Monday, October 25, 2010

The race... tiring and remembering

I stood there while he filled up my pack and looked back to see about 4 or 5 runners coming in to the station. I checked out the food table and drank some water and Heed. I looked over the food. There were M&Ms and Oreo cookies… didn’t have the stomach for that stuff. I took another small swig of Coke. The running/walking woman came up and said, “what should I drink here?” I said the Heed was good and that I wasn’t into all the candy and stuff but I DID like the Coke. “But,” I said, “I really like Coke.” She then said, “I do too.” But she didn’t take any. She had a stern look on her face as she checked out the table. I think she just grabbed some water. I was looking up the gradual incline that we were all about to climb. It turned up and went behind some trees to the right. Straight ahead was the mountain. Mile 27… I’m starting to feel it. The other runners all started moving ahead and I put my Camelbak on and headed up. I asked the guy at the station, “This is mile 27, right?” He said, “No its mile 26.” He was wrong and I knew it. So why did I ask him?... I was starting to get into my own head. I always do this when I run marathons. It makes Liz cringe. She says I psyche myself out. I think this is true. But I was catching myself doing it so when it happened I would just move on… Its supposed to hurt. Its supposed to get unpleasant. That’s what they all say about these runs and that’s exactly what was beginning for me…

Up, up, up we all climbed. The long incline would last through mile 33 and a half or so. It went slowly with lots of rolling hills. From behind me the guy from Connecticut who dreamed he ran forever came up. “Hey!” he said. “How you doing?” I asked. He seemed to be doing very well. I wanted to confirm that that station was mile 27 and he said yes but he wasn’t tracking the miles. He was paying attention to hours and what he needed to do at each point in time. Had we been eating lunch or something I may have asked him to expound on this but I wasn’t really in the place to hear someone else’s strategy while I was beginning to tire. This much was correct… I needed to get the mile count out of my head. He moved on ahead. And I kept going at my own pace.

The 5 runners that were behind me were now all in front of me. They were all running and walking and running and walking up the hills. I just kept my slow jog going. I didn’t let the fact that people were passing me bother me too much. There was 23 miles to go and I wasn’t going to let my ego ruin the second half of the run. Let them go. I ended up catching the last guy in the pack and passing him. He looked tired. A woman driving a station wagon pulled over and asked if we wanted Gatorade or anything. She was probably supporting one of the other runners. I said thanks but declined. I just left the aid station a half mile ago so I didn’t want to keep stopping. Especially if my “fatigue thoughts” were starting to work on me… Keep going… The guy behind me stopped and took a drink. That was the last I saw of him.

I kept my eyes on the runners ahead of me for this portion of the run. I kept them in my sight for about 4 miles or so before they eventually vanished behind the trees and hills up ahead. In front of me was the side of this big hill to the left that went up and up and nothing but farmland sloping down to the right where the trees started clearing out. I passed the little pond that Emily spotted in the car the day before when Steve and I toured the course with her. It probably was about 50 yards in diameter. She woke up from her nap and immediately said, “Look! A lake!” which made Steve and I chuckle. I thought of her singing to the Lightning McQueen CD. I then passed a cattle farm. There must have been about 30 cows grazing.

Up ahead the mile 32 aid station loomed. There was what looked like a small church behind a bunch of trees. After a while I made it to the station… Now according to my mental strategy, the first part of my run was over and it was a success. This had me in great spirits. Up until this point in time the longest distance that I had ever gone was 32 miles. My thought was to take a break if I needed to at mile 32 and maybe eat a “meal” like a half-sandwich or something. My stomach wasn’t up for that. I began to mentally prepare myself for the next 18 miles… or, for me, the unknown. Liz and Laura were supposed to meet me at this station but I saw no sign of them. I grabbed some Heed and water and started walking past the station. I remembered that there was a long steep hill after this that ran on for about a mile and a half. I was now feeling fatigue from the run but I still felt pretty good overall. After a few steps I heard “DAN!” from up ahead. It was Laura I think. I looked up and saw her jumping off the street and running up a short hill on the side of the road. There were some trees in the way so I didn’t see the Forerunner parked in the church parking lot.

I kept walking up the road past the lot where the truck was. Emily and Will were both running around the parking lot and Liz and Laura were running after them. I was so happy to see them and I was also worried about the kids being in the car all around this lake. It wasn’t the most ideal weekend for a 1 year old and a 3 year old. I am very grateful for my wife and kids and for “Aunt” Laura. I felt a little sad I wasn’t with them today.

They had all the goodies that I had packed… Gatorade, chocolate milk, Snickers bars, bananas, oranges… no Snickers bars. I couldn’t understand how some of the runners really like to eat that stuff during the later miles. I drank some Gatorade, ate a banana and then eyeballed the chocolate milk (Nestle Quik in the yellow bottle with the brown bunny on the label). I took a gulp and then downed the entire bottle in about 3 to 4 seconds. I don’t know why chocolate milk is so good after a run but it really is. Steve put us on to this. Its good AFTER but I wasn’t sure about DURING a run. After the last swallow I thought, “I don’t know if that was such a good idea.” Oh well.

