Erin Quinn

A Tale of Two Pacers and an Ultrarunner from a Small Town

L-R Jesse Coree Sarubbi, Erin Quinn, Shiloh Pileggi

What is a pacer? Like all things ultrarunning—the definition of a ‘pacer’ has been pushed to a new extreme. It’s no longer some 1980’s track coach with a whistle, yelling at you from a car window to ‘pick it up,’ pointing ferociously at their stop watch. It’s not even a more modern version marathon-pacer that proudly holds the sign up for a 4-hour finish or a 3.5-hour finish. Typically, marathon-pacers are people who are well versed and quite speedy in the running world and have volunteered their time to pace an entire group of people who are all aiming for a ballpark goal time in the 26.2-mile marathon distance. “Follow me,” that pacer’s face encourages with calm confidence, “and I will get you to the finish line on time.”

In ultra-distances (which is technically any running race greater than the 26.2-mile marathon) pacers can have a lot more responsibility than trying to encourage their runner to stay at a certain minute-per-mile pace. Depending on the length, terrain and environmental conditions of a specific race, pacers may have to help their runner to do course navigation, remind to eat and drink, set an alarm and stare at the stars while their athlete takes a 15-minute ‘trail nap’ in the dirt. A pacer will have to know the cut-offs for every aid-station, their runners’ particular goal or goals for the event, and do their best to keep them on pace through the day and often, the night, in a myriad of weather conditions. They’ll likely have to encourage, cajole, and at times, be stern if health and safety become a factor. They’ll have to read the runner’s temperature and make adjustments; course correct when necessary. And, here’s the real challenge—they have to do all of this, while running themselves. It’s part art, a little bit of science and a whole lot of heart.

Many ultras allow for pacers to join their runner half-way or sometimes 2/3ds of the way through a race that is at least a 100-K (66.6 miles) or longer. Typically, pacers are not used for the ‘shorter’ ultra distances including the 50K and 50-mile runs.  For the 100-mile runs, pacers can pick up their runner at a specified aid-station or crew station. This pacer can stay with them for 10 miles or 50 miles or anywhere in between as long as they check out at an official aid-station.

Depending on the runner, depending on the race, depending on the accessibility that runner has to pacers who are eager and able to join in the experience, they may have several pacers lined up to trade off for specific sections. Your elite ultrarunners may need someone fast and upbeat for the finish, or someone who knows the course well and can help them navigate through the trickier twists and turns of herd paths and rock scrambles. Elite or just well-organized runners may orchestrate a pacer for every section that allows pacing, so that each one is fresh, bringing energy to an exhausted competitor and may have specific expertise that a section of the route requires. There are speedier ‘flat’ runners and ‘mountain’ runners who are good at altitude. There are cheerleaders and drill-sergeants and pacers that can be a little bit of both.

Late to the Ultra-Party

I’m not at all this organized or planned and I’m certainly not an ‘elite’ trail runner or ultrarunner. I’m a late-bloomer when it comes to discovering these ridiculously long and grueling races. While I may be late to the ultra-party, I could not be more in love with the challenge these distances pose, the beauty and intimacy of the environments these courses can take you to. And the fact that you can cover this amount of distance and terrain on your own two feet provides a sense of both wonder and accomplishment that is difficult to explain. I’m also completely taken by the community of people ultras attract, their rawness and vulnerability and love of nature and their willingness to help their fellow competitors in a way that is more tribal than it is individual, more team orientated than it is winner-takes-all. There is no shortage of compelling backstories these runners bring to the course along with a fair number of tattooed calves and forearms. They also tend to be super-fit. I don’t mean light and lithe like road runners or buff like cross-fit Olympiads but chiseled and strong and spring-loaded, like mountain lions or black bears who have enough food stores for the winter and a keen sense of smell. Let me put it this way, if you found yourself alone and lost in the woods, these are the people you would want to tether your rope to.

When I find something I’m passionate about—a certain author, a songwriter, a sport, a compelling story I’ve been assigned, I dive in, head first, hold my breath and swim to the depths of the available material in an effort to uncover every morsel of information on the subject that I can.

