"Fighting Back to Win"

David Johnston moves steadily along the 350-mile trail from Knik to McGrath in the 2013 Iditarod Trail Invitational.

FIGHTING BACK TO WIN

 

PUBLISHED FEB. 19, 2014, IN THE ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

 

In last year’s punishing 350-mile Iditarod Trail Invitational, ultra-runner David Johnston endured sleep deprivation and hallucinations, nausea and diarrhea, sinus problems, and a strained right knee. The soles of his feet were numb when he crossed the finish line, and the numbness persisted for more than a week afterward.

He also won the foot division, finishing 1 day, 13 hours and 34 minutes ahead of his closest competitor.

“To compete and try to be the best at something—it’s an addiction, a bad drug,” Johnston said. “Even when you get an awful dose that right near kills you, you seek more.”

Johnston arrived in McGrath just four hours and 13 minutes slower than the record of four days, 15 hours set in 2005 by Steve Reifenstuhl. Before Johnston’s effort, experts such as ultra-runner Geoff Roes had believed the record was unbreakable. Roes once assessed Reifenstuhl’s winning effort as essentially that of a “maniac,” believing that no one “would ever make a serious attempt at doing this race faster.”

 

Johnston smiles at a checkpoint in the 2011 Susitna 100.

Reifenstuhl himself, nearly crippled by badly blistered feet when he crossed the finish line in that record race, has never come within 20 hours of his record.

But Johnston, powered on the trail by a strangely effective mixture of snack foods (Smarties, Uncrustables and Frosted Blueberry Pop Tarts), Budweiser beer and an occasional checkpoint meal, finished strong. With his waist-length blond ponytail festooned with colored hair ties and  draped between his shoulder blades, he was smiling and still energetic when he reached McGrath.

It was only in the months after the race that Johnston began to realize that his feat may have exacted a heavier toll than he had first believed.

In subsequent races, his body failed to respond as he was accustomed. The 43-year-old Willow runner called his subsequent attempts at marathons and other ultra-runs “horrible.” He clocked almost a minute-per-mile slower in these races, including his eighth consecutive Boston Marathon and the 40-miler at the Equinox in Fairbanks. Last summer, he failed to complete the Resurrection Pass 100-miler, a race he had won three consecutive years. And last month he had to drop out at mile 60 of the grueling H.U.R.T. 100-miler in Hawaii when his legs grew wobbly and he nearly passed out.

Fighting back against these disappointing performances, Johnston increased the intensity of his pre-Iditarod Trail training. For the last month, regardless of weather and conditions, he logged 80 miles of trail work a week—10 miles per day for six days, plus 20 miles on the seventh—all while pulling a 35-pound sled. He also ground out 300 sit-ups per day to tighten his core musculature and prepare for tugging the sled harness during the race.

Johnston and Hambach at the start of the 2012 Susitna 100.
Photo by Yvonne Leutwyler.

Last weekend, the training paid off. He handily won the Susitna 100-miler, finishing in 18 hours, 22 minutes and smashing Roes’ 2007 record of 21 hours, 43 minutes.

On Facebook a few hours after the race, Johnston posted: “I ran as hard as I possibly could and am very beat-up. Still can’t hold down food or feel my feet.”

 

 

 

Johnston’s move to ultra-endurance runs began after his move from North Carolina to Alaska in 1995, but his love of running began in 1976.

 

“My dad started running when Rocky came out,” he said. “He started jogging up and down the neighborhood road. He wore the grey bottoms, the grey top. I always wanted to do what my dad did, so I started tagging along for a little ways.” Johnston was six years old at the time. By age eight, he had run his first 5K.

 

He ran high school track and cross country, competed in half-marathons, and did 20-mile training runs. At age 22, he entered his first full marathon.

 

Johnston’s first ultra-distance effort came in February 2006, about a month before his 36^th birthday. He had competed in at least 20 marathons by that time. Now, he has completed nine 100-milers. And in 2012, he and wife Andrea Hambach completed the ITI together in miserable weather and difficult trail conditions, crossing the finish line in eight days, 17 hours, and 47 minutes.

 

In all of these ultra-distance races but one, he has gotten sick to his stomach. “If it’s after 26 miles, my body doesn’t like it,” Johnston said. In 2012 on the Resurrection Pass 100, he became so ill that he was staggering off the sides of the trail and puked on his shoes.

 

Johnston’s strategy is to simply run through the nausea. “You’ve just gotta put up with six hours or so of being deathly ill,” he said. “But it’s weird: When you snap out of it, you snap out of it instantly. You feel like a new person.”

Hambach, Johnston and David Jr. just before the start of the 2013 ITI.

 

In addition to queasiness, Johnston has learned to battle pain.

Climbing high on 6,100-foot Mat Peak in January 2011 with his training partner, veteran ultra-runner Jeff Arndt, Johnston slipped, careening down at least a thousand vertical feet of snow and rocks. The steep terrain abraded his skin, especially on his face and hands and hips. His nose was broken. His hat and gloves were torn away. His clothing was ripped open. He wrenched an ankle and badly twisted his neck.

 

When Arndt finally reached Johnston, he peered down at his blood-spattered friend and said, “I thought you were dead.” Somehow, with Arndt supporting him, Johnston hobbled the rest of the way to the parking lot.

 

A fast healer, Johnston was running again about a week later. Although his neck injury forced him to turn his entire upper body to see what was behind him, he competed in the Susitna 100-miler a month later.

 

In last year’s ITI, Johnston’s experience dealing with discomfort also saw him through a demoralizing episode while trying to sleep at the Finger Lake checkpoint.  “I went in and lay down and woke up a couple hours later and was just sick as a dog,” he said. “I involuntarily crapped my pants.” After creeping through the sub-zero nighttime to clean up in the outhouse, he nearly gave up.

 “This is where I fell apart,” he said. “I seriously thought about quitting. When I left Finger Lake, I left as an animal. When I strapped my sled on and headed toward Rainy Pass, I had changed as a person. It was that bad.”

 

“There were two or three times in the race where I had to tell myself, ‘Don’t cry, Dave. You can cry at the end.’ I would make myself not cry because I knew that if I did, it was over with as far as the intensity.”

 

Yet Johnston did not cry at the end. Not at first.

 

About four hours later, while he relaxed with some hot food and cold beer, Hambach arrived unannounced, and the emotions overwhelmed him. “I see her walk up on the finish-line porch, and that’s when I let it all out,” he said. “I started bawling. In front of all the people.”

 

In this year’s ITI, which starts Sunday, Johnston hopes he is ready for whatever comes his way. Since his last year’s race, he and Hambach have had a new baby, and their Willow Running Company has directed seven races, but he has maintained a focus on his three goals for the ITI: “Win, course record, and live.”

 

Johnston and his son, David Jr., run to the finish line of the 2012 Susitna 100. Photo by Yvonne Leutwyler.