I sat on the back of the truck for a couple of minutes and talked to the girls for a bit. They were switching modes between being my support team and managing the kids. They had a rough time navigating the route which was confusing by car and they missed Steve who was presently tearing the course up. This visit wasn’t very relaxing as I felt responsible for having to tend to my kids. I knew they had the kids covered. I just felt like I should be helping. But I had to move on... I got up and walked back out to the street. I was worried about the chocolate milk in my stomach… I hoped it wasn’t going to make me sick. I decided to walk a bit to let it digest. I looked at my watch. It was 6 hours and 15 minutes since the start. I felt that if I made 30 miles in 6 hours and was still feeling ok I’d be in good shape. This was done. I was optimistic. I reset my watch to time the last 18 miles.

The girls started getting the kids into the car and I headed off walking up the long hill with no trees on either side. There was a fruit stand in about a half mile on the left and I saw a police car stopped with the lights flashing. There was a car pulled over on the left side of the road. I wondered what this was all about for a minute but I didn’t really care much after that. I just kept walking, waiting for the right feeling to come back so that I could get back to running. My stomach was a bit off and I didn’t want to make it worse. Again I was maintaining my conservative approach.

I walked past the fruit stand and then the police car. There was some young people in the pulled-over car and then, further up the road another car was stopped. As I kept going a guy with John Lennon circular sunglasses got out of the car on top of the hill and started walking down towards the cop car. He looked like a guy from one of the aid stations. I said “hey” and kept on. He was preoccupied with the scene in front of him and I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

I took the next left and the incline continued for another quarter mile or so. The girls drove up behind me in the truck. They stopped and asked how I was. I said I was taking a little walking break and they said I was doing great and to keep going. They looked back at the kids and started chanting “Go Daddy go! Go Daddy go!” They drove off in search of Steve. I looked at my watch and realized I had walked for about 20 minutes. I needed to start running again. Finally I hit the top of the hill and started to run. I got a small burst of energy and was back into a stride. The downhill helped get me going and I started to feel better.

Running “Quiet”

This part of the run is foggy in my memory for some reason. Maybe because it was the most uncertain part of the entire run. I was worried about how I felt. I didn’t feel horrible but I didn’t feel good anymore. I wanted to finish and I was focused on anything that could have potentially prevented that. I was through two thirds of the way but there was still a long way to run.

I was at my most doubtful here but I kept going. I started to think of everything that made me decide to do this. I thought of how long I had trained… 41 weeks total. And I thought of Congo. The torture and rape of children and young females that have barely seen womanhood… all of the awful things. How there are people with such little hope. In Lisa Shannon’s book “A Thousand Sisters” Congo is said to have both the worst and the best of humanity. While there is so much tragedy, there is great hope and love as well. People with nothing take in lost and orphaned children off the dirt roads and out of the woods to try to give them a chance. I have so much. How much do I appreciate what I have? If you look at my family and my possessions you’d see that I am a king… I should run as a king…

I kept going. I thought of my friend Stan and was sad. Stan died in March and through my training I grieved him. I’d spent hours upon hours with myself running over the past 10 months. It gave me a lot of time to think about him… how we weren’t in contact very much at the end of his life. In all of this I felt every emotion I could feel. And I found that the emotions kind of just happened when I ran. Unlike when I was in conversations or even by myself, there was something about the activity of running that evoked more pure emotions… maybe it’s the rhythm that leads into various states of exhaustion. Before you know it you’re not thinking the way you normally think. I began training in December so when Stan died I had already been doing longer runs. I remember runs when I would suddenly realize that tears were streaming down my cheeks. I would quietly run. It was usually early in the morning. I was alone. Sometimes I’d miss him so much. He really had a huge impact on my life. He was far from perfect but I knew he loved me and was proud of me and I loved that. Training for the ultra allowed me to remember Stan in a very special way. I don’t think I would have grieved him as I did had I not been out on my own in so much quiet for such long periods of time. My every day life would have otherwise distracted me from this.

I then thought of Claude and Lucien. As I was fund raising for Congo I set my fund raising goal at $5000. I figured that this worked out to $100 per mile and that people could “purchase” miles. When the time came to run I made a list of the donators as it coincided with the mile that they purchased. I thought that if I didn’t reach my goal (which I didn’t – to date I had raised almost $3000), the remainder of my run would be a quiet tribute to Claude and Lucien. All except for mile 50. At mile 50 I promised myself to remember Stanley.

The first really horrific story that I read from Congo was about a family that was attacked by a militia. There were five children in this family, a mother named Generose and father named Claude. One night a militia broke into their home, murdered Claude and raped Generose in front of their children. When Generose screamed out they cut her leg off with a machete. The militia then cooked her leg on the fire and forced the children to eat it. The oldest child, Lucien, a 12 year old boy, said that they could kill him but he would not eat his mother’s leg. They shot him dead. That was Generose’s last memory before she woke up in the hospital days later.

I think of this boy, Lucien and I don’t exactly know how to describe my reaction to his story… I have many different thoughts and feelings about it. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. For whatever reasons the things that didn’t used to affect me affect me now… So I quietly ran for Congo and while I did it I thought of Lucien and his father, Claude.

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