WARNING: contains some descriptions of a gross and distasteful nature.

It all started out innocently enough. I'm in the middle of training for Chicago and I thought a race would be just the ticket to gauge how my "Quest for Boston '99" was progressing. So I'm looking around and see this 10 mile race called "Run Through Hell" and thought "hey, that'd look pretty cool on a t-shirt." The only things I knew and heard about this race was that
1) it was in the town of Hell, Michigan.
2) it was in an area that I frequently mountain bike (read:hilly).
For some reason, #2 didn't quite register in my mind and so I thought this was going to be just another 10 mile race. Ha ha ha ha ha.

I had set my alarm clock for 6am to get to the 8am start. But sleep did not find me that night as I tossed and turned all night. I finally fell asleep at around 5am, hoping I could hear the alarm to wake me up.... and then I wake with a start. The time read 6:30am! Damn! I had accidentally set the alarm for 6pm! Whoops! So I do a mad scramble for my stuff and run out the door.

The map to the site looked clear enough until I ran into an unmapped detour. Ok, calm down. I can handle this. I drive through here once in a while when I go mountain biking. So after about 5 min I'm back on track and reach the race site without further incident. I get out of my car 20min before the race starts and I still have to pick up my number and warm up. That goes smoothly enough and I just manage to warm up and stretch just before 8am. Now I'm feeling myself out and it crosses my mind that maybe I should go to the restroom even though I don't feel any pressing need to.

Before I continue, let me just add that on my recent long runs I've been battling a recurring problem of "intestinal" or more specifically, bowel distress, something that's never happened to me before. I've watched what I've eaten the night before, almost down to the point that I'm ready to just skip dinner altogether. Nothing seems to help.

As I was saying, I didn't feel the need to void so I just sauntered over to the starting line and wait for the start. And wait. And wait. Finally at around 8:10, several CARS force their way through the crowd to the starting line. They contained the (I think) race director or whoever starts the race. I found that pretty annoying. After a milling around some more, I suddenly hear a BANG (no announcement, countdown, or anything) and we surge forward. I guess the race has started.

As I said before, I don't know much about this race. So I was a little surprised when we turn onto an unpaved and rocky dirt road after a mile or so (there were no mile markers on the course). Imagine my surprise when BAM!, I run into a hill. "Ok, Thien, just relax. You've done your hill repeats. Remember: hills are your friends. This shouldn't be a problem." And it wasn't until POW!, a second hill shortly after the first one. But even this one wasn't too bad and I'm passing a lot of people on the way up. A little past the base of said hill, we do a turnaround. Man i hate those. Then BOOM!, we have to climb the same hill we just came down from. Torture. Keep in mind that we're on a rocky dirt road so I have to watch every step. I've already seen one guy badly twist an ankle.

A little ways after this hill we turn onto another dirt road and it looks relatively flat so I accelerate. Shortly, I catch sight of... a DRS singlet! My first encounter ever! I run up along side him and yell "Go Dead Runner!" I introduce myself and we chat for a little. His name was Sam Underwood (I think) and he's run this race before so I pump him for some info for the rest of the course. Much to my bewilderment, he says that there's still some hills left and one bad hill. Great. But I'm slowly pulling away so I wish him a good race and speed along.

Nothing notable happens for a while except for some small hills, which I conquer just fine. At around mile 5 we finally turn onto real pavement again as we run by a lake. I'm already drenched with sweat so I'm thinking it'd feel pretty good to drop out and just run into the water. That's a passing fancy though and I get back to the task at hand. A little past the lake, we do ANOTHER turnaround (man i hate those things) and SPLAT! we climb a big hill. Funny, I don't remember coming down this one though I must have because this is just after the 2nd turnaround. This one nearly did me in. No, what really did me in was the bowel problems that come on with a vengeance after this hill. One minute I'm hustling and the next I'm almost at a walk because every step feels like there's a bowling ball bouncing around in my lower intestines.

*GROSS ALERT* Imagine feeling very bloated and needing to pass gas and having to go to the restroom. Now imagine having to jump up and down rapidly all the while and you'll get a sense of how I'm feeling. If it had just been gas, I would have let 'er rip, but this time I know that if I let loose, EVERYTHING will come out. And for a while there, I'm actually considering just that: letting everything out right there. Trust me, it was that bad. But somewhere in my fatigued and tortured mind, the voice of reason still lived, so I hold up the best I can. While I'm doing my version of the death "trot", people are starting to pass me! NNNNNOOOOOOO!. Look - there goes dead runner Sam Underwood who I ran by just a couple of miles back.

Amazingly enough, after 1.5 or so miles and yet another turnaround (man I hate those), I actually start to feel better. And .5 miles after that, everything is back on track! What happened? Now all I have to do is make up for the time I lost and run down those that passed me. Easy! Except that we're now in the full sun and it's frying my brain. It was just brutal out there. I vividly remember looking down at the pavement and seeing wet shoeprints and thinking, "that can't be sweat soaking through from people's shoes, can it?" I look at my shoes and sure enough, it's happening to me too. Wow.

But now I'm nearing the end and I actually have caught some people. I quick grab one last drink, sip a little and pour the rest over my head, and I'm off to the finish line. About 200 yards from the finish, I hear footsteps coming up from behind me but I'll be damned if I'll let someone pass me so near the end. So I drop a gear and dash on home, just about passing out as I cross the finish line. Total time:1:10:34 (my time). I don't remember looking at the finish clock so I don't know what my official time was. I considered sticking around to try to look for Sam Underwood (whom i never did manage to catch up with) but was just too pooped (pun intended) to hang around. So I grabbed a banana and some drink and drove home. The end. Oh yeah, the t-shirt sucked!