Not every story worth telling is one of success. At the Uwharrie 100 Mile Trail Run, I logged an ugly and laborious 41 miles in a ridiculously slow 18:22:35 and then dropped out, 61.5 miles shy of the finish line. But the real story doesn't begin and end with my colossal shortcoming. My Uwharrie saga runs much deeper than the events that took place on 19 Oct 2019.

I was lying in bed one Monday afternoon, searching the internet. It was March of 2014 and the day before, I had just finished my first 100-miler, the Graveyard 100. My 25-hour journey along Highway 12 of the Outer Banks had been the greatest thrill of my running career and the elation of crossing the finish line after two consecutive sunrises was nothing short of euphoric. It was an elusive distance I thought I'd never have the ability to complete and getting that monkey off my back lit a sudden fire for more hundreds. I wanted to do another one immediately! I came across the inaugural Uwharrie 100. I read the info. It scared me. It didn't sound like fun. I didn't sign up. Later that year, I covered 102 miles at the Hinson Lake 24-Hour Ultra Classic and after that, my attempt at the hundred mile distance lay dormant for several years.

I moved on, but the nagging notion of Uwharrie never did. Every few months, I'd contemplate it again. And each time, I would decide it still didn't sound like fun. Nothing about doing a 20.5-mile loop five times over extremely rugged terrain and 17,000+ feet of elevation gain during 36 hours of time appealed to me. No matter how much I tried to see the good in it and no matter how often I tried to coax my reluctant mind into manning up and embracing the challenge, I'd cower back into reasonableness and dismiss the event.

Then a great mistake happened. Somewhere along the line, someone thought it would be a brilliant idea to create a Uwharrie marathon; six miles plus the Uwharrie loop. The event was intended to allow folks to experience the Uwharrie 100 course without having to commit to running the loop five times, a tester of sorts to soften the minds of doubters like me. And it was FREE. It almost seemed dumb not to run a no-cost event to test the course I'd been running away from for so many years.

In March 2018, I made the plunge. By mile 10, I had already become indoctrinated by two of the forest's toughest climbs and I vividly recall exclaiming to some other runner, "The Uwharrie 100 is somebody else's race." I wasn't even half way through the baby freebie, yet I was having none of it. Until I finished. Finishing the Uwharrie Marathon changed everything. The grit and determination it took for me to dance around those rocks and roots and hobble through those massive hills and complete my toughest marathon ever was enough to compel me into finally signing up for the hundred later that year.

An injury in July set back my training and I was not ready for the October 2018 event. I deferred to 2019. Different year, same assessment: I wasn't ready. But I had also learned that this was a race I'd never be ready to tackle. I just had to do it anyway. Somewhere along the way, I racked up three official training runs on the 20.5-mile loop and the thought of going into a second loop always seemed unimaginable to me. With finish times of somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 hours, it was confirmed what I already knew: I was too slow to finish the hundred (really 102.5 miles) within 36 hours. It was a mathematical impossibility. It just wasn't going to happen! I could've changed my entry to the 100K (62 miles), a more reasonable goal. Or I could've opted for the 50K (31 miles), an almost guaranteed finish. But I didn't sign up for Uwharrie to be comfortable. I signed up to be broken. Something inside me wanted to set out do what I had been battling against doing for more than five years, even though I knew I had no chance to succeed. It wasn't about the odds of finishing, it was about confronting and slaying my fear.

As race day approached, the reluctance continued to course through my veins. At the pre race dinner, the aura that dominated my thoughts was, "I do not want to be here. I do not want to tackle this monster." On race day, I did not want to step out of my truck and into the cold to dress for the race. As the minutes were counted down to the starting horn, I did not want to enter that trail, to be swallowed up by the ominous forest and spit out on the other side. The course just does something terrible and confounding to my spirit that is unexplainable. After twenty three years of running (18 years running ultras), I am no stranger to finishing tough races in all sorts of conditions. Yet, Uwharrie does something horrible to my core that is incomprehensible and I've been unable to solve it.

Throughout the entire first loop, I just couldn't get my head right. I wanted to quit and go home. It seemed a frustrating injustice to be stuck in the middle of those woods on an unfinishable course. The pointlessness of it was damaging my mood. I wasn't going to finish anyway, so what was the point of even showing up? What was the point of continuing? There'd be no glory for me. There'd be no success story for me. The inevitable was unfolding into plain view and I was its most intimately situated and hideous spectator. If it weren't for so many people cheering me on and fully expecting me to continue the race, I am certain I would've never entered the second loop. Yet, there I was again, trudging through the dreaded terrain yet again.

And that's when it hit me. I had finally done something that had always seemed so unfathomable before: I'd gone into the abyss for another loop! I may not have come close to finishing the race, but finding the guts and the courage to tackle that second loop had become my victory. For the first time all day, I actually began to enjoy the race, I began to enjoy the terrain, I began to embrace the adventure. I stripped away all of the parameters of the event and instead decided that I was just an avid outdoorsman on a romp through the trees and I was going to plod around through the woodsy landscape for as long as I was having fun! My muscular dystrophy fatigued my legs early and thoroughly and made the climbs as tough as always. And the torrential nighttime rainfall and the shoddy headlamp situation made for some miserably long miles until I finally stumbled into the completion of the second loop. Yet, 18+ hours later at around 12:00am, I knew my mission was complete.

I tossed my timing anklet into the bin before I had a chance to make a bad decision into going out for another loop. Besides, there was nothing left to achieve. Nothing left to prove. I had somehow found the God-given courage to take on the Uwharrie 100 and that is all the victory I'll ever need in those national forest hills. I may not have finished the race, but I finished my fear.