Calico 50K
It was in December that my gmail in box was graced with the following announcement and inquiry from my dear friends Scott and Masako in Japan:
"Well hello Ms. D,
Haven't heard from you so I thought I'd say Hel. Not much terribly new with us except that we are planing to go to So Cal in mid Jan. We will be spending a month there and if we can find CHEAP flights to Argentina or Spain, we will go there for a month. If not we will go to Mexico.... Speaking of which, might you be in Cal. between Jan15 and Feb15?..."
Considering the rather thorough job I've done of breezing through the vacation days allotted to Assistants in my office, the classes I have scheduled on weekends, and the money I'm purportedly saving, one could pretty reasonably argue that weekend jaunts across the country ought not to be part of my life at this time, and therefore, that I would not be in So Cal in January...but, thankfully, I've started to realize that the kind of life I want to lead depends upon knowing that the right decision is often not the one that first seems most reasonble.
Note that I do not advocate unreasonable decisions. Rather, I think that reasonable decisions require a thorough examination of what you really value. As such, the thoughts that went through my head as I considered the email above were something like this: I don't think there's much in life more important than the people with whom it's shared. Scott and Masako live in Japan, and although California's a ways from New York, it's really just a teeny hop compared to the hop, skip, jump, leap away that is Japan. My two older sisters both live in Southern California as well, and I had yet to see the house my oldest sister and brother-in-law had purchased and moved into almost a year earlier. Okay, and on top of all this, New York was (and continues to be) too friggin cold.
I reread the email, noting that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and therefore a long weekend, was coming up, then clicked open a new search on my computer and looked up flight info. Just to see what was available.
Now. Based on the previously stated values, one would think I had a pretty no-brainer situation on my hands. I agree. But somehow, three weeks and much tentative planning later, I was still ticketless. Part of my hesitation was a result of two logistical details of my life: First, that I can miss up to three weekends of school every trimester. Missing a fourth weekend means I fail automatically. Besides the whole not wanting to fail thing, I love my school, and I'm committed to getting as much as possible from my education there. I already had trips planned for two weekends this trimester. The second fact to consider is that I love to run. An hour in the park before work makes me a happier and better person, and I am grateful for that and how lovely it is. But to spend the day out running in a wild and beautiful place, to reach and strive and remind myself in an emphatic and literal way the value of keepin on keeping on, and moreover, to share this experience with a handful of like-minded others...just...makes me tick. In that way that everyone who is human and alive and endowed with heart and soul ought to tick, someway, somehow. These facts in mind, I try to fit in as many races as possible during those three weekends I'm not at school.
So it came to be that one morning in January, as I checked on available flights for the umpteenth time (still there.), I became a little infatuated with the possibility that there might be a race in California the same weekend I wanted to go see so many people I love. If there was, I told myself, I was going. A google search later, I'd come upon the Calico Trail 50K- as the website said, "It's not just a trail run- it's an adventure." I was sold.
It's funny to me the way things seem to sort of fall into place when you've made the right decision. There was a flight Friday night after work into Ontario airpot (just east of Los Angeles), Monday the 21st was a day off to celebrate Martin Luther King and there was a redeye that could get me back to New York early enough Tuesday morning for me to get into work. My wonderful, superhero boyfriend agreed that sure, it'd be fun for him to come along and do the 30K (he runs on occasion to keep me company...but, uh, not usually 18 miles...), his parents volunteered to pick us up from the airport Friday night, feed and house us, and provide us with a car. My sister and brother-in-law said they'd love to have us, as well as Scott and Masako, over Sunday night after the race; they, along with my other sister, prepared a veritable feast. Scott and Masako reserved the evening to share with us, and in doing so, completed my dream weekend. I've got good people in my life, no doubt.
So ten days out, plans were made. We managed a couple- or one- long training run, and Friday night, January the 19th, just before midnight, Kevin and I arrived at Ontario airport. His parents were there to meet us, take us home, and provide us with the requisite oatmeal bedtime snack. My dream weekend had commenced.
