Positivity and Mindfulness in the Workplace

Nathan Robertson THE ENDURANCE HUNTER 100

ASSOCIATE SPOTLIGHT

Nathan Robertson has been with Samtec for over 15 years and is an Intergration/Process Development Engineer for GCT. He assists with the process design and manufacturing of GCT products. This consists of working with process engineers to help solve problems, working with internal/ external customers to design and build products, and managing R&D projects. Nathan recently completed a 100 mile trail race within 31 hours and shares about his experience below.

The race is called The Endurance Hunter 100 in northern Georgia and is a 100 mile race with 22k feet of elevation gain and a 35 hour time limit to complete. It took me roughly 30.5 hours straight to complete the race and I finished in 13th place out of 40 total runners. Almost half of the runners did not complete the race.

I started training to do a 100 mile race about 1.5 years ago. I had originally signed up for a race last summer and it ended up getting cancelled due to Covid 19 just three weeks before the race was scheduled. With some help from friends, I attempted to set up and run my own 100 mile course on the Knobstone trail. I ended up making it 80 miles in 24 hours before quitting. It did not take long until I started having some major regrets about quitting. Specifically, when I asked my kids what they thought about it, and they said, “Well, you didn’t even finish.” Needlesss to say, that wasn’t acceptable. I started training for this race in late November. My training consisted of running 5-6 days a week with at least one of these runs being a longer trail run. I gradually worked my mileage up to between 50 – 60 miles per week and sustained that for roughly 5-6 weeks. I trained all winter regardless of the weather. I had 20+ mile training days in 5” of snow, torrential downpours, flooded creeks, single digit temps, and everything in between. I ended up not running at all the last 2 weeks before the race because of a minor leg injury. I was worried this may keep me from finishing the race, but it actually did not cause any issues at all.

I started the race at 7am Saturday morning and finished 1:30pm the following day. The race has 9 aid stations roughly 10 miles apart throughout the course that are intended for refueling. My good friend Jeremy Wooldridge (Samtec, Director of GCT) met me at these aid stations along the way and made sure I had all of the food and hydration I needed for the miles ahead. The most important part of a race like this is to maintain sufficient hydration and calorie intake. A person can digest between 200-300 calories per hour, so it is important to be replenishing at that rate throughout the entire race. I consumed mostly electrolyte powders, stroop wafels, and Cliff Blocks during the race. Towards the middle of the race I was having a hard time digesting the food and found myself sitting down and dry heaving on more than one occasion. This definitely slowed me down, but I was able to pivot, and find other easier to digest food at the aid station like pickle juice, coke classic and Ramen noodles.

Another challenging part about this race aside from the elevation gain was the rain and stream crossings. There were between 20 and 30 different stream crossings, and it rained for a solid 5 hours near the beginning of the race. My feet were wet the majority of the race which led to a decent amount of blistering. Another big challenge was sleep deprivation. By 5am, I was literally falling asleep while I was running. I was swerving all over the trail and it was miracle that I did not fall. As soon as the sun popped up, I found a new boost of energy that was able to carry me to the finish line. Jeremy met up with me and ran the last 14 miles. It was great to have help getting me through those last tough miles.