Run Forever

After running a hundred miles, twice as far as I’d ever run at one time, recovery felt like unknown territory. I’d naively told Amy that I wanted to take a break from coaching after the hundo, to see what it would be like to coach myself for a while. But now I was realizing that recovery was possibly the most important phase of training, and I felt a bit scared and intimidated. Amy had left me a week’s worth of guidance, which consisted of different forms of the admonition, “Don’t run.”

Actually it was a little more nuanced. Monday: “Eat, hydrate, rest;” Tuesday: “Again, focus on getting plenty of food and drinks… and nothing else!” Wednesday: “Eat, drink, perhaps walk a mile or two if that feels okay.” Thursday: “Again, walk a short bit if it feels okay, and then get in some stretching.” Friday: “Day off, rest!” Saturday: “Get out for a hike or walk, nothing crazy.” Sunday: “Yup, respect the recovery. Walking a bit okay.” And then I was on my own.

Not running certainly wasn’t hard on Monday, the day after finishing the run, as my Garmin logged about two hours of sleep the night before. It’s a little bit cruel that after running for 27 hours and missing a night of sleep, the following night the body isn’t able to sleep.

I respected the recovery as well as I could. Around Wednesday I started walking to work, which is around a mile both ways. Most of the muscular soreness was gone, and my joints felt fine, though my left Achilles was sore. I felt generally tired, though, and I didn’t have to exercise too much restraint not to run. Mostly I wanted to recover well, so I could keep running, and maybe actually run a hundred-mile race in October, three months out.

I’d raced a fifty in late May, and recovered well, continued my build and felt great for the hundred—wouldn’t recovery from the hundred be similar? After all, I hadn’t actually raced it.

Turns out, not really. 

Not running much does allow time for other things. The weekend after the hundo we went to Boston, visiting our old neighborhoods, went to a birthday party at a plaza in Somerville that hadn’t existed when I was there, and went on a whale watch out of Boston Harbor. I didn’t run all weekend!

That following Monday I ran four miles, which felt pretty good, but the Achilles was niggling. Used the foam roller and did yoga the next day, but then started to obsess with whether the yoga had irritated the Achilles. So Wednesday I cycled for the first time in months. Then a day off, and Friday and Saturday six and four mile runs. Maybe too much. The Achilles felt sore, probably insertional tendinopathy.

I’m pretty neurotic when it comes to niggles and injuries, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate this part of me. It keeps me from overdoing it. I know runners who have really damaged their Achilles tendons by continuing to run and climb serious vert in spite of injury, and I had visions of being reduced to short runs around the neighborhood for the rest of my life.

Age is relative, but as an oldish runner I’m quite aware that my glorious days of epic runs through forests and mountains won’t go on forever. I also know that many runners continue to run through their sixties and even seventies. I want to be one of those runners.

This recovery seemed to take a long time, and I waffled between worrying about my Achilles and obsessing with how much and what kind of exercise I could do, and fantasizing about racing. Maybe I should try to do a hundred that would get me into the Western States lottery for next year! Maybe just do Midstate Massive this year and then Grindstone next year to get running stones for the UTMB lottery! Or maybe run Black Canyon in Arizona, and experience that amazing landscape.

I took another week of roller skiing, cycling and resting, then ran with friends while visiting Montpelier, probably too long and too much vert. Achilles was not happy, but it was great to share a run on some lovely trails.

The town I grew up in is recovering, too. The flooding that cancelled the Vermont 100 left Montpelier’s downtown in several feet of water, damaging most of the stores and shops. My high school building was an island in the flood. Sunday morning I ran through the downtown, past the Pavilion Building that houses the Vermont History Museum, thick white ventilation tubes snaking from upper story windows; down Langdon Street, home to both Onion River Outdoors, the sports shop that has served running and cycling and Nordic skiing athletes since I was a kid, and Buch Spieler, the record store. Onion River was empty, with a dumpster outside, and the statue of death outside Buch Spieler said it all.

After another week of roller skiing, resting, cycling, and resting, the Achilles felt worse. I scoured the internet for information about rehabbing tendinopathy and started to develop a theory. While most of the literature advises resting tendons when injured, it’s also clear that continuing to move is important, as it keeps blood circulating to the tendons, which don’t have as prolific a network of blood vessels as other tissues.

So I developed a plan to start running more consistently, albeit short, easy distances. It was already the fourth week of recovery, and I was holding off on making any decisions about races, refusing offers to run mountainous trails with friends, and I was getting a bit restless. But the plan worked. The pain in my Achilles almost immediately started to remit. Was it more running, or just the effect of time, rest and cross training? Always hard to tell with an N of one. But I suspect that because this body is so used to running, going back to more consistent easy running was actually helpful.

Yesterday, four-and-a-half weeks out, I actually ran a fartlek, just putting in some longer surges to see how the body would respond. I felt quite out of speed shape, but the Achilles felt good.

I’ve had to run close to home this week, as I’ve had a kid who was not happy with camp. The upside is that Claire has been joining me for a half mile loop around the block at the end of each run–so great to run with your kid!

The recovery continues. Hopefully I’ll run some longer trails this weekend, as we travel up to Vermont again for a more extended visit. I’ll need to pay close attention to how the body responds to more mileage and vert, back off as needed. It’s still a mystery as to how much I might be able to build before tapering down for another long effort, or whether that will even feel prudent, but it finally feels like I’m out of the woods. I will go long again, sooner or later. 

