Vol State Glossary

A couple of years ago I was asked if I could produce a glossary of Vol State language for a group on Facebook. Vol State is growing in popularity and visibility each year, and there are always new, curious ultrarunners and fans who are a bit baffled by some of the colorful (and often eccentric) terms that have evolved around the event over the years. My little glossary has been well-received by many of them, and I decided to get it set up a little better for future years here.

How to Train for Vol State

Archival image of a Vol State training session from the early days.
(Real runners wear the fez)

This is it – the post you’ve been looking for!

One of the questions I have occasionally gotten, and that I have also seen from time to time in comments on Vol State discussions is, “How would you train for a race like that?” Many ultrarunners, who either seriously think they might want to do it or who may just have a passing curiosity about it, seem to wonder about this, and I have finally been moved to reach out with such wisdom as I have on the topic.

The Call of the Open Road

One Year Later - A Look Back at the Vol State

Somewhere along a road in Tennessee, July 2014
(Photo credit - Donald Brown)

It is hot - really hot - as I work my way through my "J-D Hilly Loop" running route - about six miles, some of which traverses the grounds of the Jamesville-Dewitt High School. It's 2:00 in the afternoon, near the peak heat of a hot day, and it is humid too. I feel the heat saturating me and beginning to radiate into the environment - not quickly enough - as I trot the bigger climbs.

Why am I out here doing this now, when I could have waited for the relative cool of evening? It's because of my Vol State brothers and sisters who are on the open road in Tennessee at this very same hour, in the heat of the fourth day of their race. I have been where they are, and I want to feel that kinship in a tangible way.

My run ended, I return to the house. The sweat is just pouring off me and I am dying for a cold shower to take the edge off. I pick up my phone to check the current weather stats: it says 80 degrees and I laugh! It is probably at least a few degrees hotter out there in reality, but it isn't the assumed inaccuracy that amuses me. It's the width of the vast gulf that separates my sincere attempt at 'solidarity' from the reality of what my brothers and sisters are experiencing!

Each day this year in Tennessee has reached the mid-90's and the dew points have been in the mid-70's. As someone pointed out on the ultra list, those numbers combine to produce heat indices (the 'feels like' temperatures that the weather services report) higher than in Death Valley, California. Eighty people started the race this year and as I write these lines sixty-six are left - and that, my friends, may well be the closest thing to a miracle that human beings are capable of creating.

Vol State Vignettes

The 2014 Last Annual Vol State Road Race

(Photo credit - Jan Redmond Walker)

"a run like this is not just a race

it can be (is) a life changing experience.

vol state is a journey thru personal hell

you WILL be discouraged.

you WILL feel self doubt.

you WILL want to quit.

but if you persevere.

if you dog it out, step by step.

you will find in yourself a strength you never knew existed."

Lazarus Lake, Race Director, the Last Annual Vol State Road Race

How do you distill an experience like the Vol State down to something readable, to something comprehensible? How do you convey to the interested reader who has not run the race what the experience is like? In the end that effort must fail, because no one who has not done it can understand how truly awful it is, how long, hard, painful and hence - ultimately - uplifting, empowering, glorious... it actually is.

I could write a nuts-and-bolts account of what happened to my daughter Kim and me as we experienced the 2014 Last Annual Vol State Road Race. 'First we went here, then we went there. This is what we did and this is what we ate.' That would tell you something, but it would not explain the Vol State.

Let me try instead to just tell some stories...

- Chapter 1: "Dad? It's a really long way from where we left the van."
- Chapter 2: Sunshine
- Chapter 3: Abi
- Chapter 4: Creatures of the Night
- Chapter 5: Going Feral
- Chapter 6: The Problem of Pain
- Chapter 7: Road Angels
- Chapter 8: The Long March
- Chapter 9: Roadkill
- Chapter 10: A New Day
- Chapter 11: Diane
- Chapter 12: Despair Cannot be Scheduled
- Chapter 13: Bad Dog!
- Chapter 14: The 'McHenri Nation'
- Chapter 15: "How y'all doin'?"
- Chapter 16: Pampered Cheaters (or "Love Diane!")
- Chapter 17: Doubt vs. Destiny
- Chapter 18: Destiny
- Chapter 19: Denouement

2014 3 Days at the Fair - Afterthoughts

This is Part 4 of a 'three-part' report. :)

Here are Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

In this final post I want to do three things:

1. Fill in some 'color' I feel is lacking in my personal narrative to the point of painting an inaccurate picture of the true character of the race.
2. Talk about what recovery from a 72-hour was like for me - something a multi-day noob reading this report might be interested in reading about.
3. Summarize the important things I think I learned doing this race.

If none of these topics appeals to you, you should probably not read on!

2014 3 Days at the Fair 72-hours - Day 3

This is Part 3 of a three-part report. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.

Day 3

We set up my stuff at a new location - the covered pavilion of a Rotary or Kiwanis club building right on the corner of the final turn. It was a nice spot, again with picnic tables to spread my things out on - and situated just before timing.

I spent the first hour or more getting ready to get back on course - most of that time carefully taping my feet. I chose to go with the kinesio tape. I taped the balls of both feet. That was the finicky part of the job because I had to trim the tape carefully to cover the foot pad without getting up into the creases of my toes where it might rub and cause a problem. I also taped one big toe, and applied several strips of tape across the bottom of each foot wherever the skin felt really tender.

