Great Expectations

A journey of a hundred miles is only a single step

Image by Matteo Orlandi.

❝Your multi part account of an epic level ultra was brilliant on so many levels. Will there be an epilogue?

—a very smart and handsome supporter

I’m not sure this qualifies as an epilogue, but here’s the most important lesson I learned from that race (that I should’ve known already).

I’m in the passenger seat once again, not so much sitting in it as slowly becoming one with it. This time, we’re driving away from the start/finish area. The pre-race excitement is two days in the rearview mirror. Two days that I spent on my feet.

“Can you pull over for a second?” My voice sounds like I’ve thrown it in front of a stampeding herd of angry rhinos. My friend hesitates because the road out of town is narrow and winding, and it’s in the middle of the night. I try again: “Nice clean floor mats you have here, are those new?” He hits the brakes. I open the door before the car fully comes to a stop, stick my head out, and throw up for the third time since my race ended.

I spent the rest of the trip passed out in the back seat, with a Sea to Summit dry bag next to me that I really hoped I wouldn’t have to use. I’d already been awake for 61 hours (before the race, during, and after)—for the life of me, I cannot tell you why I thought I could stay conscious for the five-hour drive home.

ᚯ ᚮ ᚰ

From the moment my friend nudged me awake and I dragged my useless body out of the car, I waited to feel the change that the race had inevitably prompted in me.

And waited.

And waited.

…

Surely, such an overwhelming, all-consuming endeavor doesn’t leave one unchanged. I don’t mean an ultramarathon, necessarily; I mean a thing you were long scared to do, yet dreamed of doing, and one day finally did. A Big Thing.

But yes, this particular Big Thing was an ultra: a 100-miler featuring an Everest-and-a-quarter’s worth of elevation gain, weather that throws crazy tantrums, and terrain more technical than legal documentation. I’d be chasing the cutoff (50 hours), and the longest I’d run was a third of that—once, two months prior. To the extent that running a hundred miles could be considered a wise decision at any point in one’s life, the wise thing to do was wait a few more years before attempting this one. But, you know. I didn’t.

It wasn’t the distance that was scary, but the relentlessness. Not the terrain, but the uncharted territory. What would 30 hours of running do to my body? What about 45? What if I couldn’t handle [insert full-blown disaster of choice] and became a danger to myself? A great deal of terrifying “unknown” awaited the fool who signed up before she was ready.

But if nebulous fears were all that awaited, I wouldn’t have signed up at all. The unknown had an alluring side, as well: new insights, perspectives, clarity, depth—coincidentally or not, the things that draw me most to ultrarunning are things that stir, alter, remake. Transformative things. You can find them elsewhere, of course. I just happened to find them on a mountain.

The “race” part was an afterthought, if it was a thought at all. Any competitive aspirations (as if), or even just a time goal, would’ve clamored for attention like the spoiled children they are, and I had none to spare. All of it and all my effort were reserved for the experience itself: If it broke me, or if it didn’t, I would hobble away a different person.

The exact ways in which I imagined that difference manifesting were no less important, and would likely speak volumes to a trained professional, but to me, they simply answered the question: “What would a 100-mile finisher look like if she were me?” In my head, post-race me was more patient and disciplined. She was bolder, confident, and calm under pressure. She said the right things at the right time and knew when not to say anything. She had mastered both tension and relaxation, never hit her shoulder on door frames, and could thread a needle without holding her breath.

As you can tell, while my goals for the race were modest, my expectations were quite high. Perhaps kind of absurd; however, so was the idea of me toeing that particular start line—the absurdity was merely symmetrical. And so, I would earn both my place in the race and my transformation by letting the miles hammer my impostor self until all the flaws were worked out, gradually forging me into a finisher. And she would be all those things I imagined. It all made sense.

Here’s why it didn’t make sense: I was expecting this big, dramatic change to happen overnight (technically over two), forgetting that any race, no matter how long, is still just one step. Two, if it’s the Spine or Barkley or something. The thought never occurred to me that this was one weekend out of years of running out of decades of living, 0.02 percent of my entire existence, a single struggle out of the many we all face (and a self-imposed one at that).

The only thought that occurred, really, was that the race was hard. Just so outrageously more difficult than anything I’d ever done. It would take everything I had to complete it, and it might not even be enough.

The Big Thing became the Hard Thing. Oh, how we ultrarunners love those.

“Hurry on over,” I heard the call, “and bring your ambitions and daydreams, vanity and insecurities, pile them all onto the Hard Thing, and ride it to the positive change you desire.”

A Hard Thing’s clichéd promise is the opportunity to grow. We celebrate it for it, even as we burden it with our own expectations of what growth should look like and how quickly it should happen. Only much later did I realize that much of that promise had been just me projecting my own wishes onto it. I wished to become that other person, the one who feels more in control and comfortable in her environment.

You already know I didn’t get my way. But you don’t know that I won’t! And I don’t know, either! After the race and the mother of all recoveries, I once again laced up my shoes for my usual loop through town. And then again the next day. Perhaps running a hundred miles hadn’t changed me, but running a hundred miles hadn’t changed me. I continued to run almost every day, still drawn to the sport by the things that stir, alter, remake—transformative because they offer something to work toward, not an instant payoff.

You didn’t ask for my advice, so I’ll pretend to give it to my younger self: Don’t put difficulty on a pedestal. Do the race for the joy of handing the reins to your curiosity, for the fun of discovering what your body is capable of, for the hopelessly unrepeatable moments. Do it for the things it gives you in the moment, not for the promise it will somehow make you better. You don’t need it anyway—you’re making that same promise to yourself every time you go out for a run. And most importantly, if you’re leaving right after in a car that’s not yours, bring a barf baggie for the ride home. Friendship only goes so far.

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A Reading Recommendation in a Single Quotation with No Further Explanation

❝It is not in what you succeed in doing that you get your joy, but in the doing of it.

—Jack London, Martin Eden

As always: Thanks for reading, and please consider sharing this post or leaving a like or a comment.
As just this once: Go practice a friend’s hobby with them.

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