The air was cool, the sun was warm, and a thin blanket of mist was rising off the surface of the Wolfgangsee. It was just before 8am on Saturday, May 23, a date that had been sparkling in my calendar since October, when registration for the Mozart Ultra opened. I unwrapped one of my homemade trail mix cookies and chomped on it, watching runners stretch their quads or snap last-minute selfies in front of the lake.

The weather was perfect. It had all the makings of a perfect race day.

Except I wasn’t calling it that. My coach had suggested a few weeks earlier, as I navigated those thorny pre-race nerves, that I call it something else in my head. So I decided it was an adventure. Not a race. I put on my nerdy D&D hat and told myself I had a main quest: to finish the 72 kilometer race before the cut-off time of 4am on Sunday, smiling. That was my quest. Other side quests may present themselves along the way (befriend a runner, eat 20 slices of watermelon, run through a hose-ful of cold water) that I could accept or disregard.

I’d never run 72km before, not continuously anyway. 100km in the backyard ultra a few years ago is still something I’m proud of, but it’s not the same. I did the math, and over 15 hours on the same loop, I’d accumulated about 600+ meters of elevation gain. I also finished every loop with 10 minutes to spare, a bathroom nearby, and my own little camp of supporters boiling bouillon on a camping stove, massaging my legs, catering to my every want and need. This is all to say I was spoiled. 72km over 3300+ meters of elevation gain (that’s almost 45 miles and 10,826 feet) was new territory for me.

I did some race math. I revisited my best worst race of all time: Davos 2024, where I ran about 26km of hell. The town of Davos lies at 1560m altitude, so naturally, I’d trained for that race all summer in New Jersey, at sea level. The morning I waited on the mountainside for Jesse to pass the baton, I eyed up this little hill that would begin my 26km climb, eager and jolty to get going. Jesse passed me the poles, which I’d never run with before, and off I went, arms locked vertically at my sides, gasping for breath. I didn’t make it up the hill, and the rest of the race was a nightmare, mainly because I couldn’t breathe, it was scorchingly hot under the mid-July sun, I ran out of water, and I was running with zero arm-swing because I thought it would be a great idea to hold the poles directly down at my sides.

I finished my leg of the race in 4 hours 50 minutes, way off my goal time. It sucked. I texted my sister from the shuttle, feeling like a total failure.

I’d also spent the night before scrutinizing the course map and somehow messed up all the math about when the uphill would begin.

I used that race to calculate a possible time for this one. If it took me nearly 5 hours to do 26 kilometers in Davos, I decided it would maybe take me about 15 hours to finish this race. With an 8am start time, I imagined crossing the finish line at around 11pm, well ahead of the 4am cut-off.

The Mozart Ultra began in St. Gilgen this year, climbed the Zwolferhorn, and then rolled up and down the Austrian hills until it wound past my hotel, down by the Fuschlsee, to the finish line. When I signed up, I reached out to my friend Tim, a fellow runner who happened to live in Vienna. It felt less lonely training for a race and knowing someone else is training, too. Then, Jesse threw his hat in the ring, signing up for the full 120km/80-mile version of the race. Life was good.

On the morning of race day, I woke at 5:45am and brewed a sachet of coffee in my hotel room. I ate a dark chocolate beet muffin (I’d baked two batches of muffins from my running cookbook, Rise and Run, that provided yummy, energizing snacks and also dinner on Thursday night when we arrived at our hotel at 10pm to find everything closed) and forced myself to also eat a banana. One of my goals was to fuel. Rachel Entrekin said she ate every 30 minutes during Cocodona a few weeks ago. My goal was every hour.

I filled up my flasks with electrolyte mix and made sure my drop bag and running pack were fully equipped. For Jesse, Tim, and me, this was our first ever UTMB event, and as noobs, we followed all the rules.

For example, UTMB has a list of required equipment for each race. The website promises random searches and penalties if you are missing an item. Even though the weather forecast was all sunshine and 80-degree heat, we were expected to carry warm gloves and a weatherproof jacket. I had these packed inside a 1-liter Ziplock bag, along with a first aid kit, emergency blanket, headlamp, spare battery, and backup phone charger, among other things. I had my Chia Charges, Maurten gels, Naak waffles, and my trail mix cookies packed in there, too. UTMB is BYOC (yay!) so I had some wooden spoons and those weird silicon cups.

No one checked any of the gear.

