Bataan...The Clay Pilkilton Perspective...

I would like to preface this story with a quick thank you to God, to my wife and little girl, to my cousin who stayed by my side, to the men and women from Comal Crossfit who shared this experience with me, to my friends and family who supported me through this and to all our servicemen past and present for the freedoms that we all enjoy today.  The following is a true story….

Telling someone that the Bataan Memorial Death March is hard is like telling someone who has never been to the Grand Canyon how big it is.  They  get the general concept but will never truly understand what you are talking about unless they go there.  Now I don’t mean to discredit anyone else’s accomplishments or accolades but this is not your typical marathon.  I have great respect for those who have run 26.2 but the only thing that the BMDM has in common with a regular marathon is the distance.  

I started training for the march in September of last year.  I started slow by only rucking short distances at a time getting my body used to having 40+ pounds on me for miles at a time.  By the time December came around I was rucking 15+ miles at a time, or as Levi would call it “being in deep water”.  In January I asked my cousin Brandon if he wanted to start training and possibly do Bataan with me.  He agreed and off we went.  We trained for a couple of months before Bataan.  Our training rucks went very well and we were confident that when we got to New Mexico we weren’t going to have any problems.

The morning of the event we were supposed to get up at 3 am to get our rucks checked and tape-up our feet before we headed off for White Sands Missile Range.  I was woken at 2am when our hotel room a/c had some sort of epileptic fit and started making all sorts of weird noise.  I couldn’t sleep after that so I got hosed out of an hours sleep.   At 4am we loaded up the trucks and vans and our convoy headed out to base.

We finally got onto base and parked at about 530am.  The parking this year was a half mile from the starting point so they had shuttles taking marchers from parking to the stadium for opening ceremonies.  We decided to ruck up and just walk.  It was actually good because it gave me a good stretch and warm up before the event started.  We got to stadium, found our corral and stood together as a group waiting for the ceremonies to start.

The opening ceremonies were great.  Very emotional and truly made me proud to be an American standing beside the men and women of our armed forces.  The opening ceremonies helped get my mind focused on what we were about to do and who we were doing it for.  The ceremony lasted for about 45 minutes but only felt like 5.  Before I knew we were all putting on our rucks, getting strapped up, shaking each other’s hands and wishing each other good luck.  We started walking towards the starting line as a massive artillery gun was being fired behind us.  You could hear the boom echo off the mountains with a loud quick clap and was pretty motivating to ruck to that sound.

Clay Driving On At Bataan. Mile Unknown. Photo by Brandon Denham

We hit the starting line and with a few beeps ours racing chips were activated and we were off.  Normally Brandon and I don’t run when we first start out but there were so many people that we wanted to try and get closer to the front of the crowd.  We kept a pretty good pace until Mile 1 when the crowd thinned just a little bit allowing us some breathing room and we were able to continue our normal ruck pace which is usually about 15 min/mile.  Miles 1-6 were pretty uneventful.  It was dusty and the sun was rising in the east and heating everything up.  Our pace was quicker than normal since it was pretty much a slight downhill slope the whole way.  Miles 6-8 were basically the base slope of the mountain we would be climbing up later but they weren’t that bad.  It was just a little slope over a couple of miles.  At mile 8, Brandon and I passed the Mike, Jason, Tommy, Brando and Heather  and felt pretty good about ourselves.  We decided not to stick with our plan and stop but just slow down to a snail’s pace so we could rest but keep making forward progress.  This was about the time that things started to get bad for me…..

I never had any water in my Camelbak, just an electrolyte juice mix and that was how I had trained all my previous months before.  I found out quickly that the New Mexican sun is very unforgiving on stupid people like me don’t drink water like they should.  Dehydration and heat exhaustion started to kick in hard for me at about mile 9.  These are the dark times.  I kept feeling like I wanted to vomit, my stomach was cramping, I was getting a headache, my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest and my vision was a little blurry in my peripheral.  I must have looked pretty awful because my cousin kept asking me if I was ok and what I needed.  I wasn’t even thinking straight and kept telling him I was fine and just wanted to get over this hill.

