Macho Van Vandy Savage is loaded up and ready to go!!! I’m excited to be headed to Vermont to tackle the Devil’s Den Ultra, a 30-hour race with tons of elevation and technical terrain.
After COVID and the knee injury, this will be my first trail ultra in four years. (Not counting World’s Toughest Mudder last year, which isn’t a trail ultra… and certainly didn’t go well.)
Am I ready for it?
Not a chance. After a rough first half of the year, I’ve felt decent the last few months. But I’ve still only done simple hikes and short runs. I’ve only done one run over five miles this year, and that was a six-miler way back in February. Certainly not ideal training for a mountainous, 30-hour ultra.
But that’s okay. Sometimes we can get so caught up chasing ghosts of our past or obsessing over future goals, we can lose sight of the only thing that’s truly real: the present. What we can do right now. And, if there’s anything I’ve learned the last few years, it’s you shouldn’t take that for granted.
After so much obsessing over goals and benchmarks and setbacks, it recently occurred to me I really miss how fun this stuff is. Being around like-minded people; feeling inspired seeing others push themselves; planning race strategy, gear, and nutrition; coping with weather; even the feeling of pure exhaustion. Hard to imagine missing that… until you can’t do it.
I think this is the first event I’ve ever done where I have absolutely no performance goals. The goal here is just to soak in the experience. Maybe I do three laps. Maybe I do six or seven. (Laps are between 6 to 7 miles, with roughly 1,700’ of elevation.) I plan to eat all the food, encourage fellow runners, and maybe even take a short nap at some point. Mostly, it’ll be about enjoying being able to do this stuff again.