Jesse and I brought everything to the expo on Friday, including our prepared drop bags, but we were only required to show our QR codes to collect our bibs. My bib-delivery guy told me I could send my drop bag straight to the finish if I wanted, instructed me to ziptie an extra tracking chip to my backpack, and gave me a bracelet before sending me on my way.

Jesse’s bib-delivery guy told him there was a mandatory race briefing at 6pm. We asked around and got confirmation that this was true, even though our Runner’s Guides said “join us for presentation of elite athletes and race briefing”, which did not sound mandatory to me. We didn’t go.

So, okay. We didn’t follow all the rules. But Tim was there, and he said they just presented the athletes.

Anyway. Saturday morning, before I left the hotel room, I clocked some minor GI issues and a sore left achilles. This did not bode well for me, as during my training, several times, out of nowhere, my left achilles would flare up during a run and get so painful that I had to cut the run short. I tried to ignore it. If I couldn’t finish the race, so be it. I know I will have a bad race day again. I just don’t know when that will be. Everybody does. But I hoped it wouldn’t be this day.

I took my allergy medicine, stretched, used the massage gun. I made sure I had everything I needed. Amy picked us up at 7am and we headed to St. Gilgen. Jesse’s race had begun at 5am at the expo in Fuschl am See, so he was already en route. His first assisted aid station would be St. Gilgen, so Amy would wait there for him.

Tim and I dropped our bags at the bagdrop, and I confirmed they were going to Faistenau, our assisted aid checkpoint at 33km. I did not want the bag going straight to the finish.

“There’s only one place they can go,” Tim told me, baffled. “Why would they go to the finish?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s what my race guy said.”

The whole point of the drop bag was for it to be there at 33km. I packed a change of clothes, spare socks, more food, and two full flasks of electrolyte mix I could just take and plop into my backpack, easy.

I used the bathroom, and then Tim and I quietly stretched and observed the runners around us. I entered a very serene and surprisingly chill headspace at this point. I think because I’m usually pushing myself to overcome some kind of time barrier, I’m usually very jittery at race starts. I’ve got to beat the 4-hour time of the marathon, or get a sub-2-hour half-marathon time. Or with Jungfrau, I have to meet the cut-off points.

This race felt different.

First, I wasn’t putting pressure on myself. 15 hours was my hope, but if I couldn’t manage that, whatever. It was just a big hike with opportunity to run. How many times have I been on a hike where I’ve wanted to jog a little of it? So many times. This was my chance!

Second, I’d been injured. In early January, galloping along a very snowy two-hour run in Gimmelwald, without realizing it, I somehow did something to my right knee. To the point where I could not run without pain for two months. One MRI and 20 physio sessions later, it’s great, but it meant my training plan changed. Instead of stacked weekends and 4 months of regular lifting – so, a 3-hour run Saturday and a 2-hour run Sunday, for example – which was the schedule I used going into the backyard, I was doing 2-3 hour runs on Saturday and 30-60 minutes on Sunday if I felt up to it. My weekday runs were solid, ranging 65-90 minutes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I did my best to lift as often as I could. This usually meant a Sunday session at the school weight room (for about an hour) plus daily exercises. I tried to break them up, so I’d do some Bulgarian split squats on Monday but Romanian deadlifts on Tuesday, followed by Spanish squats on Wednesday. (Why are these leg exercises named after European countries?)

Sometimes I’d tie exercise bands around the desks in my classroom between lessons and do my squats there. I began carrying exercise bands in my work backpack so I could do stretches or exercises whenever.

This is the thing about races and race training: you often only see the end result. But so much training goes into it. And it really does require sacrifice. Social events, sleep, alcohol – I’ve changed so much of my everyday to accommodate this. And it takes a lot of mental stamina. I’d go to work on Monday, run an after-school meeting from 4:30-5:30, then get changed and do some lifting in the gym. I’d get home at 6:30/7, have dinner, then go straight to bed and wake up at 4:30am to fit in a 75-minute run before work on Tuesday. Followed by a 90-minute run on Wednesday morning with 4 sets of hill sprints.

It’s a lot of work. And there are times I hate it. Like 4:30am on a Wednesday morning. But there’s also a positive to knowing, as you sprint up that bastard hill for the fourth time, that it’s only 5:30am and you’ve already done the hardest thing you’ll do all day. The rest of the day is cake from here.

