Carnage at the Canyonlands Ultra
Tips to survive, not DNF, any race or adventure
Saturday afternoon and evening, from the vantage point of a remote aid station amidst the terracotta sand and massive rocks south of Moab, I witnessed a lot of what we ultrarunners call “carnage.”
Carnage comes in various forms of suffering and breakdown. It could be a runner soaked with rain and shivering so violently that I take pity and cut a hole out of the top of a Hefty garbage bag and put it over his head to use as a makeshift windbreaker, and I slip blue disposable gloves—the medical kind we use for sanitation—over his numbed fingers, so he leaves the aid station slightly warmer but looking like a dejected dumpster-diver.
Or it could be a runner who is close to the cutoff time yet succumbs to a chair because her IT band—the ligament that runs along the outer thigh from pelvis to knee—has become tight and inflamed due to the desert’s canted sandy road and undulating slickrock, so the side of her knee where the IT band attaches radiates pain with every step. I ask her if she would like me to massage her leg, and she says please do, so I vigorously rub her thigh and knee. She says “thank you, thank you” as she chokes back tears, grateful that this stranger is touching her to alleviate pain and that this chair is providing respite, but overall crushed from disappointment. She looks at her watch, gets up, and limps several miles toward the finish, knowing she’ll be timed out but deciding that waiting hours for a ride from a volunteer would be more painful and pitiful.
Working an aid station always provides a closeup of why some athletes succeed while others fail, and I found the experience last weekend particularly interesting because the event attracted many rookies. Watching runners pass through during the afternoon and evening reminded me of the myriad reasons people DNF (i.e. drop out or “did not finish”). It never ceases to amaze me that those reasons usually are preventable and have more to do with emotions, psychology, and poor logistical planning than a lack of physical fitness.
In other words, you can be in great shape—physically able to traverse the ultra distance—yet still fail miserably.
The event was the inaugural Canyonlands Ultra by Mad Moose Events, with multiple distances: 100M, 125K, 50M, Marathon, Half, and 15K. Something for everyone. The ultra distances involved multiple loops; the 100-miler featured two 26ish-mile loops, then two 24ish-mile loops. Because Mad Moose puts on a lot of beginner-friendly sub-ultra trail races in the Moab area and throughout Utah and Colorado, this event prompted many to attempt their first 50 or first 100.
Many of these runners likely have deeply engrained memories of running Mad Moose’s past desert events in the heat. Moab is supposed to be warm, even in autumn, right? Consequently, many vastly underestimated the forecast for cold, stormy weather. By afternoon, clouds moved in and produced rain and hail, and the wind was so strong that a gust overturned our aid station table. By nighttime, temps dropped to the mid 30s (the coldest Moab-area temp that night on record was 27!).
Poor planning and bad headspace
Signs of carnage started early. I noticed a young woman—one of the frontrunners in the 100-miler—pass through our aid station at around the 34-mile mark in the early afternoon looking cold and angry, her eyebrows knit, her body language all huffy and tense. When I asked her what’s wrong and if she had an extra layer, she spit out, “No, my crew didn’t show,” meaning that her crew wasn’t on time at the start/finish area to provide her support and extra clothing layers.
Uh-oh, I thought, she is crew-dependent. Bad move. In ultras, especially ones that go through the night, one should always be self-sufficient and think of a crew as a luxury, not essential. It’s best to use dropbags or carry necessary gear such as waterproof layers and a headlamp, in case your crew doesn’t arrive on time.
When she passed through our aid station again, around mile 47, her chin was trembling as she held back tears, and she still looked cold. “You need to reset and warm up,” I told her, and she submitted to my authoritative tone.
I led her to my truck, which was parked to the side, and told her to sit in the passenger seat. Then I put a beach towel around her shoulders and went to make her a Cup o Noodles soup. When I returned, tears were streaming down her cheeks and she was shaking her head, saying, “I can’t do this.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “You are running great and have plenty of time. Just take a moment to warm up, and you’ll be fine.”
