6 things I learned from failing to finish a 100 km ultra-trailmarathon, twice....

As 2019 has come to an end, it's time to reflect on the highlight of not only this year but also 2018. Both years in which I attempted the brutal but beautiful Ultra-Trail Cape Town 100 km (62 miles) ultra trail-marathon (UTCT 100). It was also in both years that I failed to complete the race.

And although I have done my fair share of marathons and ultra-trailmarathons (my longest being a 86 km race which took me 12.5 hours to complete), the UTCT 100 has still proven to be a bridge (or mountain) to far.

To give you some background information, trailrunning is a sport where people run on any unpaved surface and generally takes place on hiking trails, often in mountainous terrain. An ultra-marathon is any run that goes past the marathon 42.2 km mark. Put those together and you have an ultra-trailmarathon.

The UTCT 100 is an ultra-trailmarathon where roughly 300 crazy athletes from around the world try to conquer Table Mountain National Park in South Africa, a world heritage site and one of the new Natural Seven Wonders of the World. It's an incredibly tough race that brings grown women and men to their knees and has them crying. And I can assure you there is a lot of them, me included. Runners have 17 hours to complete the 100 km route. You might think 17 hours is a lot of time, it's not.

The route is filled with rocks, steep climbs, forests tracks, sandy beaches and ravines. The total elevation gain is 4250 meters (14000 feet). To put that in perspective, that is the same elevation as half way up and down Mount Everest.

On top of this, you carry your own food and water with you, with refill stops roughly every 15 km. Weather can vary drastically with near sub-zero temperatures (30°F) in the early morning on top of Table Mountain to 30°C (86°F) plus during the latter part of the day. And as if this isn't already tough enough, the start of the race is 4:00 AM. So if you are a late sleeper, just unlucky or nerves get the better of you, you don't get a whole lot of sleep.

Due to the mix of elevation, weather conditions, technical terrain and the time limit, the UTCT 100 is considered as one of the toughest races in the world. Most athletes come from South Africa, USA or France because of the ideal training conditions. In both 2018 and 2019 only six people from the Netherlands participated and only two of those six actually finished the race. You might have guessed why, the Netherlands is flat as a pancake.

At this point you might have some understandable questions, remarks or concerns, which usually all lead to, 'Why?!'. Trying to answer the 'why' is difficult, I didn't just wake up one day with the need to run 100 km. So let's start at the beginning.

The love for the mountains

My mom is originally from the Czech Republic, and moved to the Netherlands in 1977. She grew up in the north-east part of the country where we still have a little family cabin (chata or chaloupka in Czech) in the mountains that was build by my great-grandparents.

It was the perfect place to escape the Dutch urban life and breath in some fresh mountain air and throughout my childhood we would go there to visit family. The days would be filled with adventures and a typical day there would look something like, wake up and watch deer and boar pass by through the garden in the morning, check the creek if I caught some trout during the night, hike through the woods to get fresh mountain water, search for the perfect tree to build a treehouse, chop wood for the stove, build a campfire, watch the stars at night and listen to old family stories until I fell asleep again. It was here that I really got to appreciate the beauty of the outdoors.

I've always been an active kid, but the love for running only really started years later when I moved to Cape Town in 2012, South Africa and Table Mountain National Park was my backyard. Whoever has been to Cape Town knows that the scenery and nature around the city is absolutely breathtaking. It's probably one of the most beautiful places to go for a hike or run.

It was in 2013 that I went for my first trailrun, joining a crazy group of friends who ran through these mountains. From that moment I was hooked to trailrunning as it was the combination of three of my favourite things, being active, the outdoors and being able to share the experience and stories with like-minded people.

The road to the first marathon

Years later those three elements would become indicative for me moving forward. Between 2013 and 2016 I had to deal with some major life events. Three of those were that I got divorced, lost my dad and one of my best friends and roommate to cancer. Needless to say, not the best period of my life. It became clear that the only way forward was to focus on staying active, being outside and to share my thoughts with friends, family and other loved ones. Easier said than done.

In those years I started to run a lot and after moving back to the Netherlands I ran my first marathon in October 2016, the TCS Amsterdam Marathon. Followed by the Two Oceans Ultra Marathon 56 km in Cape Town and the TCS Amsterdam Marathon in 2017 and the Salland Trail Run 50 km in the Netherlands in March 2018.