So I wasn’t getting in my head on race morning or comparing myself to all the other lithe-looking runners around me. I was feeling ready. So what if I hadn’t logged 100km weeks? Had I ever done this much single-leg muscle strengthening/weight training? No. So there. I’d be fine. And how many hikes had I done nimbly, with steep, gnarly ascents? So many. And now I had my trusty hiking poles tucked away in this new, very cool quiver. (My old pack was not really a running pack, so I’d shoved them in the back pockets, but I’d have to remove the backpack every time I wanted access to the poles.)

Plus, the quiver fit my nerdy D&D running mindset. Maybe I’d have to shoot a worg or something.

Shortly before 8, all the runners began to shuffle toward the starting gate. The race is called the Mozart, apparently winding through Mozart’s birthplace and some meaningful countryside locales, so they fittingly played some Mozart as they gathered us in the starting pen. Updated techno Mozart, of course, with club-beats. Cool.

We shuffled as far up as we could, with Tim moving on ahead of me. We fist-bumped good luck, and he disappeared into the crowd. (Well, not really. He’s pretty tall. But you get the picture.)

At 8am, they let the elite male runners go. At 8:01, the elite female runners. At 8:02, the rest of us. The starting line was a funnel, with all of us crowded in, slowly sifting through a gate wide enough for just one person. It was kind of cool to start the race on your own. I set my Garmin and crossed the start line.

The first part of the race wound through the streets of St. Gilgen. I was only a few hundred meters in when I heard my name being called, and there was Amy on the side, cheering me on. (Dan could not come this time as he had a coaching tournament all weekend.)

I always say this after races, but I’ll say it again: never underestimate the power of support. Even from afar. The number of friends who texted asking for the LiveTrail tracking the night before and sent screenshots of my name on the app along with a good luck, we’ll be following! message was so incredibly powerful and touching. More on that later.

I knew that the first part of the race would be about 9.8km of 1084 gain, so I wanted to conserve energy. This meant sticking to my usual pace of about 6.40/km as we wound through St. Gilgen, which also meant locking in while loads of people passed me. Maybe this was the hardest part of the race, because it is a psychological mess. You’re jogging along, and people are flying past you on either side, and you think…shoot. This is not good. I should go faster.

But I reminded myself that my goal might be different from theirs. Mine was to finish the race feeling energized and strong, and I don’t know how pushing my pace in the first few hundred meters will affect me. Maybe they can do that. Or maybe they’re going to burn out. Who knows? The point is, there’s zero usefulness in comparing. But psychologically, it’s still hard.

We met the first climb shortly after St. Gilgen, and everyone was going for their poles. I whipped mine out of my quiver easily and locked in. It was mainly up trail, with root-steps and rock and switchbacks through the forest. There were only a few times where I couldn’t advance because the trail was narrow and people were stopped. For the most part, we plodded up at a steady pace. Then the trail weaved out and up along an exposed, sunny stretch of path, then steep switchbacks up to the Zwolferhorn lookout point.

I felt great. The climb felt just fine. Around 50 minutes in, I forced myself to eat some Chia Charge. I was not hungry, but I forced it. I know how it works. You’re not hungry, so you don’t eat until you’re hungry, but by then it’s too late. You’re already behind on energy.

This was the hardest part of the climb, honestly. Eating, when eating is the last thing you want to do. (And I do love Chia Charge! They’re tasty and chewy and energizing!)

I pushed on through the sun. I did the first of many mental check-ins, where I checked in with each part of me. How’s the achilles? Sore, but manageable. How’s the spirit? Very good! What am I grateful for in this moment? Shade! Woods! Poles!

We summited Zwolferhorn and people were cheery. I snapped the only selfie/the only photo I have of myself on this race at what I thought was the top. You can see the Wolfgangsee in the background, our little blue starting point.

From there, it was up a little more, then down a bit to our first aid station at Illingeralm. I do not remember this aid station much, but I do know that I committed to keeping my water filled here. This meant that at every aid station, I’d remove the 1L bladder, have them fill it with water, and then I’d have to take out the 3 Ziplock bags so I could free up space to put the bladder back into the running pack, and then repack it.

This was annoying, but only mildly. I never once ran out of water, which was a goal. I never, ever want to be thirsty and have nothing. That’s happened to me before on more than one occasion and it sucks. The other upside to this was that when I repacked the Ziplock bags, I got to read all the inspiring messages Jillian had written on them in Sharpie. So it was like a little reminder that someone was cheering me on from afar.

