Earlier this fall, 224 runners from around the world gathered in Moab for an ultramarathon called the Moab 240. That’s 240 miles. Competitors had 117 hours, and a little less than five days, to complete the equivalent of over nine back-to-back marathons.
The course took runners from Lions Park in Moab, down Lockhart Basin, through Indian Creek, up into the Abajo Mountains, through Dry Valley, into the La Sal Mountains and along Porcupine Rim, before finishing in town.
The last runner crossed the finish line with just six minutes to spare. Trevon Hauth was what they call DFL: Dead F'ing Last.
Alicia Jenkins-Browder finished days earlier at the other end of the pack, coming in sixth place for the women's division. It took her four days, two hours, and 42 minutes total. But she always stays untill the end to cheer on the last runners.
“My favorite part is watching the final finishers come in. The people who are fighting the cutoffs,” Jenkins-Browder said. “I'll usually get there just before the final finishers come in and just be like, ‘Wow, they've been out there for five days.’”
Before beginning the race, the runners took an oath, which they repeated together:
“If I get lost, hurt, or die, it's my own damn fault.”
With a race this long, there are many opportunities for things to go wrong, especially since the course cuts through some remote areas.
This year, the Moab 240 was tough for a lot of racers due to the heat.
In fact, it was so hot that the race officials made an exception to one of their rules: The medical team was allowed to give water to runners without disqualifying them.
“The heat, it was just brutal,” said Chris Reed, who has been volunteering on the medical team since the first Moab 240, eight years ago.
For the first seven years Reed volunteered at this race, he transported only eight people. This year, he transported 10 and took care of 12, mostly due to dehydration.
Aum Gandhi was one of the runners who struggled with dehydration this year. He's 30 years old, and this is his 29th ultramarathon. But at this race, he had to drop out at mile 82.
“For me, when I got to Indian Creek, I'd already been struggling with cramping and the heat. It was a tough first day. I think the hottest Moab on record,” explained Gandhi. “You know, I tried to sleep and recover, and I couldn't. I was just puking uncontrollably. There are some very experienced people in this race who have done this many times and had to drop out early because of issues like that.”
Gandhi believes this race has one of the higher “did-not-finish” rates. He was one of 75 runners who dropped out early this year. This was his second time running the Moab 240. The last time he did, he was just five miles away from the finish when he missed the cutoff.
“Compared to the 28 other ultras I’ve done in places like the rainforest, the Himalayas and Scotland, I would probably say that Moab is one of the hardest things, if not the hardest thing, I’ve ever done,” Gandhi said.
Max Jolliffe from California won the men's championship finishing in two days, 21 hours, and 25 minutes. Sarah Ostaszewski from Colorado won the women's championship finishing in three days, five hours, and six minutes.
To put the community of ultramarathon runners in perspective, one percent of the world runs marathons, and then only a fraction of that one percent runs a race like the Moab 240. The first 200-plus mile race was held in the United States in 2008.
Because it's such a new type of distance race, there isn’t a precedent for the best strategy. There's still a lot of experimenting with what works and what doesn't for these ultra marathons. But for most runners, slow and steady wins the race—it’s usually more of a brisk walk.
“Whoever you see are the 25 people at the beginning of this race are unlikely to be the 25 at the end of the race,” said Gandhi. “It's incredible how many variables there are between the sleep and the food, and the type of person you are, what your pace might be. It's like a moving chess match every single day.”
Gandhi had hoped to get five hours of sleep for the whole race. He usually tries to sleep for 90 minutes at a time to have at least one REM cycle.
“Taking that 90 minutes, believe it or not, really gets you off your feet. I know my coach is going to do a sleep study next year because, in all honesty, nobody knows what this is actually doing to our bodies. There's so little data on this distance that we are the guinea pigs and we will find out in 20, 30 years what this is actually doing to the body,” explained Gandhi.
Five hours of sleep is a lot compared to some runners. Ultramarathon racer Courtney Dauwalter slept about 30 minutes in 2017 during the inaugural Moab 240, finishing in less than two and a half days.
According to Gandhi, the first and second days are the toughest since the body is adjusting to all the effort exerted.
“But there's this thing we have in a 200-mile community called ‘Day Three Magic.’ A lot of runners have woken up on the morning of day three and found that they're moving better than they ever have,” said Gandhi. “They're feeling pretty good, and I think it just speaks to the ability of humans to adapt."
It’s different from adrenaline, he said. It’s more like a primal state that gets unlocked around hour 30.
“Maybe some of it is rooted in the fact that humans were very nomadic people and we probably haven't adapted out of that. People were made to move,” said Gandhi. “I worked a desk job for a long time. To sit for eight hours at a desk, you know, your back starts to hurt and your neck starts to hurt. So, I think some of it is rooted in that your body starts to go back to its natural state.”
You have to be an incredible athlete to do something like this. But the race is way more than just physical. You have to be able to play the mind game too.
“It's the ebb and flow of like, ‘I don't think I have anything left.’ And then you break through that wall and you get this confidence from realizing that you had so much more than you ever thought you could have,” said Gandhi.
Day three is also when a lot of runners start hallucinating. A few years ago in Moab, Gandhi hallucinated that he was in a video game, failing his mission. “I thought I was wandering around the same place over and over again. To this day, I don't know if I was or wasn't,” he said.”
Later on, in that same race in Moab, he also saw the ocean. He thought he was running on a pier toward a lighthouse.
“But I'd say that probably the third night is where things really start to get unhinged and you start to see weird things like circus tents and hear music. These are actual conversations you have with the other runners like, ‘I just saw a frog band out there’ or something, or ‘I saw a leopard in the hammock,’” he said.
Just a couple of months ago, when he was racing in the Cascade Mountains in Washington, he saw Bigfoot and the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.
Gandhi said when he starts seeing and hearing things, he knows it’s time to lie down and take a nap. But some runners need help getting out of that trance.
“I can usually tell by just looking at their eyes, if they're home or not. You can just tell by looking at them if they're in trouble,” said Reed, the race medic. “I was sent to get a guy walking in a circle in a campground up by Oowah Lake. He didn't even know he was in a race.”
What compels someone to run ultramarathons? Most agree it’s a curiosity to see what the human body is capable of. With all the struggles and people pushing themselves to the limits, some might wonder why these races are becoming popular.
For Jenkins-Browder, she needed something to fill her time after she quit drinking. She began running with a trail running club in Bellingham, Washington, where she first heard of these days-long races.
“I just wanted to see how much I can push myself,” explained Jenkins-Browder. “And that might also be part of that addictive personality. With alcohol, I always wanted more and more. Now with running, I want more and more. But with running, I've never felt shame or guilt.”
It’s also a great way to put one’s life in perspective, Jenkins-Browder said.
“It forces you to be in the present … The sun came up, the sun went down, and I just kept moving,” Jenkins-Browder said. “You go through lots of lows and then you also get to experience lots of highs. So it just really mimics life. I’ve always learned something about myself.”
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