Last Saturday (December 7) was Pearl Harbor Day. It was also the Capstone 50K, one of the most grueling races I’ve ever run.

The event is held on a rocky loop trail near St. George, Utah. Each loop is almost seven miles of very technical ups and downs. You run the race washing-machine style: counter-clockwise, then clockwise … lather, rinse, repeat. They had several distance options, including 10K, half marathon, and of course 50K.

Everybody started together, regardless of which distance they were running. I tripped and fell about a quarter mile in, cutting up my hand pretty good. My hand went numb and I just let the blood drip as I started the first big climb. Then it started raining (which it did, off and on, throughout the day) and most of the blood washed off.

There were no “flats” on this course. Everything was either uphill or downhill. Each loop featured about 1,000 feet of vertical gain. Here’s the elevation of the race I pulled afterwards, from Strava:

Since the race began at noon, that meant most 50K runners did at least one lap in the dark. I’d planned to take my headlamp with me after finishing lap three, but I forgot and went out unprepared. The sun set as I made the big descent around mile 24. I ran the last mile or so of that lap with the help of the little flashlight on my phone. Somehow, I missed the turn going down toward the start/finish area, so I ended up running an extra half-mile or so in the dark. Yay—extra distance in an ultra!

My pace really suffered on my final circuit of the course. I’d already crashed once, and I didn’t really want to biff it in the dark or run off the edge of a cliff (which was definitely a possibility). So I took my time. I “ran” the whole time, but almost at a walking pace as I carefully negotiated the rocky terrain.

My final time was 7:53:08. I wasn’t shooting for a specific pace or place, so I was really happy with how I did. The alternating directions meant you saw the other runners from time to time, so it wasn’t just eight hours on a trail all alone. One of the best things about this race is the trophy you get for completing it. It’s just a silly plastic thing, a running man on a fake marble base. But the gold plaque on the base says, “I FINISHED THE CAPSTONE 50K AND YOU DID NOT.” And when it comes down to it, isn’t that why we run these things? To do something that most people don’t?

I also set an all-time person step record. That’s an awful lot of steps.

Here’s a gallery of some photos I took along the course.