Desert Solstice 24-hour

My only race of 2020 was definitely a memorable one!  With this being an end-of-qualifying year for the US 24-hour team, the Desert Solstice Invitational was absolutely stacked with talent.  Among the 18 men starting, I was a legit back-of-the-packer!  Zach Bitter, Harvey Lewis, Oliver Leblond, Nick Coury, Ryan Montgomery, Bob Hearn...(I could keep gong, world and American record holders all over the place!).  

It was easily the most competitive 24-hour race on the planet this year, and somehow, I got a late invitation off the ‘B’ list in November, as other faster people withdrew.

In summary, this race went absolutely NOTHING like I expected.  I expected a bunch of elites to run 160-170 miles, and I expected to run 150-something myself.  The biggest surprise to me was how absolutely punishing and difficult this track format is.  Runner-up surprise was the impact of the afternoon heat/sun.

Will break the race into segments below.

0-3 hours 

I’d planned to do 21 miles in the first 3 hours while it was still cool, which is basically recovery pace, and was only a lap ahead of that.  Even so, I think I was 11th of 18 at this point.  In hindsight, I would’ve saved more energy in anticipation of the heat.

What?  I always smile like this.  PC: Jules

3-9 hours 

This part was so, so awful.  By hour 6, I was already struggling to hold 9-minute pace, a contingency which was not even remotely on my radar.  That desert sun!  I typically do relatively worse versus the field in warm conditions (vice versa in cold), but here we are, one-fourth of the way into the race, and I already didn’t feel like running anymore.  Luckily I knew how many friends and family were watching on the webcast, so I never seriously considered quitting.  I just held out hope I could speed up at night and salvage things, but I think I knew that wouldn’t happen. 

Another fake smile

After 9 hours, I had just over 60 miles, was in 11th or 12th place, and was struggling to keep it under 10:00 miles.  And there were 15 hours remaining.  If it wasn’t for Julie (and Teddy!) proactively handing me ice water to dump on my head and in my shorts every couple laps, I never would’ve made it!  Best crew ever!  I could tell others were slowing a bit.. but not like me.  I was anticipating disaster.

9-12 hours 

I noticed I could potentially still hit the 150 mark overall, if I could just maintain 10:00 pace or better from here on out, which I thought might be feasible as it cooled off.  I was basically successful doing that in this segment up to the midway point, giving myself some false hope, landing on ~78.5 miles at halfway.

Also somewhere in here, Zach Bitter imploded (possibly injured?).  It was really hard to watch, as I’d been watching the 100-mile WR holder in awe as he lapped me over and over.  Now I was passing him in that same manner.  I think the top of the field got caught up in a crazy fast start at basically world-record pace, in the heat, and there was gonna be carnage.

12-18 hours 

The whole race went off the deep end here.  I drifted towards 11:00 pace, hitting the 100-mile split in 15:47.  Better than Brazos Bend, at least.  Then started marching towards 12:00 pace.  

PC: US24_hr team

In this terrible, awful death march, I also moved from 11th place to 5th place..?

Harvey Lewis was reduced to a walk (mixed with random bouts of absolute flying).  Jake Jackson quit after a 200k AG record, I believe.  Scott Traer quit.  A couple guys only ran the 100.  The only two consistent guys were Ryan Montgomery and Nick Coury.  Me and Bob Hearn were (slowly) trading leads back and forth, both of us also having started way too fast, messing up our 24-hour races (although Bob still got multiple AG records, as always!).

18-24 hours 

I managed to get, and stay, ahead of Bob by a mile or two, to ultimately settle into 4th place male.  It was not easy, even though Bob was just doing his insanely fast power walk by that point!  At times, my “running” pace couldn’t match it.  For that matter, I couldn’t even manage 13:00 pace for the last hour to reach 140 miles, and ended up with 139.72.

Don’t ask me what I said in this interview; I barely remember this

Ryan crashed hard, followed by Nick, then both of them had some kind of magic resurrection in the last hour and started racing again, after both could barely walk at various points!  Nick took the win - of everyone, I was most impressed with his race.  I even lapped him twice in the first few hours, which tells you what a smart race he ran (or what a stupid race I ran!).

Oh yeah, Marisa and Whitney: badasses!

Congratulations to Nick, Ryan, Marisa, and Whitney, all of whom qualified for the national team in this race!

So, a mixed result for me, but overall, positive.  On one hand, I never could’ve imagined running only 139-140 miles in 24 hours, but given it was my first attempt, along with my typical over-estimating of my own abilities against this insidiously brutal format, it’s an ok result.  I am obviously ecstatic about finishing 4th male in this elite field though.  I don’t know how I managed to hang on (kinda) while others could not, and I don’t care if it’s because they all beat each other up with competitiveness early on!  But this will definitely not be my last 24-hour attempt!  Thinking about something like 6 Days in the dome, where I wouldn’t have to contend with heat, but not sure yet.