Cocoa Wheats, Crewing and Chicken Noodle Soup by Madde Horn

“This is the breakfast of champions,” my mom said, pointing to her microwaved bowl of cocoa wheats. It was around 5:30 am. In an hour and a half, the Tunnel Hill Ultra Marathon would begin. 

In the car she didn’t want questions. She didn’t want music. I think she just wanted to run: to move her legs and go (the previous day I had to discourage her from running too much on her pre-race shake out.

At 7 am, the race began and she went off with a smile. The rest of the day went by in a blur–for me and, I imagine, for her as well. We went to many stops (she was smiling nearly every time); we took a lot of pictures, recorded her splits, and were always ready with water and, occasionally, goldfish. 

I remember one of the other crew members mentioning we should be thankful that she was so fast, because we were all exhausted just from crewing that long.

In the chaos that is inherent to crewing an ultra, the day passed by quickly. Around mile 80 she began running with pacers, it was also around this time I could see the exhaustion hitting hard. “Is there bacon?” she asked groggily at a stop to which someone laughed and responded: “you’re at an ultra, of course there is bacon!” Yes, I knew before that running 100 miles was absurd, but it was then that I truly saw how much it challenged the body to its limits.

It was the last 3.9 miles that I got a chance to run along side my mom. Everything she had left was going into this last stretch of the race. Occasionally she had to walk a few steps and apologized (unnecessarily) to me each time. I told her that everyone was leaving her comments on the race tracking page and about the texts my friends were sending me about her. I texted the crew to have a bowl of chicken noodle soup ready (her favorite which the race luckily had available). For a while we didn’t talk, but then the finish popped up on us: she crossed the line and she got her soup (and a trophy too).