Whiskey Row to Iron King Aid Station 90.7 miles
(13.4 miles w/ +918ft of gain and -1,270ft of loss)
Moving through Prescott in the heat of the day was not fun. There was nothing sexy about running on sidewalks with no shade, crossing busy intersections and then running uphill on Ruth St. for what felt like 20-miles but was apparently only 1.5 miles. I had to distract myself by looking around, going over a mental list of everything that had gone well thus far. Made it to Crown King in good time. Made it to Arrastra Creek running most of the way. Survived that brutal single-track trail to Kamp Kippa, puked and rallied several times and then had a nice reset in Camp W. Got lost but had that handy-dandy number to check in with Race Command and they helped me get back on track. I had a crew that was there to support me and hug me even though I probably didn’t smell very pleasant. Seamus had found that frozen yogurt shop and brought me the best smoothie in the entire world. Kip had proudly fashioned a series of clips to the roof of the car that held a sheet over the hatchback of our rental vehicle so that I had room to change in privacy and have shade at the same time. Both were ultra-running delicacies and I felt so fortunate to have them with me on this insane journey. But I knew they were tired. They had to drive so much and no sooner would they arrive at a hotel, get checked in and try to get some shut-eye, then their alarms would go off because it was time to get to another aid-station where I was due to come in. Not being from Arizona and trying to figure out cheap hotels that would have decent access to the crewed aid-stations and then trying to guess when exactly I would get to those aid-stations? It wasn’t even a rough science, it was like trying to throw darts, blindfolded at a map and most of the time, I felt like I missed.
While they could follow my spot-tracker and get a ballpark idea of how far I was to the next aid-station there was no way getting it just right. Too much could happen along the way that would make my movement patterns inconsistent (like getting lost, taking an unplanned trail nap or the pukes and rallies.) The only real understanding I had was the first 37 miles because I had done it once in 11 hours and I thought that I would be fairly close to that on race day, if all went well and there were no unexpected detours or issues. Thankfully, there were not, and I was even a bit faster than I had anticipated. Kip and Seamus told me that they had only just arrived minutes before I came running down the road towards the aid-station. Crews had to wait at the Bumble Bee Ranch, which was about an hour drive up to Crown King. Because these roads were narrow and steep and Crown King didn’t have the capacity for a lot of vehicles, crews had one vehicle pass and could go up once their runner was approximately 5 miles out. They had a livestream going at Bumble Bee Ranch for the crews to monitor how close their athlete was to the aid-station and Seamus said that they sat down, got some food and within minutes they had to leave because I was estimated as arriving in less than an hour.
They both enjoyed the uniqueness of Crown King and the wild drive up the mountain, but I knew that crew-life was not easy. Not that they ever complained, but after a certain point, I could just see how tired they looked. That plagued me because I wanted them to be able to rest and have some fun and go adventuring and maybe get to see some of the cool places along this route like the Granite Dells?
These are the things that went through my mind as I ran/walked/ shuffled up Ruth St and made a right onto Rosser St. This was on a sidewalk as well. I wanted so much to submerge myself in cool water. The ice rinse that I had gotten had already evaporated and now I was just frying. I wondered if I would be able to dunk my body into Watson Lake where the granite slick rock formations were? Picturing that possibility, of plunging into a lake, kept me moving forward, along a side walk with several stop signs and eventually a traffic light that led me to Highway 89. I had to run across the highway, which was scary and then onto a cinder path that wound its way through some sort of park. At least there was greenery here and eventually a lake with geese and a few small docks with families scattered about and some flora and fauna and even some trees. I walked off the path a few times to go to the edge of the lake and dunk this cooling towel my friend Joellen had given to me. Apparently these thin, long towels hold onto the water and you can even freeze them, but all I knew was that I had to try and wet whatever surfaces of my body that I could. I tried to avoid walking in the goose poop which proved fruitless and then I dunked my little cooling scarf into the water along with my “Yellow Runner” buff and used both to wet as much skin and clothing as I could before I made my way back onto the path. The lake was not cool. At least the water at the edge was not very fresh-feeling. But being wet, even with lukewarm lake water, was better than sizzling. I was so grateful for the bit of breeze coming off the lake that I wanted to cry.
I had done a month of “heat training” for this event which meant going into a sauna, several times a week, for 3 weeks, and working my way from 15-minutes up to 30-minutes. I’m not a fan of gyms, or the heat, but I ,knew this was important. I had to get a one-month membership at a local gym so that I could have access to a sauna and lucky for me I could go right from that hot-box to a cold plunge that they offered as well.
As much as I was not looking forward to the heat training, I was looking less forward to suffering in the actual heat of this race. I do believe that the sauna helped tremendously. Yes, I was hot. But this was Arizona, in May. There was no way around it unless there was a freak storm or cold-spell that came through. None of which happened. So, I had to do the best I could with what I had and at that moment, the cooling towel was taking the edge off. Just getting my arms and neck and face and sun shirt wet helped bring my core temperature down a few degrees.
