My first leg was the fourth leg of the relay. It was around noon and the sun was beginning to beat down like sword blades. My relay leg would be “unsupported.” No van. No van mates to offer me comfort or drink. I walked across the sandy soil through the sagebrush and dry heat. I promptly headed for the tent for my last little bit of shade. And I waited for Connor to break around the corner and hand off to me for the first time the yellow slap bracelet. I would soon be entering the desert, before coming out on the other side of the wilderness, I figured, either as a new day prophet or dead, whichever came first.
I took the bracelet from Connor and slapped it on my right wrist. My left wrist already had my Garmin on it, taped together with duct tape, because of a recent accident, where I had also injured my chest, thumping it against the earth . I would be running on a dirt road for 7.1 miles. My strategy, of course, was to find where the soil was the most compacted and run there. Fortunately, there were two tire tracks which were a little more firm. The surface was giving way under my feet a little more than one would desire, but not bad. My first mile was right about on my predicted pace of 9:30. So far, so good. On the second mile, I got “road kill.” I passed one guy. Right away, another runner killed me, passing at a pretty good clip. I acknowledged to the Relay Gods, OK, you’ve handed out my karma; we’re even, now. And in that acknowledgement, alas, a cloud appeared, and just ahead of me was shade, a sort of circle of shade, twenty feet in width. In a little while—I looked forward—I would be bathed in the cool waters of shade, heavenly shade. Unfortunately, I guess I did not express my appreciation enough to the Relay Gods, because my punishment was that cloud traveled at exactly 9:30 pace, just staying ahead of me, just out of my reach. For almost a mile, that spot of shade eluded me. And you might say it’s just sour grapes on my part, but I’m thinking that shade probably didn’t feel as cool as it looked anyway.
Then ahead was more road kill. I passed another runner as if he were standing still. To get around him, I moved into the other tire track, but in doing so I ran across the middle where the dirt really was like the dry sand on an ocean beach. I had to labor sluggishly through it until I reached the other tire track, almost tripping; the change in surface was so sudden. At mile three I saw that I had slowed down to exactly one minute off pace, slow. But I still had passed someone!
At mile four I saw someone gaining on me. I thought maybe this is avoidable. I could kill myself and surely stay ahead of him for two more miles, so that I’d come out ahead with one more road kill than what my enemies had inflicted on me, but that wasn’t really an option, since I was already in the process of killing myself. Not to be outdone though, as he passed me, I added a little unexpected flourish to my running. Suddenly, my Garmin sprang from my wrist and landed out in front of me. Just as he was about to console me with a sad but friendly “Good job,” he changed it up and remarked, “Oops!” Without breaking stride I snapped that thing off the ground, checked its vital signs, and with its heart still pumping, I deposited it in my pocket. It was impressive, if I don’t say so myself. Actually more impressive than this guy passing me, as I thought, this probably won’t be the last person to pass me; it’s going to become quite commonplace indeed.
Two days before leaving for Cascade Lakes Relay, my wife Lisa and I had taken her high school friend Carmen to hike Silver Falls Trail. With a little more than a mile to go, Carmen generously said, “Why don’t you run the rest of the way if you want?” I looked pleadingly to my wife. I had been restraining myself for five miles, chomping at the bit, with no sign of complaint from me about the slow pace of this thing we call hiking, which is really just walking dressed up with a decorated name. Lisa graciously said, “Go ahead.” And I was a Thoroughbred, whipping down that trail, with the trail-side vegetation just a blur beside me, falling behind me now. With about a half mile to go, a root, the root of all evil, grabbed my right foot, pushing it up until I was suspended flat horizontal to the earth, before the earth rapidly rose up and slammed into my chest, hard. I felt my heart loosen and bounce off the back of my ribcage. My hands and knees and chin slid across the trail.
I lay there thinking, “Oh my god, two days before the race. I think it’s too late to replace me. My angry teammates are going to have to pick up my 21.3 mile slack.” Then I got up, no problem. I brushed myself off, evaluating my body for injuries. It seemed to be only my scrapes that were stinging—no bruises, no broken bones. I walked a little ways; everything seemed fine, so I started running, a little more gingerly now. About a hundred and fifty yards after my fall, I wanted to check my watch and see what that delay had done to my pace. The watch was gone. I ran back in a panic, thinking I’d have to look in the undergrowth for it, but there it lay, like a sad corpse, half buried in the dust. Later that night, I realized my bloody scrapes had been nothing compared to the blow my chest had taken, and my chest was hurting intensely.
For the rest of my relay leg, no one passed me, and I passed no one. It was a wash; I broke even, but my overall pace did end up a minute slower, adding an unplanned extra seven minutes to our total. As it would turn out, I think Connor and I were chiefly to blame for the highest proportion of minutes our team was falling behind from our anticipated team time. The two men, being shown up by the one other male from our other van, but mostly we were being shown up by a bunch of our studly ladies on the team. To shame, to shame.
I rounded the corner, crossed the road, and was never so glad to see Shelley’s bright face like a beacon in the darkness. And my van mates, all there. In fact, the world was still there, as I exited the wilderness, still alive, and thus a prophet. “This is going to be a long, hard race for this old man, sometimes known as the Mo’Dogg, when I’m being cool. But right now I’m not all that cool.”
Shana encouraged me to stretch. I said, “I don’t do stretches. I just sit down”—sitting quickly in that straight-backed van seat, the only option here; sitting, a privilege, one of the few, of my advanced years on earth. I sat there in the van, and my mind went blank, as I stared straight ahead to the nearly hundreds of miles of road still left to go. I had completed Leg Number Four, and there were still thirty-two more legs left for my team to run, Running from Badgers.
(To be continued.)
(To be continued.)
No comments:
Post a Comment