Welcome And Race Setup

SPEAKER_05 0:10

Hello and welcome to Running with Problems. My name is John Eisen. And I'm Miranda Williamson. Running with Problems is a podcast exploring the problems encountered during a life in running. Today on the podcast, we have John Clark, who is coming back for a second time. Previously, we had him on two years ago in season three to discuss the Barclay Marathons, which he has run three times. But today we are discussing his new obsession, and honestly, my new obsession. I was following this race so closely. It's the Ididerod Trail Invitational. It's a race across Alaska on the classic Ididerod trail that takes place a week before the Ididerod dog sled race. And it has three modalities biking, skiing, and running. And when you're running, you are also dragging probably 50 pounds of gear on a sled. So it is not real classic running. Like, and it is all across the snow, ice, uh iced over lakes and rivers. It is across Alaska. They have three distances: 150, 350, and 1000 miles. And John here ran the most popular distance, the 350-mile distance.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yes. We dive right into the conversation about this adventure. So if you want to hear about John Clark's history, go back to that original episode, uh, season four, episode three.

SPEAKER_05 1:43

Yeah, John has been a friend of mine from the Naiwatts community. He's also someone who's helped me get into the Barkley community, and I've really enjoyed being his friend and running with him. He's he gets obsessed with these uh very specific niche events, and he really goes for it, and it's really, really cool to see. I was dot following him during ITI, and it was just so exciting to know when he passed uh Rainy Pass and seeing him, his dot get closer to all these different checkpoints. Uh, I thought it was very exciting. This is also going to be part one of a two-part series. We're going to record an episode tomorrow with another participant of ITI and get his take on the race. A totally different, you know, somebody coming in from a different experience background, somebody coming in who had a different outcome. And we want to hear how they did it. So look for another episode dropping next week. So we're going to drop them a little back to back, and uh, it'll be a follow-up to also talking about another experience at ITI. I think ITI is just like a super interesting niche part of Ultra Running. And I hope y'all enjoy these stories.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yes. And if you have any questions, you only have a week to send them to us. I have a question already. I want to ask our next guest how he keeps his water from being sending us.

SPEAKER_05 3:11

I believe they only have a day. Oh a week.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Oh, you're right. Never mind.

Training Setbacks And Health Updates

SPEAKER_05 3:20

Send your questions in anyway. We'll uh, you know, we'll ask them afterwards. Yeah. But before we jump into the episode, Miranda, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 3:32

I'm just recovering from a cold. It's not been the best.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

No, it hasn't.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

I made the mistake of trying to run 17 miles on Saturday, and probably should have just run 10 because the first eight were great. And then 10, I was like, hmm, this is alright. And then 12, I was like starting to feel a little rough. And then by 14, I was really feeling rough and like kind of like death. And by mile, uh the last three miles, I was feeling like worse than I did at the end of my hundred miler. I was like, this is worse than the end of high low. Um, I was probably exaggerating, but that's how I felt.

SPEAKER_05 4:18

Oh my gosh. So I've been recovering. Wow, there's a whole whole day, whole experience in that one run. It was horrible.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

How are you?

SPEAKER_05 4:28

I have not been running very much. I've been doing like maybe one or two runs a week, um, about an hour each. So very little running for me. Um, I did receive a diagnosis from my cardiologist uh regarding the symptoms I've been feeling preventing me from running. Uh, and it's uh it's called POTS or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Um, I'm just sort of beginning to understand how I can live and treat this disorder and how I can uh learn how it affects my body in particular, because you know, like a lot of these syndromes, like it's gonna be very personal. You know, my experience is not gonna be the same as everyone else's.

SPEAKER_06 5:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:17

And so, yeah, I'm kind of taking a break from running, focusing a bit on chess. I got a tournament in a couple weeks. And, you know, at some point I'm gonna come back and try to start running again. And yeah, hoping that I'll be able to find a way through this.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

And we're also planning a full episode to talk more in depth about this in the future, too.

SPEAKER_05 5:39

Yeah, looking forward to that, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

I will interview you.

SPEAKER_05 5:44

I will be very gentle. Oh, geez. My heart's getting high just thinking about it. I no, it's not the case. I'm not standing.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Well, let's get into the episode.

SPEAKER_05 5:56

Yeah, without further ado, John Clark, I did a rod trail invitational.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Enjoy all right, John.

Frostbite Story And Recovery

SPEAKER_05 6:12

So you were just showing us your hands.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yes. What happened to them? I got frostbite on two fingers, my left index and my right pinky, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_05 6:22

But uh they don't look they don't look black or blue or anything.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

They were dark brown uh for a few weeks. They just peeled. What do you mean, peeled? They peeled like a sunburn.

SPEAKER_05 6:34

They peel like a sunburn.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

All ten fingertips peeled like a sunburn. So I had frost nip, which is a precursor to frostbite, on the other eight. So two I had the frostbite and eight the frost nip, and they they they feel weird right now.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Did you have to go to the doctors?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

I did.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

And what do they do to treat that?

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Honestly, they just inspected, you know, they looked at the fingers, they uh assessed the situation and basically said that it wasn't it was good news. I wasn't gonna lose tissue.

SPEAKER_04 7:06

Good. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

I wasn't gonna lose fingertips with amputation, which some people unfortunately do if they get really bad.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

They don't look bad.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

No, they don't look bad. They they they're much, much better. Can you feel it? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Do you have a picture of what it happened? You don't have to show me, but I want to post it to the board. I do so. For the listeners, I want to post it to the Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

I do have a couple different versions of pictures because there's been changes from the coloring and the peeling and all that.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Okay, listeners, if you want to check out some frostbite, go to our Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

It was a little scary. Content warning. All worked out, hopefully. They say my uh sensitivity might be impacted actually for quite a while. And I'm noticing that.

SPEAKER_05 7:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

So uh I think it'll be okay. Actually, I'm I'm optimistic.

SPEAKER_05 7:57

Okay. And in um frostbites like uh trench foot, if you get it once, you're more likely to get it.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

What what are you trying to do?

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yes, I absolutely will do this again.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Oh my gosh!

SPEAKER_04 8:13

Let's take a step back.

What The ITI Actually Is

SPEAKER_05 8:14

Yeah, wait with that, but let's let's roll on back. Uh so the Iditarod, we're gonna define it. It's uh it's a famous dog sledding race. Did you take place in the dog sledding race?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

No. No, no.

SPEAKER_05 8:28

I was on the foot race. So a week before the the s dog sled race, they run the Ididerod Trail Invitational. Yes, and that's the one you ran. And there's multiple distances, but like sort of the most, I don't know, famous distances. I mean, the 1000 is a very famous distance.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Where is it?

SPEAKER_05 8:45

It's in Alaska.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

I mean, our listeners don't always know.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yeah. So it starts in Will uh Willow, Alaska, which is a little north of Anchorage, and it goes the full Ididerod trail goes a thousand miles, perhaps even a little more than a thousand, to the Bering Sea in the city of Gnome.

SPEAKER_06 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Right. Um I aspire to do that someday, but to get to into that race, you have to do the 350 distance, 350 mile distance twice as a qualification. And to get into the 350, you have to do qualifiers as well. So it's an invitational, meaning you have to prove to the race director that you can do it and that you're gonna be safe and that you know you're not gonna have some disaster out there that they need to rescue you or you're gonna have issues.

SPEAKER_05 9:33

In terms of danger levels, like how would you compare this to a lot of the stuff you've done?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

It's incredibly more dangerous because the uh the temperature is much, much lower. This year the temperature was in fact the lowest it I think it had ever been at this race. Oh my gosh for a sustained period of time. So it took me that there's a the 350-mile distance, there's a 10-day time cutoff. It took me four hours short of 10 days. Oh I was the final finisher, the so-called Red Lantern is what they call it. Uh half the field scratched or DNF'd, but the half that finished, I was the very last finisher of that of that group. Takes 10 days. The last eight days of those ten, the high temperature was negative twenty.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

That's not the high.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yes, the low, some say was like negative 50. I didn't have a thermometer, so I've taken people's word for it. But it was very cold, it was very windy. So dangers in terms of it being very cold, you get hypothermia, you can get frostbite, as I did, although not that bad, as we just mentioned. Uh not that bad. I didn't lose any digits, which I think some people may have that did the race this year. Certainly, people have in years past, have lost digits. Um, another danger in the race is there's a lot of water. In the 350-mile distance, half the race is on top of water. Now it is frozen, swamps, lakes, rivers, but there's open water where it just it's maybe rushing too fast, it doesn't freeze, maybe it's unstable ice where the water table drops a bit, but the ice is on top, might not be thick enough, and you could pop, you know, drop through the ice potentially. And then there's something called overflow, which is maybe it snows on top of the ice and then melts. So there's standing water on top of the ice, or there's microscopic cracks in the ice and the water comes up from the bottom. So that's overflow. So luckily this year, because it was so cold from negative 20 to negative 40 or 50, there was no overflow.