It’s the same with ultrarunning. I quickly went from a 50K to a 50 miler to a 100-miler to a mountainous 100-miler to the Moab 240-mile run—all within a year and a half. I’ve been a runner my entire life, but prior to this ultra-era, I had never gone further than a road marathon, which at the time, seemed like the outer edges of what was possible.

When I jumped in the lottery for Moab (which only can take 220 people,) I didn’t think I stood a chance. When my name was actually pulled out of the hat, I was both thrilled and absolutely terrified at the same time. What in God’s name had I done?

I told no one. I went to work. Quietly training, researching, reading every race report, listening to every podcast, following past competitors on social media, learning to read maps and elevation charts and watching crude YouTube videos made by runners doing the Moab 240 holding go-pros or Insta 360’s as they ran themselves into altered states, dropped out, lost their sight, fell, or simply out ran the life of their camera battery.

I knew what I would need right away. I would need a pacer. And I knew exactly who I needed. Shiloh Pileggi. She’s someone I went to high school with, ran cross-country with, participated in the New York State Park Youth Crew summer work-force cutting back mountain laurel and building water-bars with non-motorized hand tools for miles and days on end. Like me, Shiloh is someone who never stopped trail running. It wasn’t a ‘sport,’ but more of a way of life. She’s the kind of person that is more comfortable in nature than she was in this loud, overbuilt, concretized modern world. She is a thru-hiker and a masseuse. She’s also a mother and a runner and a swimmer and a naturalist and an adventurer and someone who rides her bike to work up the mountain and back down every day. In all honesty, she was probably more capable of running the 240 than I was, but I had pulled the trigger and now I desperately wanted her to come along for the ride. And guess what? She said “yes!” Not only that, but she asked her sister, Jesse Coree Sarubbi, another woman I had run with as a youngster, if she might be interested in being a second pacer, and she said yes too!

Just Some Girls from New Paltz

Like me, both Shiloh and Jesse were born and bred in New Paltz, NY. Not only had we run cross-country together, but I had trained with a local trail-running group, The Shawangunk Runners, of which they and their parents were all apart of. In fact, I ran my one and only road marathon (The Twin Cities Marathon,) with Shiloh’s mother, Jan and Jesse’s father, Stuart. At some point as teenagers, Jesse and I and our fathers decided to get scuba-certified together and after jumping into a freezing-cold dead lake in the Shawangunk’s (local mountain range) to pass our test, we went for a father-daughter scuba-vacation in Key Largo.

Suddenly my ‘pacers’ became more of this companion compass back to my childhood. As we ran and hiked through this unchartered territory out west, the overlapping memories and miles of our collective childhoods started to create its own topo-map, much larger and I would argue, richer than the landscape of the Moab 240. We were about to embark on two orienteering courses, one to get us through the rough and primitive Moab course and the other that highlighted the intersections and viewpoints of a shared landscape in our young lives.

They graciously, selflessly and enthusiastically embraced this adventure with me, deciding amongst themselves which sections they would pace, when they would trade off, what equipment and gear was necessary, but most touching, how best to get me through miles 115 to 240. That was their central focus. They read the “pacers manual” and the “runners manual’ and the “crew manual” page-to-page. They memorized route descriptions and came up with a timeline of where I needed to be by what time in order to stick with to my goal.

Unlike me, both of these women have a long history of big mountain climbing adventures. Among other places, they both spent a lot of time in Wyoming and Colorado with their family as children and again with their own children as adults. Having been accustomed to high elevations, altitude does not faze them. Being caked in dirt and sweat does not faze them. Sleeping on the lip of a cliff in an emergency tinfoil bivy sac does not faze them. Trekking through the dark in the desert, plunging across freezing mountain streams, climbing up over bald summits, traversing technical rock descents encountering deranged hunters and hoof stomping elk? None of it fazes them and thank God for that because all of the above-mentioned were part of my Moab 240 experience. I knew right away that these were the women I needed, and thankfully, these were the women I had by my side.

