20-year-old Medford native completed the Moab 240, a 238.3-mile virtually nonstop foot race in the desert of Moab, Utah last month.
Ryan Lange wasn’t always this fit.
In fact, before he completed the Moab 240, a 238.3-mile virtually nonstop foot race in the desert of Moab, Utah, he was “the chubby kid on the football team.”
“I was a thick guy,” he said. “I used to be 230 pounds and now I’m about 175.”
Lange, who’s 20 and is from Medford, initially got into running during high school at the advice of some of his friends.
“I started losing weight and people noticed it,” he said. “I got addicted to the feeling of people saying ‘wow you look good, you’ve lost some weight.’”
His first run was only about three miles, which, at the time, made him feel “on top of the world.” But those three-mile runs eventually turned into five-mile runs, which turned into 10-mile races, 26.2-mile marathons, and even more. Lange subsequently ran races of 32 miles, 50 miles and 100 miles.
“I gotta go longer,” he thought. “It might be a little selfish, or I don’t want to say cocky, but I got addicted to people telling me I looked good. Who wouldn’t?”
On Oct. 13, he found himself at the starting line of the Moab 240, which was nearly 140 miles longer than the longest race he had ever won.
Lange finished 28th out of 127 people who entered — only 99 of whom finished. He completed the entire thing in 86 hours and 12 minutes. Of those 86 hours and 12 minutes, only six and a half hours were spent sleeping. That begs the obvious question: what’s it like to compete in a 240-mile foot race while getting barely any sleep? According to Lange, you hallucinate.
“Your brain starts to play tricks on you,” he said.
During the first 24 hours of the race, Lange slept only for a mere 10 minutes.
When he eventually decided it was time to take an hour-long nap inside one of the tented cots that were provided for the racers at several aid stations placed every 15 to 20 miles throughout the trail, Lange thought he saw a dog.
“I thought someone’s dog had ran down the trail and was just hanging around, and it was just staring at me,” he said. “I started walking closer and it was just a log that was formed kind of looking like a dog.”
At another point during the race, Lange thought he saw a distressed person being administered CPR by a good samaritan, “but it was actually just a branch kind of moving in the wind,” he said.
Lange barely kept himself entertained while racing. He listened to some music and podcasts while racing, but for the most part he didn’t have his headphones in. For 90 of the 240 miles, Lange ran with a “pacer.” Lange’s pacer’s name was Adam St. Pierre, who was a track coach from Colorado. St. Pierre’s job was mostly to provide Lange with somebody to talk to, but also to make sure he was eating, drinking and being safe in the desert.
The toughest aspect of competing in the race, however, wasn’t preparing for the physical — it was mental.
“[Being] mentally [prepared] is the biggest thing,” he said. “You could be in the greatest shape ever, but if you’re not there mentally, you’re not going to do well.”
To mentally prepare himself for the race, Lange would run in the middle of the night. He also participated in an event called the Goruck, which is a 12-hour military training event in the middle of the night. After the exhaustive Goruck, he proceeded to go for a 20-mile run the next morning without sleeping.
“It’s just about having your brain become familiar with that very weird feeling [of being tired while running],” he said. “That’s really the only thing you can do.”
Lange, who’s majoring in finance and real estate development at Drexel University, hopes to do the event again next year. There isn’t a whole lot he would plan to do differently the second time, aside from packing bigger shoes to account for the swelling of his feet. He actually did pack size 12 shoes in addition to the size 11.5s he wore to start the race, but by the end of the race Lange said his feet swelled up so much that packing a third pair of 12.5s would have helped.
Lange, who insists “the biggest neglected muscle is the brain,” said completing the race has helped him immensely with his personal life.
Having completed the race, “life is one step easier because things don’t bother you as much,” he said. “I went through 86 hours of supreme hardcore pain, [so] how could little issues affect me? Having that in your back pocket is something that I always want to have and to continue to have for the rest of my life.”
