I didn't want to go to New York, and Vermont took place when I was helping my friend, Lee, at the Yeti 100. There was also a qualifying 100M in Missouri in my time frame but I only needed four points and didn't want to do any more than I had to do, given my limited time for training. So, in a way, I kind of backed into Cloudsplitter. I did e-mail a friend who had done in in a previous year and he spoke highly of the people who put it on and the volunteers, so I signed up.
With three years of history under its belt, Cloudsplitter has four races: 100M, 100K, 50K, and 25K. They would all start at the local high school in Norton, VA, at 7:00 a.m. I knew this year's course was new so my looking at old results was of limited use in terms of guesstimating a finishing time. I did know that with a 7:00 a.m. start, I would certainly be finishing too late in the evening to make the 3:15 drive back home post-race, so I booked my room at the local Days Inn for two nights. Dennis planned to come up on race day and meet me at the Bark Camp Lake aid station (miles 19.42 and 28.22) and do the last 40 miles with me. My second time through this station was the earliest we could have pacers and the 100K was actually 68+ miles. He planned to arrive at 11:00 a.m., which was plenty early as that would mean I'd been doing seven minute miles to get there in four hours.
The race day forecast was for clear skies until around midnight when Hurricane Nate would bring precipitation to the area. It also called for warm temperatures, reaching into the 80s in the lower elevations. High humidity would mix with the warm temperatures to make for some heavy sweating throughout the day, alleviated at times by cooling breezes that I could only assume were courtesy of Nate. Also that day was Norton's annual Woodbooger Festival, which is their version of Bigfoot.
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| Packet Pickup - Waiting on the Briefing |
Runners slowly filled the bleachers on one side of the gymnasium. A guy wearing a 2016 TRU shirt sat right next to me and was talking on his phone to some friends. He seemed both excited and nervous and made some comment about the fact that the 100K had the same 40 hour time cutoff as the 100M and that he'd use it if he had to. I was texting Lee at the time and told him it was weird not seeing anyone I knew or even recognized.
It was kind of hard to hear what was being said at the briefing due to the acoustics of the gym. Most of it was the standard information about the flags, bears, dropping out options, etc... but they also said something about the USATF trail championships that I couldn't follow. I am not a member and had no delusions of winning or setting any records, so I didn't pay close attention to that part. For reference though, I looked it up while preparing this writeup and found information about the championships here. I gathered that the Norton community and perhaps the entire area, was in an economic downturn due to a reliance on coal mining and was trying to rebrand itself to attract the outdoor adventurers. With mountains everywhere around the community, I could see it working. This race seemed to be an early "toe in the water" test of such a movement.
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| The Start/Finish Area |
Roughly the first mile of the course is paved and is the beginning of a five mile climb that reportedly gains 1556' and loses 260', making the net climb and distance somewhat comparable to The Bear 5-miler. Since all the races start together, it was hard to tell who was in which race, though I'd later figure out how the races were distinguished by bib number. I stayed and spoke with Jacob for a little bit but then we separated as our paces differed. He was in the 100 miler and obviously had to be a little more conservative than me. I think there were somewhere around 200 people registered for the four races and we spread out pretty quickly as the paved road gave way to dirt and then to single track trail.
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| A Blurry Look at an Early Section Showing Fall Color |
A quick pause here to note that while I took quite a few pictures during the daylight hours, I must have set something wrong on my phone camera because most were terribly blurry. So, very few are going to make it into this write-up.
This section was a lot of USFS road and though it trended uphill, I was able to run a bit here. The double track became pavement as I continued to climb. As I came closer to the observation tower, I saw they were setting up for a local 10K that would begin at 10:00 that morning. It was a great viewpoint and I probably should have just "wasted" a few minutes to go check out the view from the tower but I suppose I was in "race mode" and just kept going. A volunteer directed me to a side trail where I began a steep decent to the second aid station.
I reached this station, High Knob Recreation Area - mile nine, at 8:38 a.m. It was a larger station and the first drop bag location. Here, I would begin a roughly thirty mile out-and-back. I made a new batch of tailwind and I think I might have had PB&J triangle. I had tried a Belvita chewy granola bar earlier in the race and while I ate most of it, it was not very good, an assertion Dennis would later support when I mentioned it to him. At this point, I was ahead of a 15 hour pace--the fastest pace I had on my spreadsheet. I wasn't really running/walking strategically, though, and certainly would not be able to maintain this pace for the rest of the race.
