The entry in my workout log yesterday read, “Run for Diane, 7.4 miles @ Umstead, hot — and slow.”

Frankly, it was 7.4 miles I likely wouldn’t have run — in upper 80-degree heat — were it not for Diane Van Deren.

Diane Van Deren, ultra runner, elite The North Face athlete,  and former women’s tennis pro will spend most of this month running across North Carolina. On Thursday, she’ll set off from atop Clingman’s Dome in hopes of running nearly 1,000 miles along the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in just 21 days in the MST Endurance Run. The current record — yes, it’s been done before — is 24 days (24 days, 3 hours and 50 minutes, to be exact, set last year by Matt Kirk.

Her schedule calls for her to run anywhere from 27.6 to 53.8 miles a day. On Day 12 of her run, she’ll run 31.1 miles, from Mebane east to West Point on the Eno city park in Durham. My job is to stick by her side the entire way and make sure she doesn’t get lost.

“She’ll probably have slowed a little by then,” Chuck Millsaps, expedition leader of the MST Endurance Run, sponsored by his Great Outdoor Provision Co. and The North Face, told me when asking if I would fill the vacant slot.

Every day, in fact, Diane will have a “Trail Guide.” For the most part, these guides are the elite of the region’s ultra-distance trail runners. Dennis Norris, for instance, has 17 long races under his belt, including three finishes at the 40-mile Mount Mitchell Challenge and most recently finishing 14th with a time of 3:38:24 at the Umstead Trail Marathon. He’ll spend the first two days — and 103.2 miles — with Diane. Or Annette Bednosky, who lives in Jefferson and races for the Montrail/Mountain Hardwear Racing Team. She’ll spend days three and four escorting Diane over 74.9 miles of mountain terrain. Doug Blackford, Mark Rostan, Glenn Wells — all eminently Google-a-ble names in the ultra-running world.

Google “Joe Miller ultra” and you also get a bunch of hits — for “Palin-backed, ultra-conservative Joe Miller,” who narrowly lost a 2010 U.S. Senate bid in Alaska. (You will, eventually, find an ultra runner named Joe Miller, but it’s not me.)

I have gone 31 miles before — once, on an Ultimate Hike’s trip last fall on the Foothills Trail. But that was as a hiking coach. Plus, we left at 4:30 in the morning and finished just before sundown at 6:50 in the evening, a very long 14-hour, 20-minute day. This year, I’ve done the 12-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail 12M Challenge and the 20-mile version of the Uwharrie Mountain Run. After the latter, which took 4 hours and 22 minutes, I had trouble walking for a couple days. Now, in 17 days, I’ve agreed to run 31 miles with one of the nation’s top ultra runners.

In a conversation yesterday with Diane she assured me, repeatedly, not to worry.

“It’s not a race,” she said, “it’s an expedition. … As long as we’re moving forward, that’s all that matters.”

Which, frankly, was one of the most inspirational things she she could have said. I’ve long advocated the importance of goals, that unless you have one — a race or another event — it’s very hard to push your training. Yesterday around lunch I went for the aforementioned hot, slow 7.4-mile training run at Umstead. I’ve done this run numerous times, in worse physical condition, and never had to walk; yesterday, I walked about a half mile. I was reconsidering my plan to come back to Umstead over the weekend and run 15. Then I talked with Diane.

Training for a race to set a new PR is a good carrot. Training because, 17 days down the line, someone will be depending on me to help her through 1/21st of an extremely ambitious challenge is a bowl full of carrots that have been dumped and replaced with Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy with whipped cream, hot fudge and a flashing red maraschino cherry. It is not to be ignored.

Not that I’ll be training my butt off over the next 17 days just for Diane and the good of the MST Endurance Run. After safely depositing Diane at West Point on the Eno sometime the afternoon of May 21 you can bet I will indulge in my personal carrot.

A little Chocolate Therapy.

* * *

Follow Diane Van Deren’s epic run

In a joint venture with run co-sponsor Great Outdoor Provision Co., I will be writing a series of blog posts during the 21 days of Diane Van Deren’s MST Endurance Run. The posts will be teased on this site and appear in their entirety on the Great Outdoor Provision Co. site.  The first post will appear May 10 — the first day of the run. For more on the MST Endurance Run, go here.

