Mmt 100 pacer

On Saturday I went to the massanuttens to pace Dave at the Massanutten Mountain Trail 100. He was allowed a pacer after mile 63 at the Camp Roosevelt aid station. It was a new course this year and there were some tougher spots in the beginning that were at the end in past years. I got there around 5 and waited for him to come through. In the mean time, I talked with lots of people at the aid station. It was good to see some of the people I hadn't seen in quite awhile.

Dave came through at about 8:30 pm and ate and refilled his bottles. We grabbed our headlamps and hit the trail. For the next 9 hours we would only be seeing the tunnel vision of the trail our headlamps provided for us. As we made our way through the winding trail and up and down the mountains we caught up on everything. He was in good spirits and was running well.

Then on our way up the trail we saw a rattlesnake moving very slowly across the trail. Dave was leading, of course, and he stopped abruptly. There were a couple of runners right behind us and Dave saved all of our lives by pointing out the snake and making sure it didn't get mad and start biting us all.

At aroud 3 am it started raining which made the already cool 50 degrees even chillier. Dave said it was because he was listening to the iPod shuffle that his friend snuck "it's raining men" onto and everytime that song comes on during a race it actually starts raining.

We reached an aid station at mile 88 at about 5:30 am and there were bacon sandwiches ready to be eaten. So we sat down for awhile to rest and eat. Soon enough, Dave was ready to hit the trail again to make his way to the finish line. It was getting light now and we didnt need the headlamps anymore. I could tell there was a renewed sense of energy in him because he was running faster and stronger. Leaving the last aid station was very difficult. We had 6 miles left and after running 95 miles, 6 miles is an eternity. (the race was actually 101 miles)

Long story short, 14.25 hours after leaving mile 63 we rolled on through the finish line. It was a total of 29:30, way ahead of the cutoff time and looking very strong.

-- Patrick