Part I (midnight to dawn): Mr Moonlight

“Is that how you greet me?” Aaron quipped as I puked in the bushes. Atop Hellgate’s highest, coldest mountain, Aaron was waging a heroic battle to maintain his legendary streak of 21 consecutive finishes at David Horton’s infamous Hellgate 100km++ ultramarathon. To do so, he would need to overcome a respiratory virus, a bum ankle, the ravages of time and parenthood, and a past Lyme disease infection that left him permanently hobbled and immunocompromised. Back in 2007, Aaron was Hellgate champion. Today, he would fight just to finish. All I needed to overcome was my perennially bad stomach, which had just unleashed a round of sympathy barfs.

Aaron can run Hellgate on autopilot, but I require the help of support crew. Aaron’s friend Matt crewed and paced my first two Hellgates, but he was in Hawaii this year, so I roped in Mike and Anthony, two recent additions to our Woodley Ultra Society (WUS) trail running group in DC. Mike and Anthony’s chief qualifications were that they (a) are unflappably zen and (b) had already seen me puke aplenty (after Catherine’s Furnace 50km, during and after Highland Sky 40 miler, while pacing Trevor at Hardrock 100, after the Richmond Marathon, the list goes on….). However, Matt is a father who’d “crewed” three childbirths. Mike and Anthony are bachelors in their early 30s who’d never seen a woman fall apart on their watch. As someone who never run 100 milers — or even other 100km races — Hellgate is at the outer reachers of my capabilities. I go to some dark places.

After two “Sissygates” in 2021 and 2023 where everyone wore shorts in balmy weather, I finally got the “real” Hellgate experience this year, complete with frozen feet after the early stream crossing (Aaron’s tip #1: we slathered our feet in diaper creme this year to prevent blistering and it worked). Despite bundling up with tights, a long sleeve shirt, and a houdini jacket, my fingers still froze, making it hard to eat. My hydration pack’s bladder hose also froze, so I couldn’t drink. (Aaron’s tip #2: Aaron instructed me (after the fact) to blow air into my hose during subfreezing conditions to remove the water from the hose and keep it from freezing.)

The sky was crammed with stars. Aaron and I turned off our headlamps so a bulbous near-full moon could light our way through Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. We fell into usual conversational patterns, which means I complained loudly about trifles while Aaron silently suffered for real. I decreed that poles should be banned for Hellgate’s opening mile after another runner smacked me several times in the elbow with his flailing trekking poles during the crowded start. Sharing moonlit miles with Aaron was a rare treat that I couldn’t pass up, but as Aaron crept along at half his usual pace, my blood flow slowed and everything froze from my toes to my ears.

Mike and Anthony were rightfully surprised when Aaron and I came in together around 4:30am at the Floyd’s Fields aid station, the coldest spot in the race. (Aaron’s tip #3: Mike wore a LED light vest at night aid stations so I could easily identify him in the darkness amid the glare of headlamps). My teeth were chattering uncontrollably and my body was slipping into cold shock, so I left early without eating anything. I never saw Aaron again during the race.

Mike and Anthony had been told what to expect at the race. “My fuel will be organized into three buckets: savory, sweet, and liquid. But don’t be surprised if I never touch most of it. When you first see me at Floyd’s Fields, mile 24, around 5am, don’t be alarmed if I look like death and puke at the first whiff of food. Don’t offer me anything or mention any foods by name, because that will immediately make me puke. Wait for me to ask for stuff. I’ll tell you what I want.”

When I first ran Hellgate in 2021, I was a scared mouse who looked to Aaron for guidance on everything. I was crewed by Aaron’s friend, listened to Aaron’s music mix, used Aaron’s hydration pack, and ate whatever Aaron ate. This year, I had acquired my own tastes. I recruited my own friends to crew, picked my own menu (ramen was this year’s food winner), and made my own music mix that toggled between folk, classic rock, and 90s grunge. Aaron’s acoustic guitar playlist calms me, but sometimes I need STP.

“Jenning’s Creek, the fifth aid station, will be my low point,” I’d warned Mike and Anthony. “At my first Hellgate, I just sat there on a bucket and puked between my legs. The night whips me. But,” I chirped, “When dawn breaks on the next climb, and the sun’s rays thaw my fingers and toes, I’ll become human again.”

Part II (dawn to pacers): Here Comes The Sun

Hellgaters sometimes can’t explain why they sign up for this sufferfest year after year, like rats that keep touching the electric fence without learning, but one reason I do it is The Dawn, when light triumphs over darkness and the frozen nightmare is finally in the rear view mirror. Pain becomes easier to tolerate when friendly faces beam smiles and vistas shine in the backdrop. At daybreak I turned on my music, and Smashing Pumpkins, REM, and Neil Young lifted my mood (and pace) across the open grassy fire roads.

Accommodating someone else’s slower gait always hurts, and I paid for the slow, choppy miles I shared earlier with Aaron by flaring my knee tendinitis. Slowing down only made it worse, so I did the opposite of what any sensible person would do when faced with screaming pain in their joints: I ran faster. The grassy fire roads after Little Cove aid are a good place to stretch the legs. I wanted to explain to the dozens of runners I careened past that I’m not an idiot who thinks I’m winning Hellgate. Running it off just helps.

“I won’t see you at the sixth aid station, which isn’t crew accessible, but I’ll be in dire need of a burger at the seventh aid station, Bear Wallow (mile 42), where Mike can jump in to pace me. Expect me to be wrecked. The rocky trail between Little Cove and Bear Wallow has loose boulders hidden under leaf piles and winds around in endless loops that try my patience or, as Aaron puts it, really blows dead goat.”

