Maybe a half-hour earlier, I had thought, “What if nothing really happens during this race, and I don’t have anything to write about?”
Then I fell into the river.
I guess to be more accurate, I was already in the river, as I had been walking/jogging in it for almost a mile and a half—I just stepped in the wrong spot and fell kind of sideways, up to about my armpits. This was about Mile 21.5 of the Motatapu Ultra, a 52.5 km/32.5 mi race on New Zealand’s Motatapu Track traversing the Harris Mountain Range from Wanaka to Arrowtown.
The race course had switched from trails to the bed of the Arrow River at about Mile 20, and we just sloshed through the mostly shin-deep turquoise-tinted water, every once in a while hopping out onto a riverside trail.
I had been right behind a guy from Dunedin, so I was kind of lazily following his line through the riverbed not really paying that much attention. Eventually he dropped me, and I was sloshing along the right-hand side of the river when I realized my next few steps might take me into some waist-deep water, or maybe chest-deep, as I stuck my trekking pole into the water and it sank in up to the handle. I mean, I was in a hurry, but not the type of hurry that I needed to dive into chest-deep water to maintain forward momentum. I went to backtrack a dozen or so feet to where I could see the rocks on the bottom, stepped into the wrong spot, and fell in.
There you go, jackass, something happened. Got something to write about now.
The race had been going pretty well, all things considered. I had shown up at the starting line having been training on snowy trails for the past eight weeks, running in trail crampons. Every month for the past four months, I’d gotten one respiratory illness (not uncommon when you have a toddler in daycare).
I had also not researched the Motatapu Ultra that much before signing up, or admittedly, until the day before, when I realized that the course might actually be quite steep and technical. I knew it had four big climbs of 3,000 feet (900 m), 1,300 feet (400 m), 1,300 feet, and 1,700 feet (500 m), but I hadn’t factored in that all those climbs were packed into just under 15 miles (24 km), before a pretty much all-downhill final 12 miles (19 km).
One hundred seventy-six of us started at 6:00 a.m. from Glendhu Bay, headlamps bouncing along the dirt Motatapu Road for a mile and a half, when we entered the Fern Burn Track. I don’t mind running by headlamp, but every once in a while in a race, someone with a super-bright headlamp comes up behind me and I can’t see the trail immediately in front of my feet because of the shadow. Of course this happened very early on in the race, and I kicked a wire fence gate that we all had to step through, lacerating my shin, at which point I encouraged the guy with the very bright headlamp to run in front of me, instead of behind me.
The rooty trail twisted and turned next to the Fern Burn River, steadily climbing, and I stuck in the middle of a pack of people who seemed to be setting a me-friendly pace. In retrospect, I was working pretty hard to keep up, and in the still, humid air next to the river, I was working up quite a sweat and losing way too much fluid in the first hour of the race.
Eventually we climbed out of the trees to a view of sunrise-lit pink clouds above the Fern Burn Hut, our first checkpoint at 5.9 miles/9.5 km. I filled a water bottle, showed the volunteers an item from my Mandatory Gear list (rain jacket), packed up, and moved on. The race had limits on how much water we could take from checkpoints (500 ml from the first checkpoint, 1000 ml from the second, 1500 ml from the third, and 1000 ml from the fourth), but we could of course drink from the creeks along the way. I had brought a filter bottle just in case, but was too lazy to take it out of my vest until much later.
We chugged on and upward, climbing up steep grassy slopes toward Jack Hall Saddle (1270 m/4167 ft), the high point of the race and an incredible viewpoint, made even more majestic by the fact that we’d finished the biggest climb of the race already, and could relax on the downhill. Except no, the downhill was STEEP, dropping 1,300 feet in just under ¾ of a mile.
Four things were clear by the end of the descent:
- I underestimated the steepness of the race course
- Maybe I should start strength training a little bit to, you know, prepare myself better for these quad-punishing descents (?)
- People who backpack the Motatapu Track, the 49-km trail we would traverse the entirety of during the race, must not be scared of a few hills, to say the least.
- This was not going to be a day of crushing out 10-minute miles. Or maybe not even 15-minute miles, on average.
I mean, look at this elevation profile. You’d have to be an idiot not to realize it was going to be this steep. Now, I’m a busy guy, but yes, I’m also an idiot:
As I took the first very steep step to go uphill to the next checkpoint at 9.5 mi/15.5 km, my right groin or quad or something pulled tight, about 80% into a cramp. I dug through my vest to grab a couple salt tabs and popped them in my mouth, hoping they’d dissolve quickly. This was a sign that I had definitely gone out too fast/sweated too much/planned poorly, and might be paying for it for a while. Fortunately, I made it to the 15.5 km checkpoint, got two bottles of electrolyte drink, and plodded onward up the steep tussocky terrain.
It was steep, yes, but also on a micro level, hard to go fast—long grasses covered parts of the trail where you couldn’t see where your next footstep would land, the trail was sometimes sort of a rut between tussocks, and occasionally it gave way completely in wet areas or drainages. Every once in a while I extended a trekking pole to plant it next to the trail in some grass, only to have it punch through another foot or so.
