D-SCAR (FKT) Part 3

“This trail has taught me everything I need to know! I don’t think there is anything left to learn out here!” I cried. 

What else could I possibly learn on the Appalachian Trail? I was 75 miles in. Got it. It’s HARD. So much harder than ANYTHING in the West by a factor of 10. Overnight running while sleep-deprived is terrible. Getting lost last night broke me into a million pieces for hours. HOURS. Somehow, by forces unknown to me, I became miraculously untangled from the mess I was physically trapped in, and I suddenly had a foot back on the trail as dawn broke. Lessons learned. I was tested. I was pushed. And now I had completed the AT curriculum. 

Not panicking anymore, just clear. I’ve officially become a graduate student of the Appalachian Trail.

This would be my last hurrah. I would retire after double SCAR. Ah. A sigh of much-needed sweet relief for my brain. The gears began churning in my mind. I took a mental inventory of my gear closet at home, including the gear I had with me, and visualized taking photos of each item, how much each was worth, and then listing them one by one on Facebook Marketplace. I lived inside this ultra-retirement-sale fantasy for a while, and it let my mind feel more at ease knowing I wouldn’t have to be in this situation (that I put myself in by choice) ever again. It was final. 

I then reviewed my long list of justifiable reasons to quit. I had been collecting them for a good 12 hours now. The blog post about my DNF was written in my mind from start to end, and I had no ego about it. I had nothing to prove. Sure, I had personal reasons to be out here beyond the FKT attempt, but me and the AT are good now. I’ve gotten everything I need to get from this trail! Now that I was unmotivated by ego, it became even easier to intellectualize my way out. Rest is good. This attempt was good. Failure is good. Quitting = good. I was too close to what felt like death for too long in the middle of the night. Alone. Maybe I could just be an adult woman who cares to live and stop intentionally setting out to do efforts that push me to the absolute edge.  

“Maybe I can just be a section hiker!” I marveled at all the people hanging out at shelters, eating a warm BREAKFAST at 10:00 am, and then hiking 12 miles a day and still getting to enjoy this beautiful forest. I pined for that life. Ultra running has taught me a lot, but I could maybe just be a section hiker, or a social runner, or just an average person who stays fit and doesn’t need to push the mental, emotional, and physical boundaries of life just to remember to be grateful for every breath I get to take on this earth. I was tired of having to up the ante on intensity with everything I seek out. What would happen if I just didn’t anymore? 

I called Chap to let him know about my revelation that I’ve learned all there is to learn out here. I had wholeheartedly convinced myself it was time to call it at Davenport Gap. 

Chap didn’t quite know what to do with my self-righteous assertion that I had nothing more to learn out here. His role wasn’t to be my coach. He was nearby specifically to extract me if I so needed extraction (which was to be determined by me in this case, as I was walking and talking and not in any imminent danger). I didn’t have anything to prove to anyone. I didn’t need to prove to myself that I could perform seemingly impossible feats. I was fine calling it. The avalanche trauma was too much. I had lost too many hours and would never recoup the energy & nutrition I had lost to save this attempt. I knew it was over, and I didn’t have any qualms about it whatsoever. 

However, Chap didn’t respond right away and encouraged me to take a nap before making any decisions when I got to Davenport Gap. Meanwhile, he wisely called my sister. Shelley had him say some specific things to me on the phone after my little Davenport nap. First of all, she gave him full permission, of course, to let me quit if I wanted to. But she also told him to tell me “maybe, just maybe, there might be something left to learn on that trail.” When I heard those words, my protest paused. She had outsmarted my rationalization, and I wasn’t capable of a rebuttal. I let the idea sink in. I wasn’t expecting to hear that from him, and I thought my distress and sensibility would persuade him to agree with me, and then I would have successfully recruited support for a decision I wasn’t actually ready to make on my own. This sly but manipulative skill I have perfected for decades is wrapped in the sweet glaze of intellect and reason, but it allows me to not take accountability for my own decisions. The second half of D-SCAR illuminated this pattern for me, as I had time to see it play out and even more time to feel differently about it later. (I am now doing deep work on examining my decisions fully before polling the audience. Especially when I’m hurting).

Hmmm… maybe there was more to learn on this trail… 

After nap #1 at Davenport Gap, I turned around and began heading back to Newfound Gap, the 100-mile (ish) point. 

I was so beat down. So exhausted. I felt like I was sleepwalking on the never-ending climb out of the gap. This was my longest climb of the entire effort, and I just didn’t have any lifeforce left in me. 

The trail was paved with beautiful pink and purple flowers, and I marveled at the beauty. I was in and out of a state of exhaustion and awe. Nature’s wealth generously infused my bones with presence and gratitude.

Now that I had turned my phone on to call for help during my avalanche terror, it became increasingly easier to make more calls and texts and invent new reasons as to why I needed to call it quits in Newfound Gap. 

