Two DNFs are included in my record of finishing numerous ultras over the past 16 years, and both provide a case study of a blowup. Each was caused by just as much, if not more, mental stress as they were by physical ailments. However, each DNF also reveals a very different and extreme frame of mind to avoid when running an ultra: in the first, I didn’t care enough and in the second, I cared way too much.
The first DNF lingers in my memory like a bad date. I started the 2015 Gorge Waterfalls 100k feeling ambivalent, having poured energy and dedication into the Tarawera 100k a month prior. This ultra, by contrast, felt like an afterthought.
Like a kid on a car trip, I kept asking myself, “Are we there yet?” I was bored and going through the motions as if I was on autopilot. When all the faster runners ran back toward me on the out-and-back course, their faces portraying determination and enthusiasm, I felt as if I didn’t belong. Although my body had the physical capacity to finish, I dropped at the 50k turnaround, relieved to call it quits but later disappointed in myself.
My second DNF haunts me more like a traumatic event. It was the summer of 2018, and I put my heart into training for the Ouray 100. I practiced every segment of the course while honing fitness and mental tenacity as if I was conditioning to be a Navy SEAL.
Arguably harder than Hardrock, with more than 40,000 feet of elevation gain, this race is a trek involving multiple out-and-backs to tag sky-high peaks. The weather invariably packs the biggest summer punch in the San Juan Mountains, with hail and forked lightning that will make anyone on the mountainside quake like an aspen.
The first quarter of the race unfolded as best I as I could have hoped for. My spirits were soaring like the vistas, and I was congratulating myself on all my preparation. But then, like a switch flipped at bedtime, my body betrayed me in the dark. My lungs filled with gunk and my eyelids drooped as if I had been medicated.
The dream became a nightmare, and instead of managing and troubleshooting my physical state, I panicked. I obsessed about whether I had pulmonary edema (which contributed to hyperventilating from the stress when I should have calmed my breathing), and then I passed out to sleep on a pile of dropbags at an aid station. When I awoke shivering and saw that a woman who had been hours behind me was near my side, calmly restoring her body so she could get to the finish, I started crying at what felt like a monumental failure.
I rallied to continue at a snail’s pace but mentally, I couldn’t handle going so much slower than I had trained, nor could my ego handle going from the front to back of the pack. My mind became a whirlpool of negativity, thinking, “This is not the race I trained for.” Crying more at the mile 66 aid station (generally, I’m not a crier), I pulled the plug to end the torment, fatigue and self-imposed embarrassment.
In his excellent sports psychology book, How Bad Do You Want It, author Matt Fitzgerald devotes a chapter to “the art of letting go” and details a case study of an elite-level triathlete who “choked” at two high-level races. Choking, caused partly by self-consciousness while comparing oneself to others, becomes “a kind of ironic self-sabotage,” he writes. “The desire to maximize performance and achieve a particular outcome creates a feeling of pressure. This feeling of pressure compromises performance and ensures that the wanted outcome is not achieved.”
He describes how this athlete refocused her attention on the process of training, aiming to cultivate a flow state, and approached races less self-consciously and less worried about the outcome. “Counterintuitive though it may be, caring a little less about the result of a race produces better results,” he writes.
I would add to Fitzgerald’s conclusion: the importance of keeping a sense of humor. When I reflect on my two DNFs, in which I felt emotionally flatlined in one and emotionally overwrought in the other, I see a common thread in my utter lack of humor at both races.
Success at ultras depends in part on striking an appropriate mental balance between ambivalence and obsession, between not caring enough and too much. You should feel invested in the race and stoke a desire to finish as best you can, but also realize that it’s just one day of your life and it does not define you, nor will it negate all the worthwhile months of training leading to the big event.