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Allen Bellshaw-2008
Desert RATS 2008
It’s said that humans are programmed to forget pain over time, and that could explain why we have siblings. For me, it took two years to re-up for Desert RATS. Two years ago I ran a pretty solid race, finishing just a few seconds over the 24-hour mark. I had the advantage of a relatively cool (85º) day during the 52 mile stage, and it seemed that someone would need good legs and some luck with the weather to better that time. Apparently Reid Delman, the race director, thought so too, because he offered $1000 to anyone who could muster a sub-24 hour race. The next year Reid held on to his money and I was content to watch the race unfold on the website while sipping a cool drink. Still, I thought about the spectacular desert landscape, the single-minded focus of the race, and the colorful characters that I ran with, and it seemed inevitable that I would give Desert RATS another go.
Desert RATS is a 6-day stage race along the 148-mile Kokopelli’s Trail in Colorado and Utah. It is sort of like the Tour de France in that your times from each stage (ranging from 9 up to 52 miles in length) are added together to determine your final place. It is unlike the Tour in that you are on foot rather than on a bicycle, and instead of staying in a French hotel each night, you sleep in a tent in one of the most remote and inhospitable environments in North America. It is not for everyone, and if you aren’t willing to prepare for the heat and distance, a week at Disneyland is probably a better option.
Doing Desert RATS for the second time gave me the advantage of knowing what to bring and how to not get lost. But more importantly, I understood the problems that face the racers on each stage. For stage 1 (20 miles) you have to overcome the shock of midday heat and not get lost. Stage 2 (39 miles) is all about recovering physically from stage 1 and not getting psyched out by the distance, which covers fairly easy terrain. Stage 3 (9 miles) is about keeping a lid on your speed- saving the legs for the next day. Stage 5 (52+ miles) always determines the outcome of the race. You do well not by going really fast, but by not falling apart. The final Stage 6 (26.2 miles) occurs after a rest day and it’s difficult to gain or lose much time.
Complicated race strategies have never worked for me in the past, so my plan was simple: train for the heat and focus on doing well on the long stage. Heat training in the mountains, where I live, involved cranking up the thermostat, putting on my ski clothes and jumping on the treadmill for an hour or two. It helped to watch Quentin Tarantino movies (try it, you will see what I mean). Eight days before the race I ran the Squaw Peak 50 miler where I enjoyed freezing conditions and 4 inches of new snow during the race. The heat training didn’t seem to be paying off.
On Sunday, the day before the start of the race, I stopped at Loma, the launch site for RATS. I jogged the first 3 miles of the course. It was a furnace. I realized that training for the heat doesn’t change the fact that it is still 100º. Plus there wasn’t any spraying blood and gore like at home on the treadmill, only slickrock and cacti.
Later that day in Moab I met my fellow racers, first at the race check-in at the hotel and then at Milt’s Stop ‘n Eat for dinner. I recognized Scott Jaime, who has been having a spectacular year with a strong finish at American River 50 and fresh off a win at Collegiate Peaks. I also got to meet Dana “Mud ‘n Guts” Miller, 5-time Wasatch 100 champion and ultrarunning legend. He was gracious, good-natured and looked the part of a college president (which he is). I was disappointed, of course, since I was expecting an eviscerated, dirt-encrusted guy who was part antelope. Chuck Walker, the cop from Stockton, was my hands-down favorite to win if we had been required to chase down and kill our meals. He had this subtle deadpan sense of humor where I would find myself grinning like an idiot ten minutes later when I finally got his joke, embarrassed it took me so long to figure it out. Brent Weigner, a seventh-grade teacher from Wyoming, was a veteran of over 150 marathons and ultramarathons, many of them in extreme environments. His name is pronounced with a silent “g” and you can imagine the fun his students have with it. Chris Labbe from Littleton was a fit and experienced runner, but he seemed pretty normal and lacked the aura of craziness that hung over the rest of us. I figured (incorrectly) that he wouldn’t last long. Stephen Meratla, a software engineer from Colorado reminded me of my first Wasatch 100 when I was asking the other runners for advice during the first 20 miles of the race. He looked young and fast and I was worried he would figure out that there is nothing complicated about running a stage race and just leave us in the dust. Massimo, the big-hearted Italian giant, had not fully mastered English, but somehow his malapropisms seemed completely fitting (“I theenk this race is so easy dat I will be pushing up daisies”). Mark Chamley from Laguna, California seemed to have Chris’ problems- he was articulate, fit, likeable and with a good sense of proportion. (His wife is probably reading this and thinking: “Allen has it all wrong, my husband is a total nutjob.”) Anyway, he seemed pretty normal to me, but a good sense of proportion can be a serious handicap in a race like Desert RATS. Bryan Schlotterback turned out to be one of the favorites of the group. A firefighter from Iowa, he was the most enthusiastic and least self-absorbed of all of us. His weightlifter’s physique and tattoos served as a good lesson in not being too quick to judge.
