Carpe-ing a Couple of Diems: Part Ⅲ

The voices in the water are meant for me alone

Image by Antonio López.

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First 100-mile race, part three: Things are starting to get fun/not fun.

Parts one and two were basically me goofing around in the mountains. You can read those first if you like a good goofing-around story (Part Ⅰ, Part Ⅱ).

No? How about some context then: The race is a fairly difficult 100-miler with a 50-hour cutoff. I trained hard to give myself at least a chance of finishing but still started as the biggest impostor among the participants, simply because I signed up a few years too early. I knew it was dumb, but I didn’t think it was a mistake.

Seventeen hours and 55 kilometers (34 miles) in, I still don’t think it was a mistake. Let’s see if that changes.

You can now read the whole thing in one place:

Carpe-ing a Couple of Diems [Full]

1.6 whose feet are these?

It’s been six hours since I left the last aid station, and it will be a few more before I reach the next one.

Pause, widen eyes. I’ve finished entire ultramarathons in less time than it will take me to get just from Aid Three to Aid Four.

Unpause, push rising panic back down. It sure is nice today—sunny, not a breath of wind. Below the treeline, it’s getting toasty, even in the merciful shade of the pines. I try to remember why I thought I could get through this section on just a liter of water.

Oh, that’s right, I didn’t. I was supposed to fill the empty soft flasks, which I’d brought for this very purpose, back at Aid Three. I guess I’ll just have to ration the few drops I have left.

✛ ✙ ✚

As the descent continues, I’m witnessing the gradual transformation of the mountain: from defiance—in its evergreens—to acquiescence—in its oaks, beeches, and hornbeams; from austerity—in its sunbaked moraines—to playfulness—in its soft singletracks.

Eventually, the mountain recedes: Rooftops peek through the trees, then pavement replaces the dirt underneath my feet. Three hours flew by while you were reading the previous paragraph, and here I am in the tiny village where Aid Four is located.

Reentering civilization is… jarring. All those straight lines clustered in one place. But there’s water here, which I ran out of despite my rationing.

A young volunteer ushers me into what looks like somebody’s home. In the yard, in the shade of a long wooden awning, there’s a row of tables with—picture a Viking feast. To prove to myself that running out of water never really constituted an emergency, I decide to eat something first and then drink my weight in liquids in a casual, not-at-all-desperate fashion.

Next up is taking care of what I believe are five or six blisters on the bottom of each of my feet. After sequestering myself a courteous distance away from the tables, lest I spoil somebody’s appetite, I bare my tootsies to find zero blisters and a whole lot of wrinkles. My shoes and socks feel dry, but I guess they’ve been damp from dew throughout the night and morning, and the skin of my feet has become macerated. So that’s what that feeling of walking on embers was. Huh. I could’ve sworn it was five or six blisters.

I look at my feet cluelessly for a few seconds before putting away my blister kit. How do you treat foot wrinkledness? Trick question: You’re supposed to prevent it. Having thoroughly let John Vonhof down¹, I put my socks and shoes back on and hobble past the tables and out onto the street.

The next section is two-thirds mellow climbing, one-third mellow descending—completely runnable stuff, if not for the sum total of all the other stuff before it. Either way, mellow-anything feels good after 20 hours of extreme-everything.

The last scattered houses disappear behind me, and the pavement turns back into dirt. The mountain is moving back in, gentle and tame as can be. Spring after cold spring that were nowhere to be found on my way to the village are now popping up everywhere, glinting in the sun and purling deliciously. Gradually, the warm afternoon sobers into a chilly evening, and the sun sets on my first full day in the mountains. My damn feet are killing me.

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1.7 my madness—my method

I had no sleep strategy before the race. Having no experience with events of such duration, I figured a predetermined sleep strategy was a shot in the dark at best. Moreover, much like adhering to a rigid nutrition plan or exact pace, it would’ve just added unnecessary complexity (and potential failure points) to an already challenging endeavor.

So I decided to wing it—the damning proof of an ultrarunner’s overconfidence and/or inexperience (very much the latter, in my case). I would just sleep when sleep called, hopefully within minutes of an aid station (which would be very lucky, considering the average duration between them was five and a half hours).

It’s past my bedtime. Extremely past—I’m coming up on 36 hours of being awake (including before the race). The wide, lazy turns of the trail have been lulling me to sleep for hours, and now so is the swaying cone of light from my headlamp.

