IMTUF 100 | Are You Mountain Tough

The IMTUF 100 is Idaho's premier 100 mile mountain ultra marathon. The race starts and finishes at Jug Mountain Ranch just outside McCall, Idaho. It features more than 20,000 feet of elevation gain over some rugged granite mountain terrain. This would be my 24th state with a 100+ mile ultra marathon finish. My legs were pretty cooked from the Pine to Palm 100 Miler in Oregon a week earlier, but I was committed to earn the finisher buckle. I had registered for this race twice before without ever toeing the line and I wasn't going to make that three times. The plan was to be conservative from the start. The weather forecast looked promising with mild temps during the day and cool temps overnight. That held true...to a point. The toughest section of the course, a 25 mile section with a single water stop between South Crestline and North Crestline would be fully exposed on very technical terrain. Temps climbed much higher than expected and I saw a couple of runners struggling with the heat, vomitting on the side of the trail. I had dialed back my pace significantly during this section and ended up running/walking with a younger ultrarunner. Our conversation made this tough section pass by faster for a time. Unfortunately, he ended up in some distress peeing blood until being unable to pee followed by vomitting violently. He was clearly dealing with a couple of serious issues, so we slowed down and took a break to try to allow his body to recover enough to make it to the water stop. I was hoping for some kind of medical assistance there for him. At this point, I had convinced him that he should quit so he could live to fight another day. Peeing blood and vomitting is a valid reason to DNF. I was prepared to hike him all the way off the course to safety, but when we finally made it to the water stop (supplies had been brough on by a caravan of goats) the volunteers let me know that they would take care of him and hike him out back to the last aid station 7 miles down the mountain. After filling up with water and saying my goodbye I continued on, not sure whether i lost a significant amount of time or not. I just continued on in a controlled manner. As night approached things got easier again as expected. I bumped into Mat, whom I had originally met during the Crazy Mountain 100 and we stuck together through the night all the way to the finish. In unexpected drizzle that turned into a permanent mountain rain, dropping temps and wetting us out on the last and biggest climb of the day made for an interesting final challenge of the race. The descent to the finish became a slow hike as both Matt and I were nursing some issues. At this point, we knew we were not at risk of getting close to the cutoffs, so we took our time saving our feet as much as possible before rolling into the finish, earning our buckle and proving that we were indeed "mountain tough".