Javelina Jundred 2023 – sub-24 finish

The race

Javelina Jundred is a 100-mile, five-loop running race in the desert outside of Phoenix. It happens on a weekend adjacent to Halloween, and runners typically wear varying degrees of costumes. Many of us choose to camp at the start/finish the night before. It’s the largest (by number of runners) 100-mile race in the USA, and generally a bit of a party. I ran it last year and had a great time.

Before

Last year, I finished this race in about 28 hours. Finishing was a victory in that it was the first hundred I had run for a few years, and I had mostly trained on the bike (due to injury), so even finishing at all was a win. But the time was pretty slow – the slowest hundred I had ever run, and on a relatively easy course compared to other ones I had run.

I signed up again this year because:

• I had a lot of fun last year with friends and family
• I like the camping + costumes elements of the race
• It’s easy to crew (five loops, and crew can only hang out at one area)
• I wanted to do it faster (really distant, last-place reason)

To train, I did not use a structured training plan or work with a coach this year. Training plans for specific distances are mostly pretty similar unless you’re trying to really optimize for a really excellent / challenging time goal, so I sort of winged it. The principles of my unstructured training plan were:

• Slowly ramp weekly mileage, starting in April (after the triathlon)
• Do some long runs of increasingly longer length on Saturdays, maxing out at about a 50k
• Do some speed work on Tuesdays
• Do slow trails with climbing other days to replicate the course (I probably overdid it here and did a lot of super steep running, but it worked out okay)
• Run a couple of 70+ mile weeks in a row, and do that 2-3 times (e.g. three weeks of 70+ miles followed by a down week, then repeat)

I also got lucky in that I had a trip planned a few weeks head of the race, which was to a dramatically different time zone (helped with staying up all night) and a super warm/humid environment (>90*F, which helped with the heat). Counting walking, I did about a 100-mile week that week, in incredibly hot and humid conditions.

I felt really prepared going into this race but did not set extreme expectations for time goals. I felt confident that I would be at least a bit faster than last year, so I planned to finish in the 25-27 hour range. I had pacers joining me for laps 4 and 5, and I gave them time windows to meet me – the lower bound for the time window implied a 24-hour pace, just in case I was going faster (and my pace historically falls off a cliff around mile 70), and the upper bound was a 27-hour pace.

On Friday while Eric, Kate, and I were hanging out, Eric said “Lisa, you could run a sub-24, right?” He was speaking in the abstract – like, could I run one in general, not necessarily at this race? I said I probably could if I trained for it and it was the right course. My prior times were all in the 25-28 hour range on varyingly hard courses. A sub-24 was something I had wanted to do for a lot of years. I had never specifically optimized for it, but it was a vague goal that had been in the back of my mind for a very long time. I didn’t think it would be this race, but I didn’t want the crew to be unprepared in case something miraculous happened.

Pre-race

I rented an Airbnb in Fountain Hills. Eric (pacing lap 5), Kate (running the 31K), and I stayed there. Dad was not able to make it out this year. Kelly (pacing lap 4) did a yolo trip for this race, arriving Saturday afternoon, pacing me through the night, and leaving Sunday right after I finished.

I also rented a tent at the start/finish from the race organizers this year – they set up several rows of tents (maybe 100-150 tents), and you can also rent cots and sleeping bags. This worked out extremely well, as we didn’t have to set up or take down a 70-lb Kodiak tent like we did last year. Also, the cots were a lot more comfortable than my slowly-deflating air mattress from last year. I decorated the tent with decorations that I brought and some from Party City. I stayed in this tent the night before the race.

I got really excellent sleep the night before – I fell asleep around 8:15pm. My plan was to sleep until about 5:15, but the start/finish was buzzing with activity really early, so I woke up around 4:15/4:30 feeling fully refreshed and ready to go. I ate some peanut butter on bread for breakfast.

There are two waves of starts. The 6am start was for runners planning to finish under 24 hours, and the 6:30 was for everyone else. I planned to start with the 6:30 group, so I watched the 6:00am group start. No spectators thought I was a runner because I was still wearing pajamas/sweatpants at 6am. My thinking was that I was going to be wearing running clothes for the next day+, so why get into them ahead of time? After the 6am start, I went back to the tent, changed clothes, put on my bib, put on my horns, and headed out.

