The Huntsville Times - Lifestyle News

February 16, 2003

Three friends brave cold, unforgiving terrain of trail run

02/16/03

By KATIE BYERS

For The Times ksbyers@knology.net

She's tried it three times, finished once. She was dead last, yet found it exhilarating.

But Anne Park, grandmother of seven, is optimistic, even enthusiastic, as she prepares to take on the Mountain Mist 50K Trail Run for a fourth time. She wants to set a record in her age group.

Janet Duncan has never run a marathon, let alone an ultra-marathon. But she wants to "see how much guts I have." Standing beside Park minutes before the race, Duncan shakes with nervous energy.

Graham Gallemore, a veteran marathoner, surprised his friends by even entering the race. He usually avoids trails because he tends to fall a lot. But a recent bout with cancer has him rethinking his goals.

They come to Mountain Mist with different motivations, but one goal: Finish the 31-mile race.

To do that, they must run fast enough to make the cutoff times at three checkpoints. If they run the pace they hope, they'll cross the finish line in a little over eight hours.

It's 7:30 a.m. on a recent Saturday, 30 minutes before the race. Park, Duncan and Gallemore huddle for warmth in Duncan's Jeep Grand Cherokee, in the Monte Sano State Park parking lot. The Jeep's digital thermometer reads 18 degrees.

Park is wearing dark tights and a dark jacket. Despite the hour, she has curled her bangs and put on blue eyeliner.

She reties her shoes. They're too tight.

Gallemore is wearing yellow shorts and a yellow jacket over dark tights, and a Georgia Tech cap. "I tried to find yellow socks," he jokes.

"See that sun coming out? It's going to be gorgeous," says Duncan, wearing dark tights, a dark jacket and a toboggan. She has short blond hair and intense blue eyes.

A few minutes before 8, they head to the back of the crowd massed at the starting line. Their faces shiny from Vaseline, the three wear fanny packs loaded with water bottles and trail mix. They make last-minute adjustments to their shoes and race numbers.

"Sh-- fire and damnation," Duncan says. "I'm a nervous wreck. I've got to get that under control."

Friends offer final words of encouragement.

"Don't worry." "Just go and have fun." "Slow and steady pace." "Just do it one section at a time." "You've been in my prayers all week." "Be one with the mountain."

At 8, a race official shouts, "Everybody have a good race, be careful and enjoy yourself.

"Go!"

Watch your step

Besides steep ascents - runners will climb 3,526 feet during the race - and treacherous descents, Mountain Mist is notorious for extremely poor footing.

Among the hazards: large rocks, exposed roots, mud, creek crossings, fallen limbs and trees. Veteran runners say you risk serious injury if your concentration lapses, even momentarily.

"Expect anything," warns the race's Web site, which bills Mountain Mist as "Alabama's toughest trail run."

Besides falling, the biggest concern for Park, Duncan and Gallemore is running too slowly. Timed checkpoints are necessary, says race director Dink Taylor, to keep Mountain Mist from becoming a hike.

Park, Duncan and Gallemore are essentially running three mini-races.

They've trained many hours on Monte Sano and Land Trust trails. But Duncan and Gallemore have yet to run the entire Mountain Mist course. They decided to run together because they're about the same speed, and they wanted to help each other.

Gallemore, who turns 60 this month, started running in his 40s, after volunteering to help at the first Cotton Row Run in 1980. Running is now his main social outlet (he's not married), and he runs about 20 races a year. He's competitive - always trying to improve his road race times - but so unassuming that some of his running buddies didn't know his prostate cancer had returned recently until he let it slip at dinner that he was having radiation treatments.

3 friends brave cold, unforgiving terrain to run Mountain Mist on Monte Sano Challenge Continued from page F1 "It just made me realize I need to take advantage of every opportunity I have," says Gallemore, an electrical engineer at Lockheed Martin. "You never know when your last race will be."

Duncan, 47, started running four years ago to hold off a midlife crisis.

She was gaining weight and stressing over her job as a support analyst at Intergraph. The first time she signed up for Cotton Row, she drove the 6.2-mile course and changed her mind. No way I'm going to run this, she thought. I'm not ready.

Since then, however, she's run a number of 5K and 10K races, and run the Rocket City Half Marathon twice. She wants to run a marathon, but not until she can do it in four hours.

An avid walker, Park balked when a friend tried to talk her into running a lap around a track about nine years ago.

"Through grit and grim, I got around once," recalls Park, an administrative assistant at Adtran. "I never did a sport in my entire life."

Park, 63, now holds 35 state age-group records for various distances and wants to beat the Mountain Mist course record of 8:10 for women over 60. (Only two runners over 60 have finished the race.)

2-minute break

The first aid station at O'Shaughnessy Point (mile 6) is a folding table with paper cups of water and PowerAde, and paper plates of munchies.

Gallemore, Duncan and Park, red-faced from the cold, reach the station at 9:13, an hour and 13 minutes into the race - a few minutes slower than they hoped.

Duncan fills her water bottle and eats a few potato chips. Gallemore picks out some yellow M&Ms and eats a banana. They pass on the Chips Ahoy cookies and the baggie of ibuprofen tablets. Park says she feels "pretty good" and peels off a long-sleeve T-shirt.

They're gone in two minutes.

