We'll it was a beautiful day in Arkansas on Sat. We woke up at 5:00, got Henry packed on off to the start. They moved the start line this year down to Camp Sylvia; which, at least for the runners makes a better start/fisish. You do the nasty hill up the the Girl Scout camp at mile 1 instead of 99. :-)

Jim and I are crewing Henry and Linda Hurd is taking care of Thorbjorn. Their times are going to be about the same so Linda hooks up with us for the day.

The weather was perfect. Upper 50's and a little overcast. We milled around for a while, make sure Henry's fueled up and the gun, literally, goes off. The runners all shuffle off and we decide to make sure we're fueled up for the day with a quick trip to breakfast at the Perryville Sonic. The breakfast taco was to die for.

The first crew station is Lake Sylvia which is at mile 17. The runners come down off the Oauchita trail into a little parking area. Thorbjorn comes in an looks like he's struggling a little to keep up with people and is in and out quickly. Henry comes in about 10 minutes quicker than we're expecting him but in good spirits other than a little IT band pain. It's warmed up a bit so we get Henry a fresh shirt. He's in the aid station for about 15 minutes and doing a great job of preping for the upcoming rocks and trails.

The next stop is Winona so we drive over and hang out for a few hours. Thorbjorn is having stomach troubles and pace wise seems to be going out faster than he should. Henry comes in and is continuing to have leg pain troubles. We patch him up, refuel and send him out. If you ever want a well stocked bag, go talk to Henry. He could probably do minor surgury with what he had in the bags.

It's about 2:00 in the afternoon when we get out of Winona and we decide to take the paved road around to Powerline. A quick call to Joe and we find "The Shack" in Jessiville which serves up awesome hamburgers and shakes. Jim tells the waitress that we got the recommendation in Austin, Tx but it's clear she's not buying it. If you crew this race, don't miss this place. It'll be the eating highlight of your day. I recommend the Shack burger with grilled onions, tater tots and a large chocholate shake. You probably don't want to get your cholesteral checked afterwards; but, it's little slice of heaven on a platter.

Joe and I were talking about last year's AT100 a while back and he mentioned that Paul Schmidt liked Chocolate shakes. Paul said he would be at Powerline at 4:30 so I hatched a plan to surprise him.

Powerline is a busy place with lots of aid people and runners coming in sporadically. We get there about 3:30 or so settle in and watch the show. About 4:20, I get the shake out and walk up the road. Sure enough, Paul shows up right on time. It felt like we were living a Visa commercial - Gas for car - $20, Chocolate Shake $3 - look on a man's face when you hand a shake to him at mile 49 - priceless.

Henry has passed Thorbjorn now and comes in right around 6:00. My assessment at the time was he was doing great. He was still hurting but his spirits were high and he could have a pacer now. Henry does another bang up job of patching himself up. Linda, Jim and I are hovering around him and start getting some looks from the other runners like "Hey, what am I chopped liver?". We do our best to take care of them to but with Henry in - we're focused. Jim saddles up and we get them on their way.

Thorbjorn comes in and he's not looking good. He's been having stomach troubles all day and has a slossy stomach from not enough electrolyets. Chrissy works with him to get back in the race mentally and to take some more electrolytes to help his stomach clear. Linda decides to pace him out to Turnaround to get him back in the race and ride back with me to Powerline to go the rest of the way from there.

I take off for Turnaround and check in with the aid station captain - Joyce - by giving her a beer from Joe. She laughs and it's like we're old friends. She was saving a hamburger for Joe so I gladly volunteered to take off her hands. Thanks Joe, it rocked. She sent one back with me for you; it didn't make it through the night. This is the most rocking aid station of the whole show. They have music going. Good stuff too. Even though it's in the middle of nowhere; when you see the light coming up the hill, it looks like paradise because you know every step from here on back is taking you back home and to a nice warm shower.

Henry shows up about 9:00 which is a little slower than I wanted. His spirits are still up and having Jim with him seems to be helping. At Winona, there was this wad of cut up paper in the front seat of my car around Jim. When asked, he said he was making a joke book to keep Henry entertained that evening. Jim's a pretty good joke teller so I'm sure some of Henry's cramps later can be attributed to this.

Henry and Jim head out about 9:10 or so and I'm pretty confident at this point he's going to finish unless something medically went wrong. His times will be tight but he's on within striking distance. He had the look in his eye that he's in for the long haul, wouldn't quit and he knew it.

Thorbjorn and Linda came in shortly after Henry left and he looked significantly better than when he left Powerline; but he's mentally down and eventually calls it a night. From the crew side, our assessment is he went out too fast and didn't adapt as things went wrong during the day. Mentally it took him out. Happens to the best of us.