“I don’t have enough battery to charge everything, and without GPS and a headlamp, it's too unsafe.”

Later… “Lungs are so bad I can’t breathe. Having to stop constantly.”

And later… “I can’t keep food down.” (How could I continue forward progress if I couldn’t put fuel in my system?)

I never said the magic words “I’m quitting. I’m done.” But I thought about it more times during that 32-mile stretch (miles ~75–107) than all the times I’ve ever thought about quitting anything in my life combined. 

And the more I thought about it, the deeper the groove became.

Chap asked factual questions when I would send my well-thought-out campaigns for pity. He asked me to look at my battery bank and tell him how many dots lit up (there are four little lights to say how much battery is left). I refused to look. I didn’t want to be wrong. I didn’t want to know the truth or the facts. “I don’t know, and I can’t look.” I leaned on “battery life” as a viable quitting strategy. I could hear how ridiculous I sounded in the moment, but I gripped tightly to my cause. 

Later, on my emotional rollercoaster, I realized how silly it was that I wouldn’t even check my battery reserve, so I checked it. And I had 3/4 battery left… I couldn’t even convince my delirious self that this excuse was remotely logical.

3:00–3:30 pm: Nap #2 

My 6-minute dirt nap did something for me. Just lying down and closing my eyes helped.

Day 2: 4:18 PM

~mile 80

I finally passed by the section where I got lost off-trail. I didn’t linger, but I slowed so I could film it to understand better what happened. I could see exactly where I got off, but didn’t dare to venture off-trail again to scope out the battlefield. Just keep moving along. It seemed like such a long time ago I was here, completely suffocated in sharp tree debris.

Chap texted me to warn me my Garmin InReach was running low on battery. So was my phone. Luckily, with an ample battery bank, I charged the InReach some and changed its tracking frequency. I then took a break from listening to music and charged my phone some, but not all the way (I knew my phone was not the highest priority). Finally, I charged my headlamp, as it was the priority for getting me through the night.

After leaving the avalanche section, I got a 5th wind. I was so bummed not to be able to use it because my lungs were literally on fire, burning. Coughing up chunks of phlegm — not good. It started as a dry cough, but then it became an alternating dry and productive cough that felt increasingly painful. I forced myself to slow way down to try to calm my lungs.

Day 2: 5:52 PM 

~mile 88

Felt like sunset because of the rain clouds and dimming light. 1 mile from spring, so I picked up the pace a bit. Beautiful trail with moss, not technical, wish I could be running but intentionally slowing down so my asthmatic flare up that had been progressively getting worse for hours didn’t become a crisis.

My mood was happy, and my spirits were high. The trail seemed easy (relatively), and I wished I could run this section! I didn’t feel too fatigued. I tend to get this late afternoon (after 4:00 pm), resurgence as it begins to cool down. The new stage of the day rejuvenates me. I began gearing myself up for another night. Only one more night. No 3rd night!

I’m going WAY slower than I had planned or would have liked, and I just chuckled to myself when I had the thought of “I can finish, it's just not the way I want it to go.” I retorted to myself, “Surrender! You don’t have to be such a control freak about it! Just roll with what the trail is giving me.” I argued, “It's not my day, my body doesn’t feel right, my lungs are acting up…” But, interestingly, with time away from the more acute pain, I told myself, “I can still take back this experience, let go of any plans or expectations of how I thought it would go, and see how it is going.” I finally realized I had shifted my mentality, and something unlocked!

Day 2: 6:05 PM

I put my buff around my face and neck to help warm up the air and add some humidity to my inhalations. I reflected on how good it was to take the 2 naps. I realized that whenever I’m trying to make a decision out of fear (a panic-decision), taking a pause is all I need. My tiny naps and breaks gave me the courage to go a little further. And going a little further, and then a little further, eventually pushed me a lot further, and my mindset had morphed completely. Giving something time can help me move through a massive quit mentality to just “yeah, we’re just gonna do this. It didn’t happen the way I wanted to do it, but that’s okay.”

By now, my long list of ailments and reasons to quit had silenced because I had moved through it. I finally arrived at one of my favorite springs with a little waterfall! How beautiful! 

Filtered water, cold-soaked ramen in a ziplock bag. Trying to do some planning ahead for rehydrating food and getting water before it got dark.

Going in reverse, I feel like I have such an advantage now. I know what to look for, I know what spring I wanted to stop at, know what is coming up. My body somehow feels good. It felt 100% broken 20 miles ago. Wild. Things can really change…

Right as the sun began to set, the evening hours felt beautiful and fairy-like. I was in a stretch where there were many springs seeping out of the trail on the left-hand side, and the moss and cool light of dusk mixed with the glorious sound of trickling mountain water made me smile. The return trip brought a sense of familiarity that comforted me. I’d already been here the night before.

