult 100 mile races and part of the Grand Slam series of races in the US. My role was as crew, more specifically, to drive the rental from the start, to three different aid stations, and at the third, drop her pacer and head to the finish. I, no doubt, had the easy job.
Jack on the other hand, would pace her from the 69.34 mile stop in Brighton Ski Area, up and over the high point at 10,500 feet, to the finish, starting at midnight. You could say he got the short straw.
Anyway, on to the story. Having rented an Airbnb less than two miles from the start, we were able to avoid the 4am bus trip in from SLC, with Jack and I dropping Elizabeth off at 4:42am. With a crammed parking lot and no space on the access road to park, we hightailed it to the 3 mile mark, just before the 4 mile, 4,000 foot ascent up Bair canyon. For the uninitiated, 1000 feet per mile is steep, damn steep. While in the dark, she saw us before we saw her disappear into the canyon and on towards Soldier’s Hollow.
The Wasatch 100 has 14 aid stations not evenly distributed but strategically located. With that said, we were only allowed at three of those, as many of them were in remote locations or areas where the space available couldn’t handle the plethora of crew supporting runners. Anyway, we would need to hang out at a place called Washington Park, where they’d be tracking the runners and then giving out parking passes for Big Mountain and Lamb’s, the third and fifth aid stations of the 14. Once Elizabeth was an hour out, we’d get our pass and get in the car and head 15 minutes down the road to see if there was anything we could do to help.
A really cool part about the Wasatch 100, is much of the course is running in open scrub and high altitude grasslands, meaning you could see runners approaching sometimes from as far away as a mile or more. While this made it great for spectating, it wasn’t as great for the runners once the sun came out and the heat began to rise. About half way to Big Mountain things started to heat up, with only the first fifteen miles run in comfortable conditions. Elizabeth prefers cooler weather so by Big Mountain she was already beginning to feel the stress. 30 miles down, 70 to go.
We would catch up with her next about three and a half hours later, at Lamb’s Underpass, 47 miles into the race. While still in good spirits, the five hours of baking in the sun had exacted a toll. While she was still moving well, she was about to get into some steep climbing, with the sun still doing its damage, and her feet have been steadily in decline as well. The steep descents were reeking havoc on her toes and it wasn’t helping she wasn’t eating, as nausea had been on the rise. We had faith she was still in a pretty good place, her spirits were good, but it would be 23 more miles before we’d see her again and Jack would start his Wasatch experience at Brighton. We wished her luck and watched as she lit out, under Route 215 which marks the unofficial second half of the race.
At this point, we’d been up for 15 hours, and while that’s no big deal, in six more hours Jack would be hopping in, with his 30 miles to bring Elizabeth to the finish anticipated to take between 9 and 15 hours. If he was going to get any rest, it would have to be now. We grabbed some roadside grub, relaxed a bit, and as the sun faded for the day, tried to catch a few winks. We found our luxury automobile, a Cadillac XT6, didn’t not make for luxurious sleeping accommodations. It awards short stints of restless sleep, also offset with the fact that the tracking app stopped working as Elizabeth got deeper into the canyons. We were expecting her anywhere from 10pm until midnight, so we were back at it by 9pm.
Elizabeth rolled in around 11:30, the lack of nutrition and the growing puss filled skin pillows her feet were becoming along with the challenging terrain slowing her progress. We got her into the Brighton aid station, where she attended to relieving the pressure of her blisters with a safety pin while we worked on prepping her pack for the evening, adding warmer clothes, some electrolytes and headlamps. We tried to get her to eat something, but the only thing that appealed to her was watermelon. High in hydration, low in calories or nutrients. It looked to be a long night with the high point of the race next on the agenda. They took off in good spirits, ascending the trails of Brighton, quickly out of view as the lights of the aid station faded into the night.
From this point until the finish, I was alone, of course with the converse of that being Elizabeth now had company. And to that end, and to the end of the story, thank goodness it worked out that way. The next 7 miles would be challenging, all happening in the dark, but would pale in comparison to what would come next. During these night miles Elizabeth would fall asleep while refueling, throw up multiple times, do the opposite a couple times, and begin to lose faith in whether she was cut out for 100 miles. At one point she was simply looking to get to the next aid station so she could pull the plug. However with Jack there as a steadying force, as well as the break of dawn, buoyed her spirits to simply continue station to station. No longer able to run, both due to her lack of nutrition and the mess her feet had become, they continued on, one foot in front of another.
