written by Amy Maestas
Carl Jess is forgoing the Durango Marathon this weekend. Forgive
him, but he has other plans.
November: Run 50-mile race
in Maryland.
December: Spend 24 hours running
at least 500 laps on track in Arizona.
April: Travel to Morocco to
run 150 miles across Sahara Desert. (Note to self: Bring lots
of water.)
In the meantime: Run no less
than 100 miles each week, preferably through the mountains.
This is what his calendar
looks like for the next six months. And it’s maybe only
a third of what he runs each year. Crazy? Jess agrees.
Jess, a 43-year-old mechanical
engineer from Farmington, is one of the few and finest ultra-marathon
runners in the Four Corners. He spends his off-work hours running.
And running and running. He builds vacations around races in
the country – a 50-miler here, a 100-miler there, throwing
in a regular marathon or two just for kicks. His passion, though,
is scampering like a mountain lion up 13,000-foot peaks in the
mountains of Colorado – and then back down.
Six years ago, Jess was a
routine runner who had worked into a jogging pattern over 15
years. When he moved from Wyoming to Farmington for his job,
he changed his routine to include trail running. It clicked.
Then he met fellow Farmington ultra runners Cathy Tibbets and
Keith Baker. They clicked. Somewhere in the process, Jess says,
Tibbets and Baker got their hooks in him and prompted him to
run a 50k-race near Grand Junction. That was his first ultra-marathon
(by definition, an ultra-marathon is any race longer than 26
miles). Charged by the euphoria of success, Jess ran other 50k
or 100k races – some of them on mountainous terrain with
great altitude gain.
Along the way, Jess met and
re-met ultra racers. Faces and names become oddly familiar,
if not because of ultra-runners’ obsession then because
the sport doesn’t appeal to the masses. Though not participating,
Jess started looking at 100-mile race results. He recognized
names. Then, he’d say to himself, “If so-and-so
can run and finish that 100-mile race, I can do it too,”
he says.
So he tried. And he did –
time and time again. But it wasn’t overreaching competitiveness
that drove Jess to begin running 100-milers.
“Ultras aren’t
about competition,” he says. “It’s a different
atmosphere in those races. People aren’t trying to beat
each other.”
Jess says he was more inspired
by the stamina and determination of other runners he came to
know. When he saw the success of other people, he felt goaded
to do something greater and go someplace higher.
“A couple of years ago
I would’ve said that running a 100 was crazy.”
He still thinks it’s
crazy – not because it can’t be done, but because
it requires so much grit. He understands why people raise a
brow, squint an eye and try to non-verbally drill down on what
must really make a guy who runs ultras tick.
“After doing one, it
just gets in your blood. It’s incremental. It eases its
way in after a while,” Jess explains. “The rush
is one that you can’t imagine what it’s like, especially
when you finish. There’s no way when you start that you
know you will finish. So, it takes a certain amount of humility.”
It also requires a tremendous
attitude, because, Jess says, running an ultra is 80 percent
mental and only 20 percent physical. Strategy plays a role only
when runners are trying to beat a time, he adds. And since the
competitive edge isn’t what drives ultra runners, the
might of one’s mind is the greatest tool.
“You really gotta run
your own race and play to your own strengths,” he says.
Jess’ strength clearly
is humility (though technically speaking, he’s a far better
uphill racer). He talks without a hint of braggadocio about
the various grueling races he does each year, whether it’s
track running or tackling peaks. This year alone he has, to
date, run six ultra races, with at least two more to go. He
started off this year doing a 24-hour track race in Queen Creek,
Ariz., where he ran 519 laps equaling 129 miles. He placed 2nd
overall, just two laps behind the winner, who was some 20 years
younger than him.
He ran a 100-mile trail race
in Texas, placing 8th overall. He placed 5th in the Umstead
100 Endurance Race in Raleigh, N.C. On his way home from Umstead,
he briefly stopped in Boston, where he ran the famed marathon
in 3:10. Shortly after, he ran the Shiprock Marathon, with a
time of 2:50 and third-place finish.
His latest feat (and fourth
time participating) was the Leadville Trail 100, a well-known
mountain race outside the tiny Colorado mining town. The race
involves 15,600 feet of climb and descent. The race is so arduous
that most years it has less than a 50-percent finishing rate.
This year, 465 runners started the race and only 189 finished.
Among them was Jess, who placed 82nd overall (which includes
men’s and women’s categories) with a time of 27:26.
(Jess’ fastest time at Leadville is 24:44.)
Jess’ only disappointment
this year, he says, was the cancellation of the Hardrock Hundred
Mile Endurance Run – a laborious race through the San
Juan Mountains, with a 33,000-foot total elevation gain. Organizers
pulled the plug on the race this year because of extreme fire
danger. Jess was looking forward to the race, which was going
to be his second attempt in a row. Last year he placed 34th
in 40:58.
Hardrock is not a sign-up-and-show-up
race for the masses. And it presents more than the challenge
of running. Runners often do some rock scrambling, wade across
icy streams, trudge through snow, cross cliffs and use fixed
ropes as handrails. There’s also the impetuous weather
that is so typical of the high country. The number of participants
is limited, mostly for management and safety purposes. Those
accepted must have completed at least one 100-mile endurance
race, among other requirements. Those eligible are then part
of a lottery, where numbers are drawn at random.
Jess was drawn for this year’s
Hardrock for a second time a row – a rarity. He was not
taking the odds for granted, but rather feeling lucky for a
race he loves so much.
“The first time I did
the Hardrock, it absolutely got to me like none ever has,”
he says. “It’s gorgeous.”
Though severe lightning during
last year’s race chased him and other runners into a rock
shelter atop Handies Peak, he’d rather wax poetic about
running under a vivid Milky Way and passing through extraordinary
flora and fauna as the sun rose, set and rose again.
Disappointment from the cancellation
was so deep for Jess because the Hardrock and Leadville races
guide his running. And because they are in the mountains, which
he enjoys most.
“Everything I do is
for (those two races),” he says.
But with the way Jess finds
fondness for ultra challenges, this might change in the next
six months. In April, Jess is off to the outskirts of Ouarzazate,
Morocco, where he will spend six of seven days running 150 miles
across the Sahara Desert, which averages a 120-degree temperature
that time of year.
He and other runners will
have to carry their own food and gear, excepting an open-sided
Berber tent and a ration of 9 liters of water each day. Called
Marathon des Sables (“Marathon of the Sands”), Jess
(as well as Tibbets and Baker) will be among 600 competitors
from 30 countries in this “toughest foot race on Earth.”
This will be Jess’ most
challenging ultra race – by far. But maybe not forever.
He plans to run ultra races until he can’t walk, he says.
That leaves plenty of time to find a race that trumps six days
in the searing heat of the Sahara. And plenty of time to think
about what he’s doing.
“Most people don’t
know what they are getting into when they run ultras,”
he says. “I do, and I’m still doing it.”
Crazy, indeed.
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