I thought of Samwise Gamgee in the Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and he are embarking on their epic journey. He halts on a farmer's trail and says, " If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been." Well, at that moment, 17 miles into the 31 miles of the ultra, I realized that I had already run farther than I had ever run before, in an event or in training. Each step was a new personal record.
The woods were glorious that morning and the temperature perfect. I was running comfortably behind two ladies from Oakridge, happy just to follow someone else's pace. I knew from mountain climbing and from shorter runs that you wanted to get to within a few miles of the end and then really start running. Until then you were pacing yourself, running within yourself. Somewhere in the back of my mind I probably recalled that I had registered for this run without really training for it, but the idea that I might have to slow down was far away. I was only doing this long trail run because someone had twisted my arm into volunteering at an Aid Station for twice as long Where's Waldo trail ultra, 100 kilometers and 15,000 feet of elevation gain that, for some reason, appealed to me. So, with just two weeks to learn how to manage a trail run, and no time to train, here I was, thinking about Frodo and Sam.
It was around this time that the lady running in front started to scream. And sprint. The second lady began to sprint too and I heard the words no trail runner wants to hear, screamed in terror:
"Yellow jackets are biting me."
Yellow jackets are like NBA referees, they rarely punish the first foul, and always punish the later one. As third in our group, that would be me. So I sprinted as fast as I could over rock and root maybe 300 yards. No pain. I kept sprinting (it was amazing how fast the Oakridge ladies were going) another few hundred yards. Nothing, no sting. The woman in front registered five or six stings and the two followers got nothing. I guess the yellow jackets had not gotten the memo.
Maybe that was what began to slow me down in the next 30 minutes or so, that half mile adrenaline sprint. Or perhaps it was what happened at the beginning of the run. You see, my race (early start) was scheduled to leave Ice Cap Campground at 6:30 am. My wife and I drove up, ate at the local restaurant, then found a wide spot in the campground and slept in the car. Fitful rest, as you might imagine, but dark and cool night. I rose at about 5:30 to discover that we had forgotten to bring anything to boil water for tea in, so it was going to be a cold breakfast. I had counted on hot tea to help me swallow the scrambled eggs and sausage I had cooked up the evening before. Now I ate them cold and a tad greasy, I might say, and washed them down with cold water. Anyway, I kept looking for people to congregate near the official start of the race, which I knew would be under an awning I had seen the evening before. At 6:20 by my watch I still saw no one (well, these West Coast people must surely be laid back) and when I finally located another awning about a quarter mile away and got to it, my watch said 6:25. Whew.
"I'm here for the start."
"Which start?"
"Early start."
"That was just about four minutes ago. They already left." He pointed to a white line drawn across the road and said, "Follow the signs." The trail started on a gravel road, turned quickly onto a piled berm of dirt (with a white arrow straight over it) and then curved away from the course I anticipated into the trees. Great, I was going to get lost in the first ten minutes. Should I just wait for the regular start? Fortunately the trail turned and I was back on course, heading northeast.
Okay, so maybe I took the first 45 minutes of the run at a slightly faster pace than I should have, trying to catch up with the rest of the group (which I eventually did). Maybe that extra exertion was kicking in now, four hours into the run, exacting its toll. I don't know.
What I do know is that sometime within the fifth hour I began to slow down, no matter how many cups of flat cola and liquid gels I consumed, and about this time my right knee and ankle began to stiffen up. My ankle? I knew why that was happening--I had rolled it slightly while circling Clear Lake in the first hour. My knee? I don't know when I torqued it. Possibly I did it on one of the ten or twelve profanity-laced stumbles I took between hour 2 and hour 5. Interesting thing about those stumbles. First of all, I tried very hard not to swear, at the end as a kind of experiment. Impossible. And, at a certain level of fatigue, you kick a root, lose your balance, fall forward and--right before you catch yourself and right your ship and avoid opening up a capillary or two, and just when you begin to let fly the worst word you know--you have the distinct pleasure of feeling both of your legs cramp up. Nice. Fortunately it's only temporary, a split second or so, and then it returns to normal.
In all events, I ended up going slower and slower the last 10 miles. It was no trouble to jog the flats and the undulations, but I was walking the uphills and it became more and more of an effort to stay jumping and moving on the downhills. Also I had the most prolonged conversation with my body, one that went something like this:
"Hey, you've done great, but I really think we can stop now."
"Body, be quiet and keep going."
"Seriously, Doug, you've proved your point. We're hurting all over, we're really tired. We could probably find that road and hitch an easy ride to the finish. We've run, what, 25 miles now--that's practically a marathon. On the trails, through the woods for crying out loud. We even outran some yellow jackets."
"Body, just keep moving. And keep quiet."
"Dude, I am not kidding. I am just about all in, here, nothing left in the gas tank, nada, zilch. Next time, I swear, we'll get all trained and ready and we'll run the entire 50K. Heck, let's just go 100K next time. But for now, I get it, I understand, but there's just nothing left."
And so it went for the longest time. I've had these conversations before, at 11,000 or 12,000 feet on a glacier, but never one that lasted such a long time.
Anyway, I did make it to the end, when I walked I walked fast and swung my arms like a kindergartener, and when I jogged I really just jogged. Not pretty.
But I finished in plenty of time to get a shower and some lunch, and drive a couple hours back to town. And I had a profound sense of joy. Yes, I would be back next year, I thought, and yes I would actually train for it.