“So I don’t need to talk the whole time?” Mike, our club’s foremost introvert, was concerned his pacing duties required goods he couldn’t deliver.

“No,” I assured him. “I’ll be non-verbal by then. Your main job is to say kind, encouraging things to other runners we pass when I’m too sick to speak. It can be beastly hard to know what to say when someone is obviously suffering and crawling along. You can’t just blurt out Great job! or Looking good! or Almost there! You have to be positive without being obnoxious. It’s an art.”

Part III (pacers to finish): With A Little Help From My Friends

The never-ending “Devil trail” is my least favorite stretch of Hellgate. It was even worse this year because my bladder froze and I needed to unzip my entire hydration pack to get a sip. The operation was clumsy and I spilled freezing water down my chest and dropped a glove that I had to backtrack to retrieve. I was muttered “F that” and decided to just go without food or water until I got cheeseburgered at Bear Wallow. I looked like a kicked puppy when I arrived and learned there were no burgers on the menu this year. But it was too cold to stand around pouting, so I picked up Mike as my pacer and took a cup of ramen with a side of bacon to go. As Mike and I tramped up the climb, I forgot my woes and became downright giddy to have human company.

Mike is not the best crew I’ve ever had (watching Mike do simple task like fill a bladder requires the same patience as watching an old lady back out of a parking space). Mike is not a man who can be rushed, as we discovered at the WUS donut run. Mike sat and ate donuts deliberately, morsel by morsel, for 50 minutes, longer than it took Anthony to win the race.

However, Mike was a great pacer. Despite being exhausted, famished, and in pain, I was in an exuberant mood during the section we ran together from Bear Wallow, pointing out each beautiful view with glee and laughing at his stories. I ran everything except for the steepest climbs. Then things came to a screeching halt. Mike, why does my Coke taste like shampoo?

Mike took a swig and deduced that the soap was not rinsed out during Anthony’s last flask cleaning. I laughed deliriously. You boys are trying to poison me. I ceased running, talking, and eating and sad walked into the next aid station, where Anthony would assume pacing duties and I hoped to get replenished and turn things around.

Instead, things got worse. Even Grateful Dead hippie Anthony lost his cool when the Blue Ridge Parkway closed for ice on the road and the aid station was being taken down. I got no replacement for the soapy coke and continued my hunger streak, getting sicker and loopier. All I could mutter was “No” whenever Anthony tried to get me to nibble something in the Forever Section. Come on, Martha, one gummy bear….. I answered in the negative with another puke.

Pacing a suffering ultrarunner is a hard task. A couple weeks before Hellgate, Mike and I spent seven hours together running Vicki’s Death March going over pacer instructions in detail. I never conveyed the same information to Anthony. I get into tiffs when pacers inject their own opinions. I never yell at people, but I will rebel and grind to a halt and refuse to move, like the time Sean egged me on to get me to pass more women at the Frisco Half Marathon when I was suffering at altitude. I refused to take another step until Sean let me run my own race. “Blueberry” is my code word for please leave me alone and stop talking.

The final 2.5-mile climb up the road from Day Creek is a death march. This year I got an extra dagger when a bouncy woman ran past me up the hill looking impossibly energetic. (Are you even allowed to run that climb?) But Anthony had regrouped at the final aid station and we made peace at the summit where I agreed to take several gulps of coke. I glanced at my friend one last time before steeling myself to gun it to the finish line. The woman who passed me up the hill was long gone, but, just like in past years, I pulled out 6:30-minute miles from god knows where and soon she was in my sights. I passed her as authoritatively as she’d passed me on the uphill. I know most of the women I pass in the final stretches of Hellgate, but she was unfamiliar. I finished in my standard time of 15 hours, plus or minus, for the third time in a row. Only this year, for the first time, I did not puke on Horton’s finish line.

Hellgate has an unusual rule that top-10 men and top-10 women can’t have pacers, so one of Anthony and Mike’s biggest concerns was that their participation might cost me a puff jacket. Fortunately, I pulled off the rare feat of getting a pacer and a puff jacket by finishing as top women’s master but outside the top-10.

Aaron crawled across the finish line in the pitch dark after 17 grueling hours and 34 minutes, just 26 minutes under the 18-hour cut-off. It was the slowest of his 22 finishes by far, more an hour slower than his worst Lyme disease year. But he preserved his streak, which is all that counts. Fellow Hellgate streaker Darin cut it even closer and finished with a mere 90 seconds to spare. Ultimately, the Hellgate story of the year went to my friend Laney, who finally finished Hellgate under the cut-off on her fifth try, after coming in just 2 minutes over the time limit two years ago.

Anyone following the trends of 2024 should not be surprised that three WUS women — Nora, Keavy, and I — took home Patagonia puff jackets for top-ten or top-masters finishes. WUS women are making a comeback, thanks to Barry’s Friday morning trail runs (Barry also ran Hellgate this year, his second finish) and a new-and-improved generation of WUS gentlemen, of which my crew Mike and Anthony are standard bearers.

Nothing beats a good trilogy (Lord of the Rings, the original Star Wars), and my third Hellgate felt like a good series finale. My first Hellgate in 2021, was an act of desperation during a hellish pandemic year when I was willing to try anything, even Aaron’s crazy ice race, to beat anxiety and depression. My second Hellgate in 2023 proved I’d come to appreciate David Horton and the magical Hellgate experience, which is somehow both tortuous and goofy. After my third Hellgate, I was ready to pass the torch to Mike, Anthony, and Matt, and be their support human as they stumble through the Forever Section. But after convincing myself and everyone else that my third Hellgate would be my last, I woke up the next morning and squealed in bed to Aaron I want to do it again!