Lap 1 (4:21)

I ran into some friends from the Bay Area on the way to the start line – this race is also fun because you find lots of friends at it. I knew these folks would be there, but also saw several other friends who I did not know would be there!

The race organizer, Jubilee, counted us down, and then we started. I felt super emotional for no reason as we started and crossed the line. Maybe it was because I had been training really intentionally for this race for more than six months, or had been looking forward to it for a while. I’m not really sure. Anyway, it was pretty powerful and I was happy to be experiencing the moment.

The first 1/3^rd of a mile of each lap is through the Jeadquarters camp – an alley lined up with 10×10 decorated crew tents and lots of cheering. We started before sunrise, so it was pretty neat to see all the lit up tents in the pre-dawn light. (Side note – if you’re the banana tent, send a photo because you guys SHOWED UP for that start – the banana costumes and canopy decorations were amazing).

We started towards Coyote Camp – the first aid station – about 4 miles away. I was trying to pace by feel – I have a pretty good sense when I am overdoing it / going too fast early in the race, so I was constantly checking in with my body to make sure I wasn’t breathing too hard or working too hard in general. I felt pretty good, so I would pass people when other folks were going ahead if it made sense.

At the first aid station I started my unstructured nutrition plan. For this lap, that was to drink water between aid stations, and drink whatever the electrolyte option was while at the aid stations (in this case, it ended up being blue Gatorade). I knew that laps 2 and 3 would be much hotter, so I wanted to pre-load electrolytes on this lap as much as possible. I also wanted to stick to solid food as much as I could (vs Gus, gels, etc), so I started in on the PB&Js, bananas, and baked potatoes on this lap as well.

The second stretch of the lap is from Coyote Camp to Jackass Junction – about 6.5 miles. This is just the worst part of the course. Every single time I have run it, I am mostly mad about it, and mostly walking. It is a very gentle uphill that should be mostly runnable, but there are sections with lots of rocks that make the footing tricky, especially when the body is tired, so it just ends up being a really demoralizing section. I took this section slow on the first lap (and, honestly, every lap) and was mostly able to run it with some walking. I also ate my first and only Gu of the race during this stretch because I got hungry.

The coolest part of this section was seeing where a fire had gone through – a lot of the area around Jackass Junction aid station had been burned in a fire last year. The cactuses looked like ghost cactuses (if anyone has pictures, please share). The cactuses were completely white with black ridges and looked very spooky in a Halloween-like way.

Jackass Junction is around mile 10 in the lap – while all three aid stations are a party, Jackass Junction is the “most” party of all the aid stations. I fueled up and kept going.

The next aid station is Rattlesnake Ranch, and the 5.2 miles between Jackass and Rattlesnake are AWESOME. Gentle downhill, super runnable, very scenic rocks. The best part of the course for sure.

On the first lap, the stretch from Rattlesnake to Javelina Jeadquarters (the start/finish) is about 6.6 miles. They add about three miles here because the other four laps are a bit under 20. This 6.6 isn’t psychologically bad because you know you only have to do it once, but it does take a while. It was pretty cool to see the other runners ahead and behind weaving through the desert.

Overall, I felt pretty good on this lap. I had some minor glute/hamstring soreness around mile ten but that’s pretty normal and it went away. I was keeping a pretty good pace and didn’t feel like I was overdoing it.

Lap 2 (4:20)

I saw Kate at the lap turnaround before heading out for Lap 2, which was awesome.

Lap 2 was pretty uneventful. I remembered the end of Lap 2 was quite hard for me last year due to the heat – it was so bad that I was trying to find shade under cactuses, which is not a winning proposition. This year, I took special care to hydrate and drink lots of electrolytes during this lap. I brought a 16-oz disposable plastic bottle that I carried in my hand specifically for this purpose. The rest of my hydration – a liter across two 500ml flasks – was in my vest.

