Training in Montana

Paced a runner 34 miles in her first 100 at the Bighorn 100. It was a great experience. She made it to the cutoff time at the end of my turn by 2 minutes; the next cutoff she made by 14 seconds; finished the whole thing 4 minutes before the cutoff. So proud of her. It was tough conditions and 150/256 finished. She missed DFL by two spots. Oddly I had no pain in my left foot today so I was just being overly cautious last week. I'll take it. Picked her up at 3:15 am and finished at 4:00 pm. Long but fun day. Report: Got to Jaws Trailhead by 9 pm, as she thought she'd be there by 9:30. I knew that was way underestimating the hills. What a party! Lots of people, very cool atmosphere. I pulled out the thermarest and sleeping bag and just about then the lightning, thunder, and rain started. I dozed in the crew car the next few hours and got a couple hours sleep. The cutoff time was 5 am and about 2 am I gave up on her. Just after 3 her pacer knocked on the car door and she was in! I rushed up to the tent, hurriedly decided on what to wear and bring and packed up. She was under-dressed the 5 hours before getting in so was freezing (was rained and snowed on with no jacket and uncovered legs) but warmed up quickly and put on her winter gear. We headed out at 3:15 am. The next 3 miles were the worst mud I've ever seen and it slayed a lot of people today. We quickly moved through it with minimal wetness. She was moving okay and we kept it fairly steady. I wore a 100 lumen headlamp then carried a 200 lumen flashlight and a handheld water bottle full of water. Had a Nathan pack on my back filled with Heed. That was a great combination. She forgot to fix her heel at Jaws so we stopped a couple times to work on the blister that formed. Thankfully I'd brought a knuckle bandage and that worked perfectly. We stopped after the sun came up and bandaged the heel and put on fresh socks. That worked great and she moved much better after that. Made it to Foot Bridge aid station with our drop bags at 9:30 am. Got her some medical help and cleaned off her feet, taped up the blister and other hot spots, and wrapped her right ankle which she'd twisted early in the race. I changed socks but not shoes as my Cascadias are way better in technical terrain then my ASRs. Took off tights, changed to short sleeve shirt, refueled, and we were off by 9:45. What a brutal hill the next 3+ miles. If there were a 7 point bull elk at the top of the hill and all I had to do was hike up it to bring that bull home I would leave it there. Honestly ridiculous. She was dying up hills so this was a big struggle. After 5 minutes she was struggling with the tape job and we couldn't fix it and had no moleskin or more bandages with us so I told her to keep going on and I turned around and ran down the hill, grabbed another large bandage and some tape from her drop bag then ran back to meet her. That was fun and didn't take me long. We finally made it to the top of the nasty hill but the climbing continued for a long, long time. Brutal climb. We were doing math in our head to see if we could make the next major aid station with a cutoff time. It would be tight. She could run on the down and flat so we ran when we could but walked up everything as it was killing her. She did a good job eating and drinking and taking salt sticks but I had to prod her to eat a gel when she wasn't feeling it. She did well and was really tough. We finally got to Cow Camp, the last station before I was done. We had 6 uphill miles to go and exactly 2 hours to do it. Tough, tough to do. I thought we could do it for the first hour, but the second hour we could see the aid station in the distance and I thought there was no way but I told her we could do it. At one point I basically admitted defeat but told her to continue on in case they let us go past the cutoff time of 4 pm. We jogged when we could and walked as fast as possible. Finally we could see the end but we were 25 minutes out. A pacer ran down the hill and it was her next pacer! He came to pull her up the hill. We had time to do it as the station was closer than I had thought. I left them and ran up the hill to get her stuff together as she needed to be out by 4 pm and we were cutting it close. Her husband crewed her and is awesome. He ran down a bit and I told him what we need and then I helped him when I got there. We had all her stuff ready and laid out for her when she arrived with 5 minutes to spare. We got her socks and shoes changed, some fluids in her, packed a jacket just in case, and got her off 2 minutes before the cutoff. What a cool experience. I found out later she made the next checkpoint by 14 seconds, then finished the race 4 minutes before the 34 hour cutoff. She is a trouper!