The reward for all this strenuous perambulation was, of course, the scenery. From the ridgetops and from many sections of trail, we had views of steep, sculpted, green- and gold-carpeted mountainsides in almost every direction. I snapped 70-plus photos as I plodded along, knowing on one hand that some people might say I wasn’t technically “racing” if I was pulling my phone out, and on the other hand knowing I’m going to be dead someday, I never know when I’ll be back in New Zealand and able to crush out almost 10,000 feet of vert on a sightseeing tour on my own feet, so I’m gonna take some fucking photos while I’m here.
There are all sorts of reasons to attempt ultramarathon-distance trail races, but you don’t need to go too deep: Sometimes it’s just nice to pack in a shit ton of scenery in one big-ass day. Whatever the mountaintop version of forest bathing is—peak view bathing?
At the bottom of the descent after the second big climb, we dropped into a creek drainage in a lovely little forest, and I might have been a little dismayed with the fact that I was about to clock a half-marathon time of a little over four hours, if I hadn’t started cramping about ten vertical feet into the next climb. Whatever my body was doing, it really didn’t like the high-stepping trail action. I popped a couple of salt tabs, straightened my leg a few times, and kept chugging up the trail.
During the third climb, another 1300 feet/400 meters over about 1.2 miles/2 km, I managed to pass a handful of people, not cramp up, and feel generally pretty OK. It’s a weird sort of experience to share with a bunch of strangers, slogging up a mountain trail in complete silence but for your own labored breath and the occasional “thanks/cheers/cheers mate” as someone steps a bit to the side to let someone pass them. It’s not really the time to chat people up, at least in the part of the crowd I hang in (pretty much the dead middle of the pack)—I think we’re all conserving our breath and focusing our energy/rage/last remaining shreds of optimism on getting to the top.
As we descended off the ridge toward the Motatapu River, I started to be able to make out people moving on the valley floor below, coming at a 90-degree angle to our route. These were the Motatapu Trail Marathon runners, who started pretty much where we did and shared a finish line, but ran a different route (but still covered 1050 meters of climbing in 42 km). I managed to keep my shoes dry crossing the river on big boulders and jogged the flat-ish half-mile to Roses Hut, our third checkpoint at 16.5 mi/26.5 km, at the base of our last big climb.
The next two miles climbed 500 meters on a blunt ridge to our last high point, and I felt surprisingly OK. I passed a few people on the climb, and a few hundred feet from the top, a runner I’d been leapfrogging with all day offered to let me pass. I declined, knowing she’d fly down the steep descent much faster than my hobble-jog on creaky quads. At the top, the wind ripped across our path and I pulled my hood over my hat to hold it in place. It was all downhill here, in a macro topographical map sense, but also, you know, not all downhill from here.
I hammered down the last steep descent, sure I’d lose at least one big toenail if not both, and a couple runners passed me on the way down to the river at the bottom. Finally at the end of the two-mile descent, two volunteers stationed between signs reading “High Water Route” and “Low Water Route” pointed me toward the river and I stepped in up to my ankles, surrendering to the reality of covering the final 12ish miles in wet shoes.
I picked my way along the river, dipping in and out every once in a while following the race marker ribbons onto the shore for a few dozen steps here and there. The rocks on the river bottom were stable and thankfully not slick, but it was still slow going compared to running on a dry trail. A few runners passed me, and a ways down, I fell in.
I popped out of the water instantly, embarrassed even though no one saw it, maybe a little refreshed, and somehow bleeding from a tiny cut on my right index finger. I took a few steps back up the river, picked a smarter route, and proceeded down the river, laughing at myself. My right knee hurt? Oh yeah, I’m a middle-aged dad, so I have bursitis in my right knee from crawling around on our hardwood floor with my toddler. Must have smashed that knee on a rock. LOL.
The route wound in and out of the river for what felt like forever, but in reality was only about two miles. At the 36.5 km checkpoint at Macetown, I stepped out of the river to fill my water bottles. I chatted with the volunteers for a few seconds and was eyeballing the sandwiches when I started to feel a burning itch on my legs all of a sudden. Something in the water? An allergy to some grass we’d been walking through? I looked down to see a hundred black bugs stuck to my legs. I looked up at the volunteers and started to ask, “Are these bugs—”
“You won’t see them after you start running,” one said. I now noticed that they were both completely covered in clothing except for their faces, and had a spray bottle of OFF! Insect repellent on the table next to the water. I thanked the volunteers, pronounced them true heroes—which was true—and hustled down the river. Sandflies. What a bunch of dickheads.
In and out of the river we continued for another two and a half miles until we hit the Macetown 4WD track and I was able to run for the longest distance since the beginning of the race, cranking out a couple of 9:24 miles (!) on the gentle downhill. For big chunks of the final miles, and the last mile and a half as we sloshed in and out of the river toward the finish, I ran with Kyle, another American who split time between working at a brewery in Wanaka and another brewery near Yosemite.
I trotted the final few hundred feet to the finish arch, scanning the line of spectators for Hilary and Jay, and finally saw Jay’s blue bike helmet appear. Hilary hoisted him over the fence, and I asked him if he wanted to run or have me carry him, and he said “Wun.”
So I wrapped his hand around my middle finger and we ran across the finish line, tired dad with a million bits of river sand grinding the bottoms of his feet, and much more enthusiastic two-and-a-half-year-old in bike helmet and orange Crocs, the end of what my Australian friend Majell would later text me was “a proper Kiwi adventure.”
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