UTE 100 Miler Report

By Hunter Odom

NOTE:  Hunter originally wrote this essay as a post on social media.  It is with his permission that it is being reprinted on our web page.  Thank you, Hunter, for sharing this experience with us.

UTE100 miler report written on my flight back to Atlanta. First of all special thanks to Leslie McLendon Odom for supporting me and for Josh Fix for keeping me going one foot in front of the other and keeping me alive. I love adventures and races so why not mix the two. 

My family was suppose to join me but when I registered for the race we did not know when the kids went back to school. They started last Thursday and Abigail could not miss her first day of Kindergarten. So I came to Moab, solo. 

Josh met me in Moab Thursday morning and we did some sightseeing and took a little ride/hike into the La Sal mountains. Race started Friday Morning at 3am. 

Everything went great thru meeting Josh at aid station 51, where he joined me. We ran a while, power hiked a lot, and enjoyed the scenery until somewhere around mile 74. We were about 10,000 feet above sea level, and I started having a real hard time breathing. I was only able to go uphill in short distances and stop catch my breath and go again. Going down an incline I was ok. Problem was that from mile 73ish thru the early 90s are all around 10,000 feet above sea level. I had a very valid case of pulmonary edema caused by over exertion and high altitude for long period of time. (Hind sight, I made notes on my phone during the race like inputs and outputs. This morning I realized I had mistaken 18.5 liters by mile 61. Way too much my body could not get rid of it fast enough so this compelled the pulmonary edema issue) 

Josh stayed with me the entire time. At no point did I "lose it" according to him; however, according to him I did start talking to a bush at one time. The wheels went flat during my race but I maintained and kept them on for a finish. We had one large climb around mile 90ish that went to 11,000 feet; that was horrible. We made it up slow with the promise of a good downhill (I was looking forward to being able to breathe again). We got to the summit and started the downhill. What Josh, not ,I realized is that I had been moving so slow going up that my legs had given up, and when I tried to go down, it just did not happen. He got me some tree limbs to use a sticks and I made it down.

Every foot we went down, I could breathe better. This descent continued until I saw Jenn running up a road yelling at me at the finish line. (I actually remembered that) 

As I sit on the airplane flying back, my breathing has returned to normal, but my legs have not. It was amazing medically how intense pulmonary edema was and how short of a time it really took to resolve when I decreased altitude. Even a 1000 foot descent made a huge difference in my ability to breathe and move.

I will say that in a 2 hour span I went from running along a scree ridgeline looking into Colorado down through an untouched high alpine valley to aspen groves I’ve seen only in magazines, then by an alpine lake with reflections of scree peaks, then through some beautiful coniferous forest laden single track to a wide open wild flower popping meadow to somehow ending up on a high desert tundra for the most epic sunset I’ve seen. 

This, Sean Blanton, Jenn Edmonds Thomas and Arabelle Romeo, is the best race y'all have. Well organized as always, well marked, great aid stations, and people were there to always help. This topped out as my most favorite race (so far). Thanks to all the people I met along the way and helped me throughout.#doepicshit #runbumslam #runbum #ute100 #ute100miler #wsr #utah#LaSal