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[Editor's Note: The Harock 100 is rated the hardest 100-mile endurance race in the world. The course, from Silverton to Lake City, Ouray, Telluride and back to Silverton, traverses rugged mountain terrain which exceeds 13,000 feet in places.]  IT IS FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING, I’m following a poor excuse for a goat trail with a tiny flashlight strapped to my forehead. It’s raining steadily now as I approach tree-line. I know this, not because I can feel the rain soak through my supposedly water-proof/breathable outerwear, but because my waning headlamp illuminates the icy droplets in a surreal white glow, inches in front of my eyes. It’s probably a good thing that I can’t see beyond a few feet, as I remember this section of trail from fair-weather daylight training runs as dropping off precipitously into a roaring stream 200 feet below
I fish out another energy gel from an inside pocket of my backpack. With numb fingers inside soggy wet fleece gloves I squeeze the sweet electrolyte syrup into my mouth and try to swallow, but it won’t go down. My gag reflex has taken over. I try to wash down the saccharine clump of goo with a swig of watered-down sports drink but it backfires, along with the pasta I had eaten earlier. Darcy, my pacer, slows down to ask me, “How’s it going back there?” “Great,” I say, which is of course a total lie, but denial is as valuable a tool as loss of sensory perception when it comes to making it through the night at Hardrock. “It doesn’t sound like you’re breathing,” she says. Really? I think, is it possible to be at the 60th mile of Hardrock, nearing 12,000 feet and yet not breathe? I feel like I’m in a dreamworld. I catch my toe on a rock and pitch forward and out towards that steep cliff with the roaring stream below, which I cannot see but know is near. This misstep fortunately brings me back into the uncomfortable reality of the moment before I soar over the edge, both of granite and of sanity. “Try taking deep breaths and blowing out hard so that you get some back-pressure in your lungs,” Darcy advises. “You absorb more oxygen that way I’m way too out of it to question Darcy’s helpful and scientifically-validated breathing technique used by mountaineers in really oxygen-depleted places like the Andes and Himalayas. Stumbling along and sounding like the great bellows at an iron forge, I see a radiant orange glow ahead. “You made it,” Darcy rejoices, “Way to go! That’s the aid station up there. After that, you only have another 2,000 feet and then you’re at the top of the climb.” Emily Baer has finished the Hardrock 100 four times since 1999, when at age 23 she was the youngest runner, male or female, ever to compete. The grueling 100-mile course is considered by many to be the hardest "ultra-run" in the world. Photographs The author, running the Hardrock 100. Photo courtesy Emily Baer |
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