Running fools and a 50-mile trail

For ultrarunners, winning is mind over misery - blisters, exhaustion and lost toenails.

[Times photos: Kevin Whte] Bill Dickens of Tampa ducks under a tree at the end of the first loop of the Croom Trail Fools 50-mile Run.

By DAN DeWITT

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 9, 2000

BROOKSVILLE -- Flies had begun to hover over the aid station and all it offered to runners in a 50-mile race in the Withlacoochee State Forest: warm Gatorade and Coke, sliced bananas and baked potatoes, a glass jar of M&Ms and a 500-count bottle of Advil.

The sun was high and hot. The leaders, for whom this marked the 43-mile point, had just shuffled past -- dehydrated, depleted of blood sugar, blistered and chafed.

Jim Spencer, one of the organizers of the Croom Trail Fools 50-mile Run, looked on with satisfaction at the way his event was shaping up.

"Ah," he said, "this is getting to be a real ultra now."

After finishing first, in seven hours and 10 minutes, Danny Ripka of Naples and Minnesota won applause from runners -- and congratulatory licks from his Yorkie-poo Daisy.

Given the sport's pace, nobody involved with ultramarathoning -- or ultrarunning as it's usually called -- expects it to be popular.

It has grown steadily in the 40 years since the first ultras were organized in the United States, said Don Pilon, editor of UltraRunning magazine. Still, of the 25-million recreational runners in the country, only about 9,000 regularly enter ultras. The organizers of the Croom race, held for the fifth time on April 1, are not surprised it has become one of the most respected ultramarathons in Florida with virtually no notice from the public.

A bigger question about ultrarunning is a variation of the one that used to be common in modern art galleries.

Instead of "Is it art?" one is tempted to ask, "Is it sport?"

The events can seem more like ritualized torture, both because of the distance and the post-race recaps, when, after hours of self-monitoring, runners download reports of lost toenails and blood-tainted urine.

Fifty-mile races, nearly twice the length of the standard marathon, are the shortest true ultras. One-hundred-milers are on the next rung. Completing four of the toughest of these, all run on mountain trails and scheduled within a 13-week period, is known as the Grand Slam.

Miles Krier of Largo, one of the prerace favorites at Croom, is the only Floridian to have accomplished this. Another favorite, Danny Ripka, a Minnesota resident who winters in Naples, has run 142 miles in a 24-hour race. This summer he will compete in the closest thing ultrarunning has to a world championship: a 48-hour run in France that entails countless laps on a 300-meter cinder track.

Possibly the most famous runner in the Croom race, 52-year-old Ray Bell of Pasco County, has run two races across America. He won in 1993 and, though he finished second in 1995, ran a faster time: 442 hours for 2,938 miles, or 9 minutes per mile.

"Wow," said Ripka, looking around when he overheard these numbers. "That's unreal."

Runners encountered steep hills and treacherous footing during the race.

That is what marks real achievement in ultramarathoning, Krier said. The best runners can will themselves to maintain a respectable pace over tremendous distances.

The best, by far, is Yiannis Kourros, an Australian of Greek descent who holds records in events from 12 hours to 1,000 miles. He once covered 188 miles in a 24-hour race. That equals more than seven consecutive 3-hour, 20-minute marathons. One 3:20 would place him in the top 10 percent in most marathons.

"The biggest misconception is that ultrarunners are a lot of slow walkers," Krier said before the race.

"Danny (Ripka) will run very close to 8-minute miles. That's a 3:30 marathon, and he's going to put two of them back to back. I'm trying to put two 3:50s together. I don't think that's too bad."

The racers gathered before 6 a.m. at the Tucker Hill trailhead, about a mile west of where Croom Road enters the state forest and about 6 miles northwest of Brooksville.

The race started with little more ceremony than a training run. Co-organizer John Holmes said, "Let's do it," and 41 runners set off at dawn on the white lime rock road under an arch of oak limbs. They would soon turn on a forest road to begin a 5-mile lap. This would be followed by three loops of a 15-mile foot trail through oak hammock and forests of longleaf pine.

Spencer and Holmes were among a small group of runners from pavement-locked Pinellas County who began running in this sea of green a decade ago. They formed the Croom Trail Runners Club and later began organizing races.

Most club members have favorite stretches of the trail -- the pine-needle-blanketed crest of a hill near the northernmost point of the main loop, the descent into old mining pits, or a supernaturally green patch of congangrass.

"We call it the Field of Dreams," said Eve Dietrich, 38, of Clearwater. "It's just awesome to run through."

While the terrain and distance did not represent a major challenge to Krier, who called it "a long training run," it did for Dietrich, whose main goal was just to finish before the 12-hour cutoff.

It would be her first ultra. And her most recent marathon had been a painful slog. Though some good training runs had since lifted her confidence, she was still hit with a surge of anxiety after the previous night's dinner.

"I got a wave of nausea, which I think was fear-related," she said.

Danny Ripka runs through the woods near the end of the first loop of the race.

After the first 5-mile loop, Ripka, as expected, was in the lead. He appeared on a footbridge just north of the start, skimmed over the surface of the road and disappeared into the woods again, all within a span of a few seconds.

Krier and his training partner, Shawn Dietrich -- Eve's husband -- were running comfortably in fourth and fifth place. Eve Dietrich arrived in the middle of the pack, taking a few seconds to grab some electrolyte pills from her duffel bag and roll a massage stick over her legs.

