My favorite races: The Bryce 100
Part four of a series about the best endurance events, as subjectively chosen by me
The four of us shuffled and slipped and stumbled over a gravel road that felt as wide as an airport runway. This interminable road spanned an alien world known as the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The Paunsaugunt is a kind of island in the sky, suspended over a scaffolding of sandstone hoodoos that hold the forest far above the baked desert of Southwestern Utah. On this day, the Paunsaugunt was unbearably hot, and I’d been ill for 85 miles. I blamed the altitude. We had maybe five or ten miles to go, but it was impossible to know. We were mired in the first edition of the Bryce 100, and much about the race hadn’t panned out as we’d expected. We’d just passed an unmanned water-only aid station that was tapped out, and we were starting to run dry under the fearsome glare of the high June sun.
Some ten miles back, at what was supposed to be the mile 90 aid station but turned out to be at least 16 miles from the finish, we met our (typically much faster) friend Harry. He has been sitting at a metal picnic table, no shade in sight and fully exposed to the sun, for a number of hours. He was quitting the race, he told us. “At mile 90?” we echoed in disbelief. Harry thought he was coming down with heat stroke, and anyway this race was stupid and ridiculous as all 100-mile races are. Somehow we — the we being our California friend Steve, Beat, and me — convinced Harry to join us. Together we set out down the Orange Dirt Road with no expectation of glory and every expectation about what the future really held — misery, sweat, and possibly heat stroke.
Indeed, we spent the next six hours picking our way across the sun-baked dirt to reach distant stands of Ponderosa pines. We took many breaks. Harry developed a chill and this was a bad sign. We took longer breaks in the dappled shade. I dozed off while leaning on my trekking poles, and only awoke when I finally began to tip over like a sleeping cow. I felt as though I was waking up from a long slumber, so out of sorts that I blinked in confusion, utterly stumped. What was this strange orange planet I was perched atop?
Despite the heat, sleepiness, and real concern that Harry was succumbing to heat stroke, I was quietly joyful. I was with people I loved in this otherworldly beauty, this wide-open expanse at the seeming end of the planet. My mind had reached a state I can only compare to religious zeal. It was as though the universe was whisking me through multiple dimensions as alertness blinked in and out. I laughed with my friends while heat waves rippled across the vibrant blue sky and my mind took me to places I can only visit when my earthly sentience has fractured.
The finish line was a mere strip of white paint sprayed across the trail. The Bryce 100 was the epitome of a first-year grassroots race, in a time that — for me — ultrarunning was splashed with mystery and possibility. Six months earlier, I’d interviewed the race director, Matt Gunn, who was developing a series of races that at the time were concentrated in Southern Utah and northern Arizona. He struck me as a personality much like myself — quiet, uncertain, and introverted, but also passionate and kind. He started running to cope with grief after his father died in 2002, and quickly fell in love with the sport. He was in awe of where running could take him and wanted to share it with others.
Gunn’s early races were a bit chaotic. He was attuned to fine details — his aid stations were downright gourmet, with stone-fired pizzas and homemade banana pancakes. But sometimes the big picture fell into the background, such as mislabeled distances and aid stations that ran out of water. Still, Gunn created something special with the Bryce 100 course, crossing a remote segment of the Paunsaugunt that few see even though it’s less than a dozen miles from the national park. It didn’t take much persuading for Beat and me to sign up for the inaugural race that started May 31, 2013 — Beat’s 44th birthday.
Beat loves everything about Bryce and has been back I don’t know how many times … five, maybe six? I have started three Bryce 100s. I have yet to have a remotely good race on this course. Despite my inexplicable love for that interminable dirt road (which has since been removed from the course), I was terribly nauseated for most of the 2013 race. Because of this, I lost an opportunity to race well during what in hindsight was my best year of running.
In 2017, I returned shortly after being diagnosed with Graves Disease. This was a major mistake. The experience was bad enough that I’ve blocked most of it from my memory, and only remember flickers before I timed out at mile 67 at the most remote aid station on the course. The volunteers held me there most of the day as the aid station was barraged with 50-mile runners — their race started 24 hours after ours. They nearly ran out of water. I was spurred to action when one volunteer discovered several coolers full of unused ice in a truck. I proposed that we melt the ice cubes on the propane stove to replenish the empty water containers. I did the cooking and was proud of myself for putting my Alaska snow-melting skills to good use in the hot desert. But of everything else about the 2017 race, I was ashamed. (To be clear, I was ashamed I started the race. I was in poor health and this was a show of reckless hubris for no good reason.)
In 2019, I did everything I could to be in the best shape of my life. I wasn’t — and was just starting to accept that I would never find my way back to the fitness of my pre-Graves-Disease days. But I was fit enough and optimistic. It was a cold year. More than four inches of snow fell on the course the night before the race. The trails were still muddy and slicked with ice when the race began. At mile 10, my right foot slipped in the mud during a steep descent. I stayed upright for about five seconds, shoe-skiing on one leg and flailing before I toppled over. The twisting momentum of this fall resulted in a torn adductor muscle in my right leg. I wouldn’t learn the extent of my injury until I saw a doctor two weeks later. But I finished the race on this stiff, unstable leg, gritting my teeth in pain and eventually resorting to frequent bursts of tears to get through it. I’m not proud of this race either. “Death before DNF” is the dumbest goal ever. I don’t subscribe to this mantra, so why did I put myself through the misery (and the long recovery from an injury) just to finish another race?
So I’ve never had a good race at Bryce. When my therapist asks me why I want to go back a fourth time, I reply, “It’s a beautiful course and a fun event, and damn it, I just want to have an experience that doesn’t involve being in tears for most of 36 hours.”
Vacation Races — a large destination race company with about two dozen events all over the world — took over Matt’s races in 2016. On October 18, 2020, Matt Gunn died by suicide at the age of 44. I’d only talked with him on the phone and met him once in 2013, but his death shook me to the core. Sometimes you meet a person who feels like a kindred spirit. And although we all walk our own path, you wonder at the parallels between your life and another’s.
Beat was 44 the first year we ran Bryce. This year, I am 44. Beat and I will be returning to the Bryce 100 on May 18. I hope to finish, but more than that, I hope to honor the many spirits of the race — Matt’s spirit of discovery, Beat’s spirit of playfulness in the face of adversity, Harry’s spirit of grumpy perseverance, Steve’s spirit of camaraderie, my spirit of awe.
And also, please don’t let me hurt myself. Please oh please.
Heat stroke is no joke. I didn't quite realize the gravity of it until a co-worker died out doing an archaeological survey. He was working with a crew, felt ill, and decided to go back to the truck on his own. The rest of the crew found him unconscious on the road. since then, I've been a lot more respectful of the power of the sun.