It was 3 a.m., and despite already having 170 miles under his belt, Scot DeDeo still had about 30 miles more to go if he hoped to cross the finish line of the Tahoe 200.
But miraculously, he felt pretty good. The few hours of sleep he’d had since the last leg of his 200-mile run around Lake Tahoe was just what he needed. He had breakfast and began his 5-mile, 2,000-foot climb into the mountains.
“As soon as we got above the tree line, we literally watched the sunrise,” DeDeo recalled. “It was so incredible to be out there. It was a crisp, cool morning. That was when I really felt I could do this…. I knew I was going to get to the finish line.”
According to Destination Trail, which operates the Tahoe 200 each summer, it is a 200-mile endurance race around the largest alpine lake in North America. DeDeo finished the race in 79 hours, 29 minutes, and 44 seconds, averaging roughly 22 minutes and 40 seconds per mile.
“I’m not really a spiritual person,” he said. “But something like this really does show you that rather than quitting if something gets hard, taking a step back and regrouping … really does make a difference. It wasn’t just me; watching other runners do the same thing where they look dejected, and they look destroyed … and then (after a break and a snack), they’re moving pretty well again.”
The Belmont resident and Foundation for Belmont Education Apple Run 5K race director has been running ultra-marathons for 13 years, but never one the length of Tahoe. Prior to this, the longest he’d run was 103 miles from New Hampshire to the Rhode Island border to central Massachusetts.
“I’ve been a runner pretty much my entire life and then as an adult, I got into triathlons and running ultramarathons,” DeDeo said. “I’ve always been into adventure, which to me is going up to the mountains and doing something crazy and seeing if I can accomplish something like that.”
Training for a race the length of the Tahoe 200 was two-fold, according to DeDeo, noting experience racing and running is part of it
“I came up with a six-month training plan for this,” he said. “I increased my mileage somewhat linearly, but then as I got closer and closer to the race, I started doing more race-specific things.”
That meant doing back-to-back — or sometimes back-to-back-to-back — marathon-length distances over the weekend. It also meant running late at night and again early the following morning.
“A lot of it really is time on your feet; it doesn’t really matter how fast you’re going,” he said.
DeDeo said he completed the first 63 miles of the Tahoe 200 on his own. From then on, he had the support of family and friends, who served as pacers and moral support.
“It was absolutely super helpful to have friends pacing me,” he said. “The Tahoe area is so incredibly beautiful that every time I started a new leg with a friend, they were just so excited to be there.”
But the race wasn’t without its challenges.
“They say ultra marathons are all about problem-solving,” he said. “The challenges were a little different each of the days. The first day, my biggest challenge was dealing with the altitude.”
On the first day, he climbed roughly 9,700 feet.
“It’s a little harder to run and push through at that altitude, but also I was dealing with some nausea the first day dealing with the altitude,” DeDeo said.
Little Help from Friends
And then, his feet started to bother him.
“I had to actually work with the medical team to tape them up so I could continue moving,” he said. “After that, my fatigue started to set in more. Dealing with the heat, the fatigue became difficult the third day. That’s the one I was with [Becca Pizzi]. I was very thankful to have her pushing me through.”
He wanted to curl up in a ball at that point, but she “dragged me along pretty well,” he recalled.
Four days after running his first miles, DeDeo made it to the finish line. He found a spot in the shade, sat down and ordered a pizza while Pizzi called the rest of their running club back home in Belmont.
Would he do it again? At this point, probably not. His list of goals for 2024 includes finishing the NH 48 (summiting all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000-foot and taller mountains), setting a personal record in the 50K distance, and breaking 4,000 miles this year.
“It’s really cool just to see how, even with just a little break, you can recover and get back at it,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s persistence or perseverance, but if I can just drawback on this … I can do anything.”
The running club DeDeo takes part in meets weekly on Tuesday and Thursday at 5:45 p.m. at the Belmont High School track. All abilities are welcome.