Team Insanity and the Bartram 100s

It has been almost 2 weeks since my last adventure. The weekend after

Pine Mountain my husband John was part of team Insanity at the Bartram100’s. You can read his race report here. As for my part in this wholemess, I was going to support, get a run in and see what this crazy 100 stuff was all about.

I headed down to Milledgeville Saturday afternoon with Peggy Dwyer and Jason Rogers. The plan was to arrive around 5pm (10hrs into the race) when our support would be the most needed. When we arrived, we unpacked the car and piled all of our crap in the tent and picnic area that was base camp for Team Insanity. Team manager Rhonda (Phil’swife) had the camp stove, tent and lanterns set up and between thepacers and runner we had everything you could possible need to feed or clothe a small army (or a hungry band of stoners). I immediately realized I packed all wrong. I think when I die I will lament the fact that I have all the wrong clothes for my time in eternity (regardless of the temperature).

Team Insanity - Doug, Sandy, Mike, John and Phil

John, Phil and pacer Terrie

I am not sure what I was thinking but brought all kinds of relatively warm weather running gear. Sure, it had been 60 degrees that afternoon but it was getting dark quick and cooling off even quicker. Thankfully, I packed all kinds of cold weather gear for hanging around camp through the night. John was just about to start lap 8 (out of 16) when I first saw him and he was in fine spirits and feeling pretty good. Peggy opted to go out on a loop with him first since I wasn’t real sure how things would go between us if I was around and he got in a bad place. John seems to always know the wrong thing to say to me in a bad situation and I did not want to mess him up during this Herculean mental challenge.  Turns out I need not have worried.


I went out with John on lap 9 and 10 when it just started to get dark.  I chatted about random crap and did my best to keep him distracted. I told him a complete stranger would be the best person to hang out with since you could at least ask all kinds of random questions you didn't know the answers to. Instead I talked about my day, the dog etc. I had on a light down jacket on over a capilene T and long sleeve run top along with sweat pants. Basically overdressed for running. We ran a good part of the loop and I was sweating big time. After loop 9 I left behind the jacket and we ran enough to stay warm for that loop despite the ever dropping temps. At this point we had run over 12 miles and John had just finished 100K (62 miles). He could have stopped at this point having completed his farthest run ever but this was the best time and place to do a 100 if there ever was one. Ha ha – I know that really does sound ridiculous!! He was still moving well, running whenever he could and felt pretty good with 6 more laps to go. I had faith he could do this and was not going to let him stop.


I grabbed some food, talked a bit to everyone at camp and figured I needed to get some sleep if I was going to drive everyone home thenext day. Meanwhile, other pacers and runners were doing their thing and John had Harry Goslow for company on lap 11.


I just purchased a sleeping bag at REI (for just such an occasion) so this was going to be the first test. Peggy and I climbed into my car, got in our sleeping bags and tried to get a little sleep before the next rounds of running. It was probably close to 1 when I got in the car and after lots of fidgeting I guess I finally slept a bit when I saw that it was around 5:30.  With the hood of the sleeping bag over my head I got pretty warm and did not feel too bad when I woke up.

I had tossed and turned worrying that if for some reason John felt like quitting they wouldn’t wake me up to kick his ass. I headed over to the fire to warm up, eat a little and perk up with some Mtn Dew. John was out with Leslie and was only walking at this point but was still moving along. When he came through camp again he had 2 laps to go. Peggy headed out for that lap and I waited at camp for Todd Carson to arrive. The plan was for Todd and me to bring John in on lap 16.

I ran out the last 2 miles back to John and Peggy (a little morning exercise to warm up) and then walked back in with them. At this point John was walking with one stick and Peggy said he should get a Wookie with a stick as a commemorative tattoo for this race. I later said I think it was the Ewoks with the hiking sticks and no self respecting Star Wars fan would get an Ewok tattoo! That's almost as bad as a Jar Jar binks tattoo. John slowly made it through lap 15 and then this was the victory lap.

John getting his legs rolled with the stick before starting lap 16

For the final lap, I let John in on one of my motivational secrets. Any race, training run etc that requires multiple laps of the same thing gets a F' you final lap. So, as we began lap 16 I started announcing all the things we would never have to go by again. F you pine cones, F you power line hill, F you Governors Grove, F you creepy enchanted forest, F you aid station and port a potty. I was also tweeting our progress as we went. At this point we were across the lake from the finish and with my tweet and waving of my arms the home crew saw us and we could hear them cheering us on. We finished out the lap and made it to the finish line. 


John had run/walked 100 freakin' miles!! 

What happened afterwards is quite comical and is detailed in John's race report too. I wish I had some of the pictures taken when John finished. I need to start bugging everyone for them and will post them when I do.


This is my favorite - which one is the Ewok??

WTF!! I just ran 100 miles!

This is the car ride home!

So, what did I take away from this experience? I do not want to run 100 miles anytime soon or ever. When we first started running I was excited by how relatively flat and nice the course was and given the generous time limit I began to think that maybe even I could do this some day. Then the sun got down and it got really cold and I said maybe 100K will be a better goal. So, next year I am going to try the Bartram 100K.

Pretty much what I witnessed - mile 100.1 looks just like 75

Heading up to Baltimore for the holidays so not much training going on this next week. Next update will probably be in 2012 so until then 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!