After a couple of years
of foot trouble, I was excited to finally be lacing up again for a long
distance trail race. Wakely was the perfect choice, because the need to
carry your own aid station made it a bit like a fastpack, of which
Derrick and I had done more of recently. I don’t like the feeling of
being under prepared for something, so what I lacked in confidence after
some difficult long runs, I tried to make up for by studying trail maps.
From an online topo site I printed a large scale version of the trail
that stands about eight feet tall. It was big enough to make the trail
look virtually endless. (Perhaps not what I needed!) Lost was a place I
really didn’t want to go. That, and not getting hurt, were my two
biggest goals. Beyond that, I was just curious to experience the course,
see how I’d feel, and find out how long it would take. I wanted to
finish as strongly as possible, and thought 6.5 hours sounded like a
good goal – not because I necessarily thought I could pull that off,
but just because anything longer seemed too much for me to handle.
I started
conservatively back in the pack, watching two women ahead of me, Kerry
Arsenault and Valerie Weidman, take off in a gear I just didn’t have.
The first several miles I stayed at the tail end of a long line of
runners, negotiating the numerous downed trees. The stop-start nature of
the running was tough, as I prefer to get in my little groove and stay
there. Eventually we came to a brook where you could choose to either
tiptoe across on rocks, or plow through. A trio of us took the plunge,
and were off in a much smaller group. The cooled-down wet feet felt
good. Before long I was running by myself for stretches, which I
enjoyed. Around 10 miles, at
Spruce
Lake
, I passed Valerie, who had taken a spill. (She was okay.)
As I expected
beforehand, but tried not to dwell on, I was already very knackered by
the time I reached the half in 3:22. Despair hadn’t set in yet though.
That happened at 4:25 - oh I remember it well. For the next hour or
so I did the “I don’t know why I do these things” pity party
dance, to the rhythm of that old classic, “This Sucks This Sucks This
Sucks”. But, despite my best effort to wallow in this all the way to
the dam(n) finish line, my ‘this sucks’ mantra inexplicably turned
into a ‘thank you’. I started listing what I was thankful
for – health, running, life, all that good stuff. I think I got pretty
sappy for being in a race.
Despite all this
gratitude helping me out, I eventually fell back into the inevitable
pattern of highs and lows, but kept plunkering along. I was safely past
deep despair, but my pace was falling off. I was determined at least to
not go off trail and waste time, and keep fueling myself well. At one
point I hadn’t seen a maker for over 10 minutes, and panic was
starting to build. Then I met a woman head-on, running back on the
course to meet someone, which assured me it was the right way. Soon
after this, people started passing me in what seemed like droves.
Valerie was the first to zoom by, in that too-fast-for-me gear of hers
again. I tried to hang onto a couple of the runners (not literally,
though if it had been possible…) but eventually had to let them go.
I was at least now
moving faster than I had been, and by the time I hit the grass road, I
felt adequately within range of the finish to try to close the gap on
some of the people in front of me. This was the strongest part of my
race, as I tapped into what I had remaining, wanting to leave it all on
the course. Just before rounding the corner to what turned out to be the
finish, I asked some people on the road how far to the end. A little boy
said “about a half a mile”, which broke my pounding heart, until his
mother hastily corrected him that it was way less than that. Whew!
Crossing the dam is a great way to finish, and seeing Derrick
there in one piece was the best feeling. (Okay, he puked his guts out
mid-race and still managed to beat me by almost an hour!) Valerie came
in right behind me, and I congratulated her and thanked her for a good
race.
From the perspective of
being done, it feels really good to have the answer again to that
question of “Why do I do this?” I won’t even try to put it into
words, but it just feels right. I thought that having no option of
dropping out might make running Wakely easier to avoid facing this
question, but what I found is that it made it even more of a challenge.
When there is a way out, you can refuse it, and gain strength from that
choice. Wakely leaves you with no such choice, so it takes a different
kind of strength to find your reasons, or find your thank you’s.
Speaking of which,
thank you to Jim and his crew of family and friends for all your hard
work and welcoming the crazy bunch of us.