SPEAKER_05 11:43

That's like the lot but the first couple days were quite warm.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

The first couple days, it started the temperature maybe at like in the twent 25-ish, I think. Maybe when we started, it got warm during the day late in the afternoon, uh, the first day. Overnight it dropped. The second day wasn't too bad. I don't know what the temperature was. I didn't have a thermometer, but somewhere between zero and twenty. Positive.

21 Months Of Preparation And Gear

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Well, let's let's take a step, let's go through all of this. What did you do to prepare for this event?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

So I worked on preparing for I did the I did Rod Trail Invitational for 21 months.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Um it was your A race for this year, like your uh It's one of my A races. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

For now it's my A race. Um it I I I I trained and I prepared by reading, by talking to former participants, by looking at, you know, the Facebook page ITI Racers on Facebook. Um there's a couple books that have been written about people's experiences at the full 1,000 miler. So I've read a lot, I've talked to people, I've looked at the Facebook posts, I've read some race reports, you know, I did that. And then a year ago, I participated in a winter survival camp that the race puts on.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Ah, that sounds helpful.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yeah. It was my qualifier to get into the race this year. So I had never done a winter ultra before. I've done a lot of long distance ultras, you know, 100 mile up to 400 mile distance, you know, many of those actually, but I had never done one in the wintertime, you know, in those winter conditions. And so I went to the survival camp for five days to basically learn how to protect myself, how to, you know, what gear I would need, and that's run by the camp. And I passed that, and so I got into the race this year.

SPEAKER_05 13:36

That's uh that's a qualifier to the race. If you participate in this camp, you can get an invitation if you pass the camp.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yes. Otherwise, you have to do two winter ultras of a hundred miles distance or greater. And there's only about ten of them that are in the qualification list all around the world. So some are in the US, you know, some are in Canada, some are in some other countries in Europe and whatnot.

SPEAKER_05 14:00

Now, a winter ultra, what is what is that for our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

It's uh a race that would be like in the winter in snow and ice conditions. So there's one in the Yukon territory, there's one in northern Wyoming, there's one in Alaska, there's one in Norway. They're in these countries that are, you know, have tough conditions in the winter, right?

SPEAKER_05 14:22

And what does that involve for a runner to complete a winter ultra? What do you have to carry with you?

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Yeah, so the the gear, and that was part of my 21 months of preparation. So buying, testing, and even jettisoning things that I thought I was going to bring, I upgraded even before I started the race. I was buying and then upgrading. And I my sled that I pulled uh was about 50 to 55 pounds of weight of gear.

SPEAKER_05 14:49

So you're pulling, it's not it's not like a backpack. It's not on my back. You are putting a giant duffel attached to a plastic like sled.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 14:59

And do you did you customize your sled or did you buy it off the shelf?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

I bought it from a company called the Alaska Gear Company, actually, that uh you know manufactures and sells gear for these types of events and conditions. Um and then you have a waistbelt and then you have a like a rope that you can have poles, like fixed poles, but I had a just regular rope that connected my waistbelt to the sled itself, and you pull it basically the whole way.

SPEAKER_05 15:24

Did you have a lot of like okay, so you're reading all these things and you're watching things and you're trying to figure out what the gear you need to bring is. Yes. And like what the best gear, what the best version is jacket, or how even how to attach a sled to you. Like, how much iteration and like obsessing did you do over all this gear?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Yeah, a lot. I mean, I I've spent a lot of money on gear, and you know, like I said a moment ago, I mean, I I bought some gear that I thought was gonna work, and I decided as an example, I have three winter sleeping bags. I have a negative 20 bag. I decided that wasn't enough, so I bought a negative 40 bag. I took that to camp last year, decided that wasn't enough, and I bought a negative 72 degree sleeping bag. Had to get it from the UK from a company called PhD Designs, and it cost a fortune. I got it, you know, six months ago, so there were tariffs on top, right, to pay the tariff charge. And the thing was cost a lot of money, but it was so worth it because it was negative 40 at night or maybe even colder, and that negative 72 bag enabled me to sleep without feeling cold. And I slept directly on the snow. I didn't have any mattress, and that's a whole nother story that my mattress flew away in the wind. What? So it was strapped to my pack, and uh I needed to change my face mask at the time because you need full face coverage in the in these conditions. And I had my lesser of the two face masks on. It was too cold and windy, so I wanted to get my more robust one from my pack. So I had to undo a bungee that was this pad was you know connected to my uh you know, pack bot with and to get the get the more robust face mask from the from the pack, and it flew away in the wind. 60 mile an hour type wind, and it just like was gone in an instant. It was pretty funny.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Oh wow. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

And I never used it, it was brand new. I just bought it at REI and anyway, so I didn't have a mattress or a pad to sleep on, so I put the sleeping, had to sleep, sleep on the snow directly with the sleeping bag.

SPEAKER_05 17:35

Well, I've so many questions. Maybe we should s uh continue back along the story with like the preparation side.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Did you practice in the snow? So did you like load up your holes toboggan and run in the snow?

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yes, I did. Um last winter and this winter. So I went up to Breckenridge and Leadville, uh, both last winter and this winter with all my gear, and I would go out on the snow, and there wasn't that much snow this winter, actually, right? No. And so I found that Breckenridge this past winter uh wasn't even good enough. It wasn't it in some points, it wasn't even full snow coverage where I wanted to go. And so I went to Leadville and I ran around turquoise lake, which actually was all fully snow covered when I wanted to do it. I slept outside too.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Without a sleeping bag, well with a sleeping bag, but without a tent or anything like that, just directly on the snow. It was only negative five in Leadville, the coldest uh, you know, the one that I think you were nice and comfy in your negative 75 sleeping bag.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

It was totally comfy. Um now getting out of it's a different matter because then you get cold, right? If you're standing around trying to put gear back together, right? So that's what I found out that you know I needed to quickly within five minutes basically be packed up and and start moving and st you know, yeah to get warm again.

SPEAKER_05 18:55

So you need like an organization system that allows you to exchange gear like your face mask, but also like you know, get out your full sleeping kit. And then when you're packing up, you also have to pack it up quickly. It seems like it would be difficult just to like organize it well.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

It there is, and I I learned a lot during this race, and next time I will be even more organized because I learned what worked and what didn't work really. And that comes back to the frostbite issue. Like one thing I found was when I was fully clothed in all the the gear, you know, the the feet, the hands, you know, my head, the you know, my body, etc. And I was moving, I was totally fine, even at negative 40 degrees or negative 50 degrees. I was I was okay. The problems were I had these big mountaineering mitts on if I wanted to eat, drink, get something from my pack. I needed to take those off because there was no dexterity with those big gloves. And so I had liner gloves underneath, but they're very thin and they weren't warm enough. And so if it's I spent more than you know 30 to 60 seconds doing something, my hands got cold. And the biggest problem I had, and I think what led to the frostbite, frankly, was I had my directions of the GPS of the route on my phone. I also have a Garmin 67i, which is a you know a specialized GPS device, but both of them require dexterity with your fingers to like access. And so it at points the trail is so obvious, like there's only one way to go.