I was running mostly alone now on a stretch that rolled but mostly trended downhill. I did have one guy go by me on an uphill where the trail crossed the road. Just as he crossed the road ahead of me and was out of site, I heard a lot of noise off to my right. I thought at first that it was him crashing through the woods on a downhill section of trail, but when I looked, I could only get a glimpse of what looked to be a dark blob--certainly not a rabbit or squirrel and not graceful enough for a deer. It could only be one thing--yes, the Woodbooger. I made a mental note to report my siting when I saw a wildlife officer.
The still-low-in-the-sky sun caused me problems at times, and made me wish for my sunglasses, but it was mostly nuisance and only an issue when I was running directly toward it. It did cause a real problem at one point when the sun kept me from seeing the flag on the opposite side of a dirt road I was supposed to cross. Instead of continuing on across, I turned right and headed down the road (I don't know why I automatically went right instead of considering left.) I had run for a minute or two down the road when I saw a guy running back toward me asking if I saw any flags. I said I had not so we backtracked and sure enough, there they were, right across the road from the other set. I let him go on ahead of me and he was soon out of sight.
It was 9:52 when I reached the third aid station, Edith Gap, at mile 15:17. I didn't know it at the time, but I was 28 minutes below the 15 hour pace and it probably would have been 30 minutes without my error at the road crossing. I felt pretty good and though it was warmer than I like to run in, I wasn't uncomfortable. I did drink a bit extra here; filling my bottle, then drinking it down and refilling it. As I came into the aid station, I noticed the guy ahead of me leaving it and heading a different direction than we had come and than I was heading. If he was in the 50K, why wasn't he heading back the way we came and if he was in the 100K or 100M, why wasn't he heading my way? I later looked in the race information packet and saw that the 50K had a short out-and-back on the dirt road to make the distance accurate and that's what he was doing. That did have me scratching my head for quite a while during the race, though. Finished with my visit, I thanked the volunteers and headed on toward Bark Camp Lake.
Though it had stretches that were unrunnable for me, this stretch went pretty well until I reached an odd trail intersection. The trail I was on went straight but there was a sharp right that went onto a boardwalk across the end of the lake. The yellow blazes, which we were told marked the course along with the pink ribbons, were on the part that went across the boardwalk. Not seeing any flags beyond this intersection in either direction, I elected to take the boardwalk route because it had the blazes. The map below will show what happened over the next little while--the red line being the actual course. I went (yellow line) for a while past the boardwalk and began to doubt my decision so I turned around and went back the other way. I then ran (light green line) on this side of the lake until I caught up to another runner. Not seeing any flags here, I asked him if he thought we should have crossed the boardwalk. Right as I said that, another runner was coming toward us and said we were going the wrong way--that there weren't any flags ahead. So, we all turned around and crossed the boardwalk, taking the blue line around the lake. Ultimately, that was the wrong thing to do and we should have stayed on the north side. Not only was it shorter, but there was construction going on at the far end (right side) of the lake that we had to go through while equipment was moving earth around. I'm sure the construction workers thought we were idiots.
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| My Bark Camp Lake Error(s) |
When I finally reached the aid station parking lot, I saw Dennis and he asked what I was doing there so soon (because I was coming from the wrong direction.) I told him that I wasn't there, that it was my first time through so I was only at mile 19-20. When I checked in, they counted me as "another one" who had gone the wrong way so I wondered how many had made our error. At least I hadn't cut the course short, but there is something mentally draining about doing extra mileage, especially when the course is already six miles beyond the 100K distance. The one saving grace in looking back at my spreadsheet is that this section had been very runnable so I didn't lose as much time as I would have had it been a technical section. I was now 16 minutes ahead of a 15 hour finish time. Dennis had to just hang out at the aid station until I finished the nineish mile out-and-back that would bring me back to Bark Camp Lake.