Somewhere around mile 10 we met Heather and when she saw me asked me if I was ok.  I said “no” and we kept moving.  She told me that I needed to drink water and at the first water station made me sit down and chug about 5 cups.  That helped a bit but I think I was already pretty dehydrated after 10 miles of no water.  We still had about 3.5 miles of hill to climb and the next water station wasn’t for another 2 miles.  We left that water station at about a 20 min/mile pace.  My nausea came back full force, my back started cramping like never before and all my peripheral vision just went away.  I kept telling Heather and Brandon to just leave me and that I would catch up later.  They absolutely refused and stuck with me the whole way up that hill. 

It’s a weird thing watching the internal struggle of your will power.  I felt like I had a ring side seat while my desire to quit and my will to succeed battled it out.  There was no shade on the god awful hill but about mile 11 things seemed dark.  Everywhere around me looked shaded like enormous clouds were overhead blocking the sun.  I remember looking up and wondering where all this shade was coming from when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  I wanted so badly to stop, sit on the side of the road and wait for a medic.  Everything in my body and mind was screaming for me to stop.  I had no more water, all you could see was a line of people climbing for miles ahead and I kept having the nagging realization that maybe I wasn’t strong enough to finish this race.

I don’t know if Brandon and Heather were talking at all because everything was muffled.  All I could hear was the pounding of my own heart in my ears.  At one point Heather turned to me asked me something but I couldn’t hear her, I could see her lips moving but nothing was coming out.  I told them I needed to take a second to catch my breath and stood off on the side of the road looking at the desert valley behind us.  My mind went to a very dark place.  I’m not going to tell you what went on in my head but I can tell you I never want to be there again.  Without any words we kept moving.  I was fairly certain that at the next rest station I was just going to go the med tent and have them call a transport.  We finally made it to the water station and I sat down in a chair and chugged water for about 5 minutes.  Some of the darkness went away and I kept drinking more water and pouring it on my head.  In the chair next to me was some 20 something army dude who was expressing his opinions on the suck factor of the hill.  I agreed with him completely and we grabbed more water and set off.  We had about 2 more miles of hill at this point and the asphalt turned back into a sand road.  I don’t remember much about mile 11-13.1.  I know we went slow and the hill went on forever.  I know it was hot and there was no breeze and all I wanted to do was get that stupid ruck off my back.  The thought of quitting crossed my mind several times.  I just kept thinking that if I could just get to 13.1 the whole course was downhill from there (it wasn’t).  We got to the top of the hill and just accomplishing that made me feel way better and really helped my mental focus and morale.  At the top of the hill we saw that army dude laying in the sand sprawled out under some thorny bush trying to get some shade.  We never saw him again.  We made it to mile 14 and there was a hamburger stand.  I couldn’t believe how many people I saw standing around munching on a hamburger.  I drank about 10 cups of water and choked down a smashed PBJ.  It was nasty but since we hadn’t eaten anything I figured it would be good fuel. 

Onward we pressed.  Mile 14-16 were downhill and the breeze kicked up a little at that point.  Between the water, food, downhill slope and breeze things started looking up.  At mile 16 heather decided to go back to her interval running and she took off into the crowd like the badass she is.  This dog had NO running left in him.  The volunteers at mile 16 had pitchers of ice water and I decided to dump all that electrolyte drink out of my camelback and fill it with ice water.  Why I didn’t dump that extra 5 pounds sooner I don’t know.

Miles 16-18 were a sucky combo of little ups and downs in loose sand.  I was starting to feel like myself again and when we got to mile 17 I told Brandon that we only 9 miles left.  He told me in a very inappropriate manner what I could do with those 9 miles and how long I could do it for.  We weren’t talking a whole lot, not because we were mad at each other, we were just mentally beat up and exhausted at that point.  It amazed me how everyone was loud, talkative and smiling and happy at mile 2 and everyone looked like beat up dust covered zombies by this point.  I also started noticing how many people were walking funny by this point.  Blisters were a huge issue and at least 1 in 10 people were doing the blister shuffle. 

We got to mile 18 and back to the pavement.  At this point you were still high up on the hill and had a commanding view of the valley before you.  My feet had been on fire for a good 5 miles so we decided to take off our rucks and have a seat.  We found some military cots set up on the side of the road and laid down for about 3 minutes.  I can’t even begin to tell you how amazing it felt to lay down.  I didn’t want to get back up at all.  I knew I had to and since I was starting to feel better Brandon and I popped a few electrolyte caps, donned our rucks and started downhill.