“I lost my job this week,” she said, and my feelings toward her immediately shifted from critical to compassionate.
“Oh, wow, that’s a lot to bear,” I said. “But the beauty of being out here is, you don’t need to think about that now. Your only job is to get from Point A to Point B. This is your day, your retreat. I really don’t want you to have the disappointment of DNFing on top of your life stress right now, so you should keep running. Take all the anger and disappointment you’re feeling and channel it into determination.”
She kept nodding and eating her soup and said only, “I appreciate you.”
I left her to sit in the truck a while longer, and then she got out and started running. I didn’t catch her name or bib number, so I have no idea if she finished.
That whole interaction provided an example of how emotions and life stressors can sabotage athletic performance. Her head was in a hurtful place far away from the trail underfoot. She focused on everything that was going wrong instead of right, and on her failure instead of success. I hoped I helped her make a mental shift.
Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, countless runners were caught unprepared for the cold or were unable to troubleshoot nausea. “The misery index went up big time on the last loop,” one experienced ultrarunner told me, as he decided to call it quits at 52 miles, due to the weather and a sore Achilles, instead of completing the 100.
He, and many others, lost their desire to finish. They had the fitness and pain-management skills to keep going, but the race became less important to them, replaced by the stronger desire to find relief from the highly uncomfortable circumstances.
Those who succeeded in getting back on course to get the run done adopted a gallows humor and buddied up with others in a misery-loves-company pact. Perhaps they had braced themselves for the possibility of how hard the route and weather would be and were “embracing the suck,” as the saying goes. And perhaps they had intrinsic or extrinsic motivators to keep them going, such as a time goal or the finisher’s buckle. In any case, those things would help them survive the challenge.
Our aid station, unfortunately, couldn’t help as much as it should, because the inaugural event itself was not as well prepared for serving 100-milers as it could have been. I admire the family-run Mad Moose Events and love their races that I’ve run, but they specialize in shorter distances, not 100s, and they seemed to fall short in providing enough varied warm food and heated space to take care of runners during the night.
We hustled to heat frozen snacks such as tater tots and taquitos, and to heat enough water for hot chocolate, but struggled to keep up with demand. I winced at the amount of waste created by single-serving Cup o Noodles in styrofoam cups, and runners got more chilled while waiting for the ramen to cook. We really could’ve used a four-burner instead of two-burner stove to make a big pot of soup along with quesadillas and other warm food. But we made the best of the situation.
Around 8:30 p.m., I ended my shift and headed back to the start/finish area to take a nap and prepare to pace a runner on her final loop, from the middle of the night through morning. Driving back provided my biggest adventure because it tested all my 4-wheel-driving skills. The truck bucked and tilted precariously in the dark as I gunned it over swaths of uneven slickrock and through ditches. But I made it.
“Deep Survival” applied to ultras
As I drove and then rested in the cozy truck cab, I reflected on a book I finished last week, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales. Written 20 years ago, it remains a widely acclaimed book not only for preventing or surviving bad accidents, especially in the wilderness, but also for preventing or coping with catastrophes in everyday life and in the business world.
I realized the survival traits he dissects from case studies of those who survive or die in accidents, or from getting lost in the wilderness or at sea, also aptly apply to success at ultras.
Those survival characteristics include:
Plan ahead, but be willing to let go of plans. Through planning, we create a mental map of how an experience should go, and we plan for what we’ll need to accomplish it. For example, hikers embark on summiting a 14er with a plan of when and where to start, what route to follow, what to bring for hydration, refueling, and safety gear, etc. When unforeseen factors interrupt their plan—such as strong weather, route blockage or confusion, or a painfully rolled ankle—they may remain fixated on their plan and its timetable instead of modifying it, which leads to dangerous situations. Sometimes it’s wise to save the goal for another day. Ultrarunners should use this lesson to modify their pace goals, fueling plan, and other fixed notions of how their race should unfold in order to adapt to changing circumstances. If the going gets truly dangerous (not simply uncomfortable), be willing to do what’s necessary to stay safe.
