Teachers gut it out in 50-mile trail run

SANDPOINT — Let’s say — just for the sake of argument — that you’ve managed to run 30 miles of mind-bendingly difficult trail. Your bones have been jarred into submission, your legs have turned to rubber and your muscles are on fire. The voice in your head has become a mantra that says, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Now consider that you have another 20 miles left to run, most of it on steep uphill terrain that made the first haul look like a walk in the park.

How deep would you have to dig in order to persevere? How much would you learn about yourself when you are literally stumbling forward under the force of nothing but sheer guts?

Sandpoint-area runners Trish Butler and Caitlin Sandell found the answers to those searingly personal questions at the end of last month when they ran the Mt. Hood 50 — a 50-mile race event that traverses a particularly tough section of the Pacific Crest Trail. They were in the company of two local elite runners, Peggy Gaudet and Mike Ehredt, both of whom have competed in the most difficult “ultra-marathon” races the world has to offer.

Gaudet has run across the Sahara Desert and Death Valley. Ehredt has done the same, adding unassisted 4,000-mile-plus, coast-to-coast runs across the United States to the bargain. He currently is embarked upon what he calls Project America Run Part II, planting an American flag at every mile along his way from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico to honor fallen U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Sandell and Butler, on the other hand, are runners of a different class. Both of them started in the sport a few years ago. Sandell had completed a dozen half-marathons and two full marathons before tackling the Mt. Hood race. Butler had three marathons under her belt, as well as a couple of halfs.

“My first half-marathon was the first year of the Scenic Half,” she said, referring to the annual race held in Sandpoint. “I had done Bloomsday, but I always walked.”

So it was that these two Bonner County schoolteachers threw their hats into the ring for a race that almost doubled the number of miles they had attempted to date.

“The hardest part wasn’t the mileage,” Sandell said. “It was the trail. The first 30 miles were totally runable. But the last 20 ….”

“We called it Scotchman’s Peak,” Butler said, picking up the narrative.

“Steep and rocky the whole way,” Sandell summarized.

When Ehredt and Gaudet encouraged the women to enter the race, there were only 12 slots left. Between them, they received numbers 166 and 167 — the last two tags issued for the event. At the end of 13 straight hours of running, stumbling and clawing their way forward, 123 competitors made it across the finish line. Sandell was one of them, but just barely. Butler was not, having been removed from the course just five miles from the finish line.

But all of that comes later in this story.

The Training

Given his long-distance runner’s credentials and time spent coaching other athletes for major race events, Ehredt was the shoo-in choice for trainer.

“He put together all of our workouts,” Sandell said, adding that the coach was more interested in time on the trail than actual distance covered. “By the time we were a month out from the race, he had us running the Mineral Point Trail for five hours.”

“We ran up and down Schweitzer four different times — one time in a blizzard,” Butler said.

The hardest training run was scheduled for a couple of weeks before the trip to Mt. Hood. Ehredt took the women out onto the Strong Creek Trail, where they ran through deep snow and along one stretch that Sandell described as being “seven miles, straight up.” The terrain assailed their psyches, pounded their bodies and made them pay a price in blood. Just what Ehredt had in mind.

“Every single one of us wiped out on that trail,” said Sandell.

“We had cuts and scrapes and bruises all over,” Butler added.

But they had now had an edge based on the mental strength and physical stamina they’d gained during the training runs.

“By the time we left for the race, we felt like we were stupidly ready for it,” Sandell said.

Mt. Hood, meanwhile, had 50 miles riding on a bet that would test that assumption.

The Run

The sun has only just started to kiss the landscape at 5:30 in the morning on the Pacific Crest Trail. It was in this half-light the runners began their odyssey of spirit on July 28. The course was made up of two “out and backs,” punctuated by a final 20-mile chunk of steep climbing.

“It was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting,” Butler said. “After a while, I had blisters on the bottom of both feet, so every time I took a step, it was just pain.”

Sandell had her own challenges. With only one eye to see with — she has only 5 percent of her sight in the other — she lacked the depth perception needed to run the more technical parts of the trail. At times, she was forced to slow to a walk to make it through the trickiest parts without injury.

“Every mile is different,” she said. “You’re out there for 13 hours and the places your mind goes is crazy.”

For the first several miles, Sandell found herself weighing the relative merits of different Olympic sports against the race she was toughing out at the moment. Then she began to do some lesson planning for her upcoming year as a seventh-grade science teacher at Sandpoint Middle School. Near the end, she found herself counting off the steps as she ran until her brain finally settled into a maddeningly repetitive tape loop of the 1979 hit song, “My Sharona.”

“But all the mind games help,” she said. “Before you know it, another hour has gone by.”

For Butler, however, it was a matter of the hours going by too fast. At 12 hours into the race, another runner told her “the sweepers” were moving up from behind, ready to remove any competitors who would not be able to cross the line within the 13-hour time limit. After running 45 miles, feet rubbed raw as hamburger meat and legs that hardly responded to the command to move, Butler was taken out of the race.

“I had an hour to make the last five miles at that point and I probably would have needed two hours to finish,” she said. “You think you’re sprinting, but you’re barely even moving forward.

“When they pulled me, I just started crying,” she continued. “And I don’t know if I was crying because I was happy or sad that they wouldn’t let me go on.”

The Finish

As the sun moved behind Mt. Hood, most of the runners who completed the course had already reached their goal. One hundred and twenty three of them made it to the finish. Caitlin Sandell was No. 120.

“You had to be at the finish line by 6:30 and I crossed at 6:27,” she said. “I was sobbing because I was hurting so bad.”

In the final stretch, she was accompanied by Gaudet, who cheered her friend on as they neared the 50-mile mark.

“She told me, ‘Let’s run it out!’” Sandell said. “But my walk was faster than my run at that point.”

“To watch her cross the line, it looked like she was giving it everything she had,” Butler recalled. “And she was barely moving.”

Just under a month after the race, these women’s lives and attentions have turned to the start of another school year. Sandell will be back at the middle school, while Butler will return to her special education duties at Farmin Stidwell Elementary. Carving out blocks of time for five- and six-hour runs will be harder than training in the summertime. But Trish Butler’s feet have healed and Caitlin Sandell is only missing a single toenail as her payment in tribute to Mt. Hood.

As they sit together, Butler runs an idea up the flagpole for discussion: They should take on the Hungry Horse 50 on Oct. 17, between Kalispell, Mont., and Glacier Park, she suggests.

“Why not?” she asks out loud. “We’re already trained. I’ll do it if you do will.”

Sandell looks at her friend as if she has just lost her mind. Then she sighs and rolls her eyes.

“Oh, God,” she says, beginning to laugh at the thought of running another 50-mile race. “OK, we’ll talk about it.”