SPEAKER_05 20:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Right. At other points, there's intersections, there's junctions, there's Y's in the trail. And which way do you go? Left or right, right? You gotta look at your phone. And taking it out, you know, unzipping where it's in your pocket, taking it out, look, you know, using your fingers, you know, with to open it up and and whatnot, I mean, is uh it it takes time. And uh doing that repeatedly put me in a position where my hands got very cold at one point, about uh three, four days into the event. And I think that's what contributed to my getting the frostbite, actually. Now I didn't notice it right away. I didn't notice it until almost at the end. I was only about 60 miles from the finish, maybe, where I noticed my finger was uh it was kind of like a blister on the bottom of your foot where it gets uh filled with like a pus or fluid and it's clear, right? Like a blister, but it was on my finger. And that's the start of frostbite. So anyway, that was on one finger and it spread to a couple other fingers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:32

Why did you why the idea? Why winter ultras? I mean, I suppose those are two different questions, somewhat related, right? Like you at some point you decided you want to do winter ultras and then and you chose specifically ITI. So why what has brought you here? Why why did you choose to do this?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Yeah. Um what brought me to ITI is just the ultimate challenge. I want to go to Gnome. I got a customized uh Um, you know, personalized Colorado license plate, R D, the number two N O M E, Road to Gnome. That's my license plate, right? On my car. And what I do is I like to set aspirational goals for myself. Yeah. And I've done this with other events as well or other things really in life.

SPEAKER_05 22:17

And it always involves a license plate.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

I have four customized license plates of vehicles. Three of the vehicles I still have, one of them has been jettisoned, but yeah. So Leadman was my first. Barkley was my second, customized license plate, Nolan 14, which I had not yet done, but I planned to do that. It's on my to-do list. It's on the list. And I have Road to Gnome. They're my license plate. So they're all like aspirational goals that I set for myself. So why ITI and why Alaska? I mean, I love to set big goals for myself. I love to challenge myself. I've been to Alaska about five times previous, and it's so beautiful. And I love Alaska. And I wanted to do the ITI 1000 ultimately because it's it's a thousand miles. I mean, it's the longest ultra that I know of. I don't, and it's in the winter, which is makes it more challenging, right?

SPEAKER_05 23:10

Yeah, the only longer one I can think of is the Shri Chemoy.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Right. Okay, that's the 3100 single block at Queen. Exactly. Yes, that's super long. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:18

I mean, obviously that and ITI are two P's in a pub.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

I'll never be doing Shri Chemoy. Yeah, that's not my not my thing. But uh I know some people that have done it and it is an amazing event, but yeah. Not the same. Not the same. No.

Survival Camp And Wet-Feet Drills

SPEAKER_05 23:35

So okay, you're you're seeking something just really out there, and you got your sights set on this, and that those 21 months of preparation. I guess let's talk about the the camp. What did you learn there?

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Uh what's the a lot of things, but the big couple of the big things are what what to do when you get wet, like if you fall into water, right? You have open water, maybe you have this overflow I talked about before. You uh you just get wet, you you fall in and you have wet feet, perhaps you've you've fallen in on your side and you have a wet body. So so what do you do? Yeah, right. And we went through exercises, well, actually, really one main exercise. We learned about it in a sort of classroom setting in the cabin at the camp, and then we went out and practiced it, and we they broke through some ice intentionally, and we had to literally wade through ice and get all wet. You know, and it was probably at camp, it was probably only 10 degrees positive. So it wasn't like negative 40, but you know, 10 degrees is still pretty cold, right? And you're getting wet.

SPEAKER_05 24:40

Especially if you're in near frozen water.

unknown 24:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

You're in frozen water. You have to walk through it as part of the as part of the exercise. And then, okay, what do you do? So, you know, you have to take off all your clothes quickly, dry yourself, and then put on basically fresh. Uh put on a vapor barrier because you don't want your shoes, they are clearly going to be wet because you could you've gotten into water, right? So you don't want to put dry socks and then the wet shoes on, right? So you have to put a vapor barrier of some sort. Could be a bread bag or it could be more professional. I have REB brand. Um, you know, it's a pretty robust vapor barrier.

SPEAKER_05 25:18

Sorry, what is it?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

It's a sock that's a vapor barrier.

SPEAKER_05 25:21

Ah, so it's like a plastic sock.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Rubber or plastic or yeah, whatever it's made. Yeah, I don't know what the material is of what it's made of, but it's like a rubbery sock and you put it on over your warm socks, but that protects because your shoes are going to be wet because they got wet.

SPEAKER_05 25:39

And then you're gonna put your wet shoes back on, but uh over the vapor barrier.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Right, over the vapor barrier. And then what I did actually in this race, this is not a camp thing, but uh because it was so cold, I had protection on top of my shoes. So I had uh they're made for cross-country skiing, but booties basically that went over my shoes.

SPEAKER_05 25:59

Oh, yeah, I've seen those.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Yeah, and then I had spikes on top of that because there's no traction when you put the booties on. You kind of negate the traction of your shoes, but then you put the spikes on top of that, like Katula ghost spikes.

SPEAKER_05 26:12

So you would be wearing a sock, a vapor barrier, a shoe, a booty, and uh and crampons.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

And crampons, yep. That's what that's what I wore for eight days straight. I I went that way with the vapor barrier during the entire once it got cold, day three, cold, the whole rest of the time, I had the vapor barriers on and they they worked wonders. I would highly recommend them.

SPEAKER_05 26:35

This this uh getting in the water and then having to like save yourself by like stripping naked and then putting your dry clothes back on. Um, I feel like I've seen like some manosphere like Instagram things where people are like doing uh military exercises like this and proving how how tough they are.

unknown 26:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

John Clark actually did it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:57

Well I mean and and you didn't do it just uh and you didn't put it on Instagram. I mean, can you believe?

SPEAKER_01 27:02

No, I'm not like that's not I'm not like yeah, I do post things on social media, but I'm not like an everyday post everything I do type person now.

SPEAKER_05 27:11

No, just the if you guys want to read John's writing, he does post a recap on uh on his Facebook page.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Facebook page, yeah. It's on the Facebook page.

Weather Forecast Fear And Respect

SPEAKER_02 27:21

So yeah, that's can we go to day one starting the same? I think we have to start at day zero. Oh day zero.

SPEAKER_05 27:27

We have to start at day zero. We have to start at like getting to Alaska and pre-race jitters. How'd all that go?

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Yeah, so the biggest jitter was because of the forecasted weather. And one of the racers uh posted to the ITI racers Facebook page a weather forecast for what was expected over the next 10 days. And it was downright frightening because of the negative 40 temperatures, the high winds, and the fact that those temperatures were going to be in the harder parts of the course that were up on the mountain pass. Specifically, there's this pass called rainy pass. Rainy pass.

SPEAKER_05 28:05

And that is like the big difficulty in the 350, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:10

It's the highest altitude of the course. I mean, the it's by Colorado standards, it it's not high altitude and it's also not uh a lot of vertical really, but because a lot of it's on lakes and rivers and swamps that are pretty dead flat, right? I mean, maybe a river goes slightly downhill, but it's generally flat, right? So half the race is that. The other half, though, is quite up and down hilly. And then you have the big pass, which is the big, you know, the climb up, and then where the winds were very high, temperatures were low. And there were some rescues out there, people that were uh you got into trouble, unfortunately, and had to get SOS rescued from their Garmin device.

SPEAKER_05 28:54

Wow. A lot of the fear that you're talking about about the the harder part of the course comes as as a result of having to cross this high pass. I mean, for the terrain, it's high, right? Because you go from like, I mean, it's like a 3,000 foot climb over right. So like you are doing some climbing and you're getting to a more exposed position at the higher altitude. Right. Right? Yep. And so the very the the bad forecast was very cold, but in addition to be being very cold, also very windy, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 29:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

So the day before, you your question was like with the day before. So I actually, when I first met the uh the race director at the race, I mean I'd met him a year before at the camp, but uh, Kyle Durand, I I mean, I said, Hey, Kyle, I'm I'm pretty scared because of the forecast. And he goes, you know, that's good. You you want to be you want to be scared because you want to have it in your head that you're gonna make the right decision when the bad stuff happens and the bad conditions happen, right? You you you want to have a little bit of fear so that you take the race you know seriously and you respect it and you hopefully make good decisions when those things happen. And so I was definitely afraid at multiple, you know, going into it, but then at multiple points during the race, going over Rainy Pass for sure, and some other parts as well that were very cold. But I will say I never thought of quitting the whole time. You know, and I half the field unfortunately dropped, and they've dropped for a variety of reasons. But I think reasons, probably. Well, the the good reasons, yeah, yeah. Like the the safety reasons.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. People had real reasons to quit.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

There were there were people that got very bad frostbite. There are people they had it on their face, their hands, their feet. Um, yeah. There were people that had to get rescued on the course and have them planes flew in to remote places to extricate them from the area and get them back to Anchorage so they get medical care. Yeah, that happened to multiple people, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 30:53

So you're scared before this starts. This is your first winter ultra, and it is looking like it's gonna be one of the more difficult challenging one. Any last-minute like changing of the gear, or were you just No? No, it just is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Well, I had I'd prepared, like I said, for 21 months. I I had a plan, I I knew it was a good plan. I had practiced it at the camp the year prior, albeit it wasn't as cold. At camp, it was like positive five. I mean, it wasn't, you know, anywhere close to as cold. But I I talked through things with people. You know, I learned a lot at the camp. I, you know, like I said, I read a number of things. And so I thought I had a good gear plan. And in fact, I think I did. I wasn't really overly cold except when I took my hand my big gloves off. Had you ever felt negative 40 before? No.

