Confront Your Fears

We went to Titusville over the weekend to volunteer at the Oil Creek 100. I thought it would be a really good thing for us to 1) see some friends we haven't seen in a while and 2) get back to an ultra to clear the bad mojo from our last experience. I'm not sure when/if M will run one of these events again, and I didn't want Western States to be our last experience at an ultra as a family.

Back in 2015 (which now feels like a million years ago), OC was the first hundred that M attempted. I have really fond memories of that weekend. The weather was gorgeous, my parents watched Laurel and Marko (I was pregnant with Max) and I was free to wander (waddle) around and enjoy the scenery, weather and general good vibes of this race. Some of our friends came up to to keep me company and cheer for M. This is when I first met Paul and Jeff, who came to pace M. Being new to ultras, I was blown away by the efforts of the volunteers, who were cooking up a storm and keeping up a festive vibe. The forest was a magical, technicolor rainbow. M ran well. We slept blissfully in the back of our 4Runner in the parking lot. 

M was thrilled to get his first belt buckle. For some people that might have satisfied their urge...you want to see if you can do something hard, so you do it, and then that's it. But M genuinely enjoyed the experience, and went on to run a lot of races over the next few years. Like, a LOT. I think he did ten hundreds in about 3 years, plus many more 50K/100K/50mi races. Ultra/trail running became a part of our family culture. I started a weekly running club for kids in our local park. Evening walks/runs with our next door neighbors helped the kids sleep better. Our travel became very oriented towards finding trails to explore or races to run. We developed real friendships with M's running buddies. The seasonal rhythm of our years were marked by certain events. Always Hyner in the spring. Oil Creek in the fall. Volunteering at an aid station at the Rachel Carson in June. The pandemic pretty much killed races for a year, but they were starting up again and I think all of us were happy about that.

The weather was terrible at OC this year.  Pretty much the complete opposite of Western States....cold, rainy, epic mud. We weren't too bothered by the conditions, as we had a cozy tent to sleep in and were volunteering in the aid station, under cover. It was definitely a slogfest for the runners, though. It was great to see some friends, and I also had a chance to talk in person to a lot of people who messaged me on Facebook over the summer.  It's really different to go to a race when you aren't waiting for a runner. When the boys got tired, I just took them to the tent and put them to bed. So many people dropped out of the race, that there wasn't a lot to do at our aid station. But it definitely still had that ultra vibe. People huddled around the fire all night, the kids made signs, somebody had a cow bell. 

I was worried that a runner would get hurt or sick, and how that would feel if the kids saw it. I was worried we would feel like we didn't have a place there anymore. But that wasn't how it was at all. It just felt like we were home.