It’s 3:30 a.m. in another North Carolina motel, and another 20-hour workday begins for elite ultra runner Diane Van Deren. Van Deren is on Day 12 of her, hopefully, 21-day effort to run the 1,000-mile(ish) Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and will spend the next 45 minutes or so getting her feet to come to life. So far, she’s covered 388 miles on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, starting May 12 atop Clingman’s Dome and working her way east, eventually to Jockey’s Ridge, hopefully on May 30.

The trail thus far has been the most challenging she’s encountered — ever. This from an athlete who, in her 10-year career, has done the most challenging races in the ultra running realm, from the 430-mile Yukon Arctic Ultra (she had to pull a 60-pound sled for that one) to the Hardrock 100, arguably the hardest 100-mile race on the circuit. She’s done that one eight times.

Compounding the already technical challenge thrown at her in the Southern Appalachians has been a spell of wet weather that has left long stretches of trail sloppy and slippery, and has presented numerous inundating stream crossings — including one in the Wilson Creek area that was waist high. The conditions have taken a toll on her feet, which are riddled with blisters. Her left foot in particular has a debilitating blister between the second and third toes that has forced some creative doctoring from her support crew.

Still, Van Deren is a pro (literally — she’s one of The North Face’s sponsored elite athletes) and Day 12 on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail is just another day at the office. Here’s how that day unfolded.

4:30 a.m. — Van Deren leaves the Fairfield Inn in Elkin with support team members Joel Fleming and John Millsaps, and me. She doesn’t like to eat first thing (“I like to have a good meal the night before”), but manages to down some oatmeal and a cup of coffee. The plan for the day is discussed. Because the Mountains-to-Sea Trail is a work in progress, nearly half of it remains temporarily routed on roads. Today begins with 20 miles of mostly country roads before tapping into the Sauratown Trail portion of the MST near Pilot Mountain.

4:47 — Van Deren and her support crew meet Jill Miller, her trail guide for the day. Miller is a fellow trail runner from Winston-Salem with an impressive race resume, including a sub 28-hour finish at the famed Leadville 100. The roughly  Sauratown Trail, from Pilot Mountain to Hanging Rock, will consume the majority of the day’s run.

5:01 — Van Deren hits the trail, in this case a pitch-black stretch of two-lane Simpson Mill Road.

5:16 — First sign of daybreak. As Van Deren and Miller catch up (Miller was her guide a few days earlier in the mountains), Miller reveals she flew back from a funeral in Boston, got home at 2:30 a.m., slept until 3:30, then got up to join Van Deren. “You’re doing this on one-hour’s sleep?” Van Deren asks. “Bless you!”

5:45 — Van Deren’s progress is recorded every 10 minutes by a Spot GPS tracking device. Miller confesses that she’d gotten the name wrong in telling friends about the gizmo: “I kept calling it a ‘G-Spot.’ Finally someone said, ‘Are you sure that’s what it’s called?’” Officially, the trail guide’s role is to help Van Deren, who has a brain injury related to surgery to control epileptic seizures and can’t read a map, negotiate the trail. But as Miller proves, the guide plays an equally important role entertaining Van Deren and making the day seem not as long.

5:55 — Cresting a hill, Miller points out Van Deren’s highlights for the day: Pilot Mountain, Sauratown Mountain and Hanging Rock. “They’re your last mountains,” she tells Van Deren.

6:09 — Official sunrise. Van Deren has run four miles.

7:05 — Van Deren has run eight miles.

7:18 — “Passing time” games begin. Topic: Your worst job ever. Van Deren, whose working career began as a 17-year-old on the women’s pro tennis circuit, allows that she’s only filled out two job applications in her life. Miller talks about  working as a 9th grader at a Super 8 motel in Castle Rock, Colo., where she grew up. “I made $3.35 an hour and after a year got a nickel raise.” Also: She hated when the rodeo came to town.

7: 30 — Van Deren grows uncharacteristically quiet, then tells us that another side effect of her brain surgery is an acute sensitivity to noise. The cars and pickups whizzing by are especially bad. “It makes me irritable.” She likes when we talk, though, comparing it to a kind of “white noise” that she finds settling.

8:50 — Van Deren reaches the 400-mile mark in her run across North Carolina.

9:03 — The temporary MST trail takes us onto NC 268, a busy two-lane road with no shoulder. We agree we have no business being on this road.

9:08 — The Pilot Mountain McDonald’s looms up the road, our first stop of the day with the GOPC SAG wagon. Van Deren says she hasn’t been in a McDonald’s since high school, or maybe college. “Do they have breakfast?” she asks. She proceeds to eat two full breakfasts — pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage.