SPEAKER_05 31:47

I mean, that's that's where Celsius and Fahrenheit meet.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yeah, it is, exactly. They're both the same, and negative 40 is where they're the same. Um about five years ago or so, I did a dog walk for 30 minutes when it was about negative 12, you know, and it was freezing cold, and I was itching to get back in the house, but it was like a 30-minute dog walk. That's the only negative 12 or colder, or I never experienced colder than that. That was the coldest up until this point. And so it definitely was scary, but as long as I was moving, I it wasn't that bad.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

What did you eat? What was your meal?

SPEAKER_01 32:26

This was my problem.

unknown 32:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

I lost about 20 pounds. Oh. And I don't weigh that much. No, you're not a you know I would not say that you have 20 pounds to lose. I'm 138 at full strength. And I I think I lost I I don't have a scale to know for certain, but I lost a a lot of weight. And what happened was because I was so fearful of taking the gloves off, I didn't eat and drink a lot. And so what happens, I mean, I did when I had to. So I did some, but I minimized eating and drinking during the day when I was actually moving. And I waited until I got to a someplace where I could stop. So on the 350-mile version of the race or distance of the race, there's initially there's like three lodges that are spaced about 25 miles, roughly 20 to 25 miles apart, where uh it's more populated, it's closer to Anchorage, there's people out there in snow machines early in the race. Um, you know, there are these lodges where you can get food, you can sleep if you want a room or whatnot. And then as you get further west, it gets a lot more remote. The race has two tents, so they'll fly, they fly out uh to two different locations and they put up a canvas tent with heated, you know, it's heated with a wood-burning stove. And then there's a couple other cabins that they rent from private landowners that are for race purposes, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:54

So you were waiting for meals at these stores. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

So every 20 to 30 miles, there would be something, like a lodge, a tent, a cabin, something like that. And so I was eating minimally during the movement part of the day and then pigging out when I got to the the you know, the end point, which which, you know, I did recover every time I stopped, but it would take me 10 to 15 hours to recover, which contributed to why it took me 10 days to do the whole route. Because I was taking extended breaks, unfortunately, at each that's one thing I really want to fix for next time.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Okay, so take us to the start line. Let's go to the start line. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Um it was exciting. I mean, we uh got bus stuff from Anchorage, it's about an hour north of Anchorage to Connect Lake in Willow, where the start is. And um we got there about an hour in advance, and it's uh at a like a little restaurant kind of pub place that you can get a burger and some, you know, whatever, supplies. And so everyone's eaten their lunch. And then uh we started the the race started at 2 p.m. So it starts a little later than most ultras start. It was beautiful weather, might have been 20 degrees or something like that. Sunny, felt warm, right? You're totally fresh. Uh and you know, it was uh it was awesome. I I had a lot of issues during the race. I mean, I know I don't know how long we want to go in this, but uh we'll go as long as we need. I I made I made a mistake in navigation uh getting to the first checkpoint.

SPEAKER_03 35:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

And it got to an area where I looked at my map. So at camp we learned, we learned a lot of things at camp. We talked about that a second ago, but one thing we learned at camp was stay on the made route. The made route is they're made by snow machines that are going between place and to place. So they're beating down the snow and creating a snow machine with maybe a little even a little wider route. You want to stay on that because if you get off the route, it could be very deep snow that you'll sink right into, potentially up to your knees, your waist, whatever, right? And so that was the advice at camp. Stay on the maid route. Well, I got to a point where I missed the turn to camp and I kept going, but I was very close to camp. As the crow flies, I was about a half hour or half mile away. I looked at my map, I said, okay, I'm only a half mile away, but I got a bushwhack that half mile, go off the route. So, and I noticed it was a s a very faint snow machine trail that went in the right direction. I'm like, oh great, I'm just gonna follow the snow machine track. Well, it only went about a hundred yards and then it stopped, it turned around, the snow machine. And so I was then about, you know, whatever, four, you know, still pretty far from camp or from the not from camp, from well, from where we did camp, butterfly lake, which is the first checkpoint. That's also where we did camp the year prior. So I looked at my map and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna bushwhack the remaining 0.4 miles or whatever. Okay. So I put on my snowshoes and I was going through the snow, and initially I was okay because it was there wasn't a lot of foliage with trees and whatever, it was more of a field with without any trees or plants or anything like that. But then it got into a deep, a dense forest.

SPEAKER_05 37:15

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

And the sled, pulling the sled through that was very difficult. And I was sinking very deeply, a couple feet deep of snow with the snow even with the snowshoes on. And it just was slow going. And I was like, you know what? I just made a very critical error in the first few hours of this race. Yeah. I'm like, I violated what we learned at camp, that I went off trail. Shouldn't have done that. So I backtracked and I went back the right way and got to the first aid station and checkpoint.

SPEAKER_05 37:45

It was it probably saved you energy, even if it costs you time to go back on.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Oh yeah. Oh. It cost me a little time, but yes, saved me a huge amount of energy because it would have been it would have been too difficult to bushwhack. Like you do not want to do that. You want to stay on the May trail. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 38:02

I mean, you could even get yourself in quite a bit of trouble. I mean, if you got yourself into some quick snow, you know, that's Oh yeah, it could be it could be d devastating.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Like it's just not something I should have done. I made an early mistake and I was just like, I tried to like, you know, cut a corner.

SPEAKER_05 38:16

You want to fix it quickly.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Fix it quickly, move on.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

So and how many people are in the race at this time?

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Uh I think there were one about 120.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 38:24

And that's split across foot, ski, and bike.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Yes. So there were uh most people are on fat bike. I forget the exact numbers, but it's something like it's something like 75 cyclists, about 50 on foot, something like that. And then not that many skiers, like cross-country, maybe five or more cross-country skiers, something like that is the breakdown. And then of the distances, there's 150 mile distance, and only about 10 of those. They're within that same 120 number. There was 25, I think, doing the thousand mile, and then the bound most of the people do the 350.

unknown 39:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

Okay. It's the bulk. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

So yeah, I mean, uh it's it it's beautiful. You can see the northern lights at night. Um, you know, it's very rugged and raw. If you've never been to Alaska, I mean, it truly it the nickname is the last frontier, the state's nickname, and it truly is. It's very raw and rugged, super beautiful. Um, I saw eight moose over the course of the race on the on the course. Um, other people saw uh bison, I did not. Other people saw uh wolves, actually, I did not. But um there's wildlife out there. Luckily the grizzly bears are hibernating. So there's that fear is you know not hopefully coming to fruition. Um yeah, it's just it's it's a huge adventure. I I I I love, you know, I don't love the cold weather, I'll admit, but but I love you know, stressing myself and and and challenging myself and doing hard things, you know, and there's other ultras, John, that you know that we've done and that are that are challenging. Quite challenging. Quite challenging.

SPEAKER_05 40:12

You were attracted to the challenging ones.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Yeah, I'm attracted to the challenging ones. In fact, there's only three races that I even aspire to do anytime soon. Not to say my interest won't change again, but I've sort of gravitated away from doing traditional races you might sign up for a lottery of, or you might sign up on a website or whatever. The three races are I did a rod trail invitational, right? I ultimately want to do the 1,000 mile to Gnome. Ultimately, it's gonna take a few more years because I've got to do a 350 again, a second time, and then I got to get into the 1,000 and hopefully be able to do that later. The other race, of course, that you know, Barkley is one that I'm still attempting to get into. I would like to uh I've done it three times, but I'd like to get a fourth opportunity. We'll see. And then the other race is probably my favorite race, actually, right now. It's called the Last Annual Heart of the South, otherwise known as Hotz. And it's a fully unsupported race in the southeast in the summer. So it's hot and humid, totally different climate, but there's no race support, there's no aid, there's no crew, there's no pacers, all that kind of stuff. And you basically have to get your food at Dollar General or a convenience store or something like that.

