Ultramarathon Man (15 page)

Medical analysis of blood samples taken from previous Western States participants has shown that some muscle destruction occurs in all runners. The harder one pushes, the deeper one digs, the more extensive the damage can be. Complete recovery usually takes several months, but I was certain it would take much longer in my case. In fact, the way I was pushing, it was questionable if I'd be walking again this year.

The normally sleepy Auburn Faith Community Hospital was going to be a busy place tonight. I'd overheard that a crowd of runners had already filled the emergency room. Most were just in need of intravenous electrolytes and glucose, but there was the occasional laceration and a few broken bones. The ER was not the place I wanted my journey to end.

Halfway to the next and final checkpoint at mile 94, my senses were preternaturally acute. An owl hooted off in the distance, and the sound was crisp and clear, as though it were only inches from my ear. A warm gust of air rippled across the front of my jersey, and the pattern of ebb and flow seemed entirely predictable, almost visible. This was more than just a “runner's high.” This was an out-of-body experience, more potent than anything I'd encountered before.

Unfortunately, the levity was fleeting. The high dissipated more quickly than I would have liked, and the last mile to the checkpoint was more about sheer fortitude than running. A thick cloud of dust trailed behind me as I shuffled in, now barely able to lift my feet enough to clear the ground. The crash of the earlier buzz had left me in a corresponding deep low. I declined a chair, knowing that I would instantly tighten if I stopped.

From this last checkpoint, the finish line was just six miles to the east. Nothing more than a standard 10K, something I could usually do easily. The remaining terrain was flat compared to what I'd covered, but there was still one wicked 900-foot ascent to contend with, and it came at the very end of the course. Imagine scaling three Heartbreak Hills after having run ninety-seven miles through the mountains. This race was remorseless, bordering on psychotic. My body was being pushed to the limits of physical endurance—that much I could understand—but my mind was being played with in surreptitious ways. Would the trail ever end? Or would I eventually reach the edge of the earth and fall off into the abyss?

With my water bottles refilled, I began agonizingly making my way toward the exit. As I did, the small crowd clapped and hooted, whistled and rang bells. It was after midnight, and for these people to be out here in the middle of nowhere showing such spirit gave me goose bumps. My eyes watered with hope.

Ten minutes down the trail, I wished I'd been pulled from the event. Those tears of euphoria were replaced by tears of excruciating pain. The transition from high to low had happened so quickly that even covering a hundred feet—let alone six miles—was vexing. My quadriceps tightened further with each tender step. I was afraid to keep running for fear of cramping . . . but also afraid to stop for fear of cramping; so I chose a median, and began walking.

The trail emerged from the thickets into a vast, grassy meadow. There was a slight breeze blowing across the expanse, and a landscape of long supple reeds swayed gently in the wafts of warm air. Light-colored soil made up the path, and the trail succinctly dissected the grassy span for as far as the cast of my lights could reach. In the pale moonlight, I could detect no end to the meadow as I walked along.

Actually, it was a pleasant stroll . . . until the first mosquito stung my neck. Then another buzzed in my ear. Then one struck my leg. A swarm of the little blood-suckers surrounded my torso. Two dozen more circled overhead.

I started racing down the trail, screaming. I could only sprint a short distance before my legs shrieked in agony and I was forced to slow; and then the tiny savages caught up with me again, and I forced myself to strike back out on a run. We continued this cat-and-mouse game across the meadow and up a gradual incline, where the warmer, drier air and brisker breeze abated the nuisance.

My heart raced and perspiration dripped down my face. I'd already drunk one of my water bottles dry, and I needed to conserve the other for farther up the trail. There were no more aid stations left. But I was overheating and risked dehydration if I didn't keep drinking. So I gulped from the second bottle, depleting my remaining supply.

Coming over a minor embankment, I sensed movement up ahead by the side of the trail. I flashed my light at it. When a light flashed back at me, I knew it must be another runner, or one very smart bear.

It turned out to be a pacer, actually; the runner was lying flat on his back.

“I'm letting him nap a little while,” the pacer explained. “He's been puking for about the last ten miles and he was starting to drift off, so it seemed like a good time to rest.”

I looked down at the runner with my headlamp. He was sleeping on the ground, completely stiff, and his face appeared jaundiced.

“Are you staying with him all the way to the finish?”

“If we can get that far,” he said. “You know what DNF stands for, don't you?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I've been trying to repress those words for the past ninety-five miles.”

“At this point in the race,” he went on, “it stands for ‘Did Nothing Fatal.'”

We both knew what he meant. The race isn't over until you cross the finish line. People have been forced to quit with less than a mile left, for reasons that weren't always voluntary.

“You see that light up there?” he said, pointing off into the distance.

“Yes, I see it.”

“That's Robie Point. That's where we need to go.”

Robie Point is where the Western States trail leaves the wilderness for the paved city streets of Auburn. From Robie Point it's just over a mile to the finish line on the Placer High School track. That light at Robie Point was faint and fleeting and well off in the distance.

“Where's your pacer?” he asked.

“Big mistake—I haven't got one.”

“Whew,” he said. “You don't want to be out here all alone, it gets kind of hairy.”

“I know. It's my first States and I didn't really understand what I was getting into.”

“Man, if it's your first time, you're killing it! To make it this far in this amount of time is phenomenal.”

Now, if I could just live to tell the story, it would be all the better.

I thanked him and pressed on. The path entered a twisting succession of zigzag turns. Although the cornering was tricky as I ran along, the pitch remained surprisingly flat and even. Suddenly I detected a substantial void between the slope that I was on and the rise of the adjacent hill. It wasn't possible to fly between the two, so there was probably going to be an abrupt topological change in the not-too-distant future.

