©
Art Hutchinson, 2004
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The trail flattened as we crested the ridge, reflections
from snowmelt puddles dancing in our lights. We stood in a wide, marshy expanse
of grassy tundra hillocks. I looked at my watch: 2:00AM. The clouds that
had surrounded us most of the day had parted around midnight, or maybe we’d
climbed above; I hadn’t really noticed. The moonless sky loomed, vast and
patient. I shivered involuntarily, my urgent breath misting gently in
my flashlight’s beam. Pressing the bulb against my leg to quash the light, I
looked up from the muddy trail—my focus for the last fifteen hours. The stars
were bright and sharp, like diamonds in ink, their ancient light just now
arriving.
“You can out-distance that which is
running after you,
but not what is running inside you.”
(Rwandan Proverb)
The first humans, hunting elk in these mountains millennia
ago, had seen much the same sky. What meaning or comfort had they extracted from
it? They’d lived with constant, fear: starvation, exhaustion, frostbite, fatal
falls off unseen cliffs, mauling by wolf or bear. All were visceral, real and
close—the brutal expenses of existence. Yet they had persisted through
circumstances beyond anything we could imagine. They had to. We had chosen to
come: by jet plane, wearing Gore-Tex jackets, precision digital watches, and
polypropylene underwear, carrying LED lights, our feet clad in high-tech blister
tape, studying detailed laminated maps, and consuming specially formulated
nutrition drinks from little plastic bottles. Our trail was marked with chemical
glow-sticks hanging in the trees. Radio-coordinated medical rescue teams stood
by, tracking our progress as we passed each well-stocked aide station. We had
every advantage, save one: necessity.
How did those early hunters manage their fear and hardship?
Why was I cracking under so much less strain, with so much more support? The
answer lies in what we think is real. They knew that their very lives—and the
lives of those they cared for—depended on a successful hunt. Risks were
inevitable, even mandatory. Endurance was the ante to live; hardship their constant companion. Pain was not a thing to be measured out in careful doses in
a clean and well-lit gym. It was the non-negotiable price of making it through
to spring. They would run until they caught dinner. I would run until I wished
to stop.
They'd evolved the common sense to seek shelter and warmth each night. The aide stations we passed offered roaring fires, hot food, companionship (and commiseration), plus a dry place to sit down. Strong primal instincts drew me to these places—to pause, eat, and bond with my trail companions. An equally strong instinct recoiled at the artificial need to quickly leave them. Trudging on through dark, cold, damp and wind didn’t seem sane or natural. As tired as I'd been, my entire outlook had been different during the day. Darkness tore at the fiber of my being.
"Hey you! out there in the
cold…
Don't give in without a fight."
(Pink Floyd)
The small seed of knowing that I didn’t have to do this
had grown as night had come. Plentiful support, careful training and modern
gadgets could not stop me from doing what I was about to do. The physical facts
just weren’t adding up the way I’d hoped. I was going to drop out of the
Bighorn 100-mile trail run—my first ‘DNF’ in over twenty years. I
recognized only then that I’d been plotting this decision for hours. I
hadn’t wanted to admit it—desperately suppressing and denying and resisting.
I still didn’t want to admit it. But I couldn’t deny it anymore. I wanted
to drop out.
All day, I realized now, I’d been pushing just a tiny bit
too hard, my ego running out ahead, gesturing seductively for me to follow. I
had. And that had been enough. Now truth was settling in. Sleepy and sluggish
from altitude (nine-thousand feet), cold (around freezing), and fatigue (forty
seven miles), my legs just wouldn’t move. Such a result might seem obvious to
those outside the sport. I’d already run nearly two
marathons back-to-back over mountainous terrain. Among veteran ultrarunners,
however, this was an embarrassingly early point at which to be experiencing such
fundamental trouble. Successful competitors tend to be adept at managing such doubts as
they arise. It's a discipline that can be phenomenally difficult to maintain
through a day—much less a day, a night and another day after that.
I counted the positives. My stomach was feeling fine (I’d been eating well enough). I
wasn’t that sore (the trail was soft). I had no blisters of any consequence.