Thus, it is here, halfway through the race and nearing Aid Five (previously Aid Two), that I devise my sleep strategy: “Take a nap at Aid Five.” Had I planned the same before the race, I would’ve spent the last few hours desperately awaiting the sweet descent into oblivion. Now, the wait has barely begun before that familiar hum of the hydro-generator disturbs the quiet night.

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§2 me & the others

The last time I was at the dropbag aid station was also during the night, so it’s safe to assume its existence is conditional on it being dark out.

A lone volunteer greets me at the entrance, her voice cheerful but hushed so as not to wake whoever is under the pile of blankets in the corner. An early drop-out, apparently. Early as in “one of the first of many” (more than half won’t finish), not early as in “after a short time” (26 hours is not a short time). Whoever you are, person in corner under blankets, I commend you for your effort, and I thank you for not snoring so I can nap.

It’s quiet and warm inside, a bit bleak on account of the body in the room—perfect napping conditions. Just need to sort my stuff first. My tired brain struggles a bit with the order of operations, but eventually I get what I need from my dropbag, drop what I don’t, take a big swig of the cold, day-old espresso I have in there, and then take great pleasure in fluffing my pack into a pillow and burying my face in it. My head plunges underwater immediately.

Ten minutes later, I wake up to the sound of voices. A whole bunch of runners have arrived all at once and are creating a ruckus. Among them—what do you know—The Lady of the Long Legs and her companion. She’s sitting quietly off to the side, nursing a cup of hot something, staring into its bottomless depths.

My nap has chilled me to optimal getgoingness. The caffeine should be kicking in any moment now, too. Time to go.

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2.1 time is only weird when you perceive it

It’s been three hours since the second night of the race began. In my mind, the next morning was always the final milestone before the finish. I get through the dark hours, I get through the race.

✙ ✚ ✛

You know how, when you wake up, you have no sense whatsoever of time having passed while you were sleeping? It’s a non-time to you—not even empty, just nil. When you wake up, you simply resume perceiving time from the last moment you were conscious, inferring some has passed, but never having experienced its passage. It’s like watching a time-lapse, where sleep is the intervals between the frames.

And you know how, especially if you wake up at an odd hour, your sense of how long you’ve been asleep can be wildly inaccurate yet linger long after you’ve looked at a clock?

Waking up in the middle of the night has confused my brain. Even though I only snoozed for 10 minutes, I feel as though I’ve lost the full three hours since nightfall. The second night of the race is now eight hours long instead of 11. It’s the “time-lapse” effect of a three-hour nap without the restorative effect of a three-hour nap.

Generally disorienting in a non-race setting, the perceived time loss is just as disorienting now. But it’s also comforting, in a semantic kind of way: Having to push through an eight-hour night somehow seems easier than having to push through the final eight hours of an 11-hour one.

I will later learn that, just as time collapses when you’re unconscious, it stretches out the longer you witness its passing. Eight hours can very much seem like ∞. My three-hour 10-minute nap was merely the first in a series of delightful time-continuity distortions, brought on by exertion and sleep deprivation.

✚ ✛ ✙

Still confused but well caffeinated, I’m squelching through glistening mud up yet another lung-burning ascent (we’re back to extreme-everything). There’s cow poop everywhere.

As I stop to shake definitely just mud off my shoes, I notice I’m casting a faint shadow and turn around to see a train of lights right behind me. The first two belong to Legs and her partner. They must’ve left the aid station shortly after I did, and are now quietly pulling away from the rest of the group and catching up to me. Her breathing is just as labored as mine.

Climbing is my one strength (remember that hill, back in Flatlandia, that I came to know like the back of my hand?). “No way can she keep up with me all the way to the top.” Way. Two hours later, we’ll finish the 1,200-meter (3,900-foot) ascent still together, still breathing heavily, never having spoken a word.

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2.2 i’d rather be hallucinating

On the way up, the course runs through a coniferous forest tucked deep into a ravine between two spurs of the main ridge. The trail shares the rocky bottom of the ravine with the rapids of a stream that spills over it and causes its perpetually boggy condition. I don’t really mind the mud, but the stream’s gurgle is (*loads a Chekhov’s gun*) irritating to my ears—in a distantly familiar way.

It’s not just the stream, or just sound for that matter, that’s dancing on my nerves. Somewhere along the way, I’ve developed some sort of hypersensitivity: light seems brighter, colors more vivid, smells sharper. And I’m pretty sure I can detect ultrasound.