At the aid station was a sign advertising the distance to the next aid station and the elevation gain. This would be Shafbachalm, with 306 meters of gain over about 9km. I felt good. I felt great! I was off again. This time, I ended up speedwalking up a hill alongside a 60-year-old man from the UK. He started talking to me in German and we exchanged some words before switching to English. We chatted about the race and our goals, and he showed me his cool hiking poles that clip into these little gloves. I noticed loads of people had them, but I didn’t know what the gloves were for. I figured they were some kind of protective, cool-looking thing.

“It’s what Courtney uses,” he said with a shrug. “So I got them.”

I loved that this man was using Courtney Dauwalter as his running guide. We chatted for a while, jogging and walking, until we reached the downhill and I let him pass. I am speedy on uphills and very slow on downhills, especially technical ones. The number of times I passed people on the uphill only to be passed by them later on the downhill was too many to count.

But whatever. I wasn’t racing them. I was just out for a nice day in the Austrian countryside, enjoying the scenery. If I could get in by 11, I’d be happy.

At the next aid station, they had lots of food. I’d been eating well – more Chia Charge, a cookie, and some Naak waffle – but I figured an apple slice wouldn’t hurt. And oh my god did it taste divine. So I had another. And another. They’d obviously been out for a while because they were slightly brown, but they were delish.

Then I spotted the watermelon. I’m not a huge watermelon fan. They’re fine. But I took one and had a bite and holy shit if the apple was divine then this watermelon was like nectar of the gods or something. Never in my life have I appreciated a cold piece of fruit the way I did that watermelon slice. I knew I should salt it but I was enjoying it too much. Plus, I was getting plenty of salt from my ReLyte mix.

I refilled my water and used the toilet, which was also a goal of mine. If I’m hydrating well, I should need toilet breaks. This was a win!

Then I was out of the aid station and back in the beautiful mountains and meadows of Austria. The night before, I had to download the LiveTrail app (a race requirement), and there was a function that let you put in your time goal and it would tell you approximately what time you should arrive at aid stations to meet your goal. I put in 15 hours, and it said I’d need to be at Schafbachalm around 10/10:15am. I arrived around that time, so great job me. But as I ran out of the aid station, I realized I hadn’t actually noted any of the other time benchmarks.

Oops. But who cares? I decided then that I did not care about the time benchmarks or anything. My phone was in my side pouch, easily reachable, but I did not touch it. In fact, I only used it to take a few photos and once to check when the next aid station would be because I missed a sign.

Going into the race, I wondered where my mind would go. Sometimes I get a song stuck in my head on loop, or I think about a situation in my life that’s on my mind. Often, in previous marathons, I’d calculate kilometers or countdown how many I have left. But today, my mind was totally blank. It was like the barrier between what I’m experiencing at present and my thought process was gone. I was just there.

It sounds all kitschy maybe, but in my daily life, there’s always a barrier between my physical experience and what’s going on in my head. Mel has this great analogy, that as teachers, we live with hundreds of tabs open in our brains. The only time you can close all the tabs is over the summer, because even over our other breaks, there’s always work to be done, deadlines to be met.

I’m always operating on fast-pace, zipping off quick emails while students enter class, trying to grade that last paper before the next class comes in. I have tried to be present with my students this year and I’ve done a better job of it, sure, but when I’m not teaching, I’m juggling a million commitments and I’m never thinking about what I’m doing right now, I’m always thinking of the things that need to be done. It’s why I feel rushed all the time, why I’m constantly doing ridiculous things like going to charge my phone while eating a banana and finding myself pressing the phone charger up to the banana instead of my phone.

Or making breakfast while thinking about meetings I have in the morning and am I prepared and wait, did I send that reminder email? And then finding myself about to put the yogurt into the tupperware cabinet instead of the refrigerator.

I hate living across two planes like that, but in my daily life, there’s so much stimulus and so much demand it’s impossible not to. I receive about 40 emails a day. On top of planning, grading, actually teaching, and running sustainability. I feel like one of those X-wing fighters in Star Wars trying to shoot down enemy planes from all around, only I’m also in charge of steering my ship.

So as I ran along the trail, unaware of how many kilometers remained, it was pure bliss. There were no decisions for me to make. The course was clearly marked with hot pink arrows on the trail or pieces of caution tape dangling from tree branches. There were no messages I needed to return. There was nothing I needed to think about.

