Matt’s Deadwood Marathon Summary

This post is from Matt. It’s my first one, so I thought I’d call that out.

I really don’t like to talk about it, but after seeing Peter Hass die at the half-marathon in San Francisco this year, I’ve been overly concerned about running endurance events in the heat. Historically, I don’t do well in the heat, so my prioritized goals for the Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon in June were: 1) Live, 2) Finish, 3) Finish in under 5 hours. This was the first another marathon where I abandoned all secondary goals in favor of concentrating on the first goal of just surviving.  My condition may not have been as poor as I imagined, but I was dealing with images of Peter, so I was decidedly conservative in my self-diagnosis. I didn’t even want to go beyond a resting heart rate!

After an incredibly scenic first half, described in Sarah’s post, things started to turn. As the temperature rose, my goals dropped. By mile 19 they were all gone—even the goal to finish. If a SAG wagon had been along to pick up stragglers I would have called “shotgun,” and hopped right in. But no one came to my rescue except three ladies who were walking the course. One of them was genuinely concerned about me. I was nauseated and standing in a very rare, three-inch sliver of shade I found. I waved the ladies off with an “I’m okay, I’m just taking a break,” but then I decided I’d better keep them within site the rest of the way—kind of like having a rescue squad on retainer. So I walked just a few paces behind them for about 5 miles to the finish.

Here’s what a dejected marathoner looks like:

Sucky Sequence

The details of the run are described in Sarah’s run summary. It was all she said it was—the most beautiful, inspiring course, but uphill and hot. I wasn’t the only one to suffer from the heat. We saw a mountain biker tasked with following one runner because the aid station suspected the runner was suffering heat stroke. A woman we spoke with on the shuttle back to our hotel said she ran a 50-miler in October, and it was easier than the 26.2 we’d just finished. So, it was a tough one. Plus both Sarah and I mostly ran it alone. We used to train together, and somehow that made it possible to run together on race day. Now, living in different states, our training programs must be different enough (I need more hills next time), that we were out of sync. We started together, separated somewhere in the early teens, crossed paths again around 20, and then didn’t see each other until I finally arrived at the finish. It’s not as fun as having a running buddy the whole way, but I am happy to have finished. Got a huge medal—the biggest in my small collection (8)—and that’s cool, because it was my toughest marathon.

But the run was only part of the trip. It was great to see the graves of the actual people of old Deadwood.  We hiked up to see Seth Bullock, and we spent some time searching for A.W. Merrick. He was there, we just couldn’t get the map to match reality. He went undisturbed by us, is my point. A.W. Merrick was the newspaperman. That’s the job I would have liked to have if I had lived in Deadwood in those days.  His paper is still published today, and I enjoyed reading it over pizza at Mad Manz in Lead, South Dakota. It was a great little vacation. Thanks, Sarah!

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