This is one special race, but not just because of its billing listed above. It's because of the people involved. From the Race Directors, John and Cheri to the more than 200 volunteers. Many of whom have become friends. The lengths they go to put on a successful event you can't even imagine. Besides doing an absolutely wonderful job there are countless stories of aid workers going above and beyond each and every year. The way Wendi Baldwin and Karlene Apelt did for me last year. Not only did they help save my race, but they searched me out after to see if I made it to the finish. We've become friends and now stay in touch. Kevin Langdon is writing a book about the Superior 100. Kevin probably has or could have a chapter in his upcoming book on these stories alone. So far the excerpts I've read are brilliant! Look for it in the near future.
Still being fairly new to this ultra stuff I haven't done many events other than RockSteady events. I new we had it good out there, but didn't realize just how good until my pacer(Bob) mentioned it. He was at the big show(Western States) this year pacing a friend. He said to me, "these aid stations are unbelievable. They are even better than WS."
(Keith and Kathy LaPlante parents of the famous Dan LaPlante)
John Storkamp puts so many personal touches on this race as well. From making a point to greet and speak with virtually every runner at the pre race meeting to personally congratulating runners at the finish while hanging the finishers medallion around our necks. Then he even followed up with Facebook congrats on my personal FaceBook page. Many, many thanks to John, Cheri, and all the volunteers.
John Storkamp puts so many personal touches on this race as well. From making a point to greet and speak with virtually every runner at the pre race meeting to personally congratulating runners at the finish while hanging the finishers medallion around our necks. Then he even followed up with Facebook congrats on my personal FaceBook page. Many, many thanks to John, Cheri, and all the volunteers.
This year was a struggle for me. Training was limited due to long time nagging knee issues. Every time I'd get back to back weeks with 50+ miles I'd be sidelined with swelling and pain. I also had a really rough Voyageur 50 where I was over an hour slower than 2014. A week before the Superior 100, after not being able to run but 4.5 miles over two weeks, I was seriously contemplating my first DNS.(did not start) As a last resort I dialed up my Orthopidic Surgeon in hopes that he could help. He'd giving me synvisc injections to alleviate the pain before, but I didn't know if he could fit me in on such short notice, or if they would work again. Last time I needed them was just before the Arrowhead 135. His office called me right back and got me in the same day. Dr. Lemker has been amazing to me. Thank you Doc! This was now the 2nd time he'd hooked me up on short notice. On a side note this is the 3rd round of these type of shots. Surgery is probably inevitable, but for now we are doing what we can to keep me running. The day after the shots I knew that I was back in the game. The pain was gone, but more importantly, so were the negative thoughts.
Thursday I drove up to the pre race dinner and manditory meeting. I found some people I knew and sat with them. After the meeting I headed up near the finish area and slept in my truck dirtbag style. I brought a couple couch cushions to lay across my back seats. Then I threw my sleeping bag and a pillow on top. I was set up for a perfect nights sleep.
I set my alarm for 5am to give me an hour to get some coffee and get ready. Getting ready consisted of applying as much anti chaff lube to all my potential chaff spots as humanly possible while laying in the back seat of a truck and getting my run gear on. The hour flew by. Soon we were all loaded on the shuttle bus and headed back to the start. At the start I got to visit with quite a few people and we all wished each other good luck. This community is awesome. Just a couple years ago I was at my first ultra and didn't know anyone. Now it seems like I know or know of 1/2 the field. Lots of the same faces at all the local races. John gives his last set of instruction from his trademark stepladder and we are off.
This year the 1st leg changed a bit. Due to a land dispute the Superior Hiking Trail lost access to the first 4.5 miles of single track. Instead we used the adjacent bike path which turned out to be really nice. The views of the lake were supurb and you could actually look at them without having to worry about catching a toe on a root or rock.
