My Georgia Death Race story actually began somewhere in the wasteland east of Moab, at the foothills of the La Salle Mountains. My failure to finish something that I had started. It was a shocking revelation and a humbling experience. From the second I finally returned my weary, beaten body back home from DNF’ng at the Moab 240, I was more resolved than I ever thought possible to overcome the next challenge, the Race of Death.
I woke in the dark, fumbling around the Air BnB for bottles to fill, KT Tape to strap over potential hot spots, and other random pieces of gear that go into preparing your body to be put through pure hell. I was thankful the weather would be relatively benign throughout the next 24 hours, making the required cold weather night gear an afterthought. I wouldn’t be lugging several pounds of useless clothing with me the entire race this time. When it was time to head down to the starting line, my wife drove me and my friend Aaron the 5 minutes to the Reece Heritage Farm where the death race headquarters were this year.
The race start times were divided into 3 waves this year because of the pandemic, and luckily I was in the 1st wave. I had no interest in starting from the very back. The anxiety hung in the air so thickly you could feel it permeating your facemask and choking you with tendrils of doubt and second-guesses. A race with an average finish rate between 50%-30% was somehow made even harder for 2020.
Drastic pain a symphony, sceams
No escape your time to die - Slayer, Human Disease
The race director, the infamous Run Bum, gathered us all for some final instructions on how the course was marked. He made sure to tell us he hoped none of us finished, and a few nervous laughs echoed along the starting line. We were told that no crew or family members could be at the start due to COVID risks, but there were definitely a few spectators hanging around the outskirts. At this point, none of this mattered to me. I was dialed in like a shark cutting through the dark water towards its prey. There was no turning back. Never again.
The path straight onto the course lay before us. With a final countdown raising the anticipation to a fever pitch, our group lurched forward as the 2020 Georgia Death Race finally began. For those of us who began to run right away, we didn’t get far. Immediately, the paved path shot straight up into the forest and we began our death march at a steep grade. My plan was to hike up anything resembling an incline and run everything else, including the steep declines that I knew were on these mountain trails. The first few miles were suspiciously runnable once we got up the initial climb, with a a grassy hill leading us down into Vogel State Park. We ran around the lake, which I had waded into in pain after finishing the Cruel Jewel 50 in 2019. It was nice to see it again on such a beautiful morning. The air had a crispness to it, although it would be in the 70’s throughout the daylight hours.
The course for this years Georgia Death Race was an out and back, with most of it being run on the fabled Dragon’s Spine section of the Duncan Ridge & Benton-McCay trails. First, we had to traverse the Coosa Backcountry Trail all the way up to the highest point in the race, Coosa Bald ( elevation 4,280 feet). Getting this out of the way first would break those that were not prepared for this race. Even if those in the back of the pack could make it to the first aid station on the other side of Coosa Bald in the 3 1/2 hour cutoff limit, their legs would be feeling it. The ascent up Coosa seemingly took forever, a fact that would come back to haunt us all at the end of the race. With the fear of the clock constantly at the forefront of my thoughts, I finally saw the aid station at the bottom of the hill as we moved on from Coosa Bald.
- Aid Station 1 – White Oak
- Out at 2:30
- Cutoff: 3:30
The cutoff times are what makes this race have a notoriously low finish rate. I know a few runners personally who have tried to finish the Georgia Death Race, only to have tales of hearing the dreaded phrase, “You missed the cutoff time”, from an aid station worker as they brought their broken bodies in from the trail. Every aid station I made, the first thing I did was ask the volunteer to tell me how much time I had to spare. I knew the cutoff times were front loaded, with the turnaround at the halfway point requiring a pace that would result in a total finish time of 20 1/2 hours. If I could just make it to the turnaround, I felt like I would be on the path to pulling this off. With an hour to spare at the first aid station, I trudged on and upward.
The course was exactly as advertised. Straight up. Straight down. I felt as though I was constantly on unlevel ground. Every part of the trail that was not going to require me to burn out my legs on an incline, I ran. I surprised myself with how fast I was still moving each mile past 20, and this was a testament to the amount of work I spent in the gym with my trainer, Army veteran Geoff Speyrer. After running the Cruel Jewel 50 in 2019, I knew I needed to get stronger if I ever wanted to have a chance in hell of finishing the Georgia Death Race. There were just to many parts of the inclines where I felt as though I was using my entire body just to propel myself forward. I’ve been an advocate of weight lifting for runners since my track and field days in college, but the amount of time that was being consumed “just running” while training for these races definitely made my time in the gym reduced. I needed a legitimate plan to get my legs strong enough to handle the load, and Geoff was the right person to go to for help. That failure in Moab didn’t deter me, and instead of remaining a nightmare DNF, it became a driving factor that had me back in the gym before the dawn of my first day back from Utah. Jacob’s Ladder, the stair master, and enough burnout sets on my calves, thighs, lower back, and legs to replicate the lesson in brutality that the Georgia Death Race touts itself as. There would be nothing left to chance.
