San Diego 100: View from the Crew

Earlier this month, my husband and a variety of friends set out to run SD 100.  They were quite excited to be going out there to challenge themselves with this rugged trail 100 mile race.  I was excited for a different reason.  This was going to be my first real experience acting as crew for an endurance race like this one, fulfilling that role for my husband and our friends, Shawna and Brady.  Their 12-year-old son, Colby (an accomplished endurance runner himself), and our 13-year-old son, Matt, were going to be out there with me as well.  Since we were taking our RV, I would use Shawna and Brady's car as crew vehicle, going from aid station to aid station and making sure they  had what they needed at each stage of the race.  At least, that was the plan.

As we were getting ready to leave home for the race headquarters, Al Bahr Shrine campground in the Mount Laguna National Recreational Area, I was hit by an unexpected case of nerves.  I was unaccountably stressed out and the only thing I can think is that I was feeling a huge sense of responsibility, knowing that I was going to be crewing for the first time.  Don't get me wrong, I was definitely looking forward to the experience.  But the sense of the unknown suddenly seemed overwhelming and I found myself hoping I could live up to the responsibility I had taken on.

In spite of leaving a few hours after we had hoped, we arrived at the campground in plenty of time to get the RV set up before the pre-race briefing.  The race director went over a lot of information for the runners and encouraged everyone to practice good race management so that they could hopefully have less than the typical 30% DNF rate for an event of this type.  The weather was predicted to be somewhat hotter than normal and the course provides almost no cover for the runners.  Naturally, there was a lot of discussion on making sure that each runner had adequate hydration with them and other tips on how to have a successful race.

Following the briefing for the participants, there was a crew briefing.  I'd never experienced one of these so I was quite interested, expecting advice on how best to crew our runners, maybe information on the different aid stations and accessibility, that sort of things.  Instead, it was more a recounting of what *not* to do.  Stay out of the way of aid station volunteers.  Don't go to the aid station to get stuff for your runner(s).  That's what the volunteers are for.  The food and drink at the aid station is for the runners and pacers only.  Make sure that you don't go to any of the non-crew accessible aid stations or your runner could be disqualified.  While I get that this was all important stuff, it was not what I expected and kind of made me feel like they didn't really want crew there.  That's probably not the case but it threw me for a loop.

Shawna and Brady live close enough to the race venue that they went back home to spend the night.  We made plans to meet up in the morning before the race start and Rob and I headed back to the RV for the night.  Rob got his stuff all prepped for the morning and put together a night drop bag for the next night.  I don't think either of us slept particularly well but eventually morning arrived.  We headed out to pick up Rob's race bib and he decided that he was going to do the drop bag even though I was planning on going to all of the accessible aid stations. He dropped it off and I met up with Shawna and Brady, with Shawna giving me a "tour" of their suppplies in the back of the car and when they'd likely  need what throughout the race.

The race started and I got my first taste of what being crew involves, namely a lot of waiting.  I was with my friend Martha, who was crewing for her husband Ed, The Jester.  Although the first aid station was crew accessible, it was only 7.4 miles in so it was unlikely that anyone would need anything that wasn't available at the aid station so we had planned that our first stop would be aid station 2, Red Tail Roost, at mile 13.8.  Although I was following our runners via the "live" update page, the aid stations had spotty connections so it was difficult to track where anyone was at any point.  We made sure we were there in plenty of time and tried to anticipate what our runners might need at this point.  It was still early and most likely we'd just need to make sure that we had new hydration bottles ready to go and that they took the time to have something to eat.

When we saw our runners approaching, we ran up to see to their needs.  Colby had already filled his parents' replacement bottles with electrolyte fluids and I made sure that Rob's were taken care of (they were, by one of the volunteers who kept telling us we needed to stay behind a certain line.)  Shawna was having difficulty with her breathing, which we attributed to the altitude.  Colby ran to the car and got her her inhaler, which she used and then gave back to me.  The three of them headed out and we packed our stuff up and headed back to base camp to wait some more.  Because the next crew accessible aid station was not until mile 44.1 and we knew we had some time to kill until then.

We went back and hung out, with napping and reading on the agenda for the adults while the boys hung out in the air-conditioned RV playing computer and iPad games.  There was a nice breeze and as long as we stayed in the shade, we found we were quite comfortable out in the great outdoors.  The view from where we were was really quite lovely:

                                    

We kept up with the online tracking, trying to figure out when we needed to head to Pioneer Mail, the next crew accessible aid station.  At this point, it appeared that The Jester was running about an hour ahead of Rob, Shawna, and Brady, who had planned to all stick together through the race.  So we projected based on Ed's pace and packed up our stuff and headed out.  As we were driving to the location, I received a few text notifications which I couldn't do anything about since I was driving.  We had made the decision to go ahead and take two vehicles to this station, in case Martha needed to leave to head to the next one before my runner's came through.  So we had our car with myself and the two boys and Martha's, with Martha and our friends Terri and Louie.  Once I got out of the car, I took a look at the messages I'd received while driving.

At first, they made no sense, because I was reading them in reverse order.  However, it soon became apparent that things were no longer going as planned.  Shawna had had to drop from the race and seek medical attention at the mile 36 aid station, due to chest pains.  Brady dropped at the same time in order to stay with her.  By the time they stopped, Rob was about 10 minutes ahead of them and didn't know there were any issues.  We broke the news to Colby that his mom was being evaluated by the paramedics and that it looked like her race was over.  He held it together really well and commented that she was going to be pissed about not finishing.  :)

As we waited for Brady to update us on Shawna and what was going on, we waited for Ed to come through and cheered on runners as they hit the aid station.  Before long, I got a call from Brady, wanting to know where we were set up.  Shawna was going to be on her way to the hospital via ambulance and Brady asked if I could come and pick him up at the aid station they took Shawna from.  He would drop me back at the Pioneer Mail aid station and head to the hospital with Colby.  I told him I was sure it wouldn't be a problem and gathered up the boys and headed to the car.