I also remembered last year that someone said that Lap 1 and Lap 2 should take about the same amount of time, because Lap 2 is ~2-3 miles shorter but at a hotter part of the day, and it is important to not overdo it in the heat. While I didn’t actively plan for this, it did end up being one minute faster, so that’s a pretty good split.

Somewhere in the first part of this lap, the first-place male passed me – which means he was basically going twice as fast as I was (spoiler – he finished the 100-mile in 12:xx or something absurd.  The fastest woman was also speedy – something like 14:xx). The entire race filled with lapping people and being lapped by people. It was actually pretty nice, because it meant that I didn’t have to overthink it when someone was passing or being passed – it had no bearing on my relative speed and did not indicate I was speeding up or slowing down.

I stopped at the medical tent around mile 35 to proactively treat some pre-blisters / hot spots on the inside edge of the balls of both feet. It was a good idea to tape those because they would have gotten a lot worse. I feel like I made a lot of good decisions during this race to prevent myself getting wrecked later on, and this was one – it was very tempting to just power through it, but the five minutes at the medical tent to apply tape was a great choice (spoiler alert: I finished the race with zero blisters).

This was a very hot lap temperature-wise – apparently. I saw people dunking their heads in buckets of ice, wearing ice bandanas, pouring cold water over their heads, etc. I actually didn’t feel that warm and only was noticing hot how it was based on the behaviors of other runners. I think the trip a few weeks earlier really helped – I spent a lot of time outside in the heat during that trip both running and walking, and my body was well-adapted as a result. While it was a milder heat year at the race this year, I also think I was better prepared for it.

I got to see the whole crew at the end of this lap, which was great and very motivating. They walked / ran with me around Jeadquarters and saw me off to Lap 3.

Lap 3 (5:07)

I started lap 3 feeling a bit grumpy. Last year I had a pacer for this lap, since it was getting darker and therefore it was allowed, but this year I thought I would go a bit faster so did not have one lined up, which was psychologically tough. That ended up being the right decision even if I didn’t like it – I came in around 3:00-3:30pm so it wasn’t super close to getting dark, so it wouldn’t have been allowed to bring a pacer. But it was still not a fun thought to have to do another 20 miles, heading into the darkness, alone.

I grabbed my worst headlamp of the three I brought – a purple one I got for Burning Man – and also my headphones in case I wanted to listen to podcasts. In lieu of a pacer, my plan was to listen to some podcasts if I got bored. I did not end up listening to podcasts.

The first four miles to Coyote Camp were fine, but I was feeling really exhausted – more so than usual. I decided I would take a 5 minute nap at Coyote to see if that helped and drink a bit of Coke for the caffeine. The nap seemed to help, although I almost threw up after standing up.

Then the stretch to Jackass started, and it started getting dark, and everything started going downhill – except for the course, which continued uphill. This was really just an awful time of the race for me. I felt very nauseous. I was moving very very slowly relative to my prior two laps. My breathing was inconsistent, which is also not a good sign.

Psychologically, I was in a terrible hole. I knew I was less than halfway done (only about 45 miles in), and I couldn’t imagine doing 12-18 more hours of this slog. I was questioning the point of even competing in something like this. What was I trying to prove? Why did I keep doing this? Did I expect I would feel differently after I finished 100-miler number six (vs 5, 4, 3…), or discover something new about myself along the way? Was it worth the inevitable suffering of the next more than half of a day? Had I discovered everything ultrarunning had to tell me? Because I had felt like this before – demoralized, drained, hopeless. It wasn’t new, and it didn’t get better or easier. It was just as awful and crushing every time.

I also got really mad about – and demoralized by – these loops. I realized I was running this same loop for the 8^th time in my life, and it was … not fun. I was mad every time I hit this 6.5 mile segment. Why would I pick something that I know makes me mad? And I had two more to do. I knew in that moment that I probably wouldn’t run this race again of my own volition – if someone else wanted to do it, I would maybe also sign up, but I wouldn’t initiate it. I was tired of the loop.

The moon came up on this lap – it was absolutely stunning. It was a full moon and I could see it moving slowly up above the mountains in the light blue dusk light. I pointed it out to another runner and she and I admired it. It was objectively gorgeous, and I have not yet seen a photo from the race that captured it. It was not enough to dig me out of that headspace.