So all I did was notice things. How the trail felt, the snowcapped mountains, the pace of the person next to me as we fell into step wordlessly for several kilometers.

I arrived at Faistenau about 14km later, jogging in to see Amy shouting my name and running down the hill to meet me.

“You’re ten minutes ahead of schedule!” she cried. “How do you feel?”

Goldfinger’s “99 Red Balloons” was playing from somewhere. I felt great. We went into the support area and Amy got me a coke while I opened my drop bag and debated what I wanted. She also refilled my water bladder for me. Amy is a star supporter, partly because she’s usually racing and receiving support. So she knows how to give it.

I decided not to change into my spare clothes, considering my shirt was cool enough even if it was black. I did change socks, though, and took stock of some blisters developing on my feet. From Duke of Edinburgh, I know you should address the blister ASAP, so I put some Compeed on my pinky toe and my big toe on my left foot. The rest seemed to be doing okay.

I swapped an empty 500-ml electrolyte flask for a new one, used the bathroom, ate more watermelon, fruit, and waffle slices, and sent my drop bag down to the finish line. I reapplied sunscreen and my SPF chapstick, chatted with Amy about Jesse’s progress, and then headed out.

“You have a nice downhill to Ebenau!” Amy said, waving me off. “Enjoy it!”

The thing about these downhills, and the course map, is that I imagined the downhill portions would be dreamy and consistent. But they were actually peppered with more climbs. So sure, the jog to Ebenau was over 9km with 402 meters of downhill, but there was a sneaky 250 meters of uphill in there, too.

The downhill was also weirdly along a major road with metal guardrails. I was jogging down behind a tall man and another guy, thinking maybe I’d missed a turn, when the guy next to me stopped and said, “This doesn’t look right.”

I agreed with him, but the tall guy heard us, pointed to his Garmin, and said, “No, this is correct. We’re on the right path.”

A few meters ahead, around a corner, another caution tape signalled he was correct. I was glad to have people near me who downloaded the GPX map. I mean, I’d also downloaded it, but I didn’t actually know how to use it.

We descended and then climbed, and then we came out around some houses in the mountains. From up ahead, I could hear music playing. Then we turned a corner and some people had a speaker out, a little stand with water, and, miraculously, a hose spraying water over the road. I ran beneath it, the cold spray reviving me.

Also, these moments always warm my heart. Those people may not have known anyone in the race at all, but because the route went past their house, they decided to support. People can be so awesome.

This was the case all along the route, especially as we moved from trail to little town. We’d pass hikers or cyclists who would turn and cheer us on, read our names off our bibs. At one downhill turn, I passed a kid sitting in a field with a baby, and the baby was saying “Hopp, hopp!” (Which is what they say here to encourage you to keep running.) They start support training young here.

People sitting on curbs or just hanging out would cheer, ring cowbells, chant your name. This is one of the many reasons I love racing. When my day-to-day is a gloomy newsfeed filled with reasons to panic or headlines suggesting our world is doomed, it’s nice to see humanity at its best.

I made it to Ebenau, and then to Gaisberg. At some point, I did become aware of kilometers and time. In Faistenau with Amy, I saw a clock on the wall saying it was 2pm. I was doing pretty well. In fact, I would beat my 15-hour time goal if I kept it up. Amy and I also noted in Faistenau that the distance remaining was less than a marathon. I could do that. I’d done that before. Easy.

From Gaisberg, there was only about 22km remaining. I felt really good. This was not daunting at all. I ran this distance regularly on training weekends. I checked in: was I enjoying myself? Very much.

Gaisberg was also where I’d run into a nice guy sitting at a table with a bag of ice.

“Want some ice for your water?” he asked me. It had seemed like a brilliant idea, cold, cold water. “Somebody just left this here.”

Oh. That sounded germy. I decided not to. The guy took a block of ice and dropped it down his shirt. “It’s also good for this.”

Gaisberg was also where I encountered another woman, who I think was a part of Jesse’s race. Jesse’s race started earlier than mine, but once they hit St. Gilgen, the course was the same. So some of the faster runners from his race were beginning to pass me. This girl left the aid station, then immediately went to the bushes and vomited. Like, cartoon-style vomitting.

When she finished, I awkwardly asked her if there was anything I could do to help. She said no, apologized for vomiting, and then vomited again. After swearing a few times, she jogged onward. We kept lapping each other, and at the next aid station, she vomited again. But she kept on running. I love running, but I don’t know that I have that grit. I had a lot of respect for her.