We started our Saturday right with homemade Belgian waffles topped with mango (yum!), then a stroll and lunch in lovely Claremont (hometown of Mr. Ben Harper!), and a hard-core Simpson family scrabble game. Seriously, these people don't joke around when it comes to Scrabble- consider yourself warned. Overall, a sunny morning in a wonderful place, low-key relaxation with wonderful people, and wholesome, plentiful, delicious food...can't ask for much better pre-race preparation than that. Kevin and I set off for Calico, the Avalon equipped with snacks and good music, bodies and minds stoked and ready to go. Adventure, here we come. : )
Ahem. First we had to find our hotel, which proved to be slightly more trying than we might have hoped. But no mind, the delay made the pasta dinner at the pre-race registration site all the more satisfying. There we met Ashley Baker and her boyfriend, also Kyle Hoang, Robert and another friend of his (also Robert?!?! I hate forgetting names...), who awed and inspired me with tales from the Comrades Marathon in South Africa. Someday, I thought, someday...
Sufficiently full of spaghetti/running fuel, and inspired by some amazing company, we headed back to the Ramada to lay out clothes, clif bars, coconut water, vaseline, tiger balm, hand-bottles, ginger candy and whatever else we hoped would help us through the following day's endeavor.
5:30 a.m. Sunday morning we woke ready for adventure, or at least some breakfast from the lobby. I was irritated that there were packets of oatmeal, but no hot water...geez. Tap water from the bathroom and a microwave saved me- thank some higher power, who knows how I would have managed to begin a day, much less a race day, without my oatmeal. I have sort of a love affair with the stuff going on.
It was cold outside. Damn. Where was my Cali sunshine?!?!?! Fortunately I'd brought my hat and I had insisted that Kevin buy us new $1 gloves from one of the street stands in New York- the kind that you can throw away once your blood starts circulating without much regret. Or besides throwing them away, you could use one to...more on that later. There was one thing though, and handling that became the first real memorable moment of the day. I generally cut the tip of the right index finger off of my running gloves so that I can keep my hands warm, but still mess around with my Ipod, should the urge strike. The new gloves, however, hadn't yet undergone the requisite alteration. I ran around the start some to try to locate some scissors, and finally found a volunteer with a pocket knife. "Oh, yay! I'm so glad I found you!" I exclaimed cheerfully. Holding up my gloved hand, I made my request, "Could you just snip off the tip of the index finger right there?" Got a pretty good look there. Much to the relief of the volunteer, I realized what it sounded like I was asking and corrected myself. Much better.
Ten minutes later, index finger freed, bathrooms visited, photo-taking responsibility assigned to Kevin, we toed the starting line. Actually we sort of stood there shivering, trying to borrow warmth from a small, but tenacious, pack of fellow runners. And then we were off.
The race started on a pretty good downhill road, the kind you just sort of cruise on. I took this opportunity to display my great running wisdom and expound to Kevin, who was, by the way, cruising along just fine, "Stop bracing yourself, you're wasting too much energy, and you'll miss the benefit of the hill. Use the hill, just let yourself go...if you fight the downhills like that, you're gonna get exhausted and sore..." Note that I include this lovely little display of my unsolicited advising only in order that I may make fun of myself in a paragraph to come.
Another important bit of conversation in that first 1200 meters was the one where I insisted on giving Kevin a detailed description of the meal my sisters were planning to serve when we got back to Orange County that evening. Those of you who have run ultras might understand the motivating power of visualizing that post-race meal, where you're showered, in comfy clothes, relaxing, reflecting on the day's highs and lows...or maybe it's just me. I like a good meal. : ) Enough so, in fact, that I also felt it necessary to jump into a conversation I overheard around mile 4 or so. Two guys were talking about the Spartathlon, and had somehow shifted into postrace recovery eating. In Greece. Yum. I couldn't resist the urge to announce my affinity for grape leaves and hummus...and tea and baklavah...and tabouleh...I think post-race recovery in Greece would be fantastic. And now those two guys know I think this as well.
