The training for this race became very time consuming and I got pretty frustrated, especially with how it was eating up my weekends. I felt burned out at many points. Whenever I would miss workouts from getting sick or having life get in the way, I got really down on myself. The peak of that frustration was feeling completely worn down the week of what was supposed to be my longest training weekend of 35 miles on Saturday followed by 10 miles on Sunday, just before the taper period where I would decrease my weekly mileage before the race. I was too exhausted to make that run and needed to recharge and rest in preparation for a trip to Utah the next week. Missing that long weekend and the weeks surrounding it really decreased my confidence in how prepared I would be for the race, but by that time it was too late and all I could do was finish out the taper and hope for the best.

I arrived at the starting area on race day legitimately unsure if I would be able to finish. I felt inadequately prepared but figured I would just give it my best shot. I started out a little too fast, as I always do whenever I run in a race, but tried to keep my pace relatively in check. Over the course of the race there were many moments where I thought I might not finish. The biggest one being at mile 30 when, at that moment, running another 20 miles seemed pretty impossible, but I decided to just keep moving forward until I was either unable to move any further or had finished the race.

The ultrarunning community is very supportive, and thankfully there were multiple runners who I was able to talk with at various points to distract myself from the race and get a bit of a morale boost. The aid stations stocked full of snacks and friendly volunteers to refill my water bottles helped a lot too. Once I got to mile 40, I knew I could make it. I pushed myself to continue, walking often with short stints of jogging to try and keep a pace that would allow me to finish before the 12 hour cutoff. After 11 hours and 49 minutes, 5,810 ft of total elevation gain, and 93,000 steps, I finished my first ultramarathon. It was the hardest thing I have done to date, and because of that, also one of the most gratifying.