I have alarms set for everything (inhalers, B12, Sportlegs pills). The alarm dings are nice. They make me feel like something else is keeping me company and giving me a task. It feels like me from the outside world is here with me in this world, and the idea of “companionship” in this most abstract way was like a hit of dopamine. Sometimes, though, I would get so brain-foggy that the alarm would ring, but by the time I turned it off and started looking for whatever the alarm was for, I would forget what I needed, so the alarms also gave my brain a little task to try to hold onto and focus on the undertaking. These little tasks from my alarms jolted me out of my own black holes and grounded me to the present moment. They were good.

The Night…

Night two was slow going as my lungs were acting up and I was coughing a lot. I slowed down, took breaks, and took extra puffs on my steroid inhalers to prevent full-blown bronchospasms. Lack of oxygen and constant coughing had sort of become my thing, so I wasn’t terrified of this as I have been in previous efforts. In the Grand Canyon, the inability to breathe while trying to forge ahead pushed me into panic attack territory. This time, I had medication. I was prepared for this exact scenario. It always catches me around the 60-80 mile-mark (which is a fun sentence to say to my pulmonologist, who looks at me sideways). 

The late night brought me back to my zombie-like exhaustion, which reignited my quitting cycle. However, I realized that if I quit, I would have to come back in October and attempt this again. Or worse, someone else would come and set the FKT, and then I would have to break her time in October, which would add more pressure and be harder. No. Coming back was not on the table. This was a pure sufferfest, and there was not going to be an encore. I needed to give this all I had. Coming back would literally be doubling the pain. 

There are serious and significant gaps in time that are completely lost from night two. I didn’t film myself for 12 hours because I didn’t have the extra cellular energy to give one iota of care for documenting the slog. The memories and notes are disjointed and can’t capture how it really was, because once the sun set for night two, hours and miles fade entirely from my mind. Our brains are incredible at protecting us from remembering trauma.

I listened to David Goggins’ audiobook “Never Finished,” and while he was sharing details about the Moab 240 race, I gained a new appreciation for my effort. The Moab 240 (which is a supported race with crew, pacers, route, aid stations yada yada…) has 30,000 feet of elevation gain. This stat struck a chord and I began to feel a little better about my effort. Double SCAR is only 147 miles but has 36,200 feet of elevation gain. D-SCAR is basically double the climbing intensity per mile. There is no “settling into a rhythm.” Idk why that shocked me and made me feel better, but it did.

The moon was out, and it wasn’t raining or cloudy! I would occasionally get a beautiful view, and with the moonlight, this made my night two so much more bearable. 

My worst nightmare on night one was the thought of night two. Night one was so hard, I built up night two to be exponentially harder and was terrified of it. But now I knew I would only need to get to Newfound Gap in the middle of the night, and I could DEFINITELY quit there. Who could possibly bat an eye at an unsupported 100-mile effort in the Smokies? The hardest part about nighttime is the cold+wet combo and the inability to take a break. Constantly in motion with an extremely limited vantage point of the headlamp can cause physical and mental fatigue that can’t be compared to the same kind of fatigue in daylight. But I was forced to stop this time. It was slightly warmer than the first night, and hypothermia was lower on my list of concerns because I was so far gone I didn’t even have concerns.

I had to stop. 

I took dirt nap #3 six miles from Newfound Gap in the dark night on a cold and wet switchback somewhere. Turning off my headlamp was a little scary. 

By now, I had my dirt nap routine figured out: 

• Lay out rain jacket or wear it for warmth

• Take off pack and rest my knees on my pack

• Lay on the ground, usually on the side of the trail or in the middle of the trail (finding the least rocky and flattest section, but I think after a while I stopped discerning what a “good” dirt nap spot was…)

• Pull buff over eyes

• Listen to NuCalm recovery for 20 minutes (I was always hoping for a 20 minute nap)

• Wake up after 5ish minutes (NuCalm told me how much I had listened…)

• Resume previously scheduled program (get up and go!)

I was back on the quit-train. Just get to Newfound Gap and reassess there. Chunking the trail into mini finish lines helped me mentally not completely fall apart. But the closer I got to the gap, the more I knew the tank wasn’t empty and I wasn’t quite done. I still had food. I still had battery. I still had fully functioning legs and body. I even still had a relatively lucid mind. But wait… I was out of water! 

Still, I couldn't convince myself to quit. My manipulative persuasion tactics failed against myself.

3:00 AM

I took nap #4 on the gross bathroom floor at Newfound Gap to get a break from the cold. I dreamt of Shelley and Loulou. After I awoke, I was on autopilot and headed south on trail. I wasn't considering quitting anymore. I was just moving. But I was still out of water…