SPEAKER_05 41:25

Hotz is really cool because you show up for the race at a property in Georgia and they put you on a bus. And when you get on the bus, they hand you the route. And you get to, you get to finally the day before the race, you get to look at the route that you're gonna run for the next, you know, we'll say four to eight days or whatever it is. And uh and then they drive the route in reverse. So you have to pay attention while you're riding the bus to the route, yeah, to be like, oh, there's a there's a dollar general, there's a gas station, like, oh, there's a cemetery, you can sleep there.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

Well, so so some of that is is accurate. So some of it so they they don't give you the route when you jump when you jump on the bus. Oh, they don't do? No. No. So what happens is you you drive the direction of the route, the or where the start's gonna be, but you don't really know the specifics until that night after dinner. Oh, and then you get an email with the GPX of the course that you gotta load onto your phone onto an app.

SPEAKER_05 42:25

You only have like a few hours.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

It's like 12 hours. You're sleeping for most of that. Right.

SPEAKER_05 42:30

So you get a few hours and then you go to bed. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

And you will like they've been ex they've been doing it actually even later and later every year. I've done it six times. The hot the heart of the south. And I'm gonna I'm signed up for the seventh year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:46

Well, my body works again.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

The race is incredible. It's my favorite race. Um you know, I love the adventure of it, like I said.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 42:55

All right.

Wind, Cold, And Route Uncertainty

SPEAKER_01 42:55

So we have the rest of it.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

Let's go back to the I did a rot. So when did you sound like day one, l little bit of error, but no fear yet. When did you start to experience like a little bit of the elements and the fear of the elements?

SPEAKER_01 43:11

So the first two days, the the weather was decent. It got probably no no lower than zero at night. And, you know, I mean that's cold, but it's not like ridiculously, oh, I'm gonna I'm in danger cold. Day three, the winds picked up. Okay. Got very, very windy. I mean, I don't I again I don't know the specifics of the metrics, but 40, 50, 60 mile an hour winds. I mean, they were big winds, right? Wow.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

And how many miles are you in at this point?

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Uh we were going to Finger Lake uh after around sh this place called Shell Lake. I want to say, what would that have been? Maybe mile 70?

SPEAKER_02 43:51

Something like that.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

So we still had quite a ways to go to the finish, right? Um it started getting really cold. It got very windy. And And um yeah, it was and I was all alone. For almost all of it, I was I was alone. I did sync up with some other people from time to time, but I I I do like to do these adventures solo. So I didn't intentionally, you know, pair up with someone and say, we're gonna go together, right? If we happen to be together at one point, that's fine, but I like to do my own thing. And uh at this point, though, when it got really cold, I thought I made a wrong turn. And I I kind of did, like the real Iditarod route went a certain direction. I went the different route. As it turns out, either one will work to get to this checkpoint called Finger Lake.

SPEAKER_03 44:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

But I didn't know that at the time. I looked at my map, I'm like, ooh, I'm off course. So I went back 0.4 miles to the intersection, the Y, that, and these two guys were coming, approaching me. I saw their headlights right then and there, and we talked about it. Hey, this is the real route, but what about this other way? Will this work? They thought the other way would work, it might even be better, but they didn't really know for 100% certainty. So I took a risk by following them, which I don't usually like to do. Yeah. Right? Follow somebody that isn't 100% certain of where to go. Anyway, it got really cold, it was really cold, got windier, and we were it was very exposed. Um and that's the first place where other people behind me had some really bad issues and had to get airlifted out.

SPEAKER_05 45:21

So you're starting to hear at these checkpoints, you're starting to hear stories of people who are having difficulty. Yes. But that doesn't enter your mind. You're not you're not fearful for yourself because somebody else had trouble.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

I mean, I'm afraid I I I definitely had fear, but I also knew that I had a good plan, I had good gear. You know, I like I said, when I was moving and I was fully clothed with all the layers that I needed, I actually wasn't overly cold. It was only when I took off my gloves, which or I had to take off my face mask to eat, obviously, or drink. And then your face gets cold for 30 seconds or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Hence the reason you're putting yourself in a calorie deficit. Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Calorie deficit, right. So like these checkpoints that have a lot of food available? Aaron Powell Not a lot of food. It's not like a traditional race where there's this big smorgasbord. Um they would have things though. They would have some hot food, whether it be like burritos, um they had like uh you know brats, you know, they would cook at at places that I mean at the two tents where where they the race provides food. At other the lodges early on, they had like burgers and stuff you could order, you know, and pay for regular food. Uh at the at the tents that the the two tents the race has at Finger Lake and at this place called Roan, um they have food, they have like burritos and and uh they'll have fluids. So that sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 46:45

You're trying to eat as much as you possibly can.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah, I eat I I would pig out, I would lay down and sleep, I would, you know, um recover, but it was taking me 10 to 15 hours to recover, unfortunately. And I wasn't sleeping for that amount of time. I was probably sleep slept for three or four hours, you know what I mean? So it wasn't long sleeps. That's another issue I've had personally where I've had problems sleeping during long ultras. Even though I'm tired from the movement, right? I get to a lodge or get to a, you know, even putting my sleeping bag out on the snow, whatever the case is, I can't sleep, you know, right away.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Yeah, your system is still moving. My system's still moving.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Yeah. So I didn't sleep until uh it was like 35 hours into the race when I first slept at one of the lodges. You know, I couldn't sleep beforehand.

SPEAKER_05 47:34

Was there any drama on the route before you got to that decision point with going up and over the pass?

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Yeah. Um I mean drama for me, those drama I was hearing from other people, but no, I didn't have any drama. So everything was kind of going to plan.

SPEAKER_05 47:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

So and what day is the pass?

Rainy Pass Lodge And Rescue Tales

SPEAKER_01 47:58

The pass was my three or four? Uh it was probably like four or five. Four or five. Yeah, something like that. Okay, so we're heading. So the the fanciest lodge during the whole 350-mile race is at the foot of the pass. Okay. Well, it's 18 miles short of the pass. But it's called Rainy Pass Lodge.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

Okay, good. You need that lodge to rest up and I saw a photo.

SPEAKER_05 48:21

It looked like there are a lot of people there.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

A lot of people. So it's an amazing lodge. I want to go back to it in the summer. You take a float plane in or whatever, land on the lake, right? It was incredible. So they have four, they have like maybe 12 cabins, right, on the on the property. It's a whole campus, right? The race rents out a cabin with 16 bunks. But it's very noisy in there, right? I was like, I don't want to sleep in there because I want to get get sleep. I don't want to, you know, have people coming in and out all hours of the night, whatever the case is. I'm gonna get a private room.$600 for a night for a private room. I'm like, I'm doing it with the flush toilet, actually. It was like, oh baby. Lap luxury. That includes meals, so it includes dinner and breakfast, right?

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Oh, great.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

And those meals.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

Did you get a shower as well?

SPEAKER_01 49:08

It did have a shower. I didn't take one though.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

What?

SPEAKER_01 49:12

I was so tired after eating my dinner that I went right to bed. I'm like, I don't want to take the time, the 20 minutes or whatever, to take a shower. I'm going right to sleep. Okay. And I just I didn't take a shower now. I didn't want to get my hair wet too. Because then, you know, you gotta, my hair's a little long. You have you have beautiful flowing hair.