Things got a bit dicey on this section in terms of following the course. It was like this massive rock-scramble in the middle of a large body of water. These granite boulders were round and smooth and like steel-grey versions of the slickrock out in Moab. They were outrageous and other-worldly and both hard and fun to climb and descend. At this point, my ankles and knees were not feeling particularly nimble but they had to be. It took some dexterity to get up and down and around this maze of massive rocks that looked like they had surfaced from the water like rising loaves of bread that hardened over time.
We had to follow white markings on the rock, and I couldn’t help but take a few pictures of this unique, cotton-candy landscape with wild flowers popping up in between the rock formations. After snapping a few pics, I kept moving because I had to pay close attention to which way the white paint markings went. Another thing to add to my gratitude list—that I didn’t hit the Granite Dells at night. I couldn’t imagine how hard that would have been to navigate.
I dipped into one area that felt like I had hit a dead end. Thankfully, a runner and her pacer came in just as I was spinning around, feeling a bit panicked about which way to go. The pacer looked at her watch and pointed to a crevice that she instructed her runner to go up and I just slid in behind them as we rock-scrambled our way through this section where the water was rushing beneath us. Everything became green and lush and like I was somewhere in the Pacific Northwest but just for a short time and then we popped back up onto the slick rock again. It’s amazing how much exists when you get off the roads and the sidewalks and actually move through a natural landscape. I was stunned by the beauty of this place.
I said goodbye to the Dells and thanked them for their beauty and allowing me to visit them. I then landed on a crushed-gravel multiuse path. There were some cyclists and hikers and dog-walkers and fellow Cocodonians which lent an upbeat energy along this stretch. There were markers explaining historic sites that I didn’t have the bandwidth to stop and read but it was fun to look at the old mining carts and trolleys as I did my best to continue running along the path. It had a slight downhill grade which I was so appreciative of. I was feeling proud of myself that I was getting closer to that 100-mile mark. That was my new goal. Getting to the 100-mile mark. That would be a huge milestone. But first I had to get to Iron King.
I was sad when this sweet, smooth trail ended and I was thrust back onto a suburban sidewalk. Something about leaving the beauty of the granite dells and being back in a residential area just drained me of that high I had been feeling on the Peavine Trail. I forced myself to eat a gel and put my air pods in to listen to some music to take my mind off of the repetitive pounding along the hot sidewalk. I knew I was close to the aid-station but the sidewalk kept wrapping around more and more ranch-styled homes. I found a song I liked and hit replay on it no less than 5x because it helped take me out of my body which wasn’t feeling too good at the moment. The sidewalk hopped onto a road where I could see what I thought were aid-station tents. The heat in Prescott Valley sort of warped my vision. Everything looked blurry and far away and like the world was melting. But believing that I saw tents, helped me to keep running, although I’m sure it was more of a glorified shuffle by that point. I was so excited to see my crew and cool off and see if they had been able to visit the Granite Dells.
As I ran, I saw Kip and Seamus by the car waving me in. Next to them was a tent and a bucket of ice-water that the aid-station had put out. I was so grateful to move into the shade of the pop-up tent and sit on a folding chair by the ice bucket. Kip had a towel and dunked it in and wrapped it around my head and neck. Seamus had found me another smoothie. It was my complete sustenance at this point. I’d already lost track of how much I was eating, or more to the point, how much I was not eating. I kept sipping on my water and electrolytes but the cold, thick smoothie hit the spot.
They hadn’t gone to see the Granite Dells and they both looked so wrecked. As Seamus went over the upcoming sections, I told them not to meet me at the next two aid-stations. Of course, I wanted to see them, but I also could tell they needed to sleep. Fain Ranch wasn’t that far off and then there was Mingus Mountain which was hard to get to and could still have some snow. I explained that I wouldn’t be able to sleep there or stay too long because the altitude made me feel wonky. “I need you two in Jerome. That’s the aid-station where I’ll need to sleep. Why don’t you go and get some food and get to the hotel and sleep. I’ll be fine. I promise you, if I’m not, I’ll text you but I do have to get up that mountain and get down as quickly as possible because of the altitude.”
I was able to convince them. It would stress me out way more to think of them driving in the middle of the night up some backroad to the top of Mt. Mingus then it would to not have crew there. I wasn’t lying. I did not want to sleep at Mingus because the one time I’d been there, it was not easy to run. My plan was to get just get up it and if I made it up? Get down it as quickly as possible. There was a 17-mile downhill stretch from Mingus to Jerome and once I made it to Jerome? I could see the boys, jump into the back of that rental car and hopefully get a 2-hour nap to recharge me for the road to Sedona.