I won’t say that I felt good physically, as it was already a beat down on my legs, but it was reassuring to know I was coming into each aid station with time to spare and plenty of time to grab fuel and refill my water. I used a 2L bladder for my pack, with smaller bottle placed in the shoulder holdster and a handheld to contain my Skratch electrolyte drink. I felt like this was plenty and I never came close to running out of water, even with the unseasonably warm temperature. The food at each aid station was a great selection of avocado wraps, quesadilla, peanut butter and jelly, pickles, and an assortment of plenty other grab and go ultra running snacks. I brought some Trail Butter and Fat Bombs with me, but after the first aid station I stuck to what was provided.
- Aid station 2 – Mulky Gap
- Out at 3:56
- Cutoff: 4:50
- Aid station 3 – Fish Gap
- Out at 4:55
- Cutoff: 5:40
- Aid station 4 – Point Bravo
- Out at 7:29
- Cutoff: 9:30
All of my downhill sections felt like I was flying down the mountain. Despite the dead leaves covering the trail, there were not that many hidden hazards. I only took one hard fall, but it ended up being a big one at the edge of a cliff. There are a few trail sections that hug the side of the mountain, I believe these were all on the Duncan Ridge trail sections. I kicked something with my left foot and when I landed, I slid on the leaves far enough to where my entire right arm and shoulder were hanging over a steep drop to nowhere below. I was pretty shaken up after this, and it took me a while to get my head back to where I could focus on a rhythm. The Georgia Death Race requires utmost concentration and the resolve to repeat the same continuous torture over and over and over and over.
By the time I was close to the turnaround, I had put enough time in the bank to where it seemed as though I was an hour and half ahead of the cutoff for the rest of the race. These remaining aid stations had runners dropping out at each of them, no matter how much further along into the race we went. The turnaround was at the top of a steep hill up to Sapling Gap. Each runner that passed me heading back down the mountain excitedly told me, “They have ramen at this aid station!!!”. I guess the prospect of hot food was enough to press everyone to surge to the top, with the knowledge we were halfway to the end also being the extrinsic reward I craved the most.
Aid station 5 – Sapling Gap
Out at 8:59
Cutoff: 10:30
I passed my friend Aaron on the way down from Sapling Gap, meaning he was about 20 minutes behind me. He seemed in pretty good shape, and since we were so far ahead of the cutoff I told him I’d see him at the next aid station where I planned on swapping out my socks. Little did I know, he would almost be impaled by a gigantic tree branch kicked up by another runner passing him near the aid station. Even the course itself seemed determined to kill every runner it could. One part of the course that I would definitely list as a highlight for this years race was a huge wooden bridge spanning a river on our way back to Point Bravo. There were a few bystanders on the bridge looking at all of the runners like we were escaped prisoners from an insane asylum, and they wisely gave us as much space as possible as we shambled across the bridge.
I made it back to Point Bravo and sat down for the first time during the race. The chair felt like a padded throne, and as soon as I got my feet lubed up and a new pair of trail injinji socks onto them, it was like walking on clouds. I pulled my headlamp out and headed towards the offshoot aid station of Skeenah Gap, a Cruel Jewel aid station I enjoyed a few years prior. One thing I remember about this section of the Dragon’s Spine from 2019 were the salamanders I kept finding walking across the trail. As somewhat of a salamander enthusiast, I take this as a positive sign and was waiting for this to occur during the Georgia Death Race just so I could have a mental pick me up. As the trail split off at the intersection down to Skeenah, I was granted my wish. A large slimy salamander was hanging out in the middle of the trail! Game over, I knew right then and there I had this race right where I wanted it. By the time I walked into Skeenah Gap aid station to the sound of “Round and Round” by Ratt, I was grinning from ear to ear and ready to devour some calories and move on out. The 80’s hair metal blasting through the road side party masquerading as an ultra aid station made it tempting to stay and hang out a bit, but the sight of 3 runners dropping out of the race while I was eating some food was enough for me to put that thought out of my mind. It was time to get the hell out of there and back up to the Duncan Ridge trail.