It was a steady downhill that followed Stony Creek. I see the irony in the name as I write this because this creek had a lot of large rocks in it. The water was low, but the rocks were extremely slick when they were in shady areas. I found this out the hard way when I stepped on one and went down hard. I thought I might have broken two fingers (ring and middle) on my left hand as they bent way farther back than they are supposed to. I never heard a crack or anything, though and while it hurt, they still had full movement. From then on, I took extra care on any wet, black rocks as they seemed to have been coated with motor oil. That mishap aside, the 4.4 mile leg down to Little Stony Falls seemed to go by relatively quickly, despite there being a lot of creek crossings--some of which required some climbing to get from the creek up onto the bank.
I reached the Little Stony Falls aid station, mile 23.82, at 11:52 a.m., now back up to 22 minutes ahead of a 15 hour pace. This was my turnaround and after a quick refill, I headed back to Bark Camp Lake, where Dennis would begin his pacing duties. Note: the 100 milers had to continue three miles beyond this turnaround to a Hanging Rock picnic area.
The return trip gradually made its way uphill and was the first time I'd see many of my co-runners since the start of the race since we were now heading in opposite directions. Of course, I didn't know most of them, but I did see and briefly speak to a guy in a "Grand-further" shirt, I saw Jacob again, and I saw one guy who thought I was the "Mohician Guy" and asked if I had run "Mohican." I had to let him down. It was obviously going to be slower heading upstream, into traffic, and being extra cautious on the creek crossings, and that was reflected in my time getting back to Bark Camp Lake--roughly 12:55 p.m, or about ten minutes slower than the outbound part of the out-and-back, though I somehow did miss a turn near the lake and went a couple hundred yards up the wrong trail--to the bottom of the dam. When I finally arrived at Bark Camp Lake, Dennis was talking to some guys from Kentucky who were there crewing another 100K runner celebrating his 60th birthday.
We headed out from the aid station right around 1:00 p.m. I was still about twelve minutes ahead of a 15 hour pace, but I was now getting (with my detours) into that dead zone between miles 30 and 40 that almost always give me trouble. I did a lot of walking early on, even though the trail was runnable. Along this stretch, another guy, Eric, fell in with us for a bit. We eventually gathered that he was from Greensboro, but he didn't know most of the Greensboro-area runners Dennis asked about. He also didn't talk a lot, unless asked a question, but seemed content to have us pulling him along and didn't mind all my walking. There were a few spots where I felt comfortable running through here, but this leg would put a big dent in my pace due to so much walking. At one point, Eric decided to run on ahead but I wasn't in a position to do the same. Not only was this that tough 30-40 point, but it was also the warmest part of the day and I was in the lower elevations for the course. By now, the temps had to be in the 80s--the forecast high--and it was very humid.
When I reached Edith Gap, my 15 hour pace buffer had dwindled down to just three minutes. It was to be expected given all my walking and now that I had seen the trails (lots of flat sections were riddled with large rocks that made running tricky, I couldn't reasonably have expected to maintain it the entire race. I refilled quickly and, eager to be on my way, started walking ahead. Dennis lingered briefly to study the map and determine how far it was to the next station--possibly trying to figure out how long his pacing duties might take if I continue to walk so much.
I did try to move quickly when I was walking, but could only do what the terrain and my body would allow. There would be a lot of walking in this next section as well with some good climbs and moderately technical sections. We talked a lot, which helped to make the time and miles seem to pass quicker, but this section, which was right at 10K distance, took almost two hours to get through.
We were back at High Knob Recreation Area aid station at 4:02 p.m. I was now exactly on a 16 (not 15) hour pace. We lingered a bit at the aid station as I drank as much as I could. The Tailwind and S-caps seemed to be holding off major dehydration but I was still experiencing a mild case of it. Dennis and I both tried the boiled potatoes, which I'm sure tasted just fine, but did not sit well with either of us. I knew the climb back up to the Tower would be steep, but fortunately "only" about 1.5 miles. We headed out at a quick walk as someone else came into the aid station. 100 milers, upon reaching this aid station, have to return back to Bark Camp Lake again. Knowing that, I was extraordinarily grateful at that moment not to have been in the 100 mile race. A mile or two before we had reached this aid station, we saw the first place 100 miler coming back toward us. He was moving at a strong pace and actually smiling. I'm not sure I could have smiled knowing I had to repeat that tough stretch again.
