The race started at 0600 in Umstead State Park, N.C., and when Army Master Sgt. Mike Morton finished his first 12.5-mile park loop, the clock had ticked only as far as 0724.
Update: Mike just won the 2012 Badwater Ultramarathon. Check out coverage of his win here, and more race coverage here.
Update 2.0: Mike also just won the 2012 24-Hour World Championships. Read about it here.
Running 12.5 miles at a 6:45 pace isn't anything to get too excited about. What is exciting, was watching the 40-year-old Morton pound out 87.5 additional miles at a record-breaking pace. His 7:55 average pace is faster than most recreational runners' 5k times.
Except Morton ran that fast for 100 miles.
His time — 13 hours, 11 minutes, 40 seconds — was fast enough for first place and a new course record. The second and third place runners wouldn't finish for another hour.
In July, Mike will hit the starting line of the Badwater 135-mile ultramarathon in Death Valley, Calif., a race he's been dreaming about for 14 years.
[Mike is the third of our Badwater-135 military runner profiles. The other two, on Marine Capt. Mosi Smith and retired Army Maj. Tim Hardy can be found here.]
Looking back
The first and second Google results for Mike Morton get you a former NFL linebacker-turned-dentist from Kannapolis, N.C. The third is for a dead geologist.
For the real Master Sgt. Mike Morton — or at least the one who isn't interested in teeth or rocks — you have to go back to the '90s, when the then-Navy diver was racking up victories at some of the biggest 100-milers in the country:
1994: Old Dominion 100 — 17 hours, 40 minutes — first place
1995: Old Dominion 100 — 16 hours, 55 minutes — first place
1995: Vermont 100 — 14 hours, 8 minutes — first place
1996: Massanutten Mountain 100 — 20 hours, 21minutes — first place
1997: Western States 100 — 15 hours, 40 minutes — first place
After his '97 win — and course record — at Western States, the then-25-year-old had planned to apply for the 1998 Badwater, but a nagging hip injury took those plans off the table.
"Injury took its course, and I never got to do it," he told me.
Mike left the Navy for the Army in 2001 ("I just saw an opportunity for some massive change") and spent the greater part of the last decade either deployed or preparing to deploy. He raced on and off — notably a second-place finish at the 2003 Uwharrie Mountain Run 40-miler in North Carolina — and married his wife, Julie, in 2008. His daughter, Bailey, is 7.
The return
Now assigned to the Army's Special Operations Command and stationed at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., he has recommitted himself to running over the past two years — and to training for Badwater.
"To be honest with you, having been back into it for about two years now, training and putting all the time in every day. ... I question it myself: How long can I be competitive? One, just the commitment it takes, and two, the physical toll. So Badwater, being a goal that kind of fell to the wayside years ago, I'm going to try to take advantage of it while I can right now."
Running 135 miles shouldn't be an issue for the lean soldier. In the last two years, he's won North Carolina's Hinson Lake 24-hour race twice — running 153.89 miles in 2010 and 163.9 miles in 2011. Morton's 2011 24-hour performance is only 1.8 miles shy of elite ultrarunner Scott Jurek's 2010 24-hour American record distance of 165.7.
Except for a few blog entries, Morton's finish went largely unnoticed.
Military lessons
Morton said he believes he's a stronger runner now than he was the first time around as a 25-year-old — not because he's faster but because he's more mature. He credits this mental strength to his military service.
"Without a doubt," he agreed. "It has definitely made a difference -- just the maturity, dealing with things when they're not going good."
Specifically, he's learned to look at overwhelming challenges — such as running 135 miles, in Death Valley, in July — in manageable pieces.
"You just break things down in their basic elements rather than getting emotional and letting the total sum of everything that's not going good get you," he said. "You learn to break things down and get it in its simplest form and deal with it that way."
In a larger sense, the Army has left Mike alone. He's not a member of the marathon team, nor does he seem to want to be. He trains alone, he races alone, and his only competition is with himself.
"It don't matter to me what everybody else in the race is doing because it's an individual effort," he said. "I am there competing against myself. I don't have time to worry about if someone is in front of me or behind me or gaining on me. It's irrelevant. It doesn't motivate me."
Looking ahead
The glaring difference between Morton's recent 100s and 100-mile splits and Badwater will be the heat.
"Where I did those splits — those times — is nothing like where Badwater is," he said. "I'm going into it with an open mind. Obviously I'd love to go in there and have a day like Umstead, where everything just flows."
Morton had been deployed to Afghanistan as recently as last fall. He said living and training in Afghanistan and in his current home state helped him acclimate. His plan going forward:
"It gets pretty humid here in Florida," he said. "I'm going to try to run at lunch for an hour and then again in the evening or the morning for a longer run." This strategy worked for him when he ran Western States in the '90s. At the time, Morton was living in Annapolis, Md., and credits this plan with helping him race well in the California heat.
"That's the one weird thing about heat: It affects everyone differently every time," he said. "Just because you do well in it once doesn't mean you'll do well the next time. Everybody has their battles with that."
Morton's training weeks are between 140 and 150 miles, the bulk of which — about 100 of them — he runs as doubles during the week. The weekends, he said, are for family time.
"I don't go out on the weekend and run 30 to 40 miles; it just wouldn't fly at home. Time is premium to family."
Julie and Mike have been together since 2003, meaning she wasn't in the picture while he was competing heavily in the '90s. They've struggled with how to balance family, Mike's work and his running.
"Oh, it's not even a balance," he laughs. "You talk to my wife and daughter, there's no balance. It's me just going running, and I know it's going to take its toll, and I've explained it to them. I said, 'Look, this was my life before, and I have limited opportunity here — I'm already 40. When I'm done being competitive, I want to know I gave it my all, I didn't compromise my goals.' "
And his goal, for the last 14 years, has been to finish at Badwater.
Some — like 1999 Badwater winner and former record holder Eric Clifton, Mike's longtime training partner — think he can do more than just finish.
"Eric is saying how if I can do 100 miles in 14 hours at Badwater," Mike said with a pause. "He's saying the record is easily achievable."
Brazilian Valmir Nunes set the men's course record in 2007, running a blistering 22:51:29.
Does Mike feel any pressure to break the record since anyone in the know can tell it's well within reach?
"No," he says without missing a beat. "I'm going there like everybody else. I want to finish so I can say I finished Badwater. If I finish it in 22 hours, that's great. If I finish it in 30, that's good, too."
PT365 will be at Badwater this July 16-18. Check back for updates on Mike Morton, Mosi Smith and Tim Hardy. Follow us on Twitter for live updates (@PT365)