After leaving the bike path we are in for a treat. We pass through a box culvert and onto the Superior Hiking Trail for the next 99 miles or so. That's 99 miles of the most gorgeous views, unbelievably rugged single track trail, and almost mythical remote Northern Minnesota woods. Now we are on a single track that follows the Splitrock rivers edge inland. I settle in somewhere near the last 1/3 of the pack not concerned about anything but getting to the next aid station and enjoying the trail. We soon pass the rocks for which the river is named. It's one heck of a sight to see.
It's hard to tell from the picture but these two gigantic rocks are just standing there at the rivers edge all alone as if chiseled out of the riverside over millions of years. Here we can see runners coming down on the opposite bank of the river. Soon we come to a bridge that has seen better days. It's got a lean to it and a cable attached to the top opposite the lean as if to prevent it from falling over. The sign also reads one person at a time. Because of this traffic backs up just a bit.
Soon we are 10 miles in and at the first aid station. Like last year Donald Clark is at the top of the spur trail greeting runners. I high five him as I head down to the aid station. At the aid station I see Wendi and Karlene. They wish me well and say they will see me at Silver Bay. I just hope I'm in better shape than when I met them last year. They are not only volenteering at two aid stations again this year, but both of them would be running the next morning as well. Wendy the 50 miler and Karlene the marathon. There are countless stories like that too!(Awesome Stuff)
The next section is another 10 miler or so. Last year I ran out of water here. On the way out of Split Rock I again high five Donald.(he has no idea who I am but he's at almost every race I run) Soon we run by John and Cheri Storkamp out taking pics and cheering runners. It don't take long and it starts to open up. There are a lot of beautiful overlooks in this section not of just the Lake Superior, but some looking inland from ridge line to ridge line. The trail seems to follow all these amazing cliffs that are hundreds of feet high. A lot of the trail thru here is ledge rock and very unforgiving. It's sharp and tears up the feet. I soon pass the section that I took a huge fall last year in which I ended up summer salting and landing upside down on top of my pack. Susan Donelly was right behind me at the time. This year she caught me a few miles further in after the cliff section. For those that run this race Susan needs no intoduction, but for those that don't, she was in route to completing her 15th Superior 100. She has over 200 ultras on her running resume'. She is also a personal trainer and life coach. I ran with her a little at Zumbro this spring as well. This year I end up running with her for a few miles as we headed to Beaver Bay. The first thing I notice is how soft her foot strike is compared to my thunderous steps. I use this opportunity to learn from one of the running greats. As we talk she freely gives me pointers to work on. She asks if I ever do ab work. I say not really. Then she goes on to explain that by engaging your core you can reduce the pounding in the knees. I start to immediately test the theory and work on it the rest of the race. Soon I find myself running alone and I must be getting behind on my hydration. I feel some cramping coming on. Pretty soon my left hamstring is almost completely locked up. This is what I love about these races! For me it's inevitable. It's not if something is going to go wrong. It's when is something going to go wrong. I lean against a tree as I try to get the charlie horse to go away. A couple people ask if I'm ok as they go by. I say I'm fine, but I'm thinking to myself this is aweful early in the game to be needing to deal with this. I immediately go for my S!Caps. I take 4 right off the bat and actually break one of them open in my mouth. I read somewhere that the actual tasting of salt can somehow trick the body. When you are cramping you'll try just about anything. Anyways, it worked. I probably should have started on the S!Caps before the cramping but for some reason I didn't. Now I start to work hard at getting more water in as well. Soon I get to the Beaver Bay aid station. As I come in I hear someone yell my name. I wave but couldn't figure out who it was until a little later. It was Jim Wilson whom I met at the Arrowhead 135 and had since run with at a couple different races. Usually I see him in his running glasses, but this time he had his everyday glasses on and I hadn't recognized him. I felt bad later after I figured it out. Anyways, I head to the tables and get some food and quickly refill my water. The next section isn't long but it has some good climbs.