SPEAKER_02 49:30

A mane right now.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

It's never been well, actually, I I got a cut after uh after the race because it was all knotted because I didn't comb it for 10 days. So it was all knotted. It was a huge knot. I had a ponytail on the back, and I put took out the ponytail cord or whatever, and I had this huge knot, and it was all, you know, it was all matted and stuff, and I had to be cut out, some of it. So I I got my hair cut to make it, you know, better. Anyway. So I didn't did not take a shower, actually. But I had the nice dinner, and at dinner I was hearing stories. You talked about you mentioned drama. I was hearing stories of people that were getting rescued at the previous stop, this Finger Lake place, after I left, had frostbite to the face and the hands and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

And then that morning, so I slept that night, and then the next morning I went to breakfast. They had breakfast at like eight, 8:30 in the morning or something. And at breakfast they said, yeah, the owner of this place and two of his his employees, you know, ranch hands, took snow machines up the pass because somebody was stranded just short of the of the summit. And the story is I heard this directly from the person that saved this person. So this guy got in trouble where for whatever reason he his sleeping bag and his clothing got wet. I really don't know. I don't know why they got wet. I don't know that part of the story. But they got wet and he got very cold, he got hypothermic, he was developing frostbite. He's two miles from the summit. So it's 16 miles away from the lodge. But that's the closest place that can help. And the woman, there's a woman that was with him. Well, they weren't together per se, but she saw that he was in duress. She set up her tent. She was somebody doing the thousand miles. So she had a little bit more gear, she had a tent that she can get into. It's a one-person tent. Brought this guy into her tent one-person tent, cuddled with this guy because he was he was shivering uncontrollably. His hands were frozen. She saved his life. Saved his life. Put his hands between her legs to warm them up. So he's like slightly getting a little warmer, but still in distress. She SOS on the Garmin, like hits the SOS button basically. That goes to a call center in Texas for the Garmin, the company. So they're like, okay, what do they do? Well, they ask a bunch of questions. Well, where are you? Or they kind of know from your GPS, but they they, you know, is there any place close by that could potentially help you? Yes, the Rainy Pass Lodge that's 16 miles away. So they got on the phone at like two in the morning with the Rainy Pass Lodge. They called in, because you know, they have a phone number and all that, got the guy out of bed that owns the place, and he's like, the weather's ridiculous right now, cold, windy, the whole thing. It's unsafe for me to go out there. You mean we don't want to create a further problem by us. So we'll go out at first light. He agreed to go out at first light, and he did. And he he and two of his employees snow machined up and they were there all night. The the woman with the guy in the tent, and he he was alive. I mean, he you know, he he survived, and they put him on the back of a snow machine, and somebody else got rescued as well. There was another person that was also quitting, scratching, and they got taken back by snow machine back to the lodge.

SPEAKER_05 52:57

And this woman on the thousand, she continued.

SPEAKER_01 53:00

Yeah, she continued. Yes, and she actually just just a few days ago finished the thousand mile. There are only four finishers. What a thousand mile race. Her name's Kendall Park. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

You gotta get her on the pod.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

Yeah, you gotta get her on the okay. Yeah. Yeah. She's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 53:16

Kendall Park. All right. Badass bear.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

Two people. Not just not just this guy, this incident. There was another woman days later that was in distress.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

She's just out there saving lives.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

Out there saving lives. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

Holy moly.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

It is incredible, actually.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

It is incredible.

SPEAKER_01 53:33

And she was one of only four people this year that finished the thousand miler.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

The fact that she finished and did not have to compromise any of her morals during that.

SPEAKER_05 53:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

She's like saving people and still out there crushing.

SPEAKER_05 53:48

Yes. And I think this is like the essence of the winter ultra. Like, we think of ultrarunning as as being a bit more uh camaraderie focused than other forms of running, like road running, but like the winter ultra is even more about helping your fellow runners. Yeah. And like it's about everyone surviving, everyone, I mean, maybe not having a good time, but like like getting through it. Yeah. And I think that's really exemplifying the spirit, at least from what I know of winter ultras.

Crossing Rainy Pass And Dalzell Gorge

SPEAKER_02 54:15

That's so cool. So take us up the pass, John. You're heading up the pass, day five.

SPEAKER_05 54:20

I mean, you have to like mentally be, you know, this thing's like fucking whipping wind. People are getting rescued off of it. You've got your plan, but like you gotta know you're about to hit the shit, right?

SPEAKER_01 54:31

Yeah. So they they they recommend the the one place that the race director and the camp counselors recommended you go with someone else is up and over the pass. Okay. So I didn't want to go solo.

SPEAKER_02 54:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

My friends and people that I knew were still screwing around, uh, or you know, taking more time than I was wanted to take, getting ready at this rainy pass lodge. And so I said, Well, I'm ready to go right now. They were still look like 30 minutes away from getting ready. I was antsy, I was nervous, I was scared, whatever, but I just wanted to go. Yeah. So I ended up leaving. With I said, go with God, you know, whatever, left on good terms and all that. But I left on my own and went solo. And I didn't see anyone out there for probably 14 or 15 of the miles, right? And we're almost at the summit, you know, we're a few miles from the summit.

SPEAKER_06 55:23

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

And I'm moving slowly at this point, right? Because I'm I'd lost weight, as I mentioned. I wasn't eating. I'm halfway into this thing. My energy level wasn't great. You know, I'm a little older than a lot of these other people as well. And I got caught by a cyclist and three people on foot eventually before the summit.

SPEAKER_03 55:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

Right? My goggles actually, so I had these goggles that ended up fogging up and icing, icing up really, gradually. And it got to a point where I couldn't see through the goggles. And so I had to take them off. I literally couldn't see through the ice in my goggles, my like ski goggles. And so I took them off and I had like a little bit of you know exposure to my eyes, which, you know, isn't great to have that exposure, but I had to, I couldn't see otherwise. And these other people passed me, and I couldn't keep up with them. They were moving much quicker than I could. It was windy, it was cold. It was it wasn't snowing, but it was like a ground blizzard of just snow because of the wind.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

Yeah, you know, it's getting kicked dust. I've been in that before.

SPEAKER_01 56:29

So I mean, you're getting snow on your face, but it's not necessarily coming from the sky. Exactly. And eventually, you know, we got there. I mean, I could see the others at the summit point. There's a big sign, metal sign at the summit. I was, I don't know, a hundred yards away still at that point or something like that. But I could see it. And, you know, eventually I got there. My hands were very cold. I was really nervous to take off the gloves because my hands, you know, I had to occasionally take them off. And they they got very cold, and that's ultimately what contributed to the frostbite. Um, going over the past, there's there's a little bit more possibility for danger. You have to go through this area called the Dalzell Gorge, and it's a very tight gorge where, you know, there's a body of water, can't recall the name of the river or creek that goes through it, and the trail basically kind of parallels it has to go over and back over the creek multiple times many times. And that's where there's can be a lot of standing water, a lot of open water. You have to hop over potentially exposed water, right? And luckily, because of the cold, there was a relative minimum of that, minimum of exposed water, but there was some, and it's definitely a part of the course that's pretty dangerous. Um and you get down to the bottom, you get to the Tatina River, and then you have to go several miles on it to the next cabin. On the river. On the river. And that's where I've really started having the first major problems with my hands because I needed to take off the gloves more frequently to see my directions on my phone because there was a point where there was a Y in the trail, and I actually missed it. Now, either one will work in this case, but I stayed on the river versus going over land at that point, and I was still maybe half mile from the the aid station, you know, the the checkpoint.

SPEAKER_05 58:22

I think I saw this when I was dot watching you. Yeah. I was like so excited when I saw your dot on the pass. I remember like looking I think I think it was either in first thing in the morning or it was like last thing at night.

SPEAKER_01 58:36

It was it was a dark in Alaska, so it would have been they're two hours ahead, so it would have been night here.

SPEAKER_05 58:41

Okay, yeah. So it must have been like right before I went to bed or something, or like right after dinner. And I was like, I was constantly dot checking because I knew the pass was like a big thing. And uh when our other friend, like Mitch, were we also gonna interview Mitch. Yeah, yeah. Um, and I knew Mitch had turned around, right? Right at this point. And I I'm like, Jay C's on the pass. And then like, and then I just kept dot watching you like like over. I I was I was just like not sleeping, and I was just like pulling it, pulling it out every hour or so, and and seeing your dot get closer and closer to that. I guess Rone is the next step. Yeah, Rhone, yeah. Yeah, and I do remember it not being on the trail. And I'm like, I don't know, I guess JC's taking a different route.