I felt another blister forming on my right toe, and while I didn’t want to lose more time at the aid station, I knew I had to address it. I could hear Niki and Carl reminding the students about this on DoE. Even though it meant taking off my shoe and pulling out another Compeed, I did it. Go me.

From Gaisberg, the next aid station of Koppl looked about 7.8km ahead. The sun was sinking lower in the sky, casting a dark orange light over fields of wildflowers. I ran along road through meadows, the horizon sloping with green hills.

After 7.8km, the next aid station did not appear. It turns out, I’d misread it. It was a time chip line, but there was no aid station there. The next station would be in Hof, another 5km. I was okay on water, but I’d been looking forward to more watermelon.

I felt a little grouchy about it, so I did a check in. How was my achilles? Still fine. Ankles and feet hurt, but this is normal. Am I having fun? Yes.

Then, suddenly: another climb. Out came the poles, and up I went. It was getting tougher, but not horribly. I made it up the root-steps, out of the woods, and found myself on a cliff-edge with literally breathtaking views. I had to stop and take out my phone and take a video, because a photo wouldn’t do it justice. A man emerged from the woods behind me, panting from the climb, and paused to take it in with me.

“Wow,” he said.

We both stood there together, catching our breath, the sweeping views of hills, a craggy rock face, and Salzburg laid out before us. It was stunning.

I continued on. We were slowly descending (and ascending, but mostly descending) back down to Fuschl. The sky above was blue. At one point, facing another climb, I dragged myself up it and kept moving, thinking how annoying these little pockets of ascent were. I reminded myself what I’d decided at the start of the day: only positive thoughts. So I swept that irritation away and for some reason, looked up.

In the sky overhead, seven or eight paragliders swirled, their parachutes colorful crescents against the blue sky. Again, I had to pause and take a photo and video, because how incredible. What if I’d just kept plodding ahead? I’d have missed it.

I reached Hof, our last aid station, feeling great. In fact, the last few kilometers I’d actually felt hungry. This was new, and I celebrated the feeling. I ate waffles from my backpack and ate more fruit and waffles at the aid station.

The sun was getting even lower, the breeze even cooler as I continued out of the aid station, down the paved road. Up ahead, I spotted Tim, and we chatted. He was having some leg cramps and doing his best to alternate running and walking, but he seemed in great spirits.

There were some unofficial people up ahead giving out water and snacks, so he filled up his flasks there. Tim is also probably the most appreciative, gracious person at aid stations. Every single race volunteer we encountered, from a guy telling us how to get to the starting line to the bag drop guy to these random people giving out water, Tim would pause and look them in the eye and sincerely thank them.

Tim pointed out that we were basically done with the ascent. It was only about 4km to the finish line, and we were about to pass our hotel. Literally.

I ran past the parking lot, my cozy bed a few hundred meters away. But I wasn’t tempted. I was happy to keep going. I told myself, this is almost over. You only get a few more kilometers of this. Enjoy it.

I came down the steps near the hotel and emerged on the gravel path alongside the lake, which is where I did my shakeout run the evening before. Only tonight, it felt triumphant. The lake was cool and flat on my left, the trees cool and shady on my right and overhead.

Finally I was out of the climbs. Only little, sloping hills from now on. I was feeling a little hungry again, but only had about 2km to go. I was also starting to feel a little tired. I knew I had a Maurten caffeine gel in my vest pocket. I hadn’t had a single gel all day. I’ve had them during training, but I was really keen to stick to solid foods for as long as I could.

If I took the gel now, it would probably fire me up to really push it in to the finish, like up my pace for the last 2km. I’d have a huge burst of energy. But if it had caffeine, that also meant I might not sleep later. It was after 8pm now; did I want to be awake all night?

I decided I’d give it my all without the gel, even if it meant finishing tired. I was still running, and I was still feeling good. That was all I wanted.

The sun was setting, orange and gold and pink and that really pretty turquoise blue all reflected in the lake. I could hear the sound of the announcer and some thumping music coming from up ahead somewhere. My sunglasses were tucked in one of my vest pockets now, the forest floor growing darker. In about a half hour, I’d want a headlamp if I was still out. But at this rate, I was going to be done by 9pm.