- Aid station 6 – Point Bravo
- Out at 10:35
- Cutoff: 12:10
- Aid station 7 – Skeenah Gap
- Out at 13:04
- Cutoff: 14:30
These were the last few aid stations, meaning I only had to make sure I left White Oak with enough time to finish. I continued on my pace of making each aid station with about an hour and half to spare. As I burned through another uphill, I told myself that I could do this for as many hours as it would take to finally be done. Each aid station I saw had at least 1 runner calling it quits. The Georgia Death Race just mentally breaks you, to the point where you can’t comprehend how “close” you might be to the finish. I read several post race stories about this, and here I was seeing it for myself. Hard lines, sunken cheeks. Runners slumped into chairs staring blankly into the void as aid station volunteers tried every pep talk trick possible to get them to try and step back out onto the trail. At the final aid station, the volunteer cheerfully told me and 2 other runners that the cutoff times had been extended because of the extremely high DNF rate. It didn’t matter to me. I was finishing under 24 hours, sympathy and mercy be damned.
- Aid station 8 – Fish Gap
- Out at 15:16
- Cutoff: 17:00
- Aid station 9 – Mulky Gap
- Out at 16:28
- Cutoff: 18:15
- Aid station 10 – White Oak
- Out at 18:56
- Cutoff: 20:00
At least that was my plan. Like it usually does, the demon lord of ultra running would try every last trick at its disposal to try and knock me down. So when my headlamp began to go dim around 7 miles from the finish line, I could only laugh maniacally. It definitely slowed my pace, as I had to be sure I was on the right path since there were several intersections and off-shoots once I got onto Coosa Backcountry. At multiple intersections I had to stop and get out my phone to look at the GPX file I had loaded into the Gaia App. I highly recommend any time a race makes a GPX file available, upload it to Gaia so that it can be your last resort. I had used it during Moab and it came in handy again here. Even though I was going at a slower pace now, I felt good about finishing under 23 hours and was still moving forward. Up to this point, I also thought the aid station distances were accurate. So when Burnette Gap water stop was not at the 6.6 miles I thought it would be at, I felt my anxiety rise slightly. This exploded into full on panic when I realized that I was no longer on the correct trail. I frantically looked around me for any sign of a trail marking or painted symbol on the nearby trees. Nothing. There were no other runners headlamps in sight either. I was alone.
I am not sure how long it took me to trail blaze my way back onto the Coosa Backcountry, but it felt like an eternity to me as precious minutes ticked away. I had made the wrong turn at a point where the trail went close to the creek, and it turned out I wasn’t far away from the correct trail at all. I just couldn’t see it. So after walking in every direction with my phone turning into a compass via the Gaia App, I finally found myself back on Coosa Backcountry and my headlamp faintly illuminated a pink ribbon hanging from a tree branch. The trail marker! My heart was beating like it was about to explode out of my chest as I ran as quickly as I could manage navigating the trail, and when I finally saw multiple headlamps up ahead I almost screamed in relief. I caught up to the next 2 runners and explained that I needed to stick with them until we made it to the finish line. We finally passed the water drop station, which was unmanned, and figured we were about 3 miles away and had an hour and 40 minutes to go before the 24 hour mark.
The last 3 miles were spent traversing the rocky trail down into Vogel State Park, where we stepped back into the civilized world. The road through the park took us back around the lake and up onto the grassy hill leading upwards. I tried to run the last mile to the finish line, but once I got onto the hill, I couldn’t see anything with my dying headlamp and had to wait for one of the other runners to catch up to me so I could use their light. Once we made it back to the paved path shooting straight down to the finish line at Reece Farms, we both painfully raced down to the bottom as cowbells clanged and people at the finish line saw us coming. I jumped across the finish line and saw my wife walking towards me. After tossing the rail road spike we were forced to carry the duration of the race into a coffin, the race director, Sean Run Bum Blanton, had this to say: “This is the 8th year we’ve done this race, and the course has had a few different variations, but man, this year, that was fucked up man”. Totally agree. And I loved every mile of it. Way to live up to the terrifying reputation, the 2020 version of the Georgia Death Race was Pure Armageddon.
FINISHED
23:02:37
