Race: Squamish 50
Shoes: New Balance MT10 (first 33 miles), Topo Terraventure (remainder)
Distance: 50 miles
****
Veering off the trail after a little ways, I duck into the woods. If I am to run any portion of this leg of the course, I will absolutely need to do something about this uncomfortable bowel situation. I’ll need to shed some weight.
I make an attempt to take care of some business, but to no avail. I still weigh the same. And worse, squatting in the woods causes cramping spasms in my legs with each attempt to find an adequate position. This just isn’t happening.
Returning to the course, I march onward. Perhaps I’ll feel more comfortable as I continue. That strikes me as wishful thinking. I expect the opposite to be true. I’ve covered forty-three miles with seven to go and I begin to fear the worst is still ahead of me. Further flashbacks to Ragnar occur. Those final seven miles took me two and a half hours. How long will these take? So far, the state of my physicality is disconcertingly congruous between the two events. Let’s hope I can turn that around.
My discomfort swells and I veer off the trail again for attempt number two (no pun). I’m partially successful, but nowhere near satisfied. It will have to do. I guess it’s better than nothing. But let the record show, I am less than pleased.
Regardless, I carry on. I can do nothing more than carry on.
****
To hear my lungs tell it, you’d think I’m attempting to breathe on the surface of mars. My abdomen feels like someone has given me a sharp jab with a baseball bat. Even my arms feel the strain of this excursion, which is something I had not anticipated. Strangely, though, my legs feel pretty okay.
I trudge onward. Every step is agony. My pace is torturously slow. And my guts are in such severe discomfort that every abject effort in the interest of quickening is met with a sudden and unequivocal embargo on accelerated momentum.
As if in direct proportion to the quantity of steps I take forward, I become increasingly nauseous. I’m falling apart. That much is clear. Still, I trek onward. I haven’t considered the possibility of a DNF since I neared the highest point of the course. My lungs were the only things holding me back then. They persist in their revolt now, but are joined by the entirety of my existence more and more with every passing second.
Finally, I can go no further. Nausea floods in, washing over me in full force and I realize I’m going to vomit. There is no avoiding that eventuality. Just as with a physical decent, I’m struck by the horrifying realization that, in a trail run such as this, what goes down, must come up.
A wave of lightheadedness flushes me with a feverish sensation all over my body. I fall to my knees on the side of the trail, accepting my fate.
The first heave contracts my gag reflex and abdomen, ejecting the partially digested contents of my stomach. I breathe heavily. That was exhausting.
Another heave. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Nothing comes of this one. I collapse onto my side, a grimace on my face as I let out a pitiful little gasp.
Another dry heave. Good god damn, this is how I die, isn’t it? Tears fill the corners of my eyes, an acidic sting burns my throat.
I steady myself against the ground. This isn’t over yet. One more violent heave racks my body, but this time, I expel more of my belly’s unwanted occupants. After the last expulsion, I sputter and cry out in pain. The nausea subsides.
Are we finished?I ask of my body. I get no response save for a subtle lessening of discomfort. I take this as a sign I am allowed to move on once again.
A fellow participant emerges from around the corner and, upon seeing me sitting on the side of the trail, asks if I need anything. He offers water. I accept his offer. I take a gulp and wash down as much of the residual taste of vomit as water is able. He gives me a sodium capsule and continues on.
Standing to my feet, I feel markedly better. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say I feel a good seventy percent improvement from just a few minutes ago. I continue. I think about running, but the unevenness of the trail prohibits such attempts even before I can successfully complete a few paces. I resign myself to walking for the foreseeable future. The last few miles of this event are going to be the longest by far.
****
Without my phone, I have no music and this leaves me completely alone with my thoughts and physical sensations. And it’s probably also a blessing. Without any music, it’s hard to fully notice the passage of time. The distinction between hours and minutes becomes distorted and I don’t find myself continually focused on how long I’ve been walking.
I ask every competitor who passes me on this endless hike if they know about how many miles or kilometers are left in the course. Each of them gives me a different answer. None of their answers make me feel better.
Eventually I stop asking.
I begin to slip into despair, but before I am swallowed by the darkness entirely, I surrender to a very simple concept. My mantra returns to me.
“This will soon be a memory, faded and flawed, like the others.”
Reciting these words yet again, I remind myself that this is temporary. The race will end. I will not be slogging miserably through these trails forever. One of three things will happen: I will cross the finish line, I will be medically prevented from continuing, or I will miss the cutoff.
If the latter two examples are the case, the race will end for me in a matter of hours at most. Someone will come for me and get me back to civilization. Neither of those scenarios is ideal, but they are each definitive finales to this endeavor. I am okay with a DNF. I’ve done my damnedest. I will continue to do my damnedest. And then the race will end.
But with every step I manage to complete, finishing on my own two feet becomes more and more likely. As long as I continue in this way, I will eventually reach a point where finishing the race on the strength of my own physiology becomes inevitable. We’re not there yet, but every subsequent footfall finds me closer. Inch by inch, I creep slowly toward inevitability.
Because I have nothing but time, my mind wanders. This race will end. It could end in disaster, but every second I keep disaster at bay, a triumphant finish becomes increasingly probable. I extrapolate this beyond the ultramarathon, into the context of life as a whole, framing the event as an analogy.