But some internal biomechanical ‘clutch’, it seemed, had completely
disengaged. I had finished an ‘easier’ 100-miler in Vermont the
previous summer. It had been tough, but I'd prevailed. I’d encountered similar
trouble with sleepiness, but not until roughly twice
as far into the event. I knew I could fake it for fifteen miles. There was no
way I could fake it
for fifty. My ‘race’ had devolved into a halting stagger, and a struggle to stay
warm, awake, and moving. After several hours of this already, I’d concluded it
was more than just a ‘bad patch’. Things weren’t going to get a lot
better; I wasn’t going to be speeding up anytime soon, and I wasn't having
fun.
“You do
not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into.”
Jonathan Swift
Still, doubt tugged at me. Was I in medical danger? No.
Could I keep going? Yes. Could I make the next cutoff (nineteen miles away and
eight hours hence)? Maybe. Could I make the cutoff after that (at
eighty-two)? Perhaps,
but I didn’t think so. Might I trip and break something (as
I’d done two months earlier)? That was certainly a fear. Did I have an
understandable excuse? No. Or yes. Or maybe. I couldn’t really say. And who
else could? I wasn’t thinking clearly. No one single thing was wrong, but many
smaller errors had piled up. I wasn’t moving very fast. Could I have prepared
better? Perhaps. But I’d done all I could without sacrificing my family to my
ego. And in any case, that wasn’t a very useful thought right now. Was it
worth the cost? My view on that had certainly evolved in the last few hours. Did
I have anything to prove? Not really. But if not, then why had I come? What had
drawn me here? I didn’t have a plausible answer.
I’d mustered every twist of logic and persuasion to whip
myself into continuing: upbeat songs, bright and happy sayings, an inventory of
things that were going fairly well, thoughts of shame and censure if I failed.
But each mental strategy was met with equal force. I was arguing with myself,
and a tie match would be useless. Finishing such an event, I knew, required
total unity of purpose: body, mind, and spirit. For reasons not apparent, such
unity had eluded me—all remnants of determination fading with the light. Two
punch-drunk combatants stood there in my mind—swaying, bloody and exhausted,
awaiting a split decision. Divided against myself, I was not going to stand.
It would be some time before I was ready to admit any of
this to anyone else. It would be almost two hours until I would turn in my
number and hear my name broadcast over the radio. I did not look forward to that
moment—the irrevocable admission of defeat. (In the end, I skirted the issue
entirely, convincing my pacer to turn in my race number while I slept on a cot.)
“Hell is a
prepared place for unprepared people.”
(bumper sticker observed at the Bighorn 100-mile trail run)
In the meantime, I inhabited a tiny personal hell, as real, urgent and consuming as anything Dante dreamed. (All hells are highly personal, I suspect). My focus had narrowed to a cocoon of physical misery and childish mental anguish as I stumbled along the trail. I was wet, cold, cranky, and tired—my pace reduced to a laughable eight miles in the past four hours. My desire to be dry, warm and horizontal was irresistible. I didn’t care about anything else. Goals, expectations, and six months of preparation: none of it mattered. I marveled at how quickly physical discomfort could pervert the higher intentions of my mind. I simply could not overlook the fact that hot food and a dry cot weren’t waiting a mile away. They were. I had a choice—many choices.
The higher benefits of continuing and maybe
finishing (pride, elation, joy, status, satisfaction) had mattered a great deal
sitting at home in comfort months ago. Now those same ideas seemed odd,
inaccessible and diffuse—drowned out in my self-inflicted misery of the moment. Redemption
and the fleeting glory of a finish seemed uncertain and abstract—a long way
off at best. I hated the thought, but there it was: I wanted to be doing anything
other than this! Temptation was real and immediate, the benefits of stopping
quite concrete. Like all temptation left to fester, these thoughts had become
overwhelming. I could scarcely think of anything else.
"It is
not because things are difficult that we do not dare;
it is because we do not dare that
they are difficult."
Seneca
We’d started Friday morning at 11:00AM, jogging gently up
a wide dirt road beside a roaring stream. Canyon walls hemmed in tight, rising
almost vertically, echoing the sound. I’d stopped to take pictures, as faster
runners spread out ahead like ants winding up the trail above. An hour into it,
the trees had opened up to cascading fields of alpine vegetation—‘The Sound
of Music’ wrapped in fog. After what seemed an eon, we reached a fence at
seventy-five-hundred feet. The previous day’s snow still clung to the evergreen trees:
Christmas-time in June. Underfoot, the picture was less pretty. Unseasonable
moisture had turned clay-filled soil into a gluey mess. With each step, our
shoes got heavier and thicker, turning us into bizarre, unstable caricatures of
a rock stars in platform shoes.