Avoid impulsive behavior. In the book, the author shares a case study of snowmobilers who “hammer-headed” i.e. zoomed up a steep slope, even though they were well informed about the avalanche risk. Their emotional impulse for thrill-seeking, rooted in the memory of past pleasure from a similar joy ride, overrode good judgment, and they were buried in an avalanche and died. The author, who’s a pilot, wrote, “We have a saying: ‘There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” The take-away for ultrarunners: think long-term, and rein in your emotions. Resist the urge to do something for short-term gain—such as increasing your pace to an unsustainable level to pass a runner for ego gratification—because that risky move could jeopardize your overall race; it’s not worth the quick hit of pleasure.
Stay calm. Related to the above, moderate strong emotions in order to think clearly and perform your best. In ultras, the added stress from excitement or agitation could lead you to “blow up,” shorthand for losing energy and falling apart.
Be humble. The author recounts several cases where it’s not the hot-headed macho type of person who survives in a group catastrophe but rather the person who is humble and able to accept, respect, and adapt to the circumstances. For ultrarunners, this means having humility and respect for the difficulty of the endeavor, the harsh and unforgiving environment, and the challenge posed by other competitors. It brings to mind one of my favorite sayings for getting through tough trail runs: “Don’t fight the trail; work with it.”
Know your stuff. Do your homework to get all the info you’ll need about terrain, weather, logistics, natural hazards, etc. In ultras, this means not only doing research to optimize your training, but also understanding all the necessary logistics to get to the start line early, ready, and stress-free.
If you find yourself in survival mode (in real life, or metaphorically speaking mid-ultra), then celebrate small successes that represent any sign of progress, such as getting to the next aid station or triaging a bad blister; count your blessings, being grateful for anything that is going right and for the fact that you have the health and privilege to take part in this event; engage in play such as singing songs in your head or making up a game like searching for heart-shaped rocks along the trail; keep a sense of humor even if it’s gallows humor, laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation as if it’s a giant bad joke; and see the beauty in your surroundings.
The author detailed several cases in which survivors—such as someone starving while adrift at sea, or injured and lost in the extreme wilderness—transcended their dire, seemingly hopeless circumstances by doing all of those things listed above, including being dazzled by nature’s beauty.
This guy who passed through the aid station had the best attitude for surviving. He wasn’t trying to be a Goggins tough guy. Quite the opposite. He was smiling, eating, and “practicing maximum enthusiasm,” as shown on his hat (a saying coined by Brendon Leonard and explained in this classic essay). He also had a funny name on his bib (“Cowboy Benny”), suggesting he doesn’t take himself too seriously. That’s the winning attitude!
The worst reason to DNF
Around 3:00 a.m., I woke up and got ready to run, which meant dressing in layers and a headlamp for nighttime freezing cold. I didn’t know the runner I had agreed to pace; we had connected online and traded a few texts but hadn’t actually met. I was willing to pace any runner in need of support since I was out there volunteering anyway and would like to experience the route.
As I waited for her to arrive at the start/finish area to start her fourth and final loop, I entered the aid station’s closed-off heated area to stay warm. That’s where I met a guy sitting in a chair named Brandon who announced, “I’m done.”
“Well, you’re in trouble then,” I told him, “because I have a pretty good record of talking runners out of DNFs. What’s wrong?”
He explained that he had gotten turned around on one of the loops and went in the wrong direction for about four miles. Even though he passed runners going the other way, he was convinced that they, not he, were headed in the wrong direction. Finally he accepted his mistake. “I added eight miles—eight miles!”
“That sucks,” I said, “but it only makes a good story if you get back out and finish the race in spite of those bonus miles.”
He shook his head and looked both intrigued and annoyed by me. “I’m done,” he repeated.
I asked him if he had anything wrong medically. No, he was not injured; he was just tired. And pissed. He had zero desire to do the fourth loop. Then I asked him if it’s his first 100 and he said no, he had done Run Rabbit Run. (Turns out, he had done several other tough Colorado 100s this year also.)