In a way, the early part of the race barely counts. The runners have to be careful not to run too fast. They have to make sure to drink plenty and to eat -- usually syrup-like goo sucked from foil packets. Otherwise, they are waiting for the point when the pain descends and the race really begins.

Waiting with them were the few spectators, mostly husbands or wives sitting in lawn chairs near the start. Because of the time commitment and because weekends are blown on all-day training runs or races, ultramarathoning is hard on marriages.

Krier, a 48-year-old middle school teacher, was divorced twice before he met his current wife, Barbara Frye, a top-flight female ultrarunner, who sat out the Croom race because of a foot injury.

"It's amazing." Krier said. "There's never any guilt about having to go out and train. If we both want to go out at 1 a.m. and run 20 miles on the Pinellas Trail, we can do it and nobody bothers us."

Ripka, 43, and his wife, Pat, have endured other kinds of ordeals together.

"Danny's had a hard life," she said. His parents were both alcoholics. So was he when the couple met, in a bar, in 1982.

"He was both the wildest and most honest man I'd ever known," she said. "Then I started drinking heavily, and we both started doing a lot of fun drugs."

They quit drinking, together, 10 years and one day before the date of the race.

Andrew Colee, 53, of Valparaiso went through three pairs of shoes over the course of the 50-mile ultra. "I can't believe I've got to go back out there," Colee said as he changed shoes and prepared for his final loop.

Similar stories are common in the ultra community, Krier said.

"A lot of them have a history of some sort of compulsive behavior," he said. "And most of them have some experience of failure."

Good ultrarunners tend to be older, "because they know what it takes to finish a 100-mile race," he said. "If they're completely drained between mile 36 and 60, they can say: "Maybe I can regroup. Maybe this is just a low period.' "

Which is another point about ultras. Though the runners talk about the sport's athletic demands, the challenge is mostly psychological. A common saying is that races "are won with the mind, not the legs."

Ripka's legs were still carrying him fine at 28 miles. He stopped only momentarily at the aid table and quickly downed four cups of Gatorade. Krier and Shawn Dietrich arrived about 15 minutes later and fished drinks from the pool of ice in their cooler.

Krier looked up at the blue sky, commented that the day was turning warm and then pushed on. Shawn Dietrich, who was red-faced and sweating, lingered for a long drink and then watched with alarm as the first woman runner, a 25-year-old former college soccer player named Pam Byrne, jogged through the station with barely a pause.

"I'm spent," he said.

Eve Dietrich was several miles behind, plodding through a pine forest sparse enough that it let in most of the sun. She drank and periodically doused her head with water she carried in a pouch on her belt. Still, she was running stronger than she had expected and was employing the delusional optimism that seems to help ultrarunners.

"I'm definitely not in my comfort zone," she said, "but I have someone to run the last lap with me. If I can get there, I'm home free. And I've got champagne waiting for me at the end."

Her husband, by the time he reached the start of the final loop, needed external encouragement. He climbed the hill, took off his shoes and announced he was quitting; a volunteer scribbled "DNF" -- did not finish -- by his name on the roster.

Frye approached furiously.

"Get your shoes back on and get back out there," she said. Only a slight smile on her face kept the scene from getting ugly. "At least start walking."

"I'm not going to walk," he said. "My foot hurts so bad."

"Get out there."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You have to."

"I don't want to. My body is done," he said.

She finally persuaded him to continue with a point that would seem obvious: "Everybody hurts at 35 miles."

But as painful as the last lap was for all the runners, the excitement began building as they realized they would finish.

Also, Byrne's performance was creating a buzz, if a crowd of two dozen can actually sustain a buzz. Word spread that her longest previous run was 20 miles. She was not only running third, she was on pace to break eight hours, a benchmark that good ultrarunners work toward for years.

"You're the talk of the town, honey," said volunteer Susan Madix, as she handed her a drink at the 43-mile point.

The race ended as casually as it started, with Ripka suddenly appearing seven hours and 10 minutes after the start. Some runners announced their arrival by letting out whoops from the woods; others made demented pleas for cold beer.

Byrne crested the trail and listened while one person after another told her what an amazing performance she had turned in. Even more amazing, she said later, was that she had never really run 20 miles.

"I just told people that so they wouldn't think I was crazy," she said. "The longest I've done is like 12, and that was on Wednesday."

Krier's time, 7:43, was five minutes faster than the goal he had posted on his refrigerator. Shawn Dietrich, initially disappointed that he had been unable to stay with Krier, was starting to realize what he had accomplished in his first ultra: not only finishing but placing sixth overall.

His wife was greeted with the loudest cheers of the day as she scrambled up the final hill. Before the race, she thought the best time she could possibly run was 10 hours. She finished in 9:26.

She took off her shoes to inspect her feet, the bottoms of which were white from moisture and giant blisters, then pulled several brightly colored plastic champagne glasses from her bag.

"I'm partying," she said.

So, in his way, was Ripka.

He was planning a 20-mile run at 4:30 the next morning. In preparation for the race in France, he intended to run 25 miles a day in April, along with three weekly weight workouts. But on this afternoon he was talking to other runners and accepting congratulatory licks on the face from his two Yorkie-poos.

"He's a really nice guy," said his wife. "You'd never know he was crazy."

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