Editor’s note: This report is NOT by Alison Naney, as it shows. It was written by our badass coach Lindsay Tucker, who completed the massive undertaking of the Moab 240 miler this fall. Grab a cup of coffee and settle in to read about her incredible experience. What else do you want to know?

In the days leading up to the race, I found myself questioning my ability and identity as an athlete, and feeling a crippling sense of doubt about my preparedness. I kept having to remind myself that I’ve been running ultras for a long time and overcome a ton of struggles.

Still, I couldn’t kick the thought that all the people milling about race HQ looked like *real* runners, magazine runners. I’m a recovering track cyclist with quads the size of Oak trees; what am I even doing here? Also, I still feel like I just had two babies. But, I was about to show myself for the umpteenth time that my body’s appearance is way less interesting than what my body can accomplish. I resigned to an openness to feeling through all of these thoughts and not letting myself settle into any space, positive or negative.

Ultimately, this became a form of mindfulness meditation that eventually set me up to finish. In hindsight, staying focused on not staying focused actually felt like a visit to the brain spa, welcome relief from the fast pace of life. Because life had been life-ing at me really hard in the months leading up to the race.

Day one was chill; I worked to find a sustainable pace (in retrospect, I should have pushed harder, knowing now that I can recover quickly with a cat nap and fresh socks.) The first night, before pacers are permitted on the course, I met Michael. Michael, the sweet reminder of one of the things I love so much about the ultra community. There are few other places where I’ve experienced instant human connection and a feeling of family like I have in the ultra world. Michael sensed that I was uneasy soloing the desert all night and kept me in his sight until we rolled into the mile 72 AS around 3:30a. He even offered me the soggy hotdogs he’d been carrying for 7+ hours in his pack, leftovers from the last aid station. 🤮💚

I met up with my crew in the pre-dawn hours of day 2 and did a full reset (clothes, food, socks, blister mitigation). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get much sleep in the RV (<30 min) but it was a huge boost to see my people and tell them about my first day and the injured runner I’d come upon with his knee filleted open down to the bone after a slip in the mud in a technical section of trail. I was grateful I had my Inreach to alert the course medics and get him help.

The second day presented some interesting challenges including a climb up Shay Mtn after “bedtime.” Shay Mtn is a 4k ft climb just before mile 120 and is a location known for a lot of race drops. I’d told myself before the race that I just had to make it past Shay Mtn. If I can make it to mile 140, I could phone in the remaining 100 miles. Ha! I love this fucked-up sport! Not having had any appreciable amount of rest, I wasn’t positioning myself for efficient speed (or sanity) on the climb up Shay.

I’m going to hit pause for a second and talk about my friends. I’m not sure there’s a word in this language for the type of friendship I’m lucky enough to have; A beautiful display of sisterhood, grace, enthusiasm, silliness, tough love, and torture.

My dear friend and pacer Sara and I spent day 2 running relatively easy terrain through Canyonlands NP and alongside the Bridger Jack Mesa. She took some beautiful pictures and let me rest my eyes a few times in my first few unsuccessful attempts at trail napping (I eventually discovered I needed earplugs).

Around mile 100, my body started fighting back and let me know that it was going to start making things complicated. I took a Tylenol because my feet were really painful. It helped. I got a massive boost of energy and started really running (not shuffling) and picking off runners ahead, this built a lot of confidence. I think Sara and I passed 7 or so people before rolling into the mile 100 AS and I felt my confidence grow with each pass. During this section, it became clear that what I needed to finish *wasn’t* physical. Despite the new territory (I’d never run >100 miles), I knew deep down that I had what I needed to get through whatever else came between me and the finish. I was totally tuned into the wild flows of my mind. Every wall has another side. And another wall after that. That was my mantra.

My feet hurt again and I was really drowsy and cold as we began our climb up Shay Mtn, the sufferfest beginning in earnest. As Sara and I worked our way up Shay Mtn, and as I got sleepier and sleepier, I noticed a primal instinct to bed down and became fixated on all the cozy looking snooze spots under bushes or anything that looked like soft sand. I was also getting increasingly grumpy and started losing my grip on reality.

I was officially starting to lose my shit.

For the first of many, many times. I was having some effing weird hallucination events; Teletubbies, Kit Cat Clocks with eyes that go back and forth, Trolls… Really? Where in my brain does this stuff hide when I’m sober? Sara and I came across a lot of bodies along the side of the trail - trail nappers, many of whom had collapsed in place, face down. This level of exhaustion felt familiar: the sleep deprivation of early motherhood, which I wholeheartedly credit as the most significant contribution to my training for this event. Long days on your feet and digging deeper when there’s seemingly nothing left.

After topping out on the climb, the trail spit us out onto a FS road just as a bunch of coyotes started to howl. I was running down the hill and turned around and there was no sign of Sara. I screamed for her and no answer. I was convinced she was a goner and that the coyotes had her. I was crying and panicking for a solid minute before I saw her headlight coming down the road (she’d been digging in her pack for something and didn’t hear me yelling). Wow. I needed to sleep. Badly.

