Lake Martin was my second 100 mile attempt. After the No Business 100 I decided briefly that running 100 miles was beyond my ability and I wasn’t going to try that again. But a few hours later I got over my pity party and by the next day I began looking at more 100 milers.

A lot of things went well at No Business. My hydration and nutrition were good. I didn’t have any chafing. I didn’t even have any blister problems until the last few miles.

But plenty of things went wrong, too. I passed up an opportunity for fresh socks and shoes at 50 miles, and instead I went with the usual advice of not messing with something that wasn’t broken. It had been an unusually hot and humid day, and I hadn’t realized how much sweat had collected in my shoes over the last 14 hours. From mile 50 to mile 62 my feet had gone from funky to fully waterlogged. I changed my socks finally, though not my shoes. It was too late for that to do much good, and the multiple stream crossings starting around mile 70 did me in. I limped into the aid station at mile 75 with my feet so macerated that I could barely walk.

I studied what went wrong and explored how I could adjust to get to the finish line. In looking around for an easier hundred I came across a race I had never heard about despite not being that far away, The Lake Martin 100 Mile Endurance Run. Their website emphasized that it was a great first hundred miler, and several aspects of the race certainly seemed like it would be a challenge within my reach.

The race consisted of four 25-mile loops with the course passing four aid stations along that distance including two at the start/finish line where my car would be parked. And with only 14,000 feet of elevation gain, it wasn’t an especially mountainous course.

So I signed up and began putting together a training plan. I had attempted to follow the Relentless Forward Progress 100 miler on 70 miles per week plan before, but with several big races in the one month lead up to Lake Martin, and a series of frustrating injuries last summer and fall, I decided to focus more on staying injury-free and rested rather than on trying to force in a high amount of weekly mileage. In fact, I only broke 60 miles per week twice in the four-month training block and only had four runs of 20 miles or longer aside from race efforts. I certainly wasn’t going into this race over-trained.

If my training over the winter was fairly light, my February and March race calendar was a whirlwind. The racing started on February 4 with the Strawberry Plains Half Marathon, followed the next week by the Dirty South Dirty Double Trail Marathon and a 27ish-mile lap of the Wild Oak Trail the next weekend. I had a two-week recovery before the disappointing 40 miles of the Fontandango 50. I was beginning to really feel the exhaustion of race season and dropped down from the Dark Hallow Wallow 11 miler to the five mile course. One more week and the Lake Martin 100 was here.

I drove down to the shores of Lake Martin just south of Alexander City on Friday afternoon. I’ve gotten to where I’ll usually have a few friends, or at least some familiar faces, at most trail races in East Tennessee. Being surrounded by strangers at packet pickup and the pre-race dinner, along with the realization of tomorrow’s task, filled me with anxiety and loneliness. I spent the night sitting on the balcony of the rental cabin staring at the lake and stress eating cheese poofs.

The 4:30 a.m. wake up call came early and I began applying lube and tape where needed. I applied a strip of K tape to each heel and a liberal coating of RunGoo to the bottoms of both of my feet. Anything that touched any part of my skin was smeared with Two Toms Blister Shield, and any remaining skin got 55 SPF sun screen.

The sun rose quicker than expected as my relaxed morning schedule got tighter and tighter. Runners were gathered listening to the final words of instruction and encouragement from the race director as I was frantically trying to collect my thoughts and run through a mental checklist. Whatever final preparations I thought I might need to make were cast aside with the firing of a shot gun signalling the start of the race.

The first section of the race begins with a short paved section before reaching a curving downhill dirt road.

From here it was all single track to the first aid station. The Lake Martin 100 assures runners on their website that their trails aren’t technical, though they are constantly descending or climbing. We were also told that though there were a number of stream crossings, all of them should be passable without wading. Aside from a few roots and some brief steep sections, all of this is true. Half way through this section runners are treated to views of the lake.

The Lake Martin 100 also has a 50 mile and 27 mile option, and I found myself wondering which runners were in which category. Was I running foolishly at a marathon pace? Was the runner in front of me taking the downhills overly-cautiously because of a lack of trail running experience, or were they setting an appropriately slow 100-mile pace? Should I pass someone that was holding me back, or should I accept the easy pace? Gradually I began to pass some runners as the field began to spread out a bit. When I thought I might be running too hard, I reminded myself of advice that I had heard somewhere recently. Essentially, since it is likely that your pace will slow after sunset, it is best to push hard while the sun is up since you’ll be forced to go slower overnight.