10:45 — Van Deren borrows Miller’s cell phone to call her friend Barb Page back home in Colorado. She does this every once in a while on her races and expeditions, she tells us, just to hear a close friend’s voice. She’ll also call another friend, neighbor Rob Howe, an emergency room doctor who does over-the-phone consultations. “I sent him a photo of my feet a few days ago and he said, ‘Wash them soap and water, keep them dry and don’t go through rivers, which have all kinds of contamination.’ ” Today’s run will include at least two dozen stream crossings.

11:05 — After 20 miles of paved road, Van Deren finally hits trail, the Sauratown Trail, which she’ll be on for the next 20-some miles.

11:15 — While relishing being on actual trail, Van Deren and Miller agree that North Carolina trail is harder than anything they’ve seen racing. “Leadville 100 is so much easier,” Miller remarks.

Noon — 7 hours, 23 miles.

2:14 p.m. — The GOPC SAG wagon reappears, around mile 28. As Joel Fleming and John Millsaps hustle to fill the runners’ needs (a chicken wrap, peanut butter-and-jelly bagel, Tylenol), Fleming brings up strategy. The wet weather of last week and Van Deren’s blisters have put the expedition about 36 hours behind in Van Deren’s quest to run in the MST in 21 days. Earlier, the plan was to cover anywhere from 50 to 75 miles, but that was based on bad intel suggesting the day was largely downhill. (It is not. As Miller, who trains here frequently, notes, “The Sauratowns are scrappy!”). “It’s getting hot,” Van Deren says. “It’ll start to cool off after 4,” Fleming answers. Van Deren says she’s shooting for 50 miles. “Anything else,” she adds, “will be gravy.”

3:26 — Emily and Steve, volunteers with the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, appear at the beginning of Sauratown’s Section 4 to cheer Van Deren on. Miller was concerned upon the upcoming stretch, which goes through a pasture. She was on it a couple weeks ago and the grass was waist high. Not-to-worry, Steve assures, he just mowed it in preparation for Van Deren’s run. Likewise, other volunteers have come out in recent weeks to clear leaves and rock from the trail.

3:34 — Thunder rumbles in the distance.

3:45 — Thunder rumbles closer. Though we’re under a dense canopy, we can tell the sky to the north growing gray. There will be some rain, but it’s light and refreshing.

5:50 — Another meetup, at mile 37, with the GOPC SAG wagon. Van Deren takes her shoes and socks off, lays on a mat and elevates her feet, propping them on the inside wall of the SAG truck. More strategy is discussed. Can we do 55? Fleming asks. Miller figures that would mean finishing up after midnight, after 19 hours on the trail.

6:03 — The latest rest stop proves especially invigorating. The trail now enters Hanging Rock State Park, and the first mile and a half or so has recently been widened and cleared of rock. It’s four miles up to Moore’s Knob. The pace picks up.

7:25 — Van Deren tops out on Moore’s Knob and takes a brief rest to adjust her shoes and take in the view. “That’s where you just came from,” Miller says, pointing west to Sauratown Mountain and Pilot Mountain beyond. “And that’s where you’re going,” she adds, turning east. “See how flat it is?” Miller does some quick math and says, “Hey you just broke your record! You’ve gone 431 miles!

9:05 — Darkness takes over as Van Deren descends through a draw choked with rhododendron and waterfalls.

9:35 — The trail spits Van Deren out on roadway once again. Miller estimates its maybe 3 miles to our next encounter with the SAG wagon, at the post office in Danbury. The sky above is clear, sheet lightening flashes distant to the east.

9:50 — More discussion about what to do once Van Deren hits the SAG stop in Danbury. Various options are discussed: take a two-hour nap in the SAG truck, then put in another 10 miles. Put in another five miles, on roadway, for a total of 55 miles on the day. Stop at Danbury, get a good night’s rest (meaning 4 hours), then get back on the trail at 4:30 a.m. Pros (the night is gorgeous and there’s little traffic) and cons (Van Deren needs to rest her feet) are discussed.

10:24 — We walk down NC 8 into the parking lot for the Danbury post office, where Fleming and Millsaps await. Fleming short-circuits any discussion by saying, “Here’s the plan. I’m going to take you to the hotel and get a good night’s rest. We’ll get back on the trail early in the morning.”

After 17 hours and 24 minutes and roughly 50 miles, Van Deren likes the sound of that.


Written by: Joe Miller

http://greatoutdoorprovision.com/mst-blog/