After all these races I thought, 'Why stop here? What if I set this crazy goal of 100 km, could I do it?'. And although lots of people thought I was crazy to try to run 100 km, I believed I could do it.

I told a South African friend of mine that I wanted to run a 100 km race and he mentioned the UTCT 100. I felt that if I wanted to do a 100 km race I might as well do one that seemed completely undo-able and in the country that I used to call home.

From that moment I started adding the kilometers to get mentally and physically prepared. The most memorable races that I did apart from the UTCT 100 itself were the 73 km TCS Amsterdam Marathon (10 km + Half + Full) which I did in 2018 and 2019, the 68 km Trail des 600 Boitheux with 2000 meters of elevation and the 86 km Great Escape Trail with 2310 meters of elevation both in the Belgian Ardennes.

The UTCT 100

As I mentioned, I didn't finish the UTCT 100 twice. In 2018 I just totally underestimated the race. Six hours and 35 km into the race every fibre in my body was hurting and I knew I was never going to get to the first checkpoint in time. Because I didn't make the checkpoint I was diverted to the 65 km route, which I did finish. It gave me some sense of pride as I still finished a huge race, but it wasn't the 100 km.

In 2019 I came back with more experience and more millage on the clock. I was much quicker than the year before, but at 45 km I started to cramp and saw that my time to the next checkpoint was getting less and less.

I was fighting an internal battle and couldn't get why I was cramping. I was going into a negative downward spiral and I couldn't get out. At that point I made the decision to withdraw from the race because I knew that I was going to slow and time would catch up on me somewhere along the route. A tough decision and extremely demoralising to say the least.

So it's back to the drawing board in 2020, learn from my "mistakes" and be better prepared next time.

Although I failed to finish the race, preparing for the UTCT 100 did teach me some very valuable lessons about myself, others and life in general. So here they are:

6 things I learned from failing to finish a 100 km ultra-trailmarathon, twice...

Lesson 1: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

After finishing a number of marathons I wanted to really push myself and see what else was there, far beyond my comfort zone. I love the saying, 'If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room'.

From the moment I decided to attempt the UTCT 100, I realised that this was so far from what I knew, I needed to find the right room with the right people. So I asked coach Klaas Boomsma.

Klaas is a writer, sports journalist and running coach and in the period that I started training for my first marathons we got to know each other through training. Klaas is an excellent running coach with a wealth of experience and currently also training for a 100 km ultra-marathon.

But what really sets him apart is the hardship he endured when he was younger. Klaas has battled a drug and alcohol addiction and was severely depressed. When he was at his absolute low point he went to rehab in Cape Town. This is where he went for his first run and never stopped. Running became his way to conquer the addiction, running became his way to better his life and it coincidentally also started in Cape Town.

I could relate to the hardship and mental toughness of Klaas, so I knew that if there was one person who could coach me during this crazy journey, it would be him.

But sometimes it's not immediately clear who in the room is going to be able to help you. I remember one 68 km race through the Belgian Ardennes. Four hours into the race the temperature started to rise to 30°C (86°F). The first people started to struggle, me included. To make things worse, I was running out of water.

It was there at my absolute low point that one of my fellow runners started a conversation with me. It was Fred, a father of three and doctor from the USA living in Germany. After a quick chat he asked me about my food and water situation. I told him that I ran out. Without any hesitation he gave me half of his water for me to be able to continue, I couldn't thank him more.

I can tell you that you don't just share your water during an ultra-trailmarathon. Water and food are your fuel that make every step happen, it's a prized commodity, so for him share that was huge. Ultra-marathons bring the good out in people. Fred and myself, two complete strangers, were going through lots of ups and downs but helped each other out, 'We are in this mess together so we are going to pull through together'. We ended up pulling each other through the race, adding another 6.5 hours to the finish line.

So next time you are standing next to a person you don't know, be kind, it might be someone like Fred.

Lesson 2: Whoever tells you sleep is overrated, is wrong

One of the challenges of dealing with stress or stressful periods in your life is that it starts to affect your sleep. And when you are not able to properly sleep it affects your day to day activities, which then again affects your sleep. It's a vicious cycle and you have to find a way to break that cycle.

There was a good chance that I would have spiralled down into some sort of depression if I didn't break my negative cycle. To break it I started to do what naturally made me feel good, being active and being outside.

Running became my way to positively impact my sleep. The more I ran, the more I was outside, the better I could sleep. And the better I could sleep the better I could deal with stressful situations in everyday life.