This seemed like reasonable advice, but then I considered that I may have heard that from an elite runner and that it might not apply to a 100-miler novice like myself.

Just as doubt began to enter my mind I made the climb up to the Heaven Hill aid station. I was beginning to form a hot spot on the outside of my left foot, so I grabbed some food to eat as I sat on the ground and tried to adjust my sock and clean out any debris. The soil around Lake Martin is a mixture of sand and red clay. All sorts of little bits of grit can easily get through the mesh of your shoes there, even if you are using gaiters. I adjusted and cleaned my sock as best as I could and set out on the next segment.

Here the course arcs around for a bit more than five miles before circling back to Heaven Hill. After a fast single track downhill the course enters a pine forest occasionally punctuated with waist high tan grass, a landscape that I don’t see so often in East Tennessee. After this the course makes a right turn onto another red dirt road which climbed and dropped over undulating hills. Some of the runners who I had passed on the single track passed me back on the faster-running road. We came back to Heaven Hill, where I filled my bottles quickly and got back to running.

The next section of the course alternated from dirt road to single track and back to dirt road for around than four miles. A short steep climb brought me back up to the cabin aid station where the race had started that morning. The hot spot on my foot was still bothering me so I decided to stop by my car for a quick tape job before pushing on for the final six or seven miles. While there I crammed four Girl Scout cookies in my mouth and took a giant slice of pizza to go.

I decided right away that the fresh tape on my foot was well worth the couple of minutes of down time. This final section of trail, like the first section, was mostly single track with abrupt climbs and descents with numerous stream crossings. Once again we passed close by the lake where the wisteria decorating the lakeside cabins covered the smell of sweaty, tired runners and the severed fish head that had somehow made its way from the boat dock to the trail. I didn’t know it on the first lap, but the rotting fish head became a welcomed landmark on later loops since it signaled the end of the section was not far away.

The turn from single track back onto a red dirt road signals the final quarter mile or so to the finish line. I walked the up hill with some other runners, but once the clock tower above the finish line came into view I broke into a run crossing the lap one finish line in exactly six hours. I had planned, with all the hubris possible, to finish in about 28 hours. I considered this first lap and pondered my ability to finish closer to 24 hours. Could I push hard and even go sub-24? I reminded myself to not be disappointed if I couldn’t do that, but I still felt pretty comfortable that I could beat my 28 hour estimate. After a quick shirt and sock change at my car, along with a quick 1,000-calorie snack, I was out on loop two.

While slower than the first loop, loop two still felt pretty good. I power hiked up the climbs and ran the downhills. Gradually I passed the 50k mark and tried to estimate if I could pass the fifty mile mark before sundown. Gradually the fatigue set in and I realized that it would probably take a bit more than 12 hours to pass 50 miles, but I was still looking good for a 28-hour finish. While running one of the last downhills before turning on my headlamp I landed too far on the edge of my foot and could feel my weight start to press my ankle towards the trail. I regained my balance and yelled out loud at my legs that we aren’t blowing another race because of a rolled ankle. I then looked around to see if anyone had heard the strange man in the woods yell at his feet. I passed the loop two finish line and headed off to my car to tend to my fifty mile feet.

I started off on loop three in the dark. The day had been hot and sunny, but just a couple of hours after sunset and I was shivering. I added some arm warmers, but then decided to add a fleece on top of that. By this point I had lost most of my running, but hiking fast felt good. I was tired, but I really wasn’t facing any major problems. Nothing was blistered or chafed, my electrolytes and nutrition were looking good, and I had caught up on my hydration now that it wasn’t so hot. With the 27 mile and 50 mile runners behind me the trail was getting much more lonely. Only occasionally would I pass a runner, or get passed. Even the Heaven Hill aid station was more volunteers than runners it seemed. These were some slow and uneventful miles. The excitement of the night was a camera shy armadillo that was crossing the trail in front of me.

I walked for a while with a runner who was going to drop at the cabin aid station despite only having one more loop to go. Gradually I put some distance between us and crawled up to the hill to the aid station.