SPEAKER_01 59:23

Yeah, I got lucky. I lost my I I lost or damaged a bunch, really more lost a bunch of gear during this thing, which I had to rebuy a bunch of things afterward, which I've already rebought everything. So I lost stuff a month ago, you know, in the in the event. I've already purchased and gotten this, even though I'm not doing this race for another year or maybe two years, right? It's crazy. But I was so into like this gear, it was so great to me. One of the things I I had a Phoenix flashlight, which was 3,000 lumens. It's incredible. Wow. 3,000 lumens. I mean, there's just that's super bright.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:00

A typical headlamp, a really nice headlamp outputs like 300 lumens.

Rhone Breakdown And Gear Lessons

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

Yes. So this is 3,000. It's a floodlight. Now it doesn't work, it's not meant to be on constantly like a headlamp, right? But it's like a little button where you can get a quick view of like, okay, what's what's around me. Anyway, I must have dropped it. I believe I well, I know I dropped it, but I don't know exactly where, but I think it was on the approach to this roan because I was there were some was some open water on this on this river, a little bit of unstable ice, like just like it wasn't like completely flat. It was like a little rough looking. Um it was dark, obviously. I was cold, you know, especially in the hands. And then, you know, I missed the turn. I realized that. And so I finally got into this Rhone aid station. It was I I was hyperventilating. The the the uh aids direct uh the volunteer, head of volunteers, Adrian Baer, was one of our camp counselors.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:02

Hyperventilating, why?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

I was I think I was in a state of shock. I would my hands were bitter cold, were freezing cold, like I barely could use my hands at this point. Got into the tent, started breathing heavy, and my hands were were freezing. He gave me uh some hot chocolate to warm up my hands so I could, you know, put my hands around or whatever. And he helped me so much over the next like 12 hours or so, right? To get warm, you know, have a place to sleep, give me food, you know. I couldn't. So the other thing about my gear, so like the pack I bought had a bunch of clips, like plastic clips that you need finger dexterity for.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:44

I will not do that again. Right. I want just a big zipper. Right, like with a big pull tab on the zipper. So like just one big thing and everything's in my single bag. So I couldn't open and close. That's the other reason why sometimes I didn't stop. Because my fingers weren't working properly and weren't able to open with these clips. And so this guy, Adrian, uh, the volunteer, he went out and got stuff for my pack. I and you know, his fingers were fine and he got whatever I needed. I told him what I needed. He brought it in from the outside into this heated, heated tent. And uh anyway, I was there for until the very end, until the cutoff. So that's when I was the closest to the cutoff, was after Roan. It was 2 p.m. on day six, I think it was, at that point. I left exactly at 2 p.m. There were like seven of us that left right at 2 p.m. You know, at the very end.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:35

I needed all that time to recover.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

Yeah, I was I was spent. I mean, I needed to eat, I needed rehydrate, I needed to sleep a little bit, I needed to have my hands warm up. Yeah, exactly. And um, yeah. And so I left there and I went through the night. I tried to go through the night. I got to, I was solo, okay, even though there were seven people at the they were actually, we were all spread out, so I wasn't with anyone specifically. At 9 30 at night, so I'd been going then at that point for seven and a half hours that next night. I wanted to continue to about midnight, and then Bibby, they call it Bivi, which is basically lay my sleeping bag out on the snow, sleep there, and then make it to that next cabin later the next day. I saw three BD sets of BDIs on the trail. They were up high. Like taller than me. Moose.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:24

Moose! Oh, BDI.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:26

BDIs in this, because with my flashlight, I saw these three sets of odds.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:31

BDI. Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:35

Yeah, so and it was a standoff. I didn't think I was gonna win the standoff.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:40

No, you weren't? You probably weren't. You cannot move a moose. You've got it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:45

You gotta just especially when it's a probably a mother and two two young ones, right? Yeah. Two calves. So we stood there for a while. I don't, it's hard to say how far away they were. They weren't that far away. I mean, you know, but I it's hard to say in the dark.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:00

If only you had your super flashlight.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:01

I know. I didn't have it. And anyway, so I said, you know what, I'm not gonna win this thing, and there's nowhere else to go, and the route is only like a snow machine wide width wide. They were on the route as well, coming towards me. So I turned around a quarter uh, I walked back a quarter mile to a made Bibby site. So people that were in the race ahead of me had already made a flattened out area where they slept. Somebody, you know, cyclist probably that was going faster. And so I walked back a quarter mile, slept there overnight, and and decided to just stay there all until the until the next morning, until it got light, which it does it doesn't get light until like 7.30 in the morning. So I stayed from 9.30 at night, roughly, to 7.30 in the morning in my sleeping bag. And I wasn't cold, which is good.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:47

Until I got up and had to put everything away. Then I got cold. Um at this point, and this goes back to the other woman that saved this, uh, so I saw I was packing up, but I was faced in the direction of m where I was gonna move, and I was packing up my sled. And out of the corner of my eye, I I heard and saw something, looked over, and it was it was somebody on a bike, a fat bike, somebody in the race. It happened to be this Kendall Park, the woman that saved the other woman, you know, days earlier. So I I called out, but she was moving, you know, she had her, you know, hat on and probably didn't hear me or whatever, right? Because she was all bundled up. And I went some miles down the trail that morning and came upon her, Kendall, and another woman who was in her sleeping bag with a tarp over her head, a fire that was not, it was the remnants of a fire that clearly was there from the night before. And this woman was this other woman was in distress.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:43

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:44

And she was SOSing to get help. Again. Again. Because because the woman had had frost fight, she had uh you know, she thought hypothermia and whatnot, she was very cold. And Kendall helped get her rescued, basically. Was in communication with people and they they rescued her from Roan. Somebody came out in a on a snow machine and and rescued her. And she waited, I think, I believe, until she got rescued, and then she continued. Now she was on a bike, so she's moving faster, but nonetheless, she waited. She put her race on hold, right? Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

Which is pretty interesting. For the second game.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:22

So you um I was reading a lot of the race updates from the race director. So I got a little bit of color of what it was like to be there. And I remember reading something about like how to prepare for each of the days. You know, it was like a weather report and like for the different areas. And it talked about how like once you get to Rhone, once you get over the pass, uh the race director said, like, it's just you and the miles, which is why you're here in the first place, right? Like there's no significant, there's no significant passes or climbs. It's just a nice long 150 to 200 miles to get to the finish. Is that how those last few days felt where you were just churning them away? Or was it another set of like big day after big day?

The Long Slog To Nikolai

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

It was a few more days. I I mean, I guess I left Rhone at the six-day mark. And so I had four more days to get to the finish. And it took me virtually all that four days. Um the big part about leaving Rhone is there's not very many aid possibilities from there to the finish. In fact, there's only really one. There's a the uh a Native American village, Nikoli, which is a town of 85 people, right? That's all that live there. And they mostly live on subsistence, so they're hunting, fishing, um perhaps they get some government assistance. There's not really any other industry where they're working in a traditional way.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:57

No more lodges.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:58

No more lodges. Uh now the race does rent out the community center in Nikolai. So, and they fly in volunteers. So there were three race volunteers at the community center in Nikolai, and they did have some food for us. But that's from Roan to Nikolai is 74 miles. So you that you're not doing that in a day? Not doing that in a day. And so there is a cabin of for like a forest service safety cabin that's about halfway, but it's a mile off the route. It's called the Bear Creek Cabin. And most of the they at camp we learned that well, most of the people on foot don't want to take that mile out and back. So they just bypassed that cabin. Well, it was so darn cold going through this area called the Farewell Burn, which is an old forest fire area that's uh now like, you know, charred trees. There's not a lot of foliage. It gets very cold there just naturally. And I had gone 30, 35 miles at that point to this intersection with the cabin. I'm I'm taking the mile off. I mean an extra mile is nothing.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:04

Yeah, this distance.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:05

I mean, whatever, right? So I took the the route to the cabin and it was already packed with other people. There were like 10 people in there. It was totally full. I barely got a sleep space.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:15