As he was sitting in the aid station after he dropped, he started shaking and was going hypothermic in 60 degree weather. This was a mental lapse on my part. We should have had him in dry clothing immediately when he came into the aid station. You get stupid after running that far and your crew needs to do the thinking for you. I didn't think you could get hypothermic with the temperature that high. Live and learn.

I take Thorbjorn and Linda back to their car and take off back to Powerline to pick up as Henry's pacer. On the way back, I make a quick run up to Crystal Mountain to try to make a call to Kathy, Henry's wife. It's a 4x4 kinda rough road. The view from there was great but some clouds were starting to move in. It's the highes thing around so I figure if I'm going to be able to make a call, that's about it. Kathy and I chat for a few minutes and she asks me to tell Henry that she broke the lawn mower.

Back at Powerline, the weather forecast starts turning bad and they say there's a 40% chance of showers with a chance of thunderstorms. We're gonna get wet but the temperatures will stay in the upper 50's.

Henry rolls in around 1:00. I'm getting concerned about the cut offs now; but if we can keep a good pace, then we're still in the game to finish. We take off about 1:10 but as much as we try, Henry's walking and can't run through the leg pain. We're able to keep up a good pace through Chicken Gap and by my calculations we're still able to finish. On top of Smith Mountain, we turn off the flash lights and enjoy the view. It get *really* dark in the Arkansas woods and it's one of my favorite things to do. Henry wants to savor it a bit more but I start pushing him harder now to keep moving. Smith Mountain aid stations comes on slowly now and we're beginning to fall behind. After Smith Mountain, it starts raining. It's wet and miserable, and I would never have said this to Henry; but, inside I was having a blast. It was nasty, rocky, wet and otherwise a horrible night to be out but we were defying the elements and moving on. Henry's effort at this point was superhuman. He didn't have an ounce left in him and he kept moving. He couldn't focus on the trail so I had him grab my pack so he could just close his eyes and not worry about falling. And still he kept moving. I was in awe at the effort.

We made it into Club Flamingo about 4:30 or so. The rain had let up a little bit but the hill upto the aid station took a lot out of him. He was thinking about quiting at this point. We'd had the discussion coming up the hill about it and I told him that it was OK to be taken out of the race but he shouldn't ever volunteer to quit. He was on the verge of saying he wanted to pull but I told him he couldn't quit at Club Flamingo. It didn't occur to him to ask why so he just nodded, I said "Giddy up" and we shuffled on.

More rain now. And harder. We both zip up our jackets and steel for more rocks and hills. It took us until 6:00 to make it to Pigtrail. Going into the aid station, the volunteers looked at us like we were aliens and tell us there's one person left behind us. I was pretty sure we were going to miss the cut off at Lake Winona at this point. Henry had made his peace with the race and was going to keep on moving though. He had the 1000 yard stare of a 100 miler in his eye. He wasn't going to quit until someone ripped the race away from him. We both agree that the story was too good to quit and that's what it's all about anyway. He who has the best stories wins and we were sitting on a royal flush of stories.

The sun finally comes up around 7:15 or so and it lifts Henry's spirts a bit although he's still fighting exhaustion. We get one more Red Bull and Gu in him and wait for it to kick in. We've slowed way down by now though. We're probably doing 1.5 miles per hour now. Doesn't sound like much but when every step is painful, it's a feat. A healty baby could have out crawled Henry easily at this point. And still he kept moving.

A car came by at 7:40 to check in on us. The cutoff at Winona was 8:45. We didn't know how far it was or if we could make it. My gut feel was that we were too far behind. We told the driver if it was more than 2 1/2 miles to come back and get us since we'd clearly miss the time cutoff and it didn't make sense to keep the aid station open if we were just going to miss the cutoff anyway.

Around 8:00, a driver shows up and says we're about three miles out. Henry looks at me, almost looking for permission and we both agree to call it a day. For the record though, we didn't quit, we ran out of time. That's the way to get taken out of a 100 miler. All kinds of things can go wrong that take you out of a race that are out of your control - injuries, rain, heat, dehydration, electrolytes, hypothermia, exhaustion. One thing that's totally in your control is the mental attitude to finish and your reaction to bad things that happen on the way. Henry was totally in control of both in this race and it was an experience I'll remember forever.

I learned a lot by crewing. Henry did a lot better job than I've ever done preparing drop bags and taking care of himself in the race. I'll apply some of the lessons I learned from him in my races. I've also never used a pacer but can understand now how much of a difference having one can make. Duhh. Lastly, for folks that aren't up for doing 100 milers - YET :-) - crewing/pacing a race is a great way to learn more about what the more extreme of us do. You'll learn a lot of tricks being in the aid stations that will help with your own running.

That's about it. Now to get back out and run some to drop the weight from all those burgers.

Mike Riggs