Over the next morning, I was getting reports of Elizabeth’s condition, most concerning was her state of mind. Having known her for half of her life, I know how stubborn she is, and while I was concerned about her health, I was more concerned of what trauma might be caused to her psyche if she didn’t finish. Comfortable Jack would take care of her physical well being, I offered information to him to try to keep her going. I was hearing that after Little Deer Creek things were easy street, and if we could just get her there, the race was in the bag.
And it seemed to be working. While the pace certainly had slowed, it was consistent and moving forward. Once she left Little Deer Creek, with less than 12 miles to go, I knew I’d see her coming to the finish line, the question now was when.
After about 10am the temperature began to provide another obstacle to overcome. With plenty of time to beat the cutoff, the problem was becoming how to keep moving when you no longer have fuel in you and your core temperature was on the rise. One of my other concerns was the tracker wasn’t working so I wasn’t getting any progress data, driving up the anxiety meter a notch or two. I keep feeding Jack information I was gathering from other racers in hopes to encourage her to keep the ball rolling.
The last five miles are along the edge of a lake, making for a cruel joke, begging runners to give up on their task and simply walk into the cool water and call it a day. Not only that, with the lake to the south, there was no shade as the racers tried to get into the finish line. I was witness to the “death nap”, with athletes curling up in the fetal position on a blanket once they finished, for a much needed couple hour power nap. At this point Elizabeth had been up for 35 hours and completed 96 miles. I was getting desperate to see her and Jack come up over the horizon and walk into the finish.
And at 3:32:21pm Elizabeth McGurk, of Lebanon, NH, crossed the finish line of the Wasatch 100, in 100th place, out of 164 finishers. 298 runners started the race, with 134 DNFs. There were alot of amazing aspects of her finish. For one, it was her first 100 race. Another being that her troubles in the race started around 15 miles, doing foot surgery at miles 32 and 70. Also she hadn’t eaten any solid food for 30 hours of the race. And overcoming the voices in your head screaming at you to drop, based on all the sensory data you’ve been subconsciously assessing since the fifteen mile mark. While not where she wanted for a time, she was very happy to have overcome so many demons and slayed the biggest one being the 100 miles.
After she had some medical treatment at the finish, a quick, cold rinse in the shower (even though she had complained about the heat, both on Friday and Saturday, she refused to take a cold shower) we slowly ambled over to the awards table to collect her personalized plaque and the belt buckle that signifies the completion of a 100 mile race. While I drove home with Elizabeth snoozing in the front seat, well deserved I might add, and though I might have been chuckling at her insistence she wasn’t falling asleep, I certainly wasn’t laughing at what she had just accomplished.
There are not many people in my circle that can persevere the way I’ve seen Elizabeth persevere. Like I said in my IG post, tough as nails. This is a girl, as we were able to talk quite a bit in all the down time, who avoided running cross country as a freshman because three miles was too long. You can now times that by 34.
Over this weekend, she’s thanked me and Jack at least a dozen times. She’s said she couldn’t do it without us, and that’s partially true. We did jump from aid station to aid station. I did drive us back to the Airbnb. We did try to communicate to her in positive ways when her head was doing the opposite. So I guess we did play a part.
But I’ve also thanked her. I got to witness someone overcome countless challenges, some expected and others not, when the easy option would have been to walk away. I mean 134 others did just that.
But not Elizabeth. She showed me what grit and determination can get you. She’d tell you there were dark times. She’ll tell you she wanted to quit, she even planned to quit.
But she didn’t. And I, for one, am very grateful to her for that. And grateful for this weekend, the Wasatch weekend, with good friends sharing great experiences. How wonderfully fulfilling.
I’ll see you out there.
Elizabeth was talking about coming back and kicking the course’s butt the very next day. Often with a challenge like that, the first marathon, the person says ‘never again’, only to have time soften the memories of discomfort that prompted them to say it the first time. Not Elizabeth, pretty much right after she finished (OK, so a few well earned, sleepful hours after.) I think she was surprised to hear that Jack and I were so willing to sign back on more than we were to hear her already planning to be back. And it’s not the only 100 she was talking about. The list included BadRock as well…