I turned the final corner around the lake and I could see the expo and finish line up ahead. It wasn’t like some races, where you hear the finish and when you see it, it’s still far off. It was so close. I could not believe it.

The ground turned to pebbly-sandy-grainy terrain, and I pushed ahead. People were lined up along the finish line cheering, including Amy with her phone out. In my head, I was sprinting along; in Amy’s video, I look like I’m out for a jog.

Whatever. I finished. And I felt amazing. I felt strong, I felt fueled, I felt hydrated, and I felt happy. Could I have kept going? Maybe for a few flat kilometers.

I could not believe it was over. It just seemed to happen and then be done. It was really unlike so many other races where I’m pining for the finish line or counting the kilometers. Why is this?

Amy and her daughter came to greet me. I got myself an alkoholfrei beer and some pretzel sticks, and Amy promised to find me food. Unfortunately, all the food stands were closing, which was wild to us since the race was still well underway, with hundreds of people yet to finish.

I caught Tim’s finish with my phone, and then Jesse was coming in around 10:15pm, currently 8th in his age group. I grabbed my drop bag and changed into my warm clothes, which was a real relief; it was getting really cold sitting there in my sweaty running clothes after the sun went down.

We managed to get a veggie burger from a vegan stand, the last one they had, which they definitely thought was for Amy’s daughter. Runners kept coming up to the stand, hungry, then disappointed. But the guy at the stand was really nice and kept giving out free falafel or green beans, which people took gratefully.

Because they just ran 72-120km and wanted hot food. I’ve always thought of UTMB as the pinnacle of trail racing, a super-organization. This was really surprising to us, that they wouldn’t have hot food – and different than the aid station food – for runners upon finishing the race.

Jesse whizzed through the finish on time, and then we all headed back to our hotels/AirBnBs. I managed a hot shower and slept sort of okay, between sore muscles and weird energy bursts. In the morning, Tim and I enjoyed a very hearty breakfast at our hotel’s breakfast buffet. We sat outside on the terrace in the shade, recapping the race and talking future plans.

Because all of us earned “running stones” for this race, and you can use the stones to enter the big UTMB races like the CCC in August.

It was nice to catch up, and also really nice to enjoy a good, delicious meal. I have to say, leaving Thursday night meant a Coop sandwich on the go, then falling asleep at my hotel around 11pm without any real hot food (just my muffin and some pretzel sticks). Then the hotel in Fuschl, Arabella Jagdorf, was fully booked in their restaurant, so I managed to get some pasta at the hotel bar. But this fear of when will I eat and what will it be was not helpful before the race.

It made me super grateful for the endless breakfast buffet and coffee and cool morning breeze the day after. And of course, we’d done it. There was no longer a question of whether or not we would finish the race: we finished it.

In the end, I’m over the moon. I finished the race, and I did it in 12:47:44. I’m certainly not speedy by any means, but that wasn’t the point this time. The point was to do it and see what it felt like. Was it fun? Or was it so challenging that it kind of sucked? It was awesome. It was the most fun.

My coach wrote to congratulate me and pointed out I made the “Top 20” in my age group, which was lovely. What’s interesting is, they put me in the 40-44 category even though I’m not yet 40. There were 29 women racing in that category, so “Top 20” doesn’t feel so great. But the 35-39 category for women only had either 15 or 19 (I can’t remember) women racing, and if they’d put me in that category, I would’ve been 7th for my age bracket.

I thought it was interesting that, one, there were more entries for the 40-44 category than the mid-late thirties and two, that I would’ve had a better result if I’d been racing at the top age in the bracket than racing at the youngest age in the bracket.

The moral, I think, is that women are racing in their 40s. And that’s awesome. It’s nice to think of this as a sport that I can start to get into now, instead of a sport I’m coming to the end of my prime in. Exciting things lie ahead!

For now, I’m still basking in the post-race bliss. Luckily, today is a public holiday, so I’m not at work. I can tend to my aching quads and wobble around the apartment unpacking bags and doing laundry. I’m also incredibly grateful for all of the people who supported, encouraged, and checked in. After the race, I had a slew of celebratory, encouraging messages waiting for me in chat groups and from friends and family near and far.

It seems so small, but it really makes a huge deal. If you’ve read this far, wow. As Mark Twain supposedly once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one.” This entry feels very much like that – an overflow of thoughts and reflections I’m just getting down on the page because I know I won’t have time in the coming weeks, and I don’t want to forget the details.