The post MST Endurance Run: My taste of the ultra life appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

“I wasn’t weepy or mopey or sad,” recalls Charles West of his bonk near the end of the epic trail run he did September 11 with Mike Walsh and Mike Day. “I just didn’t feel well.” Unwell enough that he couldn’t figure out how to operate his CamelBak for a simple drink of water. Unwell enough that Day, the senior runner of the three, immediately identified West’s problem and prescribed the ultimate horror of any parent of a 3-year-old: Do as much sugar as you can in the next hour. Enough sugar to hopefully get him to the finish four miles down the ridgeline in the Davidson River Campground.

Invoking the philosophy of the founder and director of the Umstead 100-Mile Endurance Run, West notes, “As Blake Norwood says, ultra running is a series of problems to solve.”

* * *

At lunch with Mike Walsh this summer we were talking about a backpacking book I was wrapping up when the topic turned to a popular trip in the book: the 31-mile Art Loeb. I mentioned that I had half-heartedly toyed with the idea of hiking the entire trail in one day.

“That’s funny,” Walsh replied. “I’ve thought about running the whole thing at once.” Less than two months later, he did.

Running the Art Loeb in a day would strike anyone familiar with the trail, respected as much for its elevation as its duration, as daft. Anyone familiar with Mike Walsh would hear the plan and simply say, “Yeah, I can see that.”

Walsh, who is 43 and lives in Apex, is a past president of the North Carolina Road Runners Club and boasts a running resume a marathon long. Make that a double marathon, closer to the length of the trail races he logs regularly, from the nighttime Boogie 50 Mile Run to the Landsford Canal 50K to the Hinson Lake 24-Hour Ultra Classic to the upcoming Mountain Masochist (part of The Beast Series). Since 2001, Walsh has run 47 races of marathon length (26.2 miles) or longer. Comparatively, the 31-mile Art Loeb, even though it’s in the mountainous Pisgah National Forest (including a long stretch in the Shining Rock Wilderness) and the trail’s elevation ranges from 2,200 feet to over 6,000 feet, is a stroll in the park.

Shortly after our lunch, Walsh began looking for runners to share the experience. (Of running, he says, “I love the social side, and have membership in NCRC, Godiva, Mangum Track Club, Runner From Hell and Team Slug.”) Initially, nearly everyone he asked was game. As the September 11 run date neared, only two remained committed: Charles West, 42 of Cary, and Mike Day. West is a relative newcomer to running, taking his first steps in 2006 to lose weight (he has since dropped 60 pounds). The habit stuck: Among his race credits are the Midnight Boogie Marathon and a 35-mile FatAss race. Day is the veteran of the group.

Over the next two months — but mostly over the week leading up to September 11 (there was no scheduling significance to the date) — the team worked on logistics. At 6:20 a.m. on the 11th, from a surreptitious campsite near the north end of the Art Loeb, Walsh, West and Day began their 31-mile day with a stout three-mile, nearly 3,000-vertical-foot climb to the spine of the Shining Rock ledge.

“We were running sort of a pitter-patter,” says Walsh. “It was more of a power hike.”

It was a planned strategy, to not burn out on those first three, challenging miles. The climb took about an hour and 15 minutes, a 25-minute-per-mile pace. The three were content with the pace and confident they could work it down to about 15 minutes per mile once the trail leveled some. In fact, says Walsh, once on the ridgeline the three settled into a pace that ranged from 20- to 22-minute miles.

The six miles across the ledge to Shining Rock passed uneventfully. West’s lone observation: “You have to wear eye protection. I kept getting hit with branches.” Adds Walsh: “I’m short. I go under the branches.”

The lull would end as the three exited the Shining Rock Wilderness and neared Ivestor Gap. Between the Shining Rock Wilderness and the Blue Ridge Parkway, a distance of roughly four miles, is an area unique in North Carolina’s high country. Severe fires in 1925 and again in 1942 burned so deep into the soil that plant life has been slow to return. As a result, the area surrounding Ivestor Gap is one of the few exposed mountaintops in the state. As such, the views are great. But in the summer, the exposure also leaves hikers (and trail runners) exposed to afternoon thunderstorms. On September 11, those storms would come early.

Saturday: Running through the rain, running through low blood sugar, running for a Mountain Dew and a Moon Pie.

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