Running Up that Hill

As a New Paltz low-lander with minimal big mountain experience, I believed that my greatest challenge competing in the Moab 240 would not be the distance, but the altitude and 30,000 ft of climbing. While the race began and ended in the desert, the route, which made a large point-to-point loop around Moab made its way through two mountain sections—the Abajo’s and then the La Sal Mountains, which at several points tapped out just shy of 11,000ft.   

Shiloh took on the mountain sections with me. She would coach me in how to shuffle gently, keep my heart rate down, exhale deeply and then allow the oxygen to snap back in. As she marched me up the mountains to heights and elevation I’ve never encountered before, she would regale me of she and Jesse’s childhood escapades. One of the stories was when Shiloh was 12 and Jesse was 9 and they decided to leave a party that their parents were having in an old barn on their property. The adults were talking and dancing and carrying on, much to the boredom of the kids. So, she and Jesse took along their younger siblings and went out hiking in the night to find a cave that they could sleep in. They did find a cave that they could sleep in, or looking back, she said, more of an overhang, but nevertheless they all huddled together under one cotton blanket and bedded down for the night.

When they woke, she said, the ridge was covered in snow and ice. As they emerged from their small shelter, they discovered that not only had a storm blown through but there were also police officers and other adults out looking for them as part of a massive search party, because their parents had become concerned once the harvest party had ended and they had no idea where their children were.

“I told them we were going to sleep in a cave!” said Shiloh defensively.  “They just didn’t believe me.”

Even though I was straining to breathe and not slip off the trail into the ravine that accompanied the trail all the way to the top of Geyser Pass, I couldn’t help but laugh.  These are my pacers, I thought to myself with a big smile. I chose them well.

As the sun rose, she would encourage me to wipe my face with my hands after I would touch the silky white bark of the Aspen trees, letting me know that the powder served as natural sunblock. I wanted to create a list of “Shiloh tips,” because they were quite handy in the environment, we found ourselves in.

Jesse would switch off with Shiloh and pace me on several of the desert sections. She would chat effervescently as we did 30 second pick-up runs through the desert sections. We’d run and then walk and then pee and then run some more. Jesse would tell me stories about Stuart, her father, and their epic Wind River range adventures. Her huddled in a tent with her younger sister in the dark during a storm, singing every song she knew to try and keep her calm, while wondering if her father and the rest of her family made it off the mountain safely? How would she leave her sister to go call for help in the dark? In a storm? Far from civilization? I was riveted to this story, and they did make it back, after her father had to rope them all in under an overhang to avoid being struck by lightning as they rode the storm out.

Jesse would point out heart-shaped rocks as we wound our way through the desert. These were her reminders that her father, who had passed from cancer several years ago, was right there with her, watching over our pilgrimage, ensuring our safe arrival.

Their stories lulled me and inspired me and kept me moving forward—left foot, right foot. There were bouts of delirium, hallucinations, vomiting and then all at once, hysterical laughter. When you put your fate in someone’s hands, like I did with Shiloh and Jesse, a certain kind of bond is formed.

Follow Me

At some point in the La Sal’s, as we climbed up an impossibly steep section in the pitch dark, Shiloh instructed me to keep following the path, that she’d be right back. Where could she be going? I thought, but kept trekking on, following her directions. After what seemed like a long time, I heard her come running back up the trail to where I was lumbering along. She noticed that the two women we had passed earlier on were going off course because their headlamps were moving in the opposite direction of where they should be. “Women helping women,” she said, as if we were sitting on a couch, watching a Lifetime documentary on the suffragette movement. Meanwhile, we had been climbing for 12 hours, most of it in the dark, on a minimally marked trail in the freezing cold.

But this is who Shiloh is. This is what she does. She’s like a mythical creature from another time. She was more than a pacer, she was a guide into a world that she felt completely at ease in.

At one point, the fatigue and energy output had left me with almost no reserves and I just started to cry. Not a whimper or a sniffling cry but an entire-body, cleaved-in-half, bone-marrow shredding type of cry where I felt so grateful for my children, that my two boys were there crewing for me but that I missed my daughter who is studying abroad in Greece. “It’s not bad. It’s not a bad cry, Shiloh, I just miss her!” I tried to explain as I didn’t want to worry her. I was just overcome. “I know,” she said, grabbing my shoulders squarely and pulling me into her. “It’s hard to let our babies go out into the world. But you’re a wonderful mother and she’ll be back soon.”