It's about 5 miles to the next aid station. I use this time to slow down a bit and work at rehydrating so the cramping doesn't rear it's ugly head again. Now I'm taking salt every hour. I also start adding a gel every half hour. By the time I get into Silver Bay I am pretty much back on track. I am feeling pretty good and I get there about the same time as J.D. Coolidge. His Dad is also there supporting J.D. I'm in an on line run club with them and have become pretty good friends with his Dad. We were both in the Marine Corps. Here i see all kinds of people I know. I visit a little with Wendi, Karlene, Mike, and Janet. All runners I've met in the last couple years.
Photo credit: Bob Coolidge
J.D. and I leave Silver Bay together. I'm feeling pretty good. After a while on our way to the Bear and Bean overlooks I take a fall. As I go to step over a downed tree a stick pokes into the mesh of my shoe while the other end digs into the ground and I trip falling on my face. Not only that, but somehow this causes my calf to ball up into another charlie horse. This makes it sound like I broke my leg as I lay there grasping my calf. J.D. and a couple others stop to try and help. I laugh and try to apologize while I tell them it's just a cramp and I'll be fine. Soon we make the climb up toward the over looks. I am enjoying running with J.D. but he soon steps aside to take a leak. I take a quick video as I run by the overlooks. As I stop to take a picture I run into Kamie Nicholls. I'd met her and her husband up at Arrowhead the past two winters. I ask her if she would like me to take a photo of her with the lakes in the background. It's the least I could do after she had taken some really good photos of me up Arrowhead. We ended up running the rest of this section together. It was nice to have someone to visit with. It made the time fly by. As we got to the next aid station Bob is there with his big old bulldog Pearl. Bob asks, "Where is J.D.?" As soon as he does J.D. pops out of the woods. He was right behind me. At this point I was about as far back in the field as I would get. I was 183 out of about 220. I was feeling really good and I knew the overnight was my favorite part.
As I get ready to leave Tettegouche I look to see if Kamie is ready to go. She gives me a sign as if to say 1 minute and she would be. So I wait for her. I was in no rush as I was well ahead of cut offs and my target. Kamie and I depart together. She had been having stomach problems and it was starting to really get to her. Sometime before dark she had to make another potty break. She said to leave her. I stopped to take a leak hoping she'd catch back up. I also stopped to take some photos as I came out on some awesome overlooks near Wolf Ridge Learning Center.
The sun was setting and the views were magnificent.
Soon I see Zach Pierce out in the middle of nowhere with his camera and a back pack. I stop to take another photo at one of the many gorgeous overlooks.
After I'd seen Zach I must have hooked up with J.D. again. I remember talking to him and we wondered if Zach had taken a short cut in or if he had hoofed it all the way from one of the aid stations. I found out later that it was the latter. Again, these volunteers rock! As darkness fell we began looking for the Co. Road 6 aid station. I knew from last year that we could see it from a long way off.(as we would parallel it up on top of a ridge high above the road) From there we could see the cars and the aid station also had some Christmas lights that were all lit up. We hooked up with another guy too as we made our way to the long descent down to Co. Road 6. Once we get there it's a good 1/4 mile in the ditch along the road. J.D. Tripped on the slanted surface right after a guy told us to watch our step. J.D. seemed to be alright. As I pass Kamie's Crew I tell them what I know about her. I could see the look of concern in their faces. I felt terrible for leaving her. Bob is at the aid station. While he isn't crewing me I still sure enjoy seeing him at the aid stations. Here I have my first drop bag. Now that the sun went down I deside to change into a dry shirt. The temps are suppose to drop to 39 degrees overnight. I have a thin long sleeve in my pack but I chose not to use it unless I need it.
