Saxonburg man finishes 'Death Race'
SAXONBURG — Dylan Davis has no problem with endurance races.
The 23-year-old Saxonburg resident has run in about 50 of them in the past two years.
“I never competed in organized sports before, but I've always done weights and kept in shape,” said Davis, who owns the Crossfit Bonniebrook gym in Summit Township.
“Some friends I knew started running and I got into it with them.”
But over the Jan. 17-18 weekend, Davis got into something he had never heard of before — the Winter Death Race.
“The name itself was intriguing enough,” Davis admitted. “I had never heard of such a thing until three weeks before the event.”
He signed up anyway.
Pittsfield, a small rural town in Vermont, hosts a Summer and Winter Death Race every year. Nearly 300 participants sign up for the summer event and roughly 10 percent finish.At last weekend's winter race, 106 people registered, 29 showed up and only nine finished. Davis was one of the nine.He placed seventh, completing the ultramarathon event in 58 hours, 30 minutes. That's with no sleep, bringing his own food and being provided with no course map or advanced instruction.The participants are told what to do and how to do it by race organizers on the spur of the moment, are penalized if they fail and are constantly encouraged to quit.“Once you sign that waiver, you're basically signing your life over to them,” said Karlie Uzmack, Davis' girlfriend who accompanied him on the trip and was his chief support system.He said, “They try to break you — mentally, physically and emotionally.”During the race, Davis and his fellow competitors split wood and helped build a log cabin, dragged logs for miles up a mountain while bushwhacking off trails, then sprinted from the top of the mountain to a barn that was the check-in station for the event.“It was there they could change into fresh clothes, get some water or something to eat,” Uzmack said. “But it was cold in that barn. They ran out of fuel for the heaters for hours at a time and it was maybe 20 degrees in there.“As his support, I was allowed to stay in the barn for the duration. Dylan would check in for five minutes or so, then I wouldn't see him for five or six hours. I had no idea what he was doing out there.”Davis had to carry two 2-by-8-inch boards on his back to the cabin site. After cutting the wood to the size he needed for his portion of the cabin, he had to dig 16 screws out of a 55-gallon drum of freezing water one at a time and then pull out a screw driver. He twisted the screws by hand into the boards to build the cabin, then hiked back to check-in.What followed was chopping off a large piece of wood, splitting it into quarters, filling a bucket with wood and stacking it in back of the cabin.“Everything we did that way was helping that cabin,” Davis said. “But there was little time to rest. We made trips up and down the mountain and were mentally tested.“How many total miles we put in, I have no clue. An ultramarathon is 50 miles. It was way more than that.”One of the mental tests was an hourlong meditation in the barn. Participants were blindfolded and wore ear muffs. They had to stand there and guess when 60 minutes had elapsed.Davis fell asleep standing up — for two hours, thus incurring a penalty for the amount of time over the hour he was there.“I had to go in the river, waist-high, and stay in there for 59 minutes,” he said. “Thankfully, we thought to pack a wet- suit.”Uzmack said, “There were chunks of ice floating by. The water temperature was definitely subfreezing.”There were 19 participants left when they were divided into two teams and began dragging logs up the mountain. But before doing so, the teams had to memorize a Bible verse.Once they reached the top — about five hours later — the team had to recite the Bible verse in unison.“We failed that one ... had to go back down and start over,” Davis said.Participants also received an individual dance lesson. They sat and thought about it, then performed it.If the dance was bad, they were punished with two hours of mountain climbs and rolling down a snow bank, and then they had to try the dance again.“Dylan would wander back into the barn only half conscious at times,” Uzmack said. “That's what I was there for, to make sure he got water, ate, put on warm, dry clothes.”Davis admitted that “I don't remember half the stuff I did.”He ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Snickers bars, “things with loads of calories because I knew I was losing a lot of calories and getting dehydrated,” Davis said.He added, “I went 10 hours without water at one stretch because my water bottles froze over.”A river walk took place from a bridge to a general store during an ice storm, and participants cleared snow from around the store. Some helped to dig and push cars out of a ditch.Davis said he finished the race only 17 minutes before the deadline.“I think it was around 6 a.m. Monday,” he said. “They kept trying to get me to quit. At one point, they offered to buy me a warm sandwich and cup of hot chocolate if I just gave up. You don't know how tempting that was.”Each Death Race finisher received a “skull” trophy that immediately became a treasured possession for Davis.“I'll keep it forever,” he said. “I'll never forget what I went through to get it.”Pittsfield hosts the Summer Death Race in June, and Davis and Uzmack plan to be there.“It's all in the challenge,” he said. “There's nothing like pushing the human spirit.”Or learning from past experience.“We know what we did right in terms of preparation and what we did wrong,” Uzmack said. “We'll be more ready next time.“This is something he (Davis) wants to do. It's part of who he is, and I support that.”