The next morning the van shuttled us the hour and a half to the start of Kokopelli’s Trail. After unpeeling myself from the other racers, I exited the van to find it hotter than the day before. Luckily, Reid has set up the first day to allow racers to experience the midday heat and the most challenging technical terrain and route finding right from the gun. Racers have been known to miss the very first turn of the course. To add to the challenge, the scenery was impossible to ignore with the cacti blooming and the swollen Colorado River snaking along the course. I decided not to be the tour guide for my competitors. At the gun (horn, actually) I just walked slowly up the first hill. I could see that Scott was not happy about leading, but he easily shifted to Plan B and bolted. Perfect for me, but he was going too damn fast. I tried to maintain a 2-3 minute gap, but at one flatter section I clocked him doing 6:30 miles. Suddenly I didn’t feel so in control. If he were to put 20 minutes on me the first day, I would be playing catch-up all week. I entered the suffer zone and managed somehow to maintain contact until mile 17 when I lost him. A few minutes later, Scott appeared behind me, having taken a wrong turn. At the finish line, I felt fortunate to have been beaten by only a minute.
All the other racers finished well within the cutoff. Brent was the only other one to go off course, correcting his mistake with an overland bushwhack and incurring a one hour penalty. He took it in stride, since as a race director himself he knew how hard it sometimes is to locate a racer who has gone off trail. Some racers were a little cooked by the desert climate and they struggled to get something in their stomachs- or struggled to keep it there. Overall, it was a very strong group performance and not a complaint was to be heard from anyone. Dinner was well designed around the needs of the runners and Reid had arranged for a port-a-john to be delivered to our camp in the middle of nowhere. In the evening, as the temperature dropped, the full moon rose above the tents and it was perfect for reading, socializing and a good night’s sleep.
Day 2 marks a shift in runners’ attitudes from trying to beat each other to trying to overcome the challenges of Kokopelli’s Trail. Runners were beginning to team-up and join forces to complete the stage. I was envious of them because Scott and I were lining up at the start to do battle again. This time Scott would not be the tour guide. We ran together through the first 17-mile section, which feels like some strange moonscape with its rugged and arid remoteness. The time passed quickly as we talked about running and our families. At the aid station the trail joins Westwater Road for four miles where we began to push the pace a little harder. A large Pronghorn and a coyote eyed us from the roadside and gave the whole scene a surreal quality. Back on dirt, we climbed a moderate hill and unexpectedly Scott, who seemed to have been running effortlessly, fell back. He didn’t look good, and after kindly offering water and ecaps, I tried to really hurt him by picking up the pace. The next section is my favorite of the whole RATS race. The trail stretches out into the horizon and appears endless. The wind and dust can be disconcerting (though it was not a factor this year). I hammered the final 10 miles and was able to put an 18-minute gap on Scott- not enough time to feel comfortable, but better than I’d expected.
Seventeen miles was enough for Chris, Mark and Dana, who exercised better judgment than the rest of us by hitching a ride to camp. Chuck, Stephen, Massimo, Bryan and Brent slugged it out to the bitter end. Mark arranged for a ride back to the airport with some river guides. I sensed he had some second thoughts about leaving, but he may have sensed we were all having second thoughts about staying After cooling off with a refreshing swim in the Colorado River everyone seemed back in the groove. Our usual campsite was underwater due to the peak runoff and we found a good spot near the Cisco Boat Landing, where Milt’s Stop n’ Eat catered an incredible dinner featuring root beer floats for dessert
The third stage is a pleasant break after two hard days of racing. It is fairly short, but more importantly, it is run in cool morning temperatures. Scott and I tooled along socializing for most of it. Route finding was not difficult, the footing was good, and the views of the river were breathtaking. Scott coasted through the finish line first and little time separated the rest of the group. Everybody looked rested by the end of the day, which was spent lounging in camp and swimming in the river. That day I tried to help a few racers with blister problems. Massimo’s were the worst. After trimming the open blisters, I painted the underlying tissue with NuSkin. That stuff stings and I suspect that because of the language barrier I didn’t convey that very well. His screams echoed through camp. After that there were fewer requests for my services. That evening, after another good meal, I nervously paced around the campground planning my fuel and pacing strategy for the next day.