Three of the 226 runners have already quit, victims of a sore back, a twisted ankle and a pulled hamstring.

The next aid station (mile 11) is a 10-minute hike into snowy woods from a road. There are no friends or spectators here besides the five aid station and HEMSI volunteers. The group arrives at 10:28, and their mood is more serious.

Duncan's calves have been cramping. She is breathing hard, grim-faced and limping slightly.

"Just coming off K2, they locked up," she says, referring to a recent steep climb.

Park has fallen once, and Gallemore says he's "a little more tired than expected. Still got something left."

"Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the next stop!" yells an aid station worker as they head toward the next hill.

"I appreciate you guys," Park says.

They leave the station at 10:31. Three more runners will drop out here.

Tough keep going

At the first checkpoint, on Fearn Drive (mile 17), Duncan, Gallemore and Park arrive at 11:56. They beat the cutoff by 14 minutes. Still, they're 16 minutes off their pace.

Gallemore's tights are muddy from a fall.

Duncan's husband, Tom, is encouraged to see his wife taking bananas. She usually doesn't eat much during races. She can't peel it with her cold, gloved hands. So he helps and rubs her calves, which continue to bother her.

Park has blisters and a sore heel; she asks for ibuprofen and eats potato chips.

"When we came out of Stone Cuts, we thought we heard the sweepers," says Park, referring to the race volunteers who make sure no runners are left behind. If that's the case, they're the last runners on the trails.

The three are joined by their friend Diann Tolbert. She plans to pace them through the end of the race. She'll serve as cheerleader, guide and time keeper.

Tolbert, 49, has run Mountain Mist four times: She finished twice, was timed out once and dropped out last year. She got a concussion from running into a tree limb but still managed to run 16 more miles before quitting.

Her goal is to help them "bank" as much time as possible for the most grueling section yet to come. They hope to make the next checkpoint by 12:45 p.m., 20 minutes ahead of the cutoff.

They leave the Fearn Drive checkpoint at 12:01. At 12:05, DeWayne Satterfield crosses the finish line. It's his seventh straight win.

Losing more time

At 12:55 at the Land Trust aid station, there's no sign of Duncan, Gallemore, Park and Tolbert.

"Aaaaaaaahh!"

The sound comes from the woods. HEMSI volunteers stop talking and listen.

"AAAAAAHH!"

Tom Duncan fears it might be his wife. He hurries up the path, but the wrong way. The HEMSI guys grab their packs and hike down the trail.

"Where are our friends?" asks Steve Nordstrom, a friend of Park waiting at the aid station. "They should have been here five minutes ago."

At 12:59, the HEMSI volunteers emerge from the woods, followed by Janet Duncan, Gallemore, Park and Tolbert. The runners beat this cutoff by six minutes, but they're still 14 minutes behind schedule.

The scream was Duncan's. She tripped, and her calf cramped again. Duncan says she's "doing better," but her face is drawn with fatigue and pain.

Duncan, Park and Gallemore have been running for five hours now, and they're exhausted, out of breath. Worse, they're concerned they haven't built a big enough time cushion to get through Waterline hill.

Taylor, the race director, warned runners about Waterline at the prerace dinner Friday night: "It does suck the living breath right out of your body - at a walking pace. . . . You are basically going up the side of a waterfall."

Tolbert says she thinks they have enough time - a little more than an hour - to run the next four miles to make the last cutoff at 2:15.

They grab more bananas, M&Ms and chips, and leave the second checkpoint after four minutes, at 1:03.

Final cutoff point

Gallemore is the first to arrive at Waterline, at 2:08.

He grabs trees to steady himself as he climbs.

Duncan, next to arrive, takes long pauses between steps, leaning over to try to catch her breath. Park and Tolbert are minutes behind.

Gallemore, now at the top, steals a look at his watch.

"Come on, Janet."

He knows if he's going to make the last cutoff, he'll have to do it alone. As the trail flattens, he picks up speed. He scrambles over fallen trees and slogs through mud. By the time he reaches the checkpoint at Monte Sano Boulevard, he's sprinting.

It's 2:18, three minutes too late.

Gallemore tries to catch his breath. Friends look to race official Jim Oaks for confirmation.

"Did we make the cut?" Gallemore asks.

No, Oaks says softly.

Gallemore already knows. This is the first race in 22 years he hasn't finished.

"If we let you get off in that God-forsaken place, it's dangerous," Oaks says, referring to a steep climb in the final leg.

"I understand," Gallemore says.

Duncan staggers in at 2:22.

"I'm sorry," she says, hugging Gallemore. "Thank you."

Park and Tolbert arrive a minute later. Park knows by her friends' expressions the race is over. A friend gives her a hug that lifts her off the ground.

"Where did we fail?" asks Park, who's held up by her friend.

"Waterline," Tolbert says.

"My dang cramps," Duncan says. "I don't know what the hell was wrong with me. I'm sorry. It was awful, that Waterline. It's sad. We tried."

After a few minutes, the runners slowly head to their cars. They drive back to the finish area at the Monte Sano picnic area. They huddle by the pavilion fireplace, as runners mill around, limping and shivering.

They continue dissecting the race, wondering where they lost time, whether they'll try again next year. Duncan says yes, definitely. Gallemore wants to wait and see.

Park says she's through with Mountain Mist, then reconsiders.

"If I'm in really perfect condition . . ."