In the fog of sensory overload, perceiving the familiar has become a conscious effort. The low branches across the trail throw shadows that are not branch-shaped. Rocks appear as rocks only if I look directly at them. I’m willing my eyes to see the world they’ve always seen, but parts of it keep flickering in and out of their proper definitions.

Clearing the treeline, the trail crosses the stream—now a juvenile streamlet just surfacing aboveground—one final time, then turns slightly to align itself with the most sensible approach to the ridge. On the crumbly switchbacks just below the top, I finally begin to put distance between myself and my silent companions.

The distance increases as I crest the ridge and butt-scoot down the butt-scooting portion of the descent (really, this is the only way). The two spots of light behind me soon shrink to the size of the moon, then the stars, and I’m once again alone, jogging effortlessly through what seems to be an alpine pasture. Yep, effortlessly. For at least this brief moment, my brain seems to have found a way to tune out the fatigue and the pain.

It occurs to me that it might not have the capacity for them since it’s still preoccupied with the excess of sensory information. The latter is starting to drive me a little crazy. I haven’t had full-on hallucinations yet (when are those due?), it’s just that objects are looking increasingly wrong. Is this how the rest of the race is going to be?

To answer my question, something that’s either a cow-shaped boulder or a boulder-shaped cow appears in the beam of my headlamp. With its horns, flat face, and broad frame, it certainly has a bovine appearance. But that doesn’t prove that’s also its nature.

Never mind wild apparitions—what’s making me lose my mind is no longer being able to tell bovinity from boulderness. I would flunk kindergarten so hard right now.

Just in case the thing in front of me isn’t a boulder, I apologize wholeheartedly and at length for having bothered it with my presence. Because, you know, a cow would totally appreciate an apology. I may be getting stupider by the minute, but at least I have manners. Why am I talking to whatever this is? Hard to say. All I know (and it might well be) is that my apology is sincere: I do not wish to disturb the peace of the things that were here first, be they living or mineral. Or perhaps I just wish their tranquility—the stillness of the mountain—would transfer to me, to calm my overstimulated brain.

I’m both relieved and a little surprised that I didn’t hear a response in an unfamiliar language.

✛ ✙ ✚

The term “leapfrogging” calls to mind a much more plyometric movement than applies to the occasion, but anyway, here come my new friends catching up to me again. Being alone with those two doesn’t differ much from being alone. Not a word is spoken as we enter the forest together, skid down the suddenly steep trail together, lose it a couple of times then find it again, together.

But even more meaningful than the silence is the understanding that we share no connection, merely space. Our togetherness is circumstantial. It offers little; it demands—not a thing.

Near the bottom of the descent, we cross a bridge over a small river and follow a dirt road downstream. I recognize the sounds it makes (the river does), but they’re not water sounds. It’s a melody at first, then voices—dialogues. All are loud, none are familiar. The result is a bizarre, abrasively dissonant auditory tessellation that hurts my brain.

Abiding by our unspoken agreement not to speak, I refrain from asking my companions whether they, too, hear the noise. I’m hoping against all odds that it’s coming from the aid station we’re approaching, not from the river (freaky) or the inside of my head (loony tunes). But I honestly can’t tell.

The terrain is plain runnable now, and Legs’s partner takes advantage of it and, oh wow, look at him go. She, on the other hand, is not doing so hot. We walk side by side for a minute, just walk, but at that pace that’s on the verge of running. We’re not really competing for a podium spot at the aid station, but merely trying to move efficiently. She’s the first to summon the will to run and pulls away, taking the precious sound of her footsteps with her. Without it, the volume in my head goes up. A sitcom-like laugh track has now been added to the cacophony.

Hours pass (not really) and I finally reach the bottom of the descent, where the aid station is (even more not really). Huh. My watch says I’ve traveled the distance to Aid Six, so it should be here somewhere. It’s only after the slope reverses direction that I remember: Aid Six is supposed to be three kilometers (two miles) up a climb. Sigh, expletive, up I go.​

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Continue reading:

Carpe-ing a Couple of Diems: Part Ⅳ

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed your time here, consider sharing “Carpe-ing a Couple of Diems: Part Ⅲ” or this newsletter with a friend. Then go touch something that isn’t manufactured.

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1. John Vonhof is the author of a brilliant book called Fixing Your Feet—a must-have for runners and hikers.