Hi, I’m Matt, an ultra runner, nordic skier, parent, husband, psychotherapist and spiritual explorer from Western Massachusetts. I’ve been a runner for most of my life, a meditator for almost as long, a social worker and therapist for 20 years, and a parent for 10. The first year of Covid I figured out how to manage my AFib, a heart condition that kept me from racing or even running a whole lot, and I started running trails and ultras. This blog documents my explorations, starting with a 100-mile run on the Robert Frost Trail not far from the town where I live and work. Here’s a photo of me running a 50-mile race through the gorges near Ithaca, NY.

Being connected with nature and the planet is central to my life, as is the future of my kids, so I also intend to document in these posts my efforts to fight climate change and care for the environment. The challenges humans face as individuals and as a species can seem daunting and hopeless, but I believe that we often can’t imagine amazing possibilities only because we are stuck in limiting parts of ourselves. Many years ago at a marathon expo, Bill Rogers gave me an autograph that read “run forever.” Obviously this is not possible, but I have found that a lot more is possible than one might think, and it’s worth exploring. I hope you enjoy my accounts and musings, and let me know what you think!

This was an amazing adventure, and I’m proud that my first hundred-mile run was a serious challenge! But the more amazing story is of the incredible trail and ultra community, and a certain Amy R who coordinated it all to create a remarkable alternative to the cancelled Vermont 100! I just can’t thank enough the amazing friends who created unbelievably-stocked pop-up aid stations, and were there with encouraging words through the night. I feel so privileged to have shared miles with so many experienced folks who ran distances from 50-100K and more. Yes I was the only runner to make it to 100 miles, but only because of all the support, and maybe because Amy rerouted me around Lawrence Swamp on the way back and personally ran with me in the middle of the night so I wouldn’t get lost.

As you probably know, the Vermont 100 was cancelled this past week due to the catastrophic flooding in Vermont. It was the right call, and my heart goes out to all the people who were impacted. Crazy to see my hometown of Montpelier under water. Mid-week, race director Amy, who not only had the decision to cancel on her shoulders, but worked incredibly hard to deal with the situation, came up with an alternative plan to support friends in our local community run their distance. She concocted a route that would take us to the Robert Frost Trail, a rugged singletrack path that summits Mount Toby and Long Mountain, and ends in the Holyoke Range; the hundred-mile route would traverse the trail in both directions, with a total elevation gain of over 17,000 feet. So many people came together to make this happen, and Saturday morning at 7:00 AM around 20 runners set off to run on the Robert Frost Trail, with target distances of 50K to 100M.

Here’s a photo of me at the start with the Team Run 2 Empower crew, who raised money for Vermont Adaptive, an organization that enables kids and adults with disabilities to enjoy sports in the outdoors with specialized equipment and support. If you are interested in learning more about this amazing organization, you can visit my fundraising page at https://www.pledgereg.com/4532/mattczaplinski.

It was hot and muggy. So fun to run and talk with folks over the first miles. Some beautiful trail going North to Wendell State Park up through dramatic ledges. I didn’t feel great in the first 20-miles, as it felt like my heartrate was unusually high and potentially prone to AFib. But it settled out.

At around 50K I moved ahead of other folks—this was not a race, but I realized I needed to run my own pace, and even if I maintained my current pace I would be running for over 24 hours. My family met me at Amethyst Brook (mile 40) which was a huge boost. Not long after that we hit Lawrence Swamp, which turned out to be unexpectedly challenging. Not only was it flooded (at one point the trail was literally flooded by beavers, who gave me a good tail-slap warning as I approached), but the log bridges were not maintained, and clusters of huge pine trees had blown down in a storm, blocking the way. I used a stick to balance on slippery logs as I tried to move past the blowdowns, and insects bit. I couldn’t help thinking of the Barkley Marathons, as I tried to navigate my way through the mess.

At around mile 50, Mike B had set up a fully-stocked aid station in his garage, with lights lining the slight detour to his house. Then the sun started to go down, and shortly after that I hit Harris Road and the Holyoke Range. Beautiful twilight view from Rattlesnake Knob.

At Notch Visitor Center Amy and Grant were hosting a pop up aid station with strings of lights lining the trail. Amy recommended just going to the Low Place, as my mileage was higher than the original route map. That was another three miles, and when I got back three other runners, who had all run more than 50 miles at this point, were resting at the aid station in various states of heat fatigue. This was a crazy technical route, and combined with the heat made it difficult to continue.

But I was feeling okay. My stomach had turned, which is never fun, so I was not taking in much nutrition or fluid, but the temperature had gone down. So I kept plugging at a slower pace. Amy told me she’d meet me a Bay Road to route me around the swamp. It was great to share some miles with her—just so much gratitude for Amy and several others who basically stayed up all night to give support to the runners.

As it was getting light, it started to rain, and soon turned into a downpour with thunder and lightning. I was a bit nervous, but the storm had the effect of invigorating me, and I found I had a lot more energy to keep going. As I hit Bull Hill, torrents of rain had swollen the streams rushed down the trails. At one point I came to a stream crossing that is usually a long step, and was trying to figure out where to get across the torrent, when I saw two bears moving on the other side of the stream. I had the impression that they wanted to get across to my side. Initially it was a standoff, but then they disappeared into the woods.

Descending from the second ascent of Toby, Mike B and his dog met me to run me in. Great to get to know Mike a little and share some miles. I felt strong coming over the Sunderland Bridge, but then started to feel the pain as I realized I had to do a couple more road miles to make it 100. Several folks had come by to see me finish, and it was great to share stories and bask in the accomplishment.

Lots of gratitude to these friends and this community for making this possible!