Do dragons have arms? My 24-hour story …

It had to be around 4:45 a.m. I had been moving forward, on my feet, on and off – mostly on – for nearly 20 hours. Save for street lamps and an awesome nearly full moon, it was dark and quiet outside. I was getting tired, sleepy even, but I was still walking. My eyes blinked. Once. Twice. Man. I’m … really … tired. Wait. What was THAT! I flinched. I actually flinched. What I saw – what I “saw” – made me flinch. It looked like the arm of a dragon (wait, do dragons have arms?), reaching

out of the moon, in the sky, with flames shooting all around (kind of like this Santana album cover from the 1970s). Whoa man. Might be time to take a nap.

This past weekend, I was at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in New Jersey, site of an incredible – if little known – event called “Three Days at the Fair.” The event name is actually a bit of a misnomer. It’s an ultramarathon race … or really, races, and one of its many distances is, in fact, three days; my event of choice was 24 hours, one of the shorter ones on the docket (the longest is a 10-day ultra; there’s also a 6-day, 3-day, 2-day, 1-day, 12-hour, 50km and marathon races). But there’s so much more going on here, besides quasi-hallucinogenic images in the night. For nearly two weeks, the rural fairgrounds turns into a small, tight-knit community, a de facto tent city, with relentless forward movement (a takeoff on a similarly named ultramarathon book) being the primary theme.

This was my first 24-hour ultra; my previous long in fixed time races was 12 hours. I didn’t really have a goal, other than trying to stay on the course for as much of the 24 hours as possible. Which led me to the flaming dragon in the sky. Having never done or tried drugs of any kind – unless you count an extra few cups of coffee on a long day at a track meet – flames in the sky was a new experience for me. I headed to my car, started it to get the heat cranking (sorry, environmentalists and “idling law” watchdogs), and was asleep in seconds. After a quick, 35-minute nap, I stepped out of my car. Or at least, attempted to. My body had turned into a solid wall of granite discomfort. Pain, stiffness and fatigue melded as one. I stumbled to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and thought to myself: “What the f—k am I DOING? I should just pack up and drive home!” But alas, it was only 5:45 a.m., and I still had a full three hours to log more mile loops. But how. But WHY?

Ah, but here’s the deal with this sort of thing: Don’t ask why. Never ask why! Focus on the how. How am I gonna do this next lap? Fortunately, I remembered something Butch – veteran ultra guy, friend of Big Mike, pictured here with me -- told me earlier, in the bright hot sunshine of Saturday afternoon that seemed like a week ago but was really just about 12 hours before: After you start up after a break, that first lap will feel funky. Don’t worry; it’ll get better. Or, in the classic ultra vernacular: It never always gets worse.

I stumbled through the next few hours, eclipsed 70 miles (which somewhere in my brain haze had become a “goal”) and then added two more miles for good measure. Why? Because some guy named Ronald I met in the last hours of the race had a goal of 120 miles, but he extended it to 126 miles, which is 200 kilometers, because that would “mean something” to the French people with whom he does business. Then he said to me, “you know, if you do 72 miles, it’s exactly 3 miles per hour for the entire day,” thus enticing me to waddle through to 72 laps completed. This is the kind of warped logic that takes over. I guess you could call it “loopy” …

So yeah. I finished my first 24-hour. Along the way, I learned a few random lessons:

1. Hokas are by far the preferred shoe of ultra competitors. This makes sense, since they have an incredible amount of cushioning, which is necessary for the long haul. Given the toll this sort of repeated pounding takes on the feet and legs, I may have to give that a try. My trusty Asics Cumulus didn’t seem quite up to this endless task. I tested out Nick Cruz’s Hoka Bondis for the last two laps and they felt good. By the way, young Cruz won the 12-hour event in a predictably crash-and-burn methodology, cruising through the marathon in 2:55 before falling apart in the later stages of his race. A good introduction for him!
2. Defizzed (flat) cola might be the best “sports drink” in history. Healthy? No. Effective? For me and many others, yes.
3. Like many others in the world these days, ultrarunners have a lot of tattoos!
4. My haphazard “diet” for the race consisted of, in no particular order: bananas, potato chips, orange and yellow peppers, hot dogs, protein bars, cheese quesadillas, coffee (blessed coffee in the middle of the night), and perhaps the best bacon egg and cheese sandwich I’ve ever had, at around 3 in the morning. The aid station was fully stocked and manned 24/7, cooking hot food on request. It was truly outstanding.
5. I came to the realization that I’m not as good at power walking as I thought. I would get routinely passed by faster walkers for the majority of the race. However, during my catatonic post-nap death march from mile 66 to mile 72, I was able to ambulate between 18-20-minute miles. Not exactly power walking, but not exactly a stumble either, in that state.

Basically, to sum it up, I think I was consistently mediocre. Staying out on the course for most of the race, moving at very unspectacular paces most of the time, with a final average of 3 miles per hour, exactly, for 24 hours. While that’s not particularly impressive or even noteworthy, I’ll end with this very Fun Fact: According to Google maps, the distance from my home in Hyde Park, NY, to the Sussex County Fairgrounds is 72 miles. Which is exactly what I covered in the race. Pretty neat.