I think I worked on another iced coffee eye-opener while I did this.

After taping was done I very carefully put on clean, dry socks, and then stepped into the flip-flops. Finally I was ready to give this a try and I walked stiffly and gingerly away, taking the long way around the aid station building as Rick had instructed the previous night, to re-enter the course just behind the timing gate and begin mile 98.

2014 3 Days at the Fair 72-hours - Day 2

This is Part 2 of a three-part report. Here are Part 1 and Part 3.

Karen and I headed from my site to race HQ.
As usual, this is the only picture of Karen from the race. :(
(Photo credit - Tom Butler)

Day 2

Many people say that the worst day of a six-day race is the third day. I've sometimes speculated this was the reason that records are not kept for 72-hour races. Why would elite multi-day runners want to go through the worst day and not go on? Then I started talking to three-day runners and they, almost to a person, say that Day 2 is in fact the hardest day of a 72-hour race - and they are right.

Day 2 is when you are first really pushing past sleep deprivation. Most people have gone through one 24-hour period with minimal sleep. Not so many have done it while pushing their bodies to ultra endurance distance. Even fewer have tried to push that into a second day. It seems that there is a 'wall' of sorts to sleep deprivation that has to be pushed through, and this wall comes on Day 2.

This particular Day 2 also brought the rains.

2014 3 Days at the Fair 72-hours - Day 1

This is Part 1 of a three-part report. Here are Part 2 and Part 3.

At the start of 3 Days at the Fair.
Oh how fresh and confident looking!

Bing! My eyes popped open and suddenly I was fully awake. I was sweaty and I smelled bad, but my legs didn't hurt as much as they did when I laid down two hours earlier.

I was in a little two-person tent pitched on the grass just off a road on the Sussex County Fairgrounds in Augusta, NJ - site of the New Jersey State Fair but, on this weekend, the venue for a running race called "3 Days at the Fair." The 'bing' marked the end of a pattern I would repeat several times during the next two days or so. I would retire to the tent, dead on my feet, barely able to move - spend twenty minutes or so shifting around trying to find a position that didn't hurt too much to go to sleep and then (once I'd found it) zonk! Out like a light, spending about an hour in a deep haze of unresolvable dreams, occasionally mingled with the voices of other runners passing by outside. After an hour, the sleep of the dead would give way to that lighter phase where you pass back and forth between half-wakefulness and full sleep, always fighting the wakeful part until... bing!

I yawned and drew my legs up, stretching them and then checking my feet for tender spots. Everything felt surprisingly good given that I had already run and walked 50 miles in the preceding 17 hours. It was still dark outside, so I had at least four hours to add to my mileage total for the first 24 hours. The race clock never stops! It was time to get going again - and I really needed to use the bathroom anyway.

And I won a towel, too...

All scenes, whether actual or created, depict authenticated facts.

(Fame and recognition to the first commenter who

correctly identifies the TV show that line is from.)

One of the great things about becoming a runner is that it seems to lead you into trying new things. Races are just the beginning. There are training routes to discover, running groups to join, volunteer opportunities. There are stretches and exercises to be learned to help keep the body in good shape so one can continue to run. There are self-massage techniques.

When those latter things fail you there are new people in other new settings for you to meet. I'd never been to a podiatrist before I started running, nor a physical therapist, nor a chiropractor, nor an orthopedist, nor a cardiologist. I'd never had acupuncture before.

One of the biggest leaps for me was when I started wondering if real massage therapy from a real massage therapist might be a good thing for me. I'm not exactly the epitome of a "man's man" (or I'd be a construction worker or maybe a truck driver instead of a 'software guy') but I certainly didn't see myself as a spa kind of guy either (let alone an 'organic spa' kind of guy). Now walking into Terra Organic Spa to let Rachel work me over seems almost as normal as walking into the grocery store.

None of this prepared me to be any less hesitant about what I did last night though.

What Makes me Think I can do the LAVS?

Google Map from this year's race.
(RIP symbols indicate where runners dropped out of the race.)

What makes me think it is remotely possible for me - a guy who's never run longer than 50 miles - to go 314 miles across five southern states in July heat? Before I say anything else I have to acknowledge that the bottom-line answer is that I don't know whether I can - and what that says to me is, "Go find out."

That's my genetic defect.

It's Official - I'm Insane

Image (appropriately) lifted from Psyche Wimberly's blog:
"Run Like Ya Stole Sumthin'"

Imagine this:

You're out running with a good friend who happens to be a pretty experienced ultrarunner with some tough races on his resume: Massanutten, Arrowhead 135, Badwater, and a bunch more - over 60 ultras in all. Last year he managed to gain entry into the fabled Barkley Marathons, but was unable to finish.

As you run with this friend, you of course talk about ultrarunning. As it happens, another race cooked up in the imagination of the Barkley race director, the Last Annual Vol State Road Race (LAVS), is happening while you're running. Your friend ventures the opinion that the Barkley and the LAVS are the two toughest races in America.

You're an ultrarunner too, but one with just a few races to his credit. What do you do?

1. Say, "Whoa!" with a sense of awe and wonderment in your voice, and keep running.
2. Think to yourself, "It's so great there's no end of challenging goal races out there for me when I'm ready for them."
3. Sign up for the 2014 LAVS as soon as they start compiling the list of entrants (which was yesterday, BTW).

If you chose #1 or #2 you are a sane person. I picked #3.