Miles 18-20 were all downhill on pavement.  I don’t remember at all what we talked about but I know we were talking again.  Being able to kill 2 miles out of the race downhill made me very happy.  I just kept thinking that those miles were just a nice way to end that hill.  Even though we cruising at a good clip a few things really started bothering me.  My left shoulder was starting to kill me.  I took all the weight off my left shoulder and put it on my right strap and adjusted my weight belt to distribute more weight to my hips.  Going downhill with my ruck strapped like that wasn’t a problem.  I knew that the sand pit was coming up and I remember thinking that maybe this year they changed it.  Maybe, the race coordinators this year got lazy and decided that it just wasn’t worth all the effort to make that sand pit. They didn’t forget.

Clay Near The Finish. Photo By Leigh Montgomery

The “sand pit”, as it is affectionately, called is 1 mile, mostly uphill, of ankle deep kitty litter sand with 0 hard spots or packed sand.  Any energy that you had left will get sucked out of your body immediately.  That sand was hot, dirty and shifted every time you took a step.  My shoulder was killing me but now since I was trying to compensate by putting the weight on my hips they were starting to cramp as well.  That nausea feeling came back and twice as hard.  I started vomiting a little every time I was drinking water.  Just thinking about drinking water made me want to vomit.  I had to dig deep again, the proverbial happy place that you can go to in your mind when things got bad. The problem was that my happy place was gone.  I couldn’t think straight anymore.  Basically I went in to survival mode, my brain shut down except for some primal urge to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  We made it through the sand pit to mile 22. 

I don’t remember much about mile 22-24.  I remember being glad it was a long straight path to the base from there.  The wind had picked up and was blowing sand into our faces.  At this time my peripheral vision went away again, things got dark again, my shoulder, hips, feet, knee and back were on fire and my shoe came untied.  I cannot even tell you how unbelievably mad I was at the world that my shoe came untied.  Taking my ruck off to tie my shoe scared me.  I honestly didn’t know if I was going to be able to put it back on.  I dumped all the sand out of my shoes and re-tied them and sat there on the side of the trail for a little bit.  I knew I only had about 3.5 miles to go but that seemed like an eternity.  Brandon helped me put my ruck back on and I remember that’s when I started getting dizzy.  Walking in a straight like got goofy for a little bit.  I don’t remember walking to mile 23 but I remember I flicked off the mile 23 mile marker.

Mile 24 Brandon’s feet were killing him and he couldn’t keep up my slow pace anymore.  He changed his stride to be more on his toes and he took off in front of me.  I was ok with it since we weren’t talking anyway.  The thing that did suck was that I forgot my earphones so I had no music the whole time I was rucking. Mile 24-26 is along the rock fence that surrounds the base.  It lasted forever.  You were right there at the base and at certain places you could hear the crowds cheering but you were still nowhere near the finish line.  All along the wall were soldiers sitting down in the shade (the first shade they had seen in 8 hours).  I kept wondering why these guys were sitting down when they were less than a mile from the finish line.  I dug deep as deep as I could for the last bit of strength that I had.  When the 26 mile marker came into sight I got an overwhelming rush of emotion.  I truly had tears in my eyes.  If I had any fluid left in my body I might have cried.  I wasn’t happy or sad.  It came over me like a wave and then receded just as fast.  About 100 yards from the finish line Brandon was standing there waiting for me.  He had told me that no matter what we would cross the finish line together and stayed true to his word.  We finished in 8 hours 28 minutes.  I had packed 12 pounds of food, shoes, socks etc. in my ruck and planned on getting rid of the food by eating it but since I was sick the whole time I never got a chance to get rid of that stuff.  My ruck weighed 47 pounds when they weighed it.

Clay Doing Well After The Race. Photo by Leigh Montgomery

 I wanted a sub 8 hour time but after the misery I went through I’m happy just to cross the finish line.  Even writing this 2 days later I am still trying to hydrate and recover.  The Bataan Memorial Death March (BMDM) was physically and mentally the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life.  Until this march I had never pushed myself to the breaking point so hard for so long.  I gave all I had and left a part of myself in the desert.  Time to start training for my next marathon……