I got to mile 50 (technically, 52) – at Jackass Junction – and was pretty sure I was going to drop out. I lay down on a cot to take a 5 minute nap. While I was “napping,” I dejectedly reviewed my options. I knew I didn’t want to drop at Jackass, because then I would have to wait for a car to come get me, so I figured I could slow slog it back to Jeadquarters – around the 100k mark – and stop there.

After my mini nap, I took out my phone – for the first time during the race. I carry it for emergencies only and don’t look at it during races. I texted the crew that I was feeling really bad and we could make a game-time decision when I got back to Jeadquarters about whether or not to push through. In my mind I knew it was game over, but I didn’t want to have to negotiate over text. I also had a text from a colleague asking me to forward some emails, so I responded to that text and obviously … did not forward emails in that moment.

I also felt bad that I was going to be letting down Kelly and Eric, who came out there explicitly to pace me and for almost no other reasons. Even that guilt was not enough to get me out of this negativity and desire to stop running.

I got off the cot, drank some ginger ale, grabbed a ramen noodle cup, and slowly walked out of camp. I couldn’t even eat the ramen – my body was rejecting it – and I ended up tossing it.

Then I hit a downhill and started running – and everything changed. I have no idea what happened. I suddenly felt amazing – like my feet had wings – and I was flying down the hill. It was the best I had felt all day. With each mile I felt better and better, and more confident that perhaps I had dug out of this hole, for no discernable reason. I was zooming, my legs were strong, my spirits were up. It felt incredible. It is hard to describe how completely opposite I felt from literally ten minutes before.

When I got back to camp, Kelly and Eric were there. They were cautiously assessing the situation, anticipating disaster from my text. I told them, with energy and enthusiasm, I was going back out. In my mind, they were surprised and excited, but I think they perhaps expected this so the effect was less dramatic in real life than I think it was in my mind. I changed socks and got the new waist lamp for light.

Lap 4 (4:48)

At the aid station just before leaving Jeadquarters, Eric mentioned he thought I could go sub-24. I immediately rejected this – “let’s just see how we do.” When I think about speed and time goals during races, I get into a pretty stressed out mental headspace. I start second-guessing my pace every single second. If I think I am going too slow, I get frustrated. If I think I am going too fast, I get mad that I might be too enthusiastic about what is possible. I try to calculate whether or not I’ll get to the finish in time, and if it looks close or unlikely, I get even more stressed, disappointed, and angry. So I didn’t really want to think about when I was going to finish, especially after how terrible lap 3 was. It seemed like a recipe for disappointment.

After a minute of thinking about all of this and deciding I absolutely did not want to consider any time goals, I said, “Okay … how fast would I have to go?”  Eric said, “2 laps each in five hours or less.” I had no idea how fast my prior lap had been, but it seemed vaguely possible, so I tucked that piece of information into a corner of my brain to never think about again. Then Kelly and I took off.

Lap 4 was weirdly easy. Kelly – a friend from Burning Man who is just getting into ultras – was an amazing pacer. She kept asking me what she could do for me, where she should run, what she could get for me at aid stations, what kind of conversation would be most helpful. She kept me distracted – but not too distracted – and was great company.

On the 6.5 mile stretch to Jackass, I speed walked most of it. I wanted to push the pace a bit, just in case I was on the border for 24 hours – I didn’t want this stretch to be the reason I didn’t make it.

Leaving Jackass, I took the downhill at a pretty brisk clip. My legs felt insanely fresh – probably from the walking. I couldn’t believe how fast I was able to go for these miles.

Nutrition started getting a lot harder on this lap. I wasn’t able to keep down anything sweet – probably because of the volume of Gatorade consumed earlier in the day – so PB&J were out. I also couldn’t eat the ramen, which I had LOVED last year – not sure why my stomach didn’t like this. So the mini bean burritos were the go-to. They were about three bites of beans and a flour tortilla wrapped in foil, so I could pack them in my vest easily, which was great.

When I got back to Jeadquarters, Eric still had his sandals on. I told him to gear up and we got going.

