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Like trained monkeys or drug addicts, some athletes will do whatever it takes for more.

Curiously, those euphoria-causing endorphins are produced in response to pain. At some point, though, doesn't the pain exceed the rush of endorphins?

Pain and pride

For 49-year-old Chris Clausen of New York, that point appeared to come as he contemplated his last lap from under a wool blanket inside the main aid station. It was 6:45 Sunday morning, he had 12.5 miles to go. Ten friends and family members who had flown from New York to cheer him on gathered around him as Red Cross volunteer and Wake EMT Bridgette Mulder salved and bandaged his badly blistered feet.

"I'm having feet issues," he said quietly. Realizing that time was working against him, that there was a cutoff after which runners would be forbidden to start another lap, he asked, "What's the cutoff for going back out?"

"Eight o'clock," answered Sally Squire, one of 150 race volunteers.

Turns out, his pride was hurting more than his feet. Last year, his first attempt to run a 100-miler was thwarted by hypothermia at mile 75. "I swore I would come back and finish the race the next year."

Now, he was staring down the possibility of another incomplete century run.

For Andy Cable of Connecticut that transitional moment came Sunday at "6 a.m. on the dot. At that moment I realized I had six hours to do 18.15 miles, or just under 20 minutes per mile." That meant no more short breaks to tend to the blisters that began developing on his feet around mile 30.

In Frahm's case, glow ceded to grimace midway on her fifth lap, with nearly a third of the race remaining. Walking the longest hill on the course -- her strategy from the start had been to walk the hills, run everything else -- she said she was doing "good." Later, though, she would admit that her feet "were not happy with me."

"I had some soreness in my legs," she said going into Lap 5, "but nothing real significant. It seemed like I could work through it."

But then it started getting dark -- psychologically a rough time anyway for most 100-milers -- and the blisters became an issue. They slowed her pace, making her realize that she probably wasn't going to meet her goal of finishing in under 24 hours. (Not finishing, on the other hand, wasn't an option: She was wearing the coveted No. 100, given to the first-time hundred-miler deemed to have the best chance of finishing.)

She'd changed socks every other lap to this point and may have changed running shoes once ("I can't remember"). She picked up a pacer on Lap 5 but was reluctant to mention her aching feet. "I didn't want to complain."

Finally, though, she did. Her pacer asked if she'd taken ibuprofen. She'd been reluctant, fearful that it might upset her stomach. But at the midcourse aid station she relented. Along with her saltine crackers and Pepsi, she popped a pill.

Whether it was the ibuprofen, the snack or the start of the inevitable cycle of euphoric highs and crushing lows common to long distance athletes, her lot improved.

At least until Lap 7, when those imaginary trails tried to lure her into the woods, and Lap 8, when the race-long drizzle turned into a downpour, a downpour that, in the 50-degree weather, put an instant chill into her bones.

That's when she started asking, Why? Why would anyone do this once? And why on Earth would anyone do it a second time?

Why they do it

Why do people put themselves through such things as the Umstead 100 knowing that there will be a good deal of suffering involved? Well, there's that endorphin thing. There's a sense of accomplishing something that few others would or could (one in 181,522 North Americans finished a 100-mile race in 2007, according to UltraRunning's figures). And, says Keefe, the Duke sports psychologist, there's that simple urge common to many of us: meeting a goal.

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