5/23/21, Lolo, Montana

“This is the longest day of my life.”

It probably wasn’t the most hopeful or cheerful thing to say to another runner who was just trying to have a friendly conversation while trying to run an ultra-marathon. It also might have been a bit of an exaggeration. To give myself a break, I was on my third lap of a three-lap race and the past five hours or so weren’t exactly fun. I was over 20 miles into my first official ultra-marathon still with a hill summit ahead of me and trails that had been reduced to pure slipping slide mud. I had nothing to look forward to but the warm embrace of a cup of chicken broth a thousand agonizing steps ahead of me. I had been shivering for hours. I was wearing a clear Walmart poncho that resembled more of a trash bag than a real protective layer against the rain. I couldn’t feel my toes. I had been passed by seemingly everyone in the race. So, yeah, to sum it all up to that point, it had been a long day. And why you might ask was I running this race? Well, I was trying to figure that out, while convincing myself every minute not to quit.

Just weeks before the Hootenanny 50K, I was still debating whether I wanted to sign up to run the full 31 miles or run the relay option with two of my friends. I typically prefer team events, because it takes some of the pressure off just me to perform. That’s one of the reasons I liked playing baseball growing up. If the team lost, there wasn’t necessarily one person to blame, but once I transitioned to wrestling in high school, everything was brought to light on the mat. My character, how much I prepared, and how long I was willing to fight. The more I stared at the event registration, I knew I needed to go all in. I needed to find out who I was when every bit of comfort was taken away. Who am I when life in a single moment seems too much to bear?

I began training immediately with a veteran ultra-runner, Major Patrick Beckwith, a cadre member from my Army ROTC program in Montana. He helped me train for my first half-marathon, so this time around I already had a good fix on what trails we would run. Our first-time training together, he was testing to see how far he could push me, now the training wheels were off. I either kept up or got left in the dust and every training run went one of those two ways. The only sections I could out-pace him were on the steep downhills because my youthful knees could take more of a beating. Every Wednesday morning, we got up early and ran hills, and for the most part, I loved it. At the end of one of our runs, Major Beckwith was waiting for me at the turn-around while I huffed and puffed up the switchback. When I got there, I told him that one day I would be the man standing over the valley floor waiting for some young buck to power up a trail.

My friend Nate LaCorte came along on our runs a decent amount as well. When I wasn’t running with Major Beckwith, LaCorte and I would be doing sled drags in the gym. Roughly 10-15 seconds of all the muscle in your legs and breath in your lungs pushing and pulling 90 plus pounds across a gym floor really makes you feel alive. If we weren’t dragging sleds, we were flipping tires. The best part about flipping a tire is getting to slam it back down to the ground like an opponent in a fight. It makes for a good way to let out aggression versus slamming a real person. I got addicted to it within the first week. Training was fun and challenging, but it was never seven straight hours of everything I had.

April 30th, I commissioned as an officer into the United States Army proudly stating in my bio read off to a crowd all my running accomplishments I had done the past three years including the forty miles I had run in January. May 1st, I graduated from the University of Montana with a Bachelor of Science in wildlife biology. I was sitting on a high horse of accomplishments. May 23rd was race day.

The race start was 7 a.m. I showed up a half-hour before wearing Army PT shorts, and a RUDIS athletic shirt with an Under Armor long sleeve over it. RUDIS is a wrestling apparel company. On the back of my shirt it reads, “It’s a Way of Life”. Anyone who has wrestled understands that statement. I try to live my life up to that standard. A standard that requires a person to constantly challenge himself in order to be transformed into a new man on the other side. It’s a refusal to quit despite adversity. Wrestling gave me that, and running this race was about to help me put it to the test.

At the start line, I could tell I was the odd man out. Almost every runner in the lineup had their special $45 running short shorts and $50 water vests to let people like me know they were the real deal. Their physique looked the part too. Lengthy and not enough muscle to do more than thirty push-ups at once. However, they didn’t need to do thirty push-ups, just run thirty-one miles. In this case, I was the one in trouble.

