by Marlene Farrell
When you’ve been running and racing as long as I have, roughly 35 years, it’s fun to try something new to keep the fire stoked.
This summer I tried a niche challenge, a backyard ultra (BYU). A quick BYU tutorial: every registrant starts together, not once, but at the
top of every single hour because the course is a 4.17 mile loop. If you don’t start at one of the hours, you’re out, and the field dwindles until one racer is left on course and declared the winner (with everyone else getting a DNF).
Interesting, right? Obviously, the faster you run each lap, the more time you have to rest and take care of yourself (you get to set up a full tent with all your gear at the start/finish area), but you might also go too hard, so you need to seek a balance. But how to know what that balance is if this is your first BYU?
As you probably guessed, you stumble your way forward, hoping for the best.
I wasn’t foolhardy enough to think I would be the “last runner standing” (more accurately, the last runner moving). My goal was 50 miles to celebrate my 50th birthday. This would take 12 hours, given the format, and it had been over two decades since my one and only 50-mile race.
Surprisingly, a few others were intrigued, so we had a crew of 4 heading up to beautiful Sovereign Lakes Provincial Park in B.C. just outside of Vernon. I couldn’t have asked for better companions: Alice, my daughter, now 18, ready to launch into college, and, having found her own way to loving running, was up for the adventure; and Andrew and Emerson, longtime running friends, with whom I’ve shared many an hour on trail, including around Mount Rainier in 3 days a couple years ago.
The night before, we set up our staging area tents in a wide field, which in winter serves as the stadium for Nordic ski races, from kids’ races to World Cup. I had raced and watched ski races there a few times, and I was picturing the pristine tracks set for a mass Classic race, when my mental wandering was interrupted by no small number of mosquitoes attacking my head and hands as we set up a tent. This didn’t bode well for race day, but, weirdly, after their vicious threat on Friday, on Saturday the mosquitoes gave us a miraculous reprieve.
Ultras have a different vibe than short races; the discomfort will come so much later that our nervous energy is muted or compartmentalized at the start line. How much more muted at this Brokenogan BYU when, as the race director counted down and yelled “Go,” I was only committing to a 4+ mile jog before returning to all my stuff and the security that provides. I got to run and chat with my friends and what felt like a whole bunch of Canadian friends.
The first 2 laps held an unanticipated challenge. Parts of the trail were thickets of lush, dew-soaked grass, and that dew was immediately transferred to shoes and socks. To start hours of running with wet feet scared me. So, after lap 1 and 2, I changed socks, knowing full well that I didn’t have an endless supply of socks. Luckily, that was enough, because by lap 3 the grass had flattened, and the trail had dried out.
With a traditional ultra, you tend to tackle huge climbs, travel from subalpine to alpine terrain, enjoy spectacular views, rely on what you’re carrying with a bit of refueling at aid stations and maybe accessing a drop bag. A BYU is none of those things. This event for me was a love letter to the act of running. You could say running around a track is the stripped-down, simplest form of running; a BYU is the same with a bigger “track” that meanders through pretty woods.
Running the same 4.17 miles each hour allowed my mind to settle because one variable was eliminated. I knew the course with its hills, turns, and splashes of floral splendor. I could focus on how strong I felt, how second nature it was to move and keep moving. I felt akin to the trail and even had crushes on my favorite parts, with surges of anticipation when I started that middle mile that flows downhill, where my feet floated. And the trail sign that, for me, marked the last 4 minutes, or home stretch, of each lap, spiraling in toward the finish line.
All four of us were experiencing this quirky fun: run, rest, repeat. There was camaraderie at our staging area as we ate, drank and stretched. My 17 minutes of every hour became ritualized to include a bathroom stop, rinsing off sweat, airing and/or changing my shirt, eating and drinking and, an addition I highly recommend, resting on the ground with my feet propped above me on a camp chair. I was so proud of Alice, who had doubted her post-track season fitness, as she kept running beyond her tiers of goals to hit the big one, running 7 laps, nearly 30 miles, over a marathon and over double her longest ever run.
As the top of each hour approached, a race volunteer sounded a warning bell 3, 2 and 1 minutes until the next lap started. Although I loved each jaunt through the woods, I found myself involuntarily groaning with that 3-minute warning. It wasn’t that running again would be so hard. It was just the resting inertia each hour got a little weightier like a mantle that had to be shaken off.
Each lap we started off easy. Some went off even easier than me as they held sandwiches and powerwalked up the first gentle slope. I realized that was a sign of the long-haul technique. These were the runners who gave themselves only 5 minutes between laps so they had to do their eating and drinking on course. They were the ones who would be running through the night.
I started to toy with the idea of going beyond 50 miles. Why not? I was in a happy place, and I could afford to slow down a lot and still complete the course within an hour.
Andrew, running strong but still recovering from injury, and Alice both completed 7 hours, and Emerson stopped at 9 hours, when a knee started talking to him. The field was shrinking, maybe we were down to about half. Hour number 9 or 10 I faltered a bit. I couldn’t eat because my stomach knotted, so I just focused on drinking, which loosened the knot.
During lap 11, feeling better than ever, I had an epiphany. I could keep running, hour after hour, slowing down, so that the last one I did was uncomfortable with blisters or chafing or my own talking knee. My other option was to meet my goal of 12 hours and 50 miles and go out fueled by passion.
It was an easy decision. I told Alice, “This is my last one.” I wanted them to have the option of starting to clean up our gear, and I also asked them to cheer for me right before that home stretch. When the race director yelled “Go” that 12th time, I took off. Everyone fell away behind me. My feet had wings, and my cadence was one of pure exhilaration.
Please don’t ask my pace. It was pedestrian. But when it’s the 12th hour and you finally get to run the trail the way it seemed to beg to be run, it was a special kind of runner’s high that I felt.
Alice and Andrew and Emerson were there, the kindest of friends, cheering me for the final half mile. And because it’s a small race with a family feel, word spread about my 50 miles for turning 50, and everyone was at the finish line singing “Happy Birthday” as I crossed the line, about 10 minutes before the next racer would cross.
At every start line there is an unknown. There is hope and there is a chance for disappointment. Somehow, Brokenogan surpassed all my hopes. What more can an almost 50-year-old runner ask for than a perfect day of racing and what seems like the whole world wishing you well?
If a quirky event—whether a BYU, relay, ruck race, harrier race—piques your interest, I say go for it! Bring friends, be in the moment, and be grateful for the health to play in the woods.
Marlene Farrell is the Executive Director of Sustainble NCW in Wenatchee a non-profit organization promoting environmental stewardship and social sustainability, Marlene is also an avid runner.
