The Graveyard 100: Race Recap

Many people say that after the first time, anything becomes easier. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case in ultra-marathon. After my first successful one hundred miler last February, I refrained from competing for the full five weeks leading up to the Graveyard 100. This North Carolina race is located on the Outer Banks, and spans from Currituck Lighthouse to the Ferry at the southern tip of Cape Hatteras. It is ‘rated,’ as all ultra-events are, by its difficulty of grade and surface. GY100 ranks a meager ‘1’ on the difficulty scale, meaning it should be easy. The race director took great pains to ensure no one left that course feeling cheated out of a challenge.

Brandon Wilson, of RacENC, designed the course and implemented the inaugural GY100 four years ago. I actually remember reading a newspaper article about him trying to plan this race way back in 2010. Brandon is a former Marine, Ultra-runner, and one of those folks that truly takes pride in ripping out feats that folks just didn’t know they had within them. He designed this all paved, point-to-point course with one goal in mind –to make the easiest rated course the most difficult to complete. Here is how he did it.

First, he chose a string of islands connected by bridges in the Atlantic Ocean. Wind, storms, heat, sand and flooding all occur there (sometimes simultaneously) in the early Spring. The 2013 race had so much flooding that the course had to be modified to a shorter out-and-back format with much of the pavement being under water. Fortunately for those of us this year, only a few areas were completely submerged. For those of you unfamiliar with the terrain of the OBX, here is a quick synopsis. The first 50 miles of the course was primarily residential beach houses with the ocean to our left. Upon hitting the ‘halfway bridge,’ the road was quite literally flanked by about 250-500 meters of sand dunes on either side, with ocean to the left, the sound to the right, and nothing else but wind ahead.

Although a liberal 30 hour cutoff for the race in total, the first half had to be completed in a mere 12 hours. This is a pretty aggressive 100-mile pace for many. There were many water points (most unmanned) to refill water and electrolytes, but only four true Aid Stations with food, medical, supplies, established bathrooms, etc. Some of the water stops had port-o-potties, but the storm leading up to the race had tipped close to half of them over. The storm, in fact, deterred many from even coming out to start the race. Once you hit the bridge by the cutoff, you had at least 18 hours to finish up the GY100’s final 50 miles.

The desolation of the second half was brutal. Waxing fatigue, ongoing nutritional challenges and a waning mental clarity all were augmented by a strong headwind, absolute darkness and a biting cold. Many runners ran without pacers or a crew. I commend their efforts –I relied heavily on mine. Since I am trying to complete four 100-mile races in four months, I am not pushing these races hard. On the contrary, even as a new PR for me, I was in the last few finishing. When compared to Rocky Raccoon last month, this race ranked a 4/5 in mental toughness, even though only a 1/5 in physical toll. Rocky was a 2/5 and 3/5 respectively. I believe Brandon said it best when he warned all of us to discount the rating and “Respect the course.”