I believe Stage 4, the Expedition Stage, is the crux of the whole race. Running out of water (or food, or gas) could have serious consequences during this remote 52.7-mile leg. Runners already have 70 miles on the odometer and no matter how fast they go, it is impossible to outrun the hottest part of the day. Another perfect day dawned on Thursday. It was going to be a scorcher. My plan was to run with Scott for the first half of the stage. There were two reasons I thought this was a sound plan. One was that I was really starting to like Scott and our talks were interesting and made the miles go by quickly. The other reason is that for 26 miles I am physically incapable of going any faster than him. The route winds through Yellow Jacket Canyon and massive sandstone formations and then crosses the Colorado River at the site of the now burned-down historic Dewey Bridge. From there begins the first of two monster climbs taking runners into the high country. A short two-mile section through Cottonwood Canyon (not to be confused with Cottonwood Canyon the next drainage over---go figure) took Scott and me a full 30 minutes of hammering hard. Just as our water bottles ran dry, a mirage appeared- a cooler filled with ice water…no wait, that was real. We refilled and sped on to Fisher Valley aid station at mile 27.
Scott and I had decided that from Fisher Valley, it was every man for himself. We started turning the screws right away, pushing on the climbs and descending recklessly. During this, I looked over and saw him munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This ain’t no picnic, Scott. A few minutes later I checked to see if he had finished: “How was that sandwich?” “Great!” he answered. Time to see how well his digestive system works in red-line mode. It was my turn to bolt. After a few more climbs he was out of sight. On Stage 2 he had tried to match his stride to my footprints in the trail, so today I made a point of striding out during the sandy parts of the course. No point in giving him any hope. Fifteen minutes after I passed through the last aid station, Scott’s crew drove by, leading me to think Scott was about 10 minutes back. I dug deep and hammered the last 10K down to the finish. It turned out he had been a little farther back and I had put nearly and hour on him by Rock Castle Campground. Scott looked very strong at the finish, and he would have won the stage in any other year by at least a half-hour. But now he was sitting 1:10 in the hole with only the Marathon Stage to go. Dana wisely took the short-course option that day. The rest of the crazies completed the stage, with Massimo finishing an hour over the cutoff. The hero of the day was Chris, who shepherded Massimo and his blisters for 45 miles, then he handed the Italian off to the sweep and blasted the final miles to finish under the time limit.
The campsite at the top of Castle Valley, where most of us spent two nights, was a welcome relief from the heat. It seemed isolated from the rest of the world but was an easy shuttle to a nice beach on the Colorado River. It also had a cold stream running in the ravine behind it where you can wash off the trail grime. That night’s dinner was a giant vat of chili that was greedily devoured by the racers. Our tent glowed orange from the after-effects. Eerie music would play every couple hours to greet finishing runners. That, along with the multicolored headlamps, gave the whole camp a surreal quality.
Friday was a rest day, spent down at the river watching the swarms of rafters drifting by. We ate sandwiches, sipped beer and cooled off on the river.
The fifth and final stage on Saturday belonged to Scott. The 26.2-mile course climbs 1900 feet and then drops all the way down to the Slickrock trailhead in Moab, interrupted by an out-and-back on the Porcupine Rim Trail to make the distance an official marathon. All the battle-hardened racers looked confident at the starting line. But from the gun it was Scott who dropped the hammer and pulled away to a record-setting stage win. An interesting twist this year was that on the out-and-back section, runners would select a randomly numbered rock at the turnaround to prove they completed the entire distance. This meant that the slowest runner would get to carry the largest rock. Everyone finished looking strong and with fast times, allowing time for a shower and nap before the awards dinner. Besides Scott’s stellar performance, the highlight of the day (or low point, depending on your perspective) was Massimo’s tumble at the finish line and his hot pink briefs (“I could be de flagging”).
After another delicious meal at Milt’s, Reid handed out awards and we sat around like old friends (which we were) and talked about the highlights of the week. It struck me that I had never heard a single complaint during the entire trip. I received my check and Scott’s prize for his sub-24 hour finish was a free entry into next years Desert RATS. He would only need to knock an hour off his time for a course record. Now that he knows the course, it shouldn’t be that hard, should it? With cooler weather, maybe even a sub-20.
A special thanks is owed to Reid’s hardworking and talented staff. Josh, Karen, Mark, John, Glen, Dusty and the rest of the team all worked tirelessly in one of the most inhospitable climates anywhere. For seven days and 150 miles, the race logistics were executed flawlessly. Their enthusiasm and laid-back personalities set the tone for the entire race.
When I signed up for Desert RATS in 2006, I read everything I could about the race, trying to figure our how to pack, train, and stay on course. After doing RATS twice and making just about every mistake possible, some of them twice, I can offer some advice I wish I had heard back in 2006. Keep in mind that these are just one person’s opinions.
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