My nerves weren’t too high when the gun went off. I stuck close by to Major Beckwith the first two miles, surprised that I didn’t lose sight of him the first few minutes of the race. My legs were feeling heavy, a sign of lacking to warm-up before the race. That didn’t worry me however, because I would have plenty of time to warm up. The first few hills got my heart rate up but weren’t as steep as races I’ve done in the past. I kept my composure and managed to find and maintain a pace between two other runners while Major Beckwith gradually gained ground on me at each hill until he was out of sight. The two other runners and I met some steep switchbacks together all groaning by the time we had completed them, yet sort of laughing at the same time. We all knew that that section was going to be brutal in the two laps ahead of us. We reached an aid station at the top of the hill we were climbing, which I was pre-determined to take a pit stop at just for a quick drink of water. The two other runners kept going, and from that point on I was alone.

At that point in the race, someone flipped a switch in the sky causing any ray of sunshine that had been there to be drowned out and be replaced by dark, swirling clouds. Soon it was sprinkling, while I ran downhill and the distance between individual runners widened. The rain didn’t bother me at first. I was used to being rained on growing up in the lightning capital of the world. In fact, I enjoyed running through the rain. The cold sensation kept you wide awake and it added another element to what is a very simple task, putting one foot in front of the other.

I reached a section near the end of the first lap titled, “Owl Alley”. Built for downhill mountain biking, Owl Alley is a series of steep downhills followed by tall and tight berms leading you into the next downhill. It was fun the first go-around.

Reaching what would be the finish line by the third lap, my damp, numbing hands struggled to fish for my keys in my pocket, so I could throw my now drenched long sleeve into my car. I figured it was weighing me down by this point and as long as it didn’t get any colder, I would be fine with just the short sleeve. I started lap two with little hesitation, taking the first hill at a slow jog.

There still weren’t many other runners in sight, leaving me alone to face the uphill battle and the rain that began to turn into wet slushy snow. This wasn’t the nice powdery snow that you roll in around Christmas. This snow came straight out of some evil slushy machine built in the sky and it was blowing directly into my face. This is when the suck started, at about mile 13 of 31. It didn’t take long for me to start shivering. The snow clouds just above me looked like they wanted to swallow me whole leaving me as a deformed snowman for other runners to be aware of. I kept running praying for a break in the snow chilling my bones. I got to the switchbacks that I knew would end up being an obstacle, but I didn’t anticipate the combination of misery I would be feeling when I got back to it. I made my first decision to walk, convincing myself I was already going through enough pain. The trail up the switchback had already started to turn into slick mud mixed with a crunch of ice with each step. I got up the switchbacks and restarted my run taking advantage of a moment of level trail. That’s when I asked myself the first time, “Why I am really doing this?”

Eventually, I made it to the aid station tent were, I realized just how cold I really was. The aid station volunteers acted like they had just seen a ghost, a spirit struggling to stay alive in a broken man’s body. I let my shivering run through my body with no care of just how crushed I looked to others. The volunteers invited me into the tent by their heater, an invitation I accepted without hesitation. The wet snow and uphill climbs had humbled me enough to be grateful for any kind of aid rather than pretending I didn’t desperately desire it. My t-shirt was soaked like a towel that had just been through the wash, which one of the volunteers noticed. He happened to have a spare running shirt in his bag. I took mine off after about a minute of struggle and gladly accepted his in the trade hoping I would see it again. Another volunteer gave me an extra Walmart poncho she had with her, which she helped me put on. Now I really didn’t look like a belonged in the race with a shirt that was too large and a see-through poncho that could have been used to keep suits clean. I started down the trail feeling slightly warmer and grateful for the first downhill I had seen in a while.

I ran into few other runners at this point in the race and when I did it was usually because I was being passed by folks that I had made significant gains on during the first lap. Those gains slowly disappeared as every uphill turned into a brisk walk and every downhill was spent just trying not to slip in the mud.

I made it back to Owl Alley. It was a sign of hope meaning I was close to the end, but also a sign of torment now that it was a slipping slide of mud. By some miracle, I maintained my balance and finished my second lap going immediately to the aid station tent.

