Although Jenny Lendle is still exhausted from the 29-hour Umstead 100 Endurance Run, she is clearly a changed person from having finished it.
“It’s the accomplishment, pushing myself far past anything I thought I could ever do … 100 miles … that’s crazy,” Lendle said newly returned from the two-day run. “To push your body … to know there’s still more … it’s just that feeling of finishing something so far.”
The Luling mother, also owner of GL Realty Group in Luling, is an ultra runner.
In the long hours of the run in William B. Umstead State Park in Raleigh, N.C., the 34-year-old recalled thinking about her husband, children and friends and couldn’t bear the thought of facing them with this undone.
“That’s why I’m crying … so many hours and days, usually alone,” she said of training. “It was so hard yesterday (Sunday), but it was everything I worked for and it was great. It was the best feeling.”
Some 29 hours and 14 minutes later, when Lendle crossed the finish line, a friend hugged her and announced she was not the same person anymore. The words echoed in her mind, particularly when he added, “You can do anything.”
She’s still emotional about it.
With tears, Lendle explained how the run represented all her hard work and the culmination of years of stepping up her running distance.
For Lendle, the Umstead victory is finishing a race that took two days to complete. She ran alongside 189 people who ran a 50- or 100-mile run.
That’s what Lendle was hoping for all these months as she trained for her first 100-mile run.
“It’s all mental after a certain point,” she said. “You have to fight.”
And fight she did, but it hurt.
“Man, I’m tired,” Lendle said. “Even with all the training and lessons I’ve learned from everybody, yesterday was something like I’ve never done.”
At the 50-mile mark of the run, Lendle knew she was alright. She never thought she was going to quit, but in the final stretch her body began to rebel and she overcame it when she thought, “Remember who’s watching this. You can do this. The pain of coming without a finish was worse than the pain of running.”
Lendle was accompanied by her family and her crew that included Jasmine Galjour and Nikki Naquin, both ultrarunners who served as pacers for her. In return, Lendle will be Galjour’s pacer and serve in Naquin’s crew in her run. Both have upcoming 100-mile runs. Her business partner Liz Hollingsworth also was on her pit crew.
“They got me through it,” she said. “When I was crying and in pain … just so tired… they were there.”
Although she questioned at that time whether she’d make it, her husband later told her he knew she would not quit.
Lendle also praised her fellow ultra runners as some of the best people who offered her encouragement, too.
Lendle got into running with the birth of her daughter in 2010. She trained for a half month and ran her first marathon on her birthday. She was happy with running races here and there until she heard talk about a 50-mile run.
“I thought that’s the next big thing, but I took about 1-1/2 years of training before I actually went and did this,” she said.
She soon found a group called Louisiana Ultra Runners, who do Friday night runs and she reached out to them. Soon after, she ran with them for 16 miles on trails in Mandeville.
“After that, I was kind of hooked on the trail running, and I knew that I wanted to build the distance,” Lendle said.Then came the Ultra Runners’ 50K Bobcat Bail run in September of 2015 followed by a 50-mile run in March of the following year, but she wanted more.
“I knew I wanted the 100 [mile] and I was headed toward that,” Lendle said.
She ran some races in the summer to keep her mileage up and then landed a spot with the Umstead. That’s when she really went hard to work on training in September. As part of it, she ran her first 100K race in February on the Red Dirt Ultra run, which helped her feel confident for the Umstead.
Umstead Race Director Rhonda Hampton said the run is an experience that no one can really understand without doing it.
“When you cross the 100-mile for the first time, you know you can do anything,” Hampton said. “There are no barriers. You just know you can do it. It’s an incredible feeling that you don’t get from anything else.
“You run the first 50 miles with your legs and the second 50 miles with your head.”
With the glow of her achievement still coming through her exhaustion, Lendle agreed.
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