The One thing I’d learned from running the Moab 240 was that I had needed more sleep. Not getting adequate rest, (a relative statement when talking about a 250-mile foot race) I believed, had ended up slowing me down way more than the extra couple of hours of rest would have. I also learned that altitude was my kryptonite as I came from sea-level on the east coast. I knew I did not want to spend any more time on top of Mingus than I had to. Still, it was hard to say goodbye to them. I knew it would be another entire night before I saw them again. I hugged them and thanked them and wrote some things on my arm in Sharpie marker so that I could remember how long it was to each of the next aid-stations. I was off to Fain Ranch, which I was kind of excited about because I had loved seeing the aid-station, sponsored by Satisfy Running, on the livestreams the past two years. They had this huge white couch and fancy lazy-boy chairs and a rug and potted plant. The entire thing looked like an oasis in the desert and I believe there were masseuses there. It was hysterical watching that white couch getting dirtier from each passing runner that either sat or laid down on it. The white couch morphed into more of a mud-brown sofa as the hours and days wore on.
Iron King to Fain Ranch Aid-Station 95.9 miles
(5.2 miles w/ +224ft of gain and -189ft of loss)
I had listened to and read a lot about this section. Overall, it wasn’t a part of the course that people were too thrilled with. It was hard to navigate as it was cross-country-styled with markers placed in the ground along wide, open fields. People complained about pocked holes in the ground that the cows left behind and how difficult it was to run or even walk across. Runners talked about getting lost and cut up by the high grasses along this stretch. There were wows could eat the directional flags. Even though it was only a little over 5-miles, I was mentally prepared for some rough travel.
For whatever reason, I enjoyed this section. It was wide open and felt like Kansas, not that I’d ever been to Kansas but it had a certain wholesome quality to it. The wind blew across the fields that the race director said had been farmed by the Fain family in Prescott Valley, since the 1870’s. There had been lots of talk and Instagram reels and photos of these A-framed ladders that we would have to cross to get over barbed wire cattle fencing. I settled into a groove where I kept my head down, out of the sun and my eyes focused for the flags staked in the ground.
Maybe it was because I was in the latter part of the day and there was a bit of a breeze? It could have been that I had a physiological and mental boost from getting those calories in from the smoothie? Or maybe this section just appealed to me because it was sort of wild and rangy. It was also comforting to be able to see other runners far off in the distance or behind me because the viewshed was enormous. The A-framed ladders actually made me laugh out loud. It made me feel like we were in a Spartan Race or a steeple chase run. Having to throw my poles over the fence and then balance on this ladder, hop off of it without loosing my pack or getting my sun hoodie caught in the barbed wire was just so ridiculous at mile 95 that it was actually comical. There wasn’t just one, but at least 3 A-frame ladders that we had to hurl ourselves over and then there was the herd of cattle that looked to be munching on the directional flags. The entire 5 miles I was just smiling and laughing to myself. I found it much more enjoyable than the residential areas we had to go through. Here it was just trying to avoid getting too shredded up by all of the grasses, plants and shrubs that wanted to stick, prick or slice up your feet and legs. I was so grateful for my gaiters in these miles because my legs were definitely getting cut up. Before I knew it I was moving towards a huge parking lot next to a race track. It seemed like kind of an odd place to be but then I saw the Satisfy banner flying and some tents towards the very back of the parking lot, along with a full bathroom and of course, some comfy looking couches and chairs. It felt like a pop-up salon, but it was in fact, an aid station. The energy from the volunteers was high. They had cowbells ringing and music pumping and I believe the livestream was running on a screen there as well.
They offered all kinds of food and I think that I ate, or tried to eat some hashbrowns. I know I tried a couple of items because I knew that people who completed these races ate a lot of real, solid food as well as the gels and chews and energy drink-mixes they carried with them. I tried. I knew how important it was, but after having some pretzels and hashbrowns and taking a few snacks to go, I felt so sick. I thanked the volunteers and told them what an amazing aid-station they had and then I headed out, knowing I had a mountain to climb. Thankfully the sun was starting to get a bit lower. It was still hot as all hell, especially with the sun radiating off the asphalt in that parking lot. I saw a lot of nice crew vehicles parked there with canopies hanging off them so that their runner could sit in the shade. It was sweet to see people greeting their loved ones and getting taken care of. I stared getting emotional. This was such a strange and beautiful sport. Here we all were, traversing a huge section of Arizona, mostly on trails, but sometimes in towns and cities, and always on foot. We had 125 hours to finish 250-miles. I tried to get myself out of that parking lot and back on the course because soon, I would be climbing up Mt. Mingus. And I did not want to do that in the dark. It was steep. It was rugged. It was looming.
—- Erin Quinn
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