Lap 5 (4:51)

As we started, Eric said I had about five and a half hours to finish lap 5 if I wanted to finish under 24 hours. That seemed like a lot of time, but I didn’t know how fast my prior lap had been. During the first four miles, Eric and I spent a bit of time trying to calculate how fast lap 4 had been. We were both tired and didn’t really remember what time I had come in after lap 3, so we concluded that lap 4 either took four and a half hours, or five and a half hours. So, pretty useless information. We also didn’t remember what Eric had said about “two five hour laps” – I think we had forgotten he had said it at all. Anyway, we had no idea how long lap 4 had taken. It didn’t really matter either way, because I had about five and a half hours to finish this lap.

Eric is an incredible partner at races. He paced me last year at Javelina and has shown up to random other local races as well. Because he is an excellent ultra runner and has done a lot of hard races, he knows what runners need. And more than being reactive to what I say  I need, he also suggests and coaches, pushing me to make good choices about food, pacing, and hydration. It is helpful to have suggestions like that from someone I trust who also understands the sport, because I don’t always think of them myself, and I don’t have to second-guess if these area good ideas or not. They almost always are.

When we got to Coyote Camp, I knew I had to keep eating because I still had 15 miles to go. I tried to eat some pickles but almost threw up and had to spit them out. My gag reflex has literally never been that strong – no idea what that was about. The aid station was out of baked potatoes, so I had to fully resort to the bean burritos. My body was really unhappy with having to eat anything, so I was resorting to taking a bite of the burrito, taking a huge drink of water, then swallowing it all as fast as I could before my body could try to reject it. Ginger ale still seemed okay on prior laps, but most aid stations were out of it by this time. Eric grabbed me 8oz of Coke, but we ultimately tossed that too because my body didn’t want it.

It was the middle of the night by this point. I was shocked how awake I was, especially without having had any caffeine. I was completely alert, awake, and not at all tired – same as I had been on lap 4, which had also been completely in the dark. Usually I have running narcolepsy at this point and have to nap, or am weaving across the trail, or my eyes are closing involuntarily while I am running. None of that was happening. I have never felt this awake so late in a race before.

We headed out on the 6.5 mile segment to Jackass Junction. I really tried to push the pace here – it was the last lap, after all – and I was able to run perhaps half of it. Eric is really fast (and also tall), so my “running” was his power hiking pace up this hill. I would run, and he would … walk quickly behind me.

The first mile out of Coyote aid station was about 17-18 minute pace, which was better than I thought. Faster than a walk for sure. Eric told me this mile and it was helpful – but then I told him not to tell me any more miles, because I would spiral mentally if I was focusing on the time.

When we got to Jackass, it was about 4am. I sat down for a minute while Eric grabbed some snacks. We had a quick discussion about timing, and concluded that at this point, it was pretty likely I was going to make a sub-24. I just had to finish before 6:30, so that left two and a half hours. I had done the last half of the loop in under two hours on the last two laps, so even if I slowed down by 25%, I would still make it. So we took off.

During this part of the race, I was feeling pretty sure that I would finish under 24 hours. It was a very weird feeling. In the moment, I was experiencing the feeling of being in the process of accomplishing a really hard, really cool stretch goal. I had just a couple of hours of being able to experience this – doing the thing I had wanted to do for years leading up to this. It was going to happen. There aren’t a lot of times where you are sure you’re going to complete a goal you’ve set out for, and you get to really pause for a moment and appreciate that you’re actively doing it. Usually the feelings are stress leading up to it, and post-accomplishment appreciation. There’s very rarely a moment for “Wow, I’m doing it right now” appreciation. It was a pretty unique experience. I had trained so hard, for so long, and had so many setbacks in prior years, and it was really happening. Right now. In that moment. I was doing it.

My waist light died on this next stretch, so Eric and I shared his headlamp. It was a mistake to not buy a backup battery for this light or to bring a second light source – I almost never mess that up after having run completely out of light at Rocky – so I was pretty frustrated at myself from a preparation perspective. Sharing the light with Eric worked just fine, but I was constantly worried one of us was going to trip – neither of us did, so that was good.