Reaching the first aide station, I worked to squelch my
elation. It didn’t work. I was on pace and feeling strong: only ninety-two
miles to go. I gobbled a boiled potato and was off. The weather was hard to
gauge. One minute I’d be shivering and damp in a stiff breeze. Around the
corner, I’d be shedding layers as the wind settled in behind. Sloping open
fields gave way to undulating forest roads and trails, then back again to
fields. The pristine beauty of the area was constant and amazing—breathtaking
at times. Bizarre and colorful rock formations loomed high above; silent carpets
of trees stretched out below; the sound of rushing water whispered in the
distance; elk footprints appeared on the muddy trail; colorful wildflowers
accented the gray felt sky.
Around the marathon mark, I began to sag. Afternoon was
waning; skies remained thick and glum. I was running largely on my
own—something I’ve always found particularly tough. At an aide station deep
in the woods, a volunteer offered advice: “I’d do a split on this next
section if I were you.” I stared blankly. He spread his feet wide like a
novice skier, earnestly trying to help me understand. I had no idea what he
meant. A hundred yards out of camp, I turned a corner and figured it out. A
sloppy trench sloped downhill where the trail had been. It looked as if a troop
of midgets had been reenacting the Battle of the Marne. I goose-stepped
carefully, emerging half a mile later, surprised to have not fallen in the muck.
My pace and mood picked up as I neared the thirty-mile aide
station at the bottom of the Littlehorn Canyon. Was it the lower altitude?
Warmer temperatures? The excitement and anticipation of seeing my crew and
picking up my pacer? As would happen hours later in the negative, physical and
mental factors spun together into a positive outlook. I entered the aide station
five minutes ahead of schedule and set to work changing shoes, eating dinner,
and packing warmer clothes. In just under twenty minutes I was out of
there—beginning another vertical mile back up and out of the canyon on the
other side of the river. Seventeen miles and seven hours later, I would fold my
hand.
"You can't create experience.
You must undergo it."
Albert Camus
In hindsight, I realize I made some key mistakes: letting
my effort drift up too high on the long climbs early on, running the downhills
too aggressively, forgetting to pick up my chocolate-covered espresso beans for
the night, not recovering fully from a hard race a few weeks earlier. But those
things had been enough. Ultrarunning legend Ann Trason has been quoted as saying
that: “The margin for error in a 100-mile run is precisely zero.” And she
should know. I would find out later that I was in good company. Of 75 who’d
started the race, only 40 finished under the 34-hour cutoff the next evening.
Watching a few of them do that (after
I’d had a nap, a meal, and a shower), I could scarcely comprehend the
discipline that they had mustered to persist. The maladies that led the rest of
us to our own customized hells of resignation had varied: bad stomachs, blown
knees, trashed quads, altitude sickness, or some other downward spiral of mental
and physical distress: mind and matter not in synch.
“In the greater game, we strive not for winning, but
to extend our personal boundaries…
to create ourselves in motion as a celebration of our creaturehood.
True excellence is achieved only in playing the greater game.”
Loraine Moller
While humbled by this experience, I recognize its larger importance in teaching me things I probably ought to learn: not just about running an ultra, but about running a life—a rich source of metaphor and inspiration. It's nearly impossible to find the finish line alone, even as one must be comfortable alone in order to succeed. Getting through one hundred miles on foot in a single push is always hard—inconceivably so to most people. I count myself as blessed for having achieved it even once.
A good
friend reminds me that she has finished only two of these in six attempts—a
level of accomplishment about which she can be justifiably proud. Compared to
running say, a marathon or 10K, there is no widely accepted formula for
succeeding at this
distance. Mental strategies and emotional wisdom always play the biggest parts.
Proper physical training, while important, matters little if these elements are
misaligned. There are basic principles (train long, arrive rested, start slow, eat much), but the
real keys to success are always more personal and subtle.
Would I do this again? It’s too early to say. There’s a lot I still need to assimilate. I was happy to spend quality time with old friends in an exceptionally beautiful place, to watch one of them excel beyond his wildest dreams, and to make several new ones in the process. And that should be enough, shouldn't it? Hardship, even of a highly artificial nature, has the capacity to forge extraordinary bonds of camaraderie—one thing that makes me think that yes, I may be back—once I’ve trained a little more.
My other race reports: www.cartegic.com/training_&_racing.htm