It was getting late and I was getting sleepy. I’ve struggled to even keep a 2 mph walking pace in the early morning of overnight races, so I decided to burn a few minutes in a quick nap. I pounded a few hundred calories, gulped down 20 ounces of coffee, and closed my eyes while reclined in a camp chair. My alarm woke me 16 minutes later where I roused in a bit of confusion about where I was. After a bit of scrambling for last minute gear and nutrition adjustments I set out on the final section of loop three. My nap carried me all of the way to sunrise and beyond. I passed the rotting fish head for the third time, turned off my head lamp, and greeted the rising sun. Climbing up to the finish line I had a rush of energy. I was passing 75 miles, my furthest distance so far, and about to head out on my final loop. I wasn’t going to finish in 28 hours, but a 32-hour finish was easily within grasp. I asked the RD about the cutoffs, and he assured me that I had until sundown as long as I was making progress. This flexible cutoff is what really makes the Lake Martin 100 a good first hundred for runners looking to step up to this distance. It is certainly not the easy trails.

At the car I abandoned my headlamp and fleece, grabbed my trekking poles, and began running out to my final lap, certain that I could finish within the remaining eight hours. A few runners had met their pacers, and I planned on keeping them within eyesight. Gradually that plan, along with my adrenaline, faded. I began to hike fast, then walk, then practically limp. Despite several shoe and sock changes, a fair amount of grit had gotten into my wet socks and begun to rub blisters. A particularly painful blister the size of a quarter had formed on the bottom of my right foot and the length of my middle toe. My left leg where last year’s stress fracture had formed began throbbing with each step. The non-technical trails from yesterday were now treacherous pathways overgrown with roots. The fun downhills were now pointless dives into washed out gullies. While most people would have designed a trail following a lake shore to also follow a contour line so as to avoid pointless ups and downs, this trail seemed to go out of its way to find the most inconvenient and difficult route. I passed a park bench and sat down to try to mitigate my leg pain with a compression bandage in my first aid kit. Several runners passed me, and I assumed I was now probably in last place.

The sun glared down on the central Alabama dirt roads. I learned from an aid station volunteer that it was over 80 degrees already. Yesterday morning back home it was barely even 40. I iced down my soft flask bottles and set out with one pressed against the back of my neck. With each painful step I was reminded of advice I had heard from the Ten Junk Miles podcast. Blisters hurt, but no one has ever died from a blister. Just keep moving. They’ll hurt more for a while, but then they will hurt less. Gradually, I confirmed this advice.

At the second pass through Heaven Hill I learned that there were at least two runners behind me. I crammed more food in my mouth, all of it disgusting at this point. Just ten or eleven more miles to go. As I trudged along, I was reminded of a warning that Lazarus Lake himself gave to runners the night before the Pistol 100 in Alcoa, TN, a couple of years ago. The hardest miles of a 100 miler were roughly from 60-95. There’s no more milestones here. This is where the pain and monotony set in. If you can get past mile 95, then you should be able to finish. I wondered at the time what it was that could make a runner question his ability to make it six more miles. I learned that afternoon that there is a very real risk of just not being able to continue despite being so close.

I approached the cabin aid station at mile 94 and went straight to my car. I drank some cold fluids from my cooler and forced myself to eat another slice of pizza. The volunteers stared at me as I limped back up to the course for my final six miles. A few of them assured me that they wouldn’t let me quit now and all I had to do was walk the next six miles in less than three and a half hours. Rain storms were coming in and they would need to get everything packed up. I told them I could do it, but more doubt entered my mind as I stepped across the timing mat and back onto the course.

Figuring that I was going to hurt whether I was walking or running, I actually managed to run some of the downhills for a while. I passed a runner who had passed me that morning as I sat on the park bench. Gradually my rush of adrenaline faded and I could only muster a walk again. The rain started as I passed the fish head again. I gave the dusty carcass a brief salute as I trudged by. The rain was steady as the clock tower came into view. The tired volunteers that had urged me to keep going six miles ago were gone. The timing mat and inflatable finisher’s chute were packed away. The RD, his wife, and a couple of other runners and their crew cheered as I finally walked past the finish line 34 hours and one minute after I started yesterday morning. A few steps past the ad hoc finish line I sat down, exhausted and chocking back tears as the RD handed me a shiny buckle.

It was slow, and it hurt a lot, but I kept going until I crossed all 100 miles. Sitting on the aid station floor and listening to the Alabama rain I couldn’t figure our how I could finish faster, but now that I’m a bit more rested I know that there are faster 100s in me. Faster or not, there are certainly more 100s in me. I’m already looking forward to returning to the No Business 100 this October.