And soon enough, the trail literally dropped out from under my feet. I lurched forward, with no surface beneath me, and began free-falling. When my foot finally contacted the ground, the speed was too much to remain upright. I tripped, fell, and wheeled down the slope like a barrel, eventually crashing into a sturdy shrub.

I lay there on my back, gazing up at the sky while the world whirled round and round. Afraid to move, I remained motionless.

When my head finally stopped spinning, I inched myself up. I'd been deposited on a small ledge, with a steep drop below me. Thank God that shrub had arrested my fall—who knows where I might have ended-up otherwise?

The embankment that I'd tumbled down was composed of loose sandstone; it wasn't going to be easy getting back up. After collecting my senses, I slowly rose, took a deep breath, and began a calculated charge up the hillside. The footing was sandy, my feet sank as I dug in, but I desperately clawed my way to the top.

Debris filled both my shoes.
Screw it, no need to empty them out.
My feet were toast anyway. Best just to keep moving forward.

Rattled by the fall, I labored up the trail with reserve, watching for other unmarked drop-offs. The path wove confusingly through tall shrubs for a while and then stopped abruptly at a sheer rock wall.

Clearly they didn't expect for us to free-climb a vertical rock face, did they? I searched for a way around the obstruction, thinking that perhaps the trail was hidden from view. But blocking all potential exit routes were thick and impenetrable bushes.

Then it occurred to me: this was not the Western States trail at all. I was lost. Time to make a U-turn.

Backtracking was deflating. I've made my share of mistakes over the years, but this was an exceptionally costly blunder, wreaking havoc on my psyche. I'd fallen down a hill and then taken a costly detour. How much worse could it possibly get?

The answer, unfortunately, was “much.”

The final climb to Robie Point was hellacious. My remaining water was consumed early in the ascent, leaving me dry. I marched wearily upward, stumbling frequently. My hands were cut, and my arms and legs were bruised and scraped.

After I'd contended with this beastly climb for about as long as my body could hold up, the lights of Robie Point finally came into view. I was coated in dirt and drooling on myself as I covered the last few feet of approach. My eyes were nearly shut; all I could see was the ground a few feet in front of me.

A man stood there with a record log. When he saw me, he dropped the clipboard and ran over to help. I crumpled into his outstretched arms, and he slowly lowered my body to the ground. He was talking to me, almost yelling, but I was fading in and out and couldn't comprehend a word.

Then another face appeared above me. It was oddly familiar.

“Dad?”

“My God, son,” he replied gravely. “What's happened to you?”

He knelt down beside me and took my head in his hands. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. He cradled my body gently, as though trying to protect any last bits of life that were still left inside.

“Where's Mom?” I whispered. “I don't want her to see me like this.”

My father choked back tears. “Don't worry, son. She's waiting at the finish line.”

“Dad,” I said weakly, “I'm not sure what to do at this point. I can barely move.”

“Son,” he said resolutely, “if you can't run, then walk. And if you can't walk, then crawl. Do what you have to do. Just keep moving forward and never, ever give up.”

He closed his eyes and held me tightly. I reached up and put my hand on his shoulder. “I will, Dad,” I muttered. “I won't give up.”

He loosened his hold and I rolled onto my stomach. I got my arms and legs in place and then simply followed his instructions: I began crawling up the road. I could hear Dad trying to control his crying as I dragged my body off into the distance.

The course
was now on paved city streets, but it was still pitch-dark. There were no lampposts along this back-country road on the outskirts of town. No side-walks, either, so I crawled up the middle of the dark road. I rose to my feet and shuffled when capable, but mostly I crawled. Slower and slower I progressed, until my legs were nearly useless and I inched forward using primarily my arms.

The finish was less than a mile away, but it was bullheaded ambition to continue onward in this manner. I would never make it at this rate, the odds were impossible. Still, nothing was going to stop me.

Not even the car that came barreling down the road at me.

I stopped crawling and waved my flashlight at it. Eventually the driver slammed on the brakes, then pulled up beside me. A man and woman leaped out.

“Are you all right?!”

I was flat on my stomach in the road. Slanting my head sideways, I muttered, “Never felt better.”

“Oh, thank God,” the woman cried. “We thought you got hit by a car.”

“Nah,” I groaned. “I just look that way.”

I contorted myself into a sitting position and explained what was going on. They offered to help, but there really wasn't much they could do. The finish line was so close, but it just as well could have been on a different continent. Destroyed, I reclined on the warm asphalt in front of them, thoroughly defeated.

But when my back hit the ground, a strange phenomenon began: my mind started to replay the events of the day. And through all the pain and despair I'd experienced over the past ninety-nine miles, the memories that came flooding in were good ones of all the people who had helped me along the path. Jim the “foot-repair man.” Nate the water guy at Last Chance. The lady who baked magic brownies. My sister, who inspired me in life, and whose spirit inspired me to this day. The final scene that played through my mind was that of the Indian chief at the Ford's Bar aid station and the last words he had said to me: “You can do it.”

It hit me as if I'd awoken from a dream, only to realize that I wasn't dreaming at all. I turned to the couple standing by their car and defiantly proclaimed, “I can.”

They both stared at me. With even more resilience in my voice I repeated, “I can!”

They blinked at me, but the husband played along.

“Yes,” he bellowed. “Yes, you can!”

I jumped to my feet and started shaking my arms and legs wildly. I swung my head around, letting out an animal-like growl. And then I took off, dashing up the road, shouting, “I can! I can!”

The initial few steps were agonizing, but it's not like the hurt came as some big surprise. I knew what to expect by this point. Though it hurt like never before, I no longer just numbly accepted the pain for what it was. Now I went after it, sought it out, hunted it down. The pain radiated from every cell in my body, and my response was to push even harder. The tables were turned.
To hell with the pain: bring it on!