The next section was about 7 miles and J.D. and I head out together. I've moved up from 183 to 171. J.D. had some time split sheets he had gotten from somewhere online and he said we were on 30 hour pace. In my mind I knew I couldn't sustain that pace but I knew I felt phenomenal at this point. I was leading J.D. I was starting to pull away. I asked J.D. If he wanted to stick together. He didn't seem to care either way so I just went at a pace that felt good to me. Soon we were separated and on our own. Now I was starting to make up ground. From Co. Road 6 to Crosby Manitou I wasn't passed by anyone. As I got to the Findland spur trail I was looking for Christmas lights. I remember thinking last year how much work it must have been to string all the lights. This year there were non so the spur trail seemed much longer than I had remembered. Again Bob is there at the aid station. He hangs out with me as I get my resupply. I make it a quick one here and try to head out before I cool off. By now I'm starting to see lots of buffs, hats, long sleeve shirts, and even some puffer jackets. I'm still in my short sleeves and shorts. I just figure most of them must be from somewhere further south or it could be my own extra layer of insulation. I'm not exactly skin and bones. I've now moved up to 161.
The next section I don't remember much as I just put my head down and tried to reel in the headlamps ahead of me. Now people had picked up pacers so I didn't know if I was passing runners paired up or runners with pacers. I wasn't sure when or where my pacers would show up, but the plan was in the morning sometime around 7am. I was ahead of where we figured I'd be in the morning. I was also not sure of what aid station was next. It ended up being Sonju Lake Road. In hindsight I should have had a list of aid stations and mileage chart with me. Sonju is a pretty remote aid station, but they do it up right. They have a fire and are cooking food on camp stoves. I avoid the trappings of the warm fire and try to get out of there before it has a chance to suck me in.
The next section is about 5 miles and by the time I get there I had moved up 31 more spots to 130. I was starting to hope my wife or anyone else following along would wake up in the morning and see my race had picked up and I was moving up in the field. As I head up to the Crosby Manitou aid station my pacer(Bob Skenzich) walks out to meet me. It's 4 in the morning and Bob and Lindsey had seen that I was ahead of schedule so they came up in the middle of the night. I had to have been smiling ear to ear. Those guys are so good to me!
Next we had probably the most difficult section ahead. It's about 10 miles but it is some grueling climbing down and then even worse going back up the other side of the river gorge. I just wish it were daytime because you could just tell the view had to be magnificent. In this section I started to feel rocks or mud in my shoes. I was also starting to chaff. We were still making good time tho. As it was beginning to get light out my chaffing was getting really bad. I started asking other runners if they had any lube as we'd pass. Finally we caught a runner I knew. It was Dan Laplante and his pacer Jorden. Dan was having trouble holding anything down, but he was still looking pretty good. They had some lube that helped with my chaffing issue. We got to sugar loaf still making up ground. We were now in 111th place.
The next section was only 6 miles, but it was a long 6 miles. In this section I was starting to feel the lack of sleep creeping up on me. I even saw what I thought was an aid station set up with tents and cars. As we got closer it soon becomes apparent it was only a hallucination and they vanish into thin air. We thought we were coming up to Temperence when in reality it was Cramer Road. We knew what the mileage was but we were off by an aid station. That played with my mental state just a little. At Cramer Road we had moved to 108. Here my next pacer Stu was there to meet us. I took a seat and had planned on tending to my quickly deteriorating feet, but my drop bag was at the next aid station. Stu offered me a pair of his extra socks that he had in the car. So I did end up tending to me feet. Unfortunately the damage had already been done. I cleaned my feet as best I could with baby wipes and popped a few blisters with my bib pin. Becky(Stu's wife) looked as if she was going to puke when she saw my feet. They had now been wet for almost 24 hour and did not look good.
Everyone bid us farewell and now just Stu and I headed off on the next 7 mile section.(Bob stayed behind) I don't remember much from this section as the lack of sleep was now getting to me in a big way. We must have still been moving good because I was still gaining ground. We got into the Temperence aid station(mile 85) in my best position of the race. We were now in 90th, but that was soon going to head in the other direction. My feet were now in major pain.
From Temperence to Sawbill it only 5.7 miles. However in elevation I believe it's the largest and highest climb of the entire race.
This is another gorgous section where we go down one side of the river and then cross a bridge and head right back up the other side. Leaving the Temperence river bank we begin the long arduous climb up and over Carlton Peak. Once we get over it is pretty runnable all the way into Sawbill and this is where we started flying last year. This year however the climb seems to take forever. The peak just seems to look down upon us as if taunting us from above.