When we arrived at the Shay Mtn AS in the pre-dawn of day 3, I tried again to sleep. I was able to grab an hour before I was awake and ready to mobilize. This was maddening. With the amortized exhaustion, I was starting to grow a significant fear of the night. My goal became hammering out as much mileage during daylight as I could, no effing around. The next 20 miles flew by with my pacer Emmanuel and I rolled into Dry Valley (mile 140) in the afternoon. I was feeling fast. Ashley took over pacing and we figured it was going to be about another 27 miles before I’d have another chance to sleep. I had in my head that I’d get to the Rd 46 AS at a reasonable time in the late evening, affording me a good chance at a normal-ish bedtime and perhaps some much needed sleep. Upon realizing it was going to be another late night with a 3a arrival into the Road 46 AS (mile 167), I fully lost it. I was on my third night with only 90 min of sleep total. Once the sun set, I slowed down significantly and then (predictably) came the night crazies. Ugly crying and snorting ensued. Amidst the pretty shitty mind space, there were a few moments of magic.

The magic took place when I turned off my headlamp and was greeted by a giant sky full of stars. I remembered how lucky I was to be in this body that was willing and able to move this far and all of the privileges and resources in my life that made this moment of self-induced suffering possible.

“The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.” ~ Werner Herzog.

At this point, I still wasn’t able to take an effective trail nap. My eyes would get heavy and I’d start veering off the road like a drunk driver, and then I’d just collapse in place, resting my eyes for a few minutes and waking back up. It was torture. And I wasn’t the only one. So many other runners had “fallen asleep.” When I stood up to move again, hobbling along, I was reminded of that scene from Monty Python, “bring out your dead!” with all the bodies lying along the trail— “I’m not dead yet”. I had what felt like such a little amount of life force. I was simply alive, and not in an inspiring way. I was battling self-defeating thoughts like a bloodied boxer as the night wore on.

We eventually made it to mile 167 before the sun came up and I had another failed attempt at an appreciable amount of sleep. As dawn broke, blue skies and sun made an appearance, but it was a trick. The storm system we’d been warned about was moving in, and you could see ominous clouds enveloping the mountains we were about to ascend.

I was on a mission to cover as much mileage as possible before all hell broke loose (again). We made it about 14 miles short of the Horse Creek AS (mile 200) when the sun set. Just as the sun was setting, we crested a hill and could see the lights of Moab. It was motivating, we were getting close. Only one more night of this sleep torture and I’d be done. Not too far into the fourth night, when I started drunk-running again, it got cold enough to put on my down pants and I threw in some ear plugs and tried a trail nap. And that was it, I was out. Snoring audibly. Unfortunately, Ashley started to get cold and we had to move, but I had finally had a successful trail nap and some hilarious footage.

Poor Ashley had the toughest sections to pace, not just because of the terrain, but I was a real piece of work. Her second of the two nights with me was a real epic; as we ran into the blizzard it started to feel like it had turned from race/sufferfest to rescue and carnage mitigation. I was beginning to worry about my body temp and realized that stopping was no longer safe. We had one runner with us that kept walking off the trail and was getting hypothermic and hallucinating pretty badly. Ashley and I sandwiched the other runner between us and blasted some Flo-Rida and marched with our poles in unison— desperate to stay awake. It was blowing 50 mph gusts and the rain turned to snow as we climbed. We arrived on night 4 into the Horse Creek AS in really bad shape. I collapsed into the bathroom of the RV and cried. Sara and Emmanuel handed me a pizza box, which I cried into while I shoveled the pizza into my mouth. I got out of my soaking wet clothes and fell asleep.

I woke up two hours later to some crazy wind, snow and freezing cold temps. Emmanuel was going to pace me from mile 200 to Porcupine Rim (220) and into the finish. We bundled up and left the Horse Creek AS early and saw some of the human carnage from the night before stuffed into a U-haul truck w/ cots and heaters. Folks were in bad shape. Some had spent the whole night in the storm, some had even gotten lost. Some were still lost.

“The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong – that's when adventure starts.” ~Yvon Chouinard

As Emmanuel and I descended into Moab, I felt strong. The storm was intense and I was soaked, but there was daylight and I was focused on finishing before another sunset. We picked off 8 or so runners in the last few miles of trail before we hit pavement. I was so proud of myself. The weight of the last four and a half days was starting to sink in; I had just redefined what I knew as my limit. Indelibly imprinted in my spirit was a message about this experience; the struggles and depths of persistent suffering that I’d never be able to erase. I’m still working to collect all the takeaways of this experience, but this is what I have so far: limits are arbitrary and magic happens in the space beyond what we define as possible.

Photo: Howie Stern, mile 235 w/ Mishka the Husky

As we cruised along the highway into Moab I cried, screamed and woohoo’d. Emmanuel and I blasted some triumph ballads and shared mutual expressions of stoke. My people are the best.

As I turned the corner coming into the finish line, I noticed a massive puddle in front of the finish arch. I got way too caught up in the moment of cowbells and cameras and jumped two feet into the puddle and my legs finally gave way: face plant. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere…

A dear friend, who unfortunately wasn’t able to join us for the race, once said on a training run together: “Maybe what life is about is just finding your people and taking turns falling down.” ~Sarah Brown

Moab 240: The Face Plant

Find us in the Methow

Moab 240: The Face Plant

Wednesday Night Uphill

New Ski Class Series

Find us in the Methow