As time went by and I started to really push myself with long distance running, I realised that it worked the other way around as well. The better quality off sleep I would get, the better my running went. I realised that the exercise itself didn't make me a better athlete, sleep did. It's during the periods of rest that you recover and build up your body again, stronger than it was before.

So whoever tells you sleep is overrated, is wrong.

Lesson 3: Small steps lead to big changes

Some things are as simple as they sound, 'If you want to run 100 km, start off by running 1 km'.

I ran my first marathon in 2016 and just added the kilometers, day in day out.

But as I look back on the last two years I remember something I read in the book 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear, 'Don't focus on the goal, focus on the system instead. The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.'

And although finishing the UTCT 100 is the goal, it's actually short-term and is not sustainable. More long-term is the continuous improvement to find out more about myself and to continue to improve as a person in every aspect of life.

Every consistent run facilitates and nurtures a system that allows me to continue to "play the game" in the years to come far beyond the UTCT 100.

Lesson 4: 100 km is just 10 x 10 km

When I first thought about a 100 km race I could not imagine to be running for so long. It's just really hard to imagine doing something that is so far out of your comfort zone. But I remember one conversation I had with Klaas.

He reminded me that I should break the race up in manageable pieces. And that I should start thinking about it as "just" 10 times 10 km. I knew what 10 km felt like, I knew 5 times 10 km felt like, so thinking about 10 times 10 km made the race feel much more manageable.

'How do you eat an elephant? A bite at a time.' So when you are confronted with a mammoth task (see what I did there) the only way to tackle it is to break it up in to manageable pieces.

Lesson 5: Try to find the other side of the dark patch

One thing is certain during an ultra-marathon, things will get tough, things will hurt and you will go through lots of ups and downs. It's hard to describe the emotions you go through when you run for hours on end. Without being overly dramatic, imagine some of your shittiest periods in your life and some of your most valuable. Put those in 12.5 hours and you have an ultra-marathon.

You have to find a way of embracing or accepting the pain, having faith and believing in a positive outcome no matter how uncertain the situation. You have to find the other side of the dark patch, the pain cave, the dark side, the wall or whatever you want to call it.

Pain is just a signal from your brain telling your body you need to stop doing what you are doing, long before you actually need to stop. The better you become at intercepting that signal and controlling your body the better chances you have on getting to the other side. This ability sets a good athlete apart from a great athlete. Needless to say, this is easier said than done.

The most memorable dark patch I experienced (apart from losing my dad and close friend) was during the UTCT 100 in 2018. Six hours and 35 km into the race every fibre in my body was hurting. As a result my mind started telling my body I needed to stop. I was going in a negative downward spiral (see video below). To break the cycle I forced myself to focus on the things I could influence. The water that I drank, the food that I ate and every step that I took. All other things would not take me any closer to the finish line. It was very tough, but I ploughed through and I ended up adding another 8 hours to my race. And although I did not finish the 100 km race, I did manage to finish the 65 km route.

One thing in life is certain, at some point it will hit you in the face and it can be really hard to imagine a positive outcome. I know, I've been there. Running ultra-marathons has provided me a way of tapping into the lows, focus on the things I can influence and turning them into highs. As a result the highs in life become so much higher when you have experienced and conquered the absolute lows.

Lesson 6: You cannot connect the dots looking forward

My dad was a very knowledgeable person and I remember one conversation I had with him. We got slightly philosophical and talked about the meaning of life. I asked him why he thought things happen, and what he thought a meaningful life was.

He asked me, 'Do you feel that the single things that you do, are meaningful' I said, 'Yes, I think so'. And he replied, 'So when every single thing that you do has a meaning, why question whether life as a whole has meaning?'.

And it's true, life is just an accumulation of the things that happened in the past. If those things are meaningful, why worry about the future. But thinking about the meaning of life can be a bit overwhelming. You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back.

I could never have guessed that the little cabin in the Czech mountains, getting married and divorced, the loss of my dad and close friend, the trails of Table Mountain, the UTCT 100, Klaas, Fred and writing this article would somehow meaningfully connect, but it did.

There is no way of telling what the future holds, but up till now it's been pretty meaningful, so I am looking forward to more dots being connected.

Thank you for reading, I appreciate your time. Feel free to leave a comment or connect and send me message should you have any questions or remarks about my journey so far.

A special thank you goes to my physiotherapist Celine ter Beek and Martijn Rodijk for the heart-rate based training and advise.

Alex