Local ultra athlete completes the Deca

1,406 miles… or the distance from Shoshone County to Cuervo, N.M.

Local ultra athlete Dolph Hoch ran, biked and swam that distance over the course of 10 days in León, Mexico, last month when he became the second American to complete in the DecaUltraTri World Cup.

The total distance is really in the name: Deca equals 10, ultra is for the endurance it takes to complete the event, and then the triathlon distances of 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking and 26.2 miles of running.

Hoch did 10 of those triathlons in 10 days, for a total of 24 miles of swimming, 1,120 miles of biking and 262 miles of running.

Let.

That.

Sink.

In.

Hoch is no stranger to these races, although the Deca is the biggest race that he has competed in.

Hoch qualified for the Deca after he won a quintuple triathlon last October, and then he spent the better part of 2017 deciding on whether he was going to throw his name into the hat for the Deca.

But after his fourth-place finish, he is definitely happy he did, but there are a few things that he wishes he could have done differently.

“First off, it was different than any other race I have ever ran,” Hoch said. “I ran it with a horrible sinus infection which didn’t help, but the finish of the race was really different than any of the others that I have done. During the triple and quintuple races I have done, you see a lot of the racers get really emotional as they finish. During the Deca, the finish is very anticlimactic. You finish the race and you just want to get to bed.”

Hoch once again did the entire race unassisted, which means he didn’t take a race team with him, and is also one of the things he would have done differently.

“When you don’t have a race team, you lose one to two hours a day,” Hoch said. “From cooking, to having a team masseuse, having a team there to make sure that everything gets taken care of while you sleep is so important in a race like this. When you begin getting behind on sleep, you start slowing down, so having a team is probably the biggest thing I could do to change how I finished.”

On the morning of day seven, Hoch woke up to a quadriceps muscle that had knotted up so tightly that he genuinely thought he had ruptured or torn it, but that wasn’t going to be a deterrent for him either.

“I woke up and basically could only move my leg to like a 15 degree angle,” Hoch said. “I was able to get the swim done, but as I got out of the water, the race organizer saw my leg and asked if I was going to be able to keep going. Each time I pedaled that bike was like a stab in the thigh and each step of that day’s run was like a pitchfork.”

Fortunately for Hoch, he met a young Mexican masseuse who was able to figure out what was going on, and got his leg from nearly being unusable to having it back to as close to normal as possible.

“If you look at my race times, I feel like I ran a smart race all things considered,” Hoch said. “I stayed at a steady pace, so my times were pretty steady until day 7, then my time got higher, but after that my times came back down. At the beginning on day 7, I was within striking distance of third or possibly better, but I’m not going to dwell on that. I completed the race, which was one of my biggest goals.”

It’s been about a month since Hoch finished the race and he is still kind of in awe of the fact he accomplished it, but is still having to readjust to getting back into a normal routine.

“Like I said, finishing the race was anticlimactic, but there is still a lot of things that are taking some re-getting used to,” Hoch said. “I still have a huge appetite, and there have been nights where I have woken up and I’m moving my feet like I’m pedaling my bike.”

After finishing fourth overall out of 10 racers, Hoch is looking back at his performance and is not ruling out giving it another go.

“At this point in my life, I’m looking forward and wondering when does this stop,” Hoch said. “I’m 53 years old, but if the opportunity is there, I will put myself through hell again to get the win like the quintuple. In these long races it’s about racing within yourself and if you don’t, you will blow up early. Obviously I need a race crew as well, I wanted to be the first American to do it unsupported and second ever to finish.”