For those who struggle with depression, suicide can seem an appealing option. The more overwhelmed one gets with life, the more death promises relief. I’ve never been suicidal in a practical sense, but I certainly understand why someone would be. I know the kind of emotional overwhelm that would have to exist in my life to push me over the edge and I do not blame anyone who decides to choose this end for themselves. I think many people judge suicides as weakness, but I strongly disagree.
I certainly don’t think anyone who ends their own life weak, selfish, or cowardly. There have been numerous times in my own life when I’ve resented my own conscious existence. If someone resents their existence long enough, or with enough severity, it’s not surprising to me that they might ultimately come to point where they can justify putting up with it no further.
But what if, instead of calling it quits prematurely, one were to surrender to this idea of finitude? Everything ends. Ultramarathons and life are no different in this. What if we viewed death as inevitable regardless of anything we do? Is that not comforting to one who is weighing suicide? You don’t have to decide to die for death to come for you. We can count on this. We know this is the way of things.
But death is final. Life can always turn around. Circumstances can improve in a split second, and at any time. You only get to die once. There’s no need to rush it. Think of this as a better version of Pascal’s Wager. Everything could change tomorrow, but that doesn’t matter if I die today.
My thoughts carry on, following this rabbit hole in multiple directions until I’m pulled back to this present moment by an eye-catching phenomenon.
Along these final seven miles, I see a few instances of large tree stumps, clearly ancient and long deceased. The bulk of their trunks have been hauled away, who knows how long ago? Within the rings of the former trunk, a younger tree grows upward.
“Life born of death,” I murmur as I pass. It’s a beautiful thing to me and I wish I had my phone. I would like to snap a photo, but the memory will have to do, faded and flawed though it will ultimately be.
****
As I trudge through this eternal death march, a haggard and broken individual, I am passed by several people. One such person is particularly memorable. A stunning woman, probably around my age, glides by me as I make pathetic attempts at navigating down a cruel switchback.
You know those girls who go to the gym, makeup on, decked out in trendy clothes, “working out” in the sense that they’re on the elliptical, but not in the sense that they’re ever going to break a sweat? You know, the intellectual equivalent of some dude bro who goes to the gym just so people notice his superficial muscles. Super hot, but clearly not working very hard. Or, at the very least, not working hard for the right reasons.
Well, this gorgeous woman who nimbly passes me looks like that…except she looks like that at around mile forty-eight of an ultramarathon. I’m forced to wonder if I didn’t just hallucinate some mythical, ultrarunning goddess.
Others pass me after her. No one looks nearly as light and effortless (or as pretty) on their feet as she does, but they’re all looking a hell of a lot better than I am at this point.
I think back, once again, to that first Ragnar event I did years ago. The final seven miles of that race were the worst as well. I got passed by literally dozens of people in those last few miles after having been passed by almost no one for the first twenty-six.
I was far more irritable then, though. My body may be just as broken, but my mind is far stronger here today. I have a little experience on my side.
****
I hear cars, highway traffic whooshing through the winding roads of Squamish. Civilization is nearer now than it has been since I departed aid station five.
As I turn another corner, I spot wooden stairs. Society is now evidenced by sight as well as sound. My quads are so shot at this point that these steep stairs are almost as terrifying as the bridges throughout the earlier portions of the course. I grip the handrails to steady my ruined body as I cautiously place first one foot, then another, down each step.
The stairs appear sporadically for the next few hundred meters. Each set I descend finds me closer to sea level until I stumble out of the woods and into a residential area.
I’m back in Squamish now. Onlookers eye me from their porches. I wonder what they’re thinking. How many have they seen pass by before I got here? How many looked worse than I do? How many looked like the goddess who passed me earlier? The answer to both questions is, I’m sure, not many.
I reach the road. I know I’m close. Less than a mile to go. Volunteers point me in the right direction and cheer me on. My pace quickens. I feel as much like shit as I have for the past seven miles, but my proximity to the finish line spurs me on at a greater clip.
As the last kilometer of the race dawns, I resume running. I started this race running; that was lifetimes ago. I’ll finish the way I started.
Emotions swell. Overwhelming elation and agony mingle, bringing tears to my eyes. I press on. Everything hurts. The tears fall.
Just a couple hundred meters to go. I spot my dad with his phone out, readying for a picture as I dash by.
I turn the last corner and see the Promised Land, the end of my journey.
With tears in my eyes, I cross that finish line. Gary Robbins grabs my hand as I pass, pulls me in for a hug.
“You did it, man,” he tells me. “Was that your first fifty?”
“It was,” I reply, overjoyed and dumbfounded.
“You did great!” he says.
I thank him and he returns to his station by the finish line, ready to hug the next finisher to cross over into the paradise of completion. I turn to seek out my family and am ambushed, instead, by several of the aid station five volunteers who helped me find my family in a bygone epoch, a former life.
“You made it!” they exclaim, it’s hard to tell if I’m more excited about it or if they are. I see my family just outside the finishing area with the rest of the spectators. I smile in their direction.
Another volunteer brings over my medal and hangs it on my neck. I rejoin my family and give a few more hugs. The surreality of the moment becomes evermore real as the weight of what I’ve just done settles in.
Today, I fulfilled a dream. I ran a fifty-mile ultramarathon. The entirety of my physiology feels only pain right now. I can hear my body screaming.
“What the hell did you just do to me!?” it says. “And when are we doing it again?” it adds shortly thereafter.
I know I’ll sign up for another. I already have a few in mind. For now, though, I revel. The Squamish 50 is over. It will soon be a memory, faded and flawed, like the others. But no matter how dim the recollection gets, it will remain a part of me forever.