And that's when things got interesting.  You see, the crew directions only directed you from crew accessible aid station to crew accessible aid station.  Problem was, the aid station Brady was at was *not* crew accessible.  Meaning I had no directions to it.  "How hard can it be?" I thought to myself as we headed down the Sunrise Highway.  I remembered seeing what looked like an aid station off in the distance that we had passed coming in.  We got there and quickly realized that that was Penny Pines and not Pine Creek, which was the one we needed.  The volunteer crew from Penny Pines was packing up and we asked them if they knew where the Pine Creek aid station was but they had no clue.  It appears that volunteers knew where their own aid stations were and that was it.  They didn't have a course map or anything.

I have to admit, this was a little frustrating.  I was anxious about my friend and knew her husband was waiting for me.  Between the aid station that we had left and the aid station we were currently at were 3 - 5 miles, maximum.  Somewhere in between there had to be a way to get to the aid station Brady was at.  I thought back to how the runners were approaching the mile 44 aid station and recalled that there was a road that went off in that direction between the two aid stations right on Sunrise Highway.  So we took a chance and turned off, hoping for the best.

That turn began an hour of adventures in driving.  Although there were no signs, at one point a car passed us going the opposite direction with what looked like volunteer aid station crew in it.  The road was a single lane rutted track, full of twists and turns.  There was one section where you prayed you didn't encounter a vehicle coming the opposite direction because one of you would have had to back up.  There literally was a cliff on one side and a rock wall on the other, leaving you no where to pull over and the road was much too narrow to accommodate more than a single car.  After what seemed like forever, Brady called, wondering where we were.  Just as we were about to tell him that we had no idea, we saw a truck off to the side, packing up chairs and such.  I pulled over and asked them if they knew where the aid station was.

Luckily, we were only two miles away from it at that point and were able to finish and pick up Brady.  Poor guy.  It was obvious he was worried about his wife and then he had to contend with my driving back up that rutted dirt road.  If he'd had hair, I'm sure it would have turned white!  At one point, he asked if we were almost there and I had to tell him that I had no idea.  Although I think that road was only about 8 miles long, it seemed to take forever to drive it.  By the time we got out and back to the Pioneer Mail aid station, where he dropped off Matt and I, we had been driving for over an hour.  To cover about 22 miles, total.  That should give you an idea of what that road was like.

Matt and I made it back to our chairs and found out that Rob had not been through yet.  I had been afraid that we would have missed him while we were out driving.  The other issue was how we were going to get five of us plus all of our stuff into Martha's car.  Fortunately, Martha had driven Louie back to the campground to pick up his truck.  She went on to the next aid station to be ready for when Ed came through and Louie came back to wait for Rob and then take us back to the RV.  The cut-off time for that aid station was 8:00 pm, which was getting close so I was a little nervous.

However, when we finally saw Rob approaching, he looked great.  It had cooled off considerably by that point and I was worried that he'd be getting cold.  It was also starting to get dark. Luckily, I had the long-sleeved tech shirt that he'd started the day out in with me so I was able to give that to him.  Unluckily,  his headlamp was in his night-time drop bag which was at an aid station 20 miles away.  Oops.  Bad planning on our part.  Next year, we'll know better.  I also had to break the news to him that Shawna and Brady were out of the race due to Shawna's medical condition.  Our friend Ryan, who had been planning on pacing Shawna and Brady throughout the night, was there and told Rob that he'd be at the next aid station (mile 51),  ready to go, since that was the point at which runners could pick up pacers.  Our friend Louie happened to have a headlamp in his truck and graciously loaned it to Rob so that he wasn't running in the dark.

After seeing Rob on his way out of the aid station, we headed back to the RV.  Terri and Louie dropped Matt and I and all of our stuff off and we went inside to wait for word on Shawna.  The eventual diagnosis was pericarditis, which is essentially an inflammation of the sac around the heart, generally caused by an infection.  It was in no way caused by running and the infection was there before she set out to run 100 miles.    They were keeping her overnight for observation and gave her some antibiotics and started her on a course of steroids.  The good news was that there was no permanent damage and she should be back to running in no time at all.

Sadly, I had no way to get to any of the remaining aid stations.  However, that became a moot point when Rob called me from the mile 51 aid station to ask where I was.  He missed the 10:00 cut-off for that aid station by 15 minutes and his race was now over as well.  Ryan was there and agreed to bring him back to base camp and our RV, for which I am extremely grateful!  Poor Ryan came all that way, prepared to run through the night, only to find that everyone he had planned on pacing was out of the race by the halfway point.  Shawna's friend Tanya had been planning on coming up in the morning, to pace the last 20 miles of the race for them.  I was able to contact her and let her know that there was no one left to pace.

So my first time crewing a big race for hubby and friends went belly-up.  The sad part is that Rob was feeling great when he timed out.  That was 15 hours into a 32 hour event.  As it cooled off (temperatures had reached over 100 that day and something like 60% of the runners ended up either dropping or timing out), he had picked up speed and would have most likely ended up with a negative split, especially with Ryan pacing him through the night.  Likewise, Brady had been having a fantastic race up until he dropped to stay with Shawna.  In true selfless fashion, she tried to convince him to just leave her and continue on.  In typical Brady fashion, he refused.  Which is probably a good thing because I know she appreciated having him with her once he got to the hospital.

I've already agreed to crew for all of them again next year.  Hopefully I'll have some additional crew experience under my belt by then and have a better idea of what I'm doing!