I took about ten minutes chewing a handful of salted peanut-butter pretzels and goldfish trying to give myself some time before even considering starting the next lap. Then, someone handed me a warm cup of chicken broth obviously noticing that the race had already taken its toll on me. I wrapped my palms around the cup and just let it sit in my hands for a moment taking in that sweet sensation of warmth taking soothing the numbing cold. The first sip was like natural medicine bringing me back to life. My thoughts of self-pity were momentarily replaced with overt thankfulness. Still, I had no idea how I was going to go through ten and a half more miles of constant aching, mud, and rain. The thought crossed my mind of just sitting in that tent till the race finished holding that warm cup of broth in my hand. The pain could be over, and I would be comfortable again. The thought was enchanting, but no matter how strong its pull, I knew I couldn’t do it. There was enough time left in the race where, I could walk the entire last lap if I wished to do so and still finish in time. I had no excuse to quit. So, I started walking up the first hill.

I walked practically every hill the first six miles of the final lap, till two girls came alongside me sounding still happy to be there. They asked how I was doing, and I immediately responded, “This is the longest day of my life.” Self-pity fought for space in my head. Thoughts like, “Why I am here?” and “This is stupid” were playing on repeat.

When the angel who had given me the poncho, saw me from a distance, she was in shock. I walked up to the tent and grabbed a few bananas to eat, but I knew I couldn’t stay long or else I might not want to keep going. She told me how her and the other volunteers thought for sure I would drop out seeing how beat-up I was on the second lap. She took a photo of me and promised she would send it to me so I could remember the day. I tried to smile in the photo. As I slowly chewed on the bananas and fruit snacks, I awarded myself, I overheard two runners behind me who sounded better than I did and were about my age. They told the volunteers that they were pulling out of the race. They said their hip flexors were simply shot, and the finish just wasn’t worth it. My hips felt exactly the same way. Each rotation to move my feet forward felt like pulling an old rusty lever to get an out-of-date machine to work. Yet, somehow seeing that I wasn’t the only one suffering enabled me to keep walking and so I did down the trail with just five miles to go.

I switched back and forth from slow jogging to walking about every five or so minutes. I did this for four miles all the while asking myself, why? Why was I putting myself through this? Why was I trying so hard? It felt like with everything in my life I was trying so hard to prove something. Prove what, I didn’t know. Everything felt like a battle. Why does everything always have to feel like a battle? I asked myself what all the toil was for, but I couldn’t answer it. I just kept going hoping to find an answer somewhere along the way.

I ran the last mile and finished the race just over seven hours completing the most difficult single event I had ever done. I was greeted by Major Beckwith who had finished two hours before me, but still congratulated me on the finish. I then grabbed some hot chow and two large M&M cookies enjoying the best part of the race, the celebratory finish. I couldn’t stay for long, because I was still shivering and ready to warm up, but I did make sure to enjoy every last bite of the greatest cheeseburger I have ever tasted.

On my walk back to my car, Major Beckwith rolled by in his car and stopped to say, “That was badass, Forsberg!” I didn’t feel that tough at the time but hearing him say that helped me believe that I was. I slowly fell back into the driver seat of my car thinking about how I was going to celebrate that night with friends and how good the shower was going to feel, yet still asking myself, why?

I couldn’t quite answer it that day, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have an answer to get through the race. Maybe it was stubbornness? Maybe it was my own pride? I was happy I did the race, but that overwhelming sense of accomplishment you see at the end of most sports movies wasn’t very overwhelming at the time. That sense of pride had been alluding me for months now from when I completed my first ultra-marathon to graduation. I wanted it, but I couldn’t grasp what I actually accomplished. I ran thirty-one miles, but so what? How does that affect me or anyone else today? Maybe I just don’t fully understand it, but there is one thing I do understand.

My last week in Montana was warm and joyful. In the middle of the week, I started on a jog one morning down to my favorite spot in the state, Rattlesnake Creek, to say goodbye to a place that has brought me so much comfort in times of trouble. On my jog down, that’s when it hit me. That feeling you get when you yourself truly feel like you’ve done a good job. I had accomplished all I set out to do in Montana. I earned my degree in wildlife biology, I commissioned as an Army officer into the Infantry, and so much more. I did it, and I didn’t quit. All I could think was, “That was a great and crazy adventure” and I thanked God for it. Now it was time to move on to the next adventure. The accomplishment couldn’t be found in one race, but it was in four years of refusing to quit and give in when everything in me was telling me to. The accomplishment was in those long nights of feeling alone, but still choosing to believe that Jesus was near. It was in all those days of feeling like I wasn’t good enough yet at the same time fighting to believe that God didn’t make me as a mistake. I ran not to prove that I was the fastest, but that I could make it.