Finally we crest Carlton Peak and are headed down. We meet a runner who had sent his pacer ahead looking for trail markings. He thought he might be off course. We tried to assure him he was fine and he could just follow us. Soon his pacer passed us heading back for his runner. The run down to Sawbill wasn't as good as I hoped but it wasn't terrible either. This descent has a lot of elevated boardwalks and is a good running surface most of the way. We got into Sawbill and now our goal was to not need headlamps to finish. Last year we needed headlamps. We didn't stay long as now the end was almost within reach. We now had slipped to 114th. The Laplante's are working this aid station.(Dan's Parents) I let them know where I'd seen Dan and how he was doing.
Sawbill to Oberg is just over 5 miles. This section is normally really muddy, but very runable. My feet were now thrashed. Every step was excruciatingly painful. At one point a monster blister must have popped because the sting almost bought me to a complete halt. I hoped the pain would soon go numb and start to fade. It finally did but it took a while. I ask Stu to do some math and try to give me a time that we'd get to the last aid station. I would have done it myself but math becomes next to impossible that far into a race with the lack of sleep. Stu says we'll be there at 4:30 on the button. It starts to feel like this section won't ever end. I start doubting Stu's math as I keep looking at my watch. We roll into the last aid station at exactly 4:30!!
Here we are met by two young kids asking what I need.
These guys were AWE-some!!
Quickly we are off.
I'm now moving pretty slow and my energy levels are way down. I start to worry that we may not make it before dark. Stu and I left our lights with the crew. I did have my back up in my pack, but it was still in the back of my mind. This final section should take me between 2 and 3 hours normally. Knowing how slow we were going I was thinking 3 would even be good. This was now the 9th time I'd done this section of trail. You'd think I'd know it like the back of my hand. For some reason this section is never how I remember. I forget complete sections and even feel as though the trail is going in the wrong direction. This does a number on my mental state. We finally get to the stairway to heaven. It's the 2nd to last big climb. I swear I'm going less than 1mph.
Stu tries a couple tricks to keep me moving up the climb.
He climbs ahead and gives me a point to hit before I can rest. I power through then have to stop. He leap frogs me and gets me another point. We repeat this until we make it to the top. At the top the view is our reward.
We tried to get a picture here last year but the Stu's camera wouldn't work. Now we had only one more big climb to go. I was more worried about the next descent off the moose mountains ridge line than the climb itself. The downs were now killing my knee and my feet. As we reach the bottom Bob reappears. He ran in to meet us from the finish area. He brings headlamps just in case, but not only that he brings a big smile. We weren't expecting him. Now we have the whole team together and it's looking like we will make our goal of not needing headlamps. The last climb wasn't as bad as I remembered. Having poles really helped. I start questioning Bob about the trail ahead and how much further we had to go. We joked that he was forgetting how the trail was even though he had just run it. We start listening for the glorious sounds of the Poplar River. It lets you know you've made it to the final river crossing and subsequently the Ski Resort where the finish line is. Stu had been again predicting a finish time of 7:30. As we reach the pavement we have about 3/4 of a mile on pavement though the resort. As we run I keep asking if anyone is closing on us. Stu tells me we are fine and we keep running. At the last turn some dude sprints by. I could care less. We come down around the pool entering the finish chute. John Storkamp is standing there to greet me. He hands me my buckle after placing the finishers medallion around my neck and shaking my hand.
We crossed the finish line at 7:30 it took 35hrs 30min and came in 125th place beating last years time by 35 minutes.
What a journey. Thank you Stampeders!
No words can express my thanks to Stu and Bob. Without even asking, these guys they were there offering help. They came to me offering to pace. I am absolutely blessed to have the people in my life that I do. I don't know that I deserve it, but I am so incredibly grateful. Thank you Guys!
What's Next? The Arrowhead 135. Below is what I will be doing to get ready to toe the line at a 135 mile foot race in the dead of winter. Cheers My Friends! Dream big! There are no limits.