The climb up to High Knob actually went by pretty quickly. Considering it gained 612' in elevation over 1.58 miles, the fact that I was only three minutes slower than a 16 hour pace when I reached the aid station in the parking lot meant we had made pretty good time up the mountain. Because of how close it was to the one below, this aid station was not here the first time I came through High Knob. It was a pretty large one and marked the start of a "lollipop" section of trail that lay ahead. It was now 4:28 p.m. I was three minutes behind a 16 hour pace and 32 minutes ahead of a 17 hour pace.
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| Dennis Runs Ahead on a Colorful Section of Trail |
We departed, with Eric coming along with us, at a fast walk. I drank a lot at this aid station and needed to let it settle. I'm not sure whether it was the particular section of trail or the time of day, but this was the most colorful part of the course I could remember. There were a lot of yellow leaves on the trees and the indirect sun gave them a bit of a glow. Dennis pulled me to run a little through here, which I did, almost stepping on a snake at one point. Slowly, Eric disappeared behind us, running his own race. As the loop went on, it got tougher, with long boulder fields and ultimately a bit of minor rock climbing. It was a tricky enough section that the race officials sent two people up to hang out in one area to make sure no one got injured.
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| The Devil's Bathtub |
We now had our headlamps on as we made our way across the boulders and creek beds. After crossing a wide section of creek, we had to walk along a narrow rock ledge that I would later learn was above the Devil's Bathtub that had been mentioned in the pre-race meeting and on the race's facebook page. Since it was dark, I couldn't get a picture of this feature, but on the right is a public domain picture. If you do a search on Devil's Bathtub Virginia, you'll get some better pictures. In relation to this view, we were above and to the left of the pool when we were on the ledge. Roughly two miles later, we reached the Devil's Fork Parking Area and the mile 52.65 aid station.
Here, Dennis ran into a friend named Laura, whom he knew from the Abingdon area and they talked while I refilled my bottles. I hadn't eaten much lately and just didn't want much. By now, it was about 7:50 p.m.. I spoke to a local fireman while Dennis hit the Portajon. Eric came into the aid station while we were there and went to his drop bag. After a few minutes, we headed back out, faced with a climb of 1000' in 1.7 miles, back to the start of the loop.
There was only one thing to do and that was to just accept that this would be a steep and grinding climb. We didn't talk much, just focused our energy on the climb. There was nothing to see but the ground ahead of us. Nothing to worry about but getting to the next aid station. The fact that another long climb lay after that aid station was not important at this moment. Perhaps our focus paid off because the aid station came into view much quicker than I had expected and we arrived around 8:28 p.m. By that point, I was hoping for a 17 hour (midnight) finish and remember asking Dennis if he thought we could manage a 3:30 over the last 14 miles. It sounds doable, and 8:30 p.m. was just below the 17 hour pace for this aid station, but we still had a major climb back up to High Knob to tackle.
So, we headed out of the aid station and up the grassy road we had descended earlier. To our right, an orange moon peered through the trees, still low in the sky. We wondered when we might see runners coming toward us but we were completely past the grassy road and onto the dirt road before we saw anyone. Making our way up the dirt road, I tried to run the occasional downhill on this section, but I was in another low point. We saw runners trickling down toward us either solo, with a pacer, or in pairs. We saw the first place 100-miler go by, and much later the second place 100-miler, but everyone else was in the 100K with me. The number of climbs seemed inconsistent with the number of descents we had had coming down this section. And it wasn't until we reached the paved section of road that I began to feel like this race might actually have an end. I knew we didn't have much farther to the next aid station. A sign reinforced my belief when it read just .5 miles up the paved road to the parking area. Though I felt somewhat like I needed to throw up, I pressed as best I could up this hill, relieved when the aid station lights (some with an unsettling strobe effect) came into view. I was now at mile 60.92. It was somewhere around 10:30 p.m. now, which was 21 minutes over the 17 hour pace with about 7.5 miles to go. Dennis gave me half a banana here, but I couldn't eat it. I was just ready to be done. Though the temperatures had not dropped, a strong wind cooled things down substantially on this exposed point so we didn't linger long. I asked if they had any Tums but they did not. I suppose I could have tried ginger ale, but didn't think about it at the time. After thanking the volunteers, we headed down the paved road, looking for the spot where the course turned into the woods on the left.