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:15

Because I was the last one to get in that night. And uh, but the fire was going because people were already there, which is great. That's nice. That was very nice. And then uh they there was water being boiled, like you know, made from snow, which is how you get water, right? There's not too much water you can get from streams, right? Because they're usually frozen over, right? So you have to basically take snow and melt it, right, with a with a fire, which that was already going with people that were already there, which is great. So yeah, it was a slog and there was no real services. So I had to eat, but once you get into a cabin, you can bring food that you have, you're carrying, and you can eat it in the cabin, right? So I re-replenished then, you know, and uh stayed there overnight, left there, and then I had another 40 miles roughly to get to Nikolai, this Native American village of 85. Got there late at night, and there was no sleep space. It's this huge area like of flooring and whatnot, but all the beds and cots and mattresses were taken. There were like 12 people in there sleeping. So yeah, we we can give you the floor. So I had a wooden floor to sleep on, you know. So it wasn't the most comfortable thing, but I did get some sleep there. They did give me a couple burgers that they had made, had oatmeal and you know, other chips and stuff they had, you know. Which is great.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:37

And you know, what's your head space like at Nikolai?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:43

I was so I I felt really good because I knew it was the last checkpoint to the finish. Now it's still 48 more miles to the finish in McGrath, which is a town of 300 people. But at that point it was I knew I was gonna make it, you know. Um now, the next morning after I slept at Nikolai, I I got a salmon burger that they had made me. Oh, yummy. Yeah. It tasted great. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:14

But oh no, but I was five miles out of Nikolai, and I was like, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:20

I think I need to drop trial right now. Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:24

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:24

And with all my layers, I had like four layers of clothing, so I wore merino wool underwear. I had like a biking tights with the that are windproof with the front windproof, which came in really handy and they're really heavy. I had Gore-Tex pants, and I had down shorts. So they were my four lower layer layers, which totally kept me warm when they were on. But I had to get them all off, and getting them off is very difficult, right? Especially without dexterity in your hand. Well, I well, I had to take the gloves off to do it. Yeah, so I had to take the gloves off really quick. I had to, you know, drop each, you know, the the the down shorts first, then the Gore-Tex pants, and then the tights, and then the underwear. And I I wrote this in my race report, and you could read the story, but basically, I think I made it by about a half second. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:13

Oh God.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:15

And and I had an explosion out there on the trail. No.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:18

Did you have like uh you know tissue at hand? Not at hand. No. I mean, I had stuff in the pack, but it was like, no. It was Did you wipe or did you just put the pants back on? I put the pants back on.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:36

Yeah, I would have done the same thing. Well, at this point, you haven't showered anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:41

Yeah, you haven't showered. I didn't shower in 10 days. I didn't wash my hair in ten days. I mean, I get it. Um Yeah, no, and uh, but I I was so glad that I didn't do it. In your pants. In my pants. Think about that.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:55

Oh, yeah, yeah. That would have been early.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:58

So I started laughing hysterically, like thinking about what if I had not made it? Like what would that be? Because I had another 43 more miles to go to the finish at that point. It was only five miles outside an eagle-eye, right? I mean, there's nothing in between.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:13

I mean, you would have had to go in poop pants.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:15

I had I would have had to go in poop pants. There's no way. So like there's nowhere to go.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:21

And like and you got it, you got it, you got you what if you had like frostbite on your ass?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:26

It would have stayed warm because it would have stayed warm. Because it's my escape. I don't know.

unknown 1:13:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:35

Um there were there are four guys behind me. I was like not at that point the last person. But I was and I was I saw this woman ahead of me, and I was gaining ground on her, and I could see her and and I was within like maybe 150 yards of her. And I became s this is the next day, right? Or that final well, the day before I finished. And I was so exhausted, I needed to sleep right then and there. So I did what's called a shiver bibby. So I just got down onto my laid down onto my sled, didn't put the sleeping bag down, just slept on my sled until I start shivering and I wake up.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:16

I guess kind of like a trail nap.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:18

Like you're just trying to get you're just trying to get five minutes. Exactly. So once I got about five minutes, the second time when I was almost catching up to this other woman that was ahead of me, uh Jillian, I was I I got about a 20-minute nap. I woke up and I'm like, I feel great. Like it was a 20-minute nap. I felt awesome. And I went for another whatever hour or two, and I got tired again. And I saw these guys behind me. There were three guys, there were well, there were four behind me. One guy ended up dropping because he knew he wasn't gonna make the cut time cutoff. So he flew from Nikolai to McGrath. The other three guys were on foot and they were gaining ground on me, and I saw them in the distance behind me. They ended up catching up to me. And they were all in a train, you know, three of them in a row. And I wanted to like have them basically pull me to the finish. Yeah. So we were probably 20 some miles from the finish, something like that. I don't know. And then it got dark, and I just became so sleepy tired.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:17

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:17

And I couldn't keep up with these guys. I'm like, and I saw a made Bibby sight from people from days prior, and I pulled off and I just put my sleeping bag down. I slept for a few hours and they were gone. And so they finished ahead of me. And then that next morning, uh, I needed to sleep again. So the sleepies were coming fast at this point. Yeah, I was exhausted.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:41

You were low on calories, low on calories, things had just gone through you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:45

But I knew I was gonna finish. I knew I had time for the cutoff, so it wasn't like I had to push through. And I got to, I was seven miles from the finish from McGrath, and I slept again. I I put the sleeping bag directly on the trail, which is not a best practice, because if a snow machine comes, you know, they theoretically could run you over, right? If they don't see you somehow, whatever. But I was so exhausted, I just put the sleeping bag directly on the trail, seven miles out. Wow. And slept for another couple hours. I woke up, but I'm like, okay. And I got moving and I started walking. And once you get close to Nikolai within like four or five miles of Nikolai, the it's a real road that's plowed.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:22

Oh, that must be a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:23

Now it's snow covered, but it's like a real, it's flat.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:26

Yeah, but to see that. Yeah, yeah. What were you feeling when you saw that? Like I was elated.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

Yeah, I was just like so excited that wow you even have the ability to produce tears. I you know, I do get emotional at times, even though I was emotional, like in my head and my mind, I didn't, I didn't produce tears. No.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:46

Your body is so depleted.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:48

He has dehydrated again. Yeah. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:53

Amazing. And then what did it feel like crossing that finish line?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:56

Yeah, it felt amazing. I got into the town. If you call it a town, it's 300 people. There was some signage to go left, right, whatever to get to the lodge where we were where the end point is. And uh yeah, when I saw the final the finisher banner at this lodge, I was like, I can't believe I finished. Wow. So now it was an amazing adventure. I love this kind of stuff, as I mentioned, and uh I can't wait to do it again.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:25

Oh my god, that was an amazing story. And we'll have you back again when you do it again.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:30

Hell yeah, dude. What I was so excited to see you finish. I was I was dot watching you. I remember seeing you seeing that you were the last dot guy, but you were only like 10 miles or 20 miles from uh McGrath. Yeah. I was like, John's gonna do it. He's gonna do it. Uh it was it was very it was very cool to watch you. Cool. I am I'm just so I mean the fact this is like your first winter ultra and you're able to complete it on a hard weather year. I mean, it's just like I don't know. I I'm kind of flabbergasted. It's very impressive, dude. Very impressive.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

I mean, I I I feel good about it. I mean, I I'm I'm proud of myself. I mean, I you know, I know it was a tough year, and I'm glad I I I finished. I'm glad I didn't, you know, stop. I didn't I I I didn't want to quit. I actually never thought about quitting, like I said. I mean, I I don't quit easily on things. I mean, I have quit in the past and on a couple occasions, but I like I don't quit easily and and I didn't want to quit, so I'm glad it didn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:39

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:40

Yeah, that's awesome, dude.

Advice, Camp Value, And Closing

SPEAKER_02 1:18:41

Well Any uh yeah, go ahead. Just I was gonna say, what advice would you like to give our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:49

Oh, well, I mean, it's I can't speak any more highly about the race. It's it's it's an amazing adventure. If you're into adventures, I mean, I don't know what you could do that's greater than this. I mean, you know, the ultimate to know them, I mean, would be incredible. Um definitely go to the camp. I mean, in terms of advice, I mean, it's definitely good to do the camp the year prior. So you learn the skills requisite, you see some of the course, you hear from the counselors on their experiences, all of whom have done the race themselves. They're not just teachers. I mean, they've they've actually done the thousand mile, all of them. And uh yeah, just uh if you love Alaska, it's there's nothing better than this thing, I think.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:27

Very cool. Well, thank you, John, and uh thank you to all the listeners who made it this far. And I hope y'all uh keep enjoying, keep running with all your problems, and we'll see you next time.