“If you can do that, you can totally do this! You have plenty of time to finish under cutoff,” I said. “Let’s say you do 4 miles an hour. That’s six hours out there. You can do anything for six hours. You could even walk just 3 miles an hour and still make it back here by the noon cutoff.
“Trust me—dropping for being tired is the worst reason to DNF. You’re guaranteed to regret it later. Plus, the sunrise will make it all worthwhile.”
He looked at me inscrutably and slowly stood up from the chair. Either I had shamed him or motivated him. In any case, he started getting his hydration pack ready. I got some hand warmers and shoved them into his gloves. He barely spoke but his body language seemed to say, “I can’t believe she’s making me do this.”
“Where’s your light?” I asked, and he said his headlamp had crapped out and the spare battery didn’t work, and all he had was a weak handheld flashlight.
I took off my headlamp—it was my backup, my good one was back at the truck—and told him to take it and turn it in at the finish line so I could get it later. He put it on his head.
“There, you have no excuses. Go, Brandon, go!”
He stumbled out of the aid station and into the night. An aid station volunteer called me a miracle worker.
After he left, the runner I was prepared to pace arrived at the aid station limping and in deep pain, with barely 10 minutes remaining until she had to depart to make the cutoff time. She doubted she could complete the final loop given her slow hiking pace, and she didn’t want to cause serious damage to her knee.
Significant limping, I told her, is a legit reason to drop, because going many miles with an altered asymmetrical gait can cause a secondary injury. She made the difficult but understandable and likely wise decision to end her race there, at about 76 miles. (The race organizer lessened the sting of DNFing by listing 100-milers who stopped after three loops as finishers of the 125K, rather than as DNFs.)
With no one to pace, I took off at 4 a.m. on the route, sorry for that runner but grateful to be able to run my own pace. I figured I’d encourage and chat with runners along the way, which I did.
About an hour later, who did I meet? Brandon, of course! He was moving well and sounded happy when I reintroduced myself, and he fell into pace with me. We shared about six miles together, swapping stories and getting to know each other while passing several slower runners. When I asked what he does when he’s not running or working, he said, “Read.” Thus launched a conversation about books.
We stuck together until sunrise, at which point I ran a bit ahead and he fell a bit behind. I marveled at the landscape and mused about all that has happened in my life since I last ran a race in this area in March of 2022. I felt profoundly grateful to start the day this way.
Brandon finished in 28 hours, 45 minutes with high spirits and, I’m guessing, no regrets. He survived.
I had planned to share my take on a controversy that lit up the mountain/ultra/trail world this past week, involving the UTMB-Ironman group, and explain why I choose to support small, independent race organizers like Mad Moose Events and won’t run a UTMB-branded race. You may have seen my Instagram stories last Friday on this topic. But I’ll save it for next week, as this post is long enough, and I want to spend a bit more time thinking through that matter.
I’ll end instead with one more Brendan Leonard shout-out. He published a post a few days ago called “16 Writers on How Running Helps Them Write.” I’m honored he included me in the list. I hope you’ll read this short collection of stories and advice, as it likely will inspire you to sit down to write and to go on a run or hike!
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Related post: Anatomy of an Aid Station
Sarah! It's Brandon--the one who had "the worst reason to DNF". What an absolute pleasure it was to meet you, and at such a momentous time for me. I was so sure that I was done. And although I was having a similar conversation in my mind as we had in the aid station--I knew all the reasons why I ought to continue--I truly needed to hear it from you as well. You didn't shame me, but you also didn't gratify my self-pity. This was humbling and motivating! This provided me with a deep respect for the community aspect of running. Your engagement with the runners--and with me in particular--showcases your power to inspire. I will never forget what you did for me and I can only hope that one day I will have the opportunity and requisite words to encourage someone else out of the chair. Thankyou!
Another wonderful piece Sarah! How great for all the runners to have your wisdom, experience and kindness. Would love to have you at my first 100!!!