Dennis would occasionally pull ahead and I'd shuffle run to catch up. Once we got onto the trail, I remembered it was double track and I really had no good excuse not to run, so I did so as quick as I could, which is to say 5-6 mph at most. My headlamp had annoyingly kept sliding down my forehead but I hesitated to tighten it too much as I already wasn't feeling great. For the last several hours, I had unclasped my pack to let air circulate around my soaked shirt, but I could only do it on uphill climbs. While running downhill, the pack bounced around too much, but I surely could have used some cooling down now. It seemed that every time we ran, the breeze stopped so I was getting hotter through exertion as well as lack of air flow. It seemed incredible that despite being well after sunset, the temperatures had barely dropped.
The last (Pickem Mountain) aid station came up much sooner than I had expected because the prior aid station told us we had 3.5 miles and it was actually only 2.5. With the home stretch ahead of us, we lingered only long enough to be polite and then took off. It was about 11:10 when we left, or 24 minutes off of the 17 hour pace. We had to average 10 minute miles the rest of the way to meet that goal, but I seemed to recall a few things about this part of the trail that would make that difficult. First, there would be some uphill sections, and second, there were some very technical sections and sharp turns. But we pressed on as finishing was the important thing. I had looked on the check-in sheet at the aid station and thought I saw only three times recorded when they wrote mine in, implying I was in third place. While a top three finish wasn't my goal, it gave me some motivation to keep from being passed in the last section. We had no idea where Eric might be or if anyone might have passed him and be chasing me down. So, I moved with a little more enthusiasm. I'd still have to slow down at times and keep from overheating, but it was usually momentary, and I was able to continue to run the runnable sections. I told Dennis that we'd have about a mile to go when we hit the pavement. We crossed pavement a time or two, which gave us some false hope, but then, almost unexpectedly, we emerged into a gravel park area I remembered from earlier in the day. The pavement came right after it and we charged down the hill, "smelling the barn". It was the middle of the night and as we passed a house, there were three people outside that told us their coon hound was loose and if we saw him to just tell him to go home. I told them I had beagles and knew what it was like to have them go roaming in the middle of the night.
Down we went, under the same massive bridge that I had passed under seemingly so long ago and moving over to a coned section of the road. An uphill I had forgotten was on the final section of road, beside the high school, and I made it the first uphill I had run in many hours. Down the other side and left into the parking area and then less than 100 yards to the finish. I saw the clock as I drew near and it read 17:12. So, I had missed my time goal, but achieved my ultimate goal of finishing. The same guys who Dennis had talked to at Bark Camp Lake were there waiting on their friend so we spoke briefly post-race. It turned out I was actually 4th--the third place guy was sitting there and came up and spoke--but that was fine. I hung around just long enough to return my chip tags and thank the RD for putting on the event and making it a UTMB qualifier. Susan, the race director, gave me a large finisher's medallion.
As we left, a bank's sign indicated that the temperature was still 71 degrees--after midnight in Virginia in October. At least Bryce Canyon had dropped down later in the evening--and it was in June! That was the longest race I can recall where I had to deal with so much heat and humidity the entire time. I don't know what the finish rate was, but I imagine that there were at least a couple people that were taken out by the conditions. I was just glad it wasn't me. We made our way back to Bark Camp Lake for Dennis to retrieve his car and there were still 100 milers (I guess they weren't 100K runners) passing through the aid station. It seemed so long ago when I was here, and it was--12.5 hours ago--but they were hopefully heading back from their second time through that out-and-back.
After seeing the sections the 100-milers had to repeat, I was extremely glad to not have signed up for that event. Once was tough enough, but going into the out-and-back or loop a second time, knowing what it was like, would have been torture, especially if the incoming rain made things slick and muddy. It was hard to fathom late Sunday that I had finished the 100K, cleaned up, slept about five hours at the hotel, driven around 3.5 hours home, had lunch, napped, had dinner, and gone to bed at 9:30 p.m. Sunday night and there might still be people on the course, taking advantage of that 40 hour cutoff. I'm certain that Dennis pacing me cut significant time off my finish because without him bugging me to run some of the sections, I am pretty sure I'd have walked them and had a much slower pace. It was helpful to have him ahead on the climbs, "pulling" me up as well. So now, when he goes back and does the Cloudsplitter 100M, I guess I have to pace him for his last forty miles. LOL.