That’s not in the pacer’s manual. Nor is a description of what takes place on mile 232 when anyone left on the course (almost half of the 211 people who started the race had long dropped out by this point,) are sleep deprived, confused, hungry, hallucinating and just all-around unhinged. This is where Jesse stepped in, guiding not only myself, but two other racers (who attached themselves to her like lost puppies,) down the treacherous Porcupine Rim path that is basically a grade 4 downclimb on slick rock perched on the edge of a mesa overlooking the Colorado River. In the daylight this would be considered a challenging trail but it was 2am, on our 4^th night, and the stars which had been glistening and providing some guidance were now tucked behind a sandstone wall. This was the last section of the course. When I say “section,” it was 20 miles (of which, 15 were a technical descent,) from the last aid-station to the finish line in downtown Moab.

With her vibrant smile and her poles clicking against the slickrock, Jesse careened down the path like a sheep herder, tucking myself and our new companions into formation, backing one of the men away from the cliff’s edge who was insistent that she wasn’t on the right trail. Somehow, she lulled him away from the edge and kept plodding forward, a ray of sunshine in an otherwise dark night of the soul. Our blisters had blisters. Our legs were buckling beneath us. Our stomachs had gone south a hundred miles earlier and our body temperature could no longer regulate itself. One of the men, the one who almost walked off the cliff, acknowledged he was hallucinating while the other man kept grumbling about the added mileage the race-director had tacked on.

But Jesse was in charge of our spirits. While she could not cure any of the things that ailed us physically, she could care for our spirits, guide us and have us believe that if we trusted her, which I did implicitly, that each step was bringing us closer to the finish line looming like a promised land inside our souls, in an RV park off the main street of Moab.

“Cliff to your right, hug the left, staircase down the middle, sand wash over here… would anyone like a cashew? An Advil? Erin, are you hydrating? I can hear the river. We’re getting closer.” She was like a run-whisperer, lulling us forward, allowing me to pause for a minute dirt-nap, my head supported by the root of a Juniper tree.

When we finally hit the bike trail, the only pavement on the course, which, with a new section added, ended up closer to 255 miles, we could smell the barn. Once she was sure that the two men had made it down the rim safely, we moved ahead, running and laughing as she pointed out various constellations in the sky.

I knew that Shiloh was petrified of breaking any of the pacer rules. She didn’t even want to give me a peanut M&M because she felt it would violate the ethos of the race that said pacers could not “aid their runners.” I had pleaded with her at the last crew stop, which had been at Geyser Pass at mile 184, to ask the race director if she could meet us on the bike path the last few hundred yards, so that we could cross the finish line together, because a runner is not allowed to have more than one-pacer running with them at a time. “If you get permission, it’s okay,” I said, “You need to be there with us.”

We could hear faint noises coming from the finish line. It was still dark, in the early hours of the morning but we could see a figure approaching us. A silhouette that I quickly recognized. It was Shiloh. “I asked the race director and they said it was okay!” she said. I started crying I was so happy to see her. “Oh stop that, we’re almost there!” she said excitedly. We linked arms and off we ran towards the large, inflatable archway, my two sons and my boyfriend cheering us on as we rounded the corner.

So, when asked, “what is a pacer?” I can’t help but think, at least in this experience, that a pacer is someone who walks or runs beside you, sometimes in silence, other times in wonder, but constantly caressing that outer-edge of your soul and saying, without any words, “you can do this. You’re stronger than you know.”

Thank you, Shiloh and Jesse, for being the most incredible pacers, the strongest women and the most protective and fierce guides and part of my crew out there on the 255-miles of trails that led us through at least a hundred different lifetimes.

—Erin Quinn

*Moab 240 Crew Story is coming next. A runner is only as strong as their pacers and a runner and their pacers are only as strong as their crew—said someone. Maybe me?

L-R Shiloh, Erin, Kip Ruger, Jesse, Erin’s two sons, Taj and Seamus Trzewik-Quinn at the finish line of the Moab 240.