The day began smoothly enough. After a restless night, I roused my wife Jill from her solid slumber at 3:00 am and hopped in the shower. Breakfast was a Red Bull and bagel, consumed in the car hurdling through the darkness in the middle of the night.

Got to the race no problem… got parked… got checked in. I always worry about that. No rain. Nice ‘n’ warm… relatively speaking. Checked my gear. Everything is cool.

Me ‘n’ Jill at the start…

Not too much pageantry to an affair like Zane Grey: pretty much, the race director says “Go!” into a megaphone and we’re off into the darkness at 5 am.

I do love a good, slow start. For those of us not really competing, the race begins with a single file headlamp procession up into the mountains. I stopped for a few minutes on the side of the trail to take off my hoodie and enjoy the cool of the morning. Although the terrain of this race makes it difficult to really take in the scenery, we were treated to a lovely sunrise. This was the calm before the literal storm.

Right before Geronimo Aid Station at Mile 8. Photo by Megan Galope

I rolled in and out of Camp Geronimo aid station at mile 8 in good spirits and feeling fine. My general strategy for a 50k is pretty simple: pound the downhills, get comfortable on the flat parts, and just hike all the uphills. A gentle rain washed over the course. I ran at a very nature and fluid pace.

It was somewhere out in the wastelands between Camp Geronimo and Washington Park that shit got ugly. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention to the warning signs, but I found myself just getting pelted by hail propelled by extremely high winds. Alarming. The temperature dropped more quickly than I was expecting. Looking for a bit of shelter, I pulled off the trail with a handful of other runners into a spot which offered a bit of respite from the ice blast.

I had to do the following things: take off my raincoat, remove my long sleeve shirt and tie it around my waist, get my hoodie out of my pack, remove it from its waterproof storage sack (a trash bag) then put the hoodie on over my sleeveless base layer. The raincoat went on over the hoodie and from there, it was just the simple matter of getting my gloves on. All of this proved to be much more difficult than expected: my fingers were frozen, totally unable to obey commands.

My teeth chattered but I didn’t freak out. I guess maybe I would have if I’d been out in the wilderness by myself, but surrounded by other runners as I was, I figured nothing really catastrophically terrible would happen. I patiently maneuvered my disobedient appendages, donned all my gear, ripped open some Sports Beans with my teeth, and got myself moving. I mean… what can you do, really?

I knew, though, that I’d have a pretty serious choice to make at Washington Park. In the meantime, the Highline Trail, always tough to navigate, had turned into a serious obstacle course. I love racing on treacherous terrain, so I was very much in my element, sliding down hills, occasionally slipping and making contact with the ground. The mud quickly engulfed my shoes and socks. My feet were soaking wet. Moving along quickly and keeping my body heat up as I exerted myself, so far, I was having fun. I mean… when do I get to run through the snow like that?