So, unless something bad happens, I am now qualified and guaranteed entry into the UTMB 100 for 2018. The question is should I even try? I've mentioned it before in write-ups, but unless I figure out a way around the eating issue later in races, I don't see how I could finish something that will take possibly eight hours longer than say Grindstone, where I was already finishing on fumes. Registration is in January, so there will be a lot of hard thinking between now and then. But for now, I'll just be glad to have survived another 100K (plus.)
So, unless something bad happens, I am now qualified and guaranteed entry into the UTMB 100 for 2018. The question is should I even try? I've mentioned it before in write-ups, but unless I figure out a way around the eating issue later in races, I don't see how I could finish something that will take possibly eight hours longer than say Grindstone, where I was already finishing on fumes. Registration is in January, so there will be a lot of hard thinking between now and then. But for now, I'll just be glad to have survived another 100K (plus.)
The full results are available here. It was good to see that the guy (Brian,) I had seen in the TRU shirt at packet pickup finished. Also, Jacob finished strong in the 100-miler.
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POSTSCRIPT
A few weeks post-race, I went to the UTMB website to see if Cloudsplitter was showing up in my qualifying points list and what do I find??? Grindstone 2016 is now showing up! If you do not understand why I highlight this, I was going to be guaranteed entry for 2017 UTMB if I finished the 2016 Grindstone 100 (which was showing up on the UTMB site as a qualifying race.) I did finish but Grindstone did not submit its paperwork to the ITRA so it was not considered a qualifier when it came time for me to register for 2017 Mont Blanc. Now, a year later, it shows up... I could have either skipped 2017 Bryce Canyon or 2017 Cloudsplitter and still been qualified.
And below is where it shows I am guaranteed (priority) for 2018 UTMB.
As a twice rejected lottery applicant, I was supposed to be guaranteed entry for 2017 UTMB, but because Grindstone ultimately didn't count at the time to register for 2017, I had to register for the another Mont Blanc race, for which I had enough points, the TDS. I was unlucky in the draw, however. After Bryce Canyon, I e-mailed the UTMB board and pled my case. They graciously informed me that because my situation was unique and unfortunate, if I was qualified for the 2018 race, I would be guaranteed entry. So, I added Cloudsplitter to get my remaining four points and now with 2016 Grindstone counting, I didn't even need them. Still, I enjoyed the event and it really served to inform me that I need to get more serious about training for longer races like this.
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POSTSCRIPT
A few weeks post-race, I went to the UTMB website to see if Cloudsplitter was showing up in my qualifying points list and what do I find??? Grindstone 2016 is now showing up! If you do not understand why I highlight this, I was going to be guaranteed entry for 2017 UTMB if I finished the 2016 Grindstone 100 (which was showing up on the UTMB site as a qualifying race.) I did finish but Grindstone did not submit its paperwork to the ITRA so it was not considered a qualifier when it came time for me to register for 2017 Mont Blanc. Now, a year later, it shows up... I could have either skipped 2017 Bryce Canyon or 2017 Cloudsplitter and still been qualified.
And below is where it shows I am guaranteed (priority) for 2018 UTMB.
As a twice rejected lottery applicant, I was supposed to be guaranteed entry for 2017 UTMB, but because Grindstone ultimately didn't count at the time to register for 2017, I had to register for the another Mont Blanc race, for which I had enough points, the TDS. I was unlucky in the draw, however. After Bryce Canyon, I e-mailed the UTMB board and pled my case. They graciously informed me that because my situation was unique and unfortunate, if I was qualified for the 2018 race, I would be guaranteed entry. So, I added Cloudsplitter to get my remaining four points and now with 2016 Grindstone counting, I didn't even need them. Still, I enjoyed the event and it really served to inform me that I need to get more serious about training for longer races like this.
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