The moon was so bright that it would have been possible to run just by the light of the moon. Some runners were choosing that. I think I would have gone a lot slower if I had done this. Also, it was impossible to adjust fully to the darkness, since the majority of runners at 400-600 lumen lights, so your night vision would be wrecked every few minutes.

I basically skipped the last aid station at Rattlesnake and kept going. With less than four miles to go, there wasn’t a lot I could do from a nutrition perspective that would change the answer. Apparently Dad was watching the livestream and saw me here – “You were smiling!” I was smiling because I was trying to be nice to the guy with the camera who seemed to want to talk, but I was pretty committed to speeding out of the aid station. So on the live stream you can see a super choppy version of me just … blitzing past the very nice camera guy.

As we exited the aid station, Eric said I had a good chance of finishing in under 23:30 if I kept the pace. I told him this section was likely to be a bit slower than the last because it was flatter, and let’s just keep moving and see how it goes. I still didn’t want to stress out about time, even though I was clearly thinking about it constantly.

As with every lap, I could hear Jeadquarters before I could see it. A couple of people passed me in the last mile, seemingly getting energy out of nowhere. This random burst of energy towards the finish line almost never happens to me, and I did not try to keep up.

When we got to Jeadquarters, Eric saw the time – 23:23 or something – and was like “Okay, you can definitely do a sub 23:30. Let’s go.” So we pushed through the last third of a mile together. Kelly and Kate showed up – everyone had the horns! And we all crossed the finish line together at 23:27, a full half an hour before my unstated – but very real – goal.

Afterwards

We packed up the tent and gear. Kelly took off fairly quickly to drive back to L.A. Eric, Kate, and I went back to the Airbnb, then we went to breakfast after I showered. Hilariously, showering was apparently not a requirement for going to breakfast at this place – one 100-mile finisher came straight from the finish line to breakfast. He was still wearing his race clothes and bib.

My stomach was completely trashed, and the soft palette of my mouth was in an excruciating amount of pain. Apparently this mouth pain is caused by a combination of too much sugar, too much mouth breathing, and too much sucking on a hydration pack. This pain took almost a week to fully heal and prevented me from eating a lot of things.

In any case, at this breakfast I was completely uninterested in food. I had half a slice of toast, 4 ounces of apple sauce, and two sips of orange juice. I probably shouldn’t have gone to breakfast and instead should have slept, which I did for several hours when we got home.

Recovery has been fine – I’m about ten days out from the race, and I’m doing short, slow runs. I’m sleeping a lot – at least 8-10 hours every night. No major aches and pains. My stomach seems back to normal after a few days of nausea and general discomfort.

Overall reactions / feelings:

• I’m incredibly proud of this race. Running sub-24 is a goal I have wanted to do for a very long time. I didn’t anticipate that it would happen at this race, and I’m blown away that it did. I wasn’t expecting it, and I still can’t explain why it happened the way it did.
• I made a ton of great choices in training and during the race. I leveraged my experience (now, intuition) based on having done this sort of activity a lot of times. My training was excellent, with several high-mileage weeks and good heat and terrain running. My in-race choices were also good, from blister/chafing remediation, to fueling, to clothing, to pacing. The two things I would have done differently are 1/ wear shoes that are not six months old and have holes in them (+gaiters to prevent rocks getting in) and 2/ bring backup batteries for the headlamp.
• I love spending time with friends – that continues to be a highlight of these races for me. The “only run races with friends” strategy is really working.
• This is the first time that I have had such a 180* during the race. I was just psychologically wrecked at mile 50-52. Then when I left the aid station, I was in amazing spirits almost immediately. I have no idea what happened there. When I run through the possibilities – ginger ale, nap, three swallows of terrible ramen, texting sad messages to my crew – none of those seem to be able to explain it, because I’ve done all of those before at other races and they did not have the same effect. One of the enduring mysteries of running.

What’s next – I have a fun race coming up in about a week and a half that will be very slow, then another fun one in January – both marathons, so much shorter. I’m not sure what I will sign up for next year. There are a few lotteries/applications I am going to sign up for, but the outcome of those processes will be determined by the gods of ultrarunning – much like this race was.