Kevin had stopped to stretch a little (and probably also to let me go do my thing a bit...because he knows me) around mile two and I wished him good luck and went on. I also told him to "take pretty pictures," something that I later decided was not what I wanted my last piece of advice/encouragement/statement of support to be. Fortunately, he passed me a couple miles later and I was able to correct myself. "Hey baby!" I called as he passed , "Um, when I said 'Take pretty pictures" before, what I meant was..um...kick some ass!" He laughed and told me he knew. : )
Not that ultra running is about kicking ass. It's really not, at all, unless you're talking about your own. That's one of the things I love about it. Any competition between runners is far overshadowed by each runner's competition with himself. Twenty five miles in, when you can't see anybody else, and you're in the middle of the desert and it's getting hot and you're getting hungry and your legs are tired, and nobody would see if you stopped to take a rest, but something makes you want to see how many more steps you can run...
Of course, as I am always trying to explain to my non-trail-running friends, it's mostly not a dig-deep super challenge. It's mostly beautiful. Inspiring. An insistent reminder of a great big world out there, within which we are only a little bitty traveler. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right, don't forget to breathe and to take in the world, left foot, right, see how vast and beautiful it is, soak it up...
Not all moments of an ultra are so profound though. Like the eighty seven times (okay, well it seemed like eighty seven) I almost went off course because I was so busy "soaking it up" that I lost track of those damn little arrows intermittenly chalked in the sand. Or when around mile five, I realized I really needed to use the restroom. Actually, I'm being polite. I had no hope of a "restroom." I just needed to pee. It was then that I took a strong dislike to the barren, sparse nature of the desert. Modesty was going to be difficult. I also had forgotten my little pack of Kleenex. So. After a few miles of nagging discomfort, I rounded a bend with a rockface I could sort of crouch behind. Nobody else was in sight. And I used one of my $1 gloves. Afterwards I dug a little hole and buried that glove in the sand. Second "restroom" break was at an aid station around mile 26. I ran in, and volunteers offered me water and fig newtons. "Um, can I just use a paper towel and the area behind your truck?" I sheepishly asked. Fortunately they also had a little fire going in a roasting pit, so I was able to dispose of said paper towel without digging any more little holes in the sand. Profound and beautiful, not so much. Necessary, yes.
The course was hard. Really hard. The drop bag station at mile 18 was at the crest of a hill, and the wind was blowing hard enough there that I had to use by body as a sort of windscreen, crouched over my hand bottle while I refilled it with coconut water. I got some sand in my eyes as I was ran on, and this was the first moment where I recall thinking, "This sort of sucks. Keep running. If you just keep running, you'll get somewhere else, less windy/miserable." Then there was some serious downhill. Definitely not easy, but quite fun in a wild, adrenaline-y kinda way. Even as I used all the core strength I had to brace myself, I still felt slightly out of control. It was just that steep and slippery, and I was pushing forward with momentum. Halfway down I remembered the advice regarding hills I'd so matter of factly doled out to Kevin hours earlier. I hoped he hadn't listened to me. Anyone who had tried to "use" that hill, rather than "fight" it, would have been seriously injured. As a reward for making it up to the drop bag station, and then back down into the depths, the mad dash descent was followed by two or three miles of refreshingly easy downhill coasting. I zipped along and told myself I had made it through the toughest part. Feeling good...little did I know.
Then began the hills that would not end. I feel like I should have a lot to say about them, because they certainly seemed monumental. But somehow I don't have a lot of words. Just hard. Tough. Steep. Too steep. I did a lot of counting as part of the mental games I invent to keep myself moving forward. As in, "Okay, twenty five steps running earns ten steps walking. " Or "Okay, let's see if I can get to that cactus up there in 14 steps." There was one hill where I stopped in the middle, and I really wondered for a second how I was going to get to the top. It only lasted a second, and it made me think of life and the blatant parallels one can find in an ultra. It was hard, and a little part of me wondered if it might be impossible, but the only real choice is to keep putting one foot in front of the other as best as you can. I love the honesty and simplicity of it.
By mile 29 or so, I was ready to be done. This was a new experience for me. I kept thinking, and at one point, I told a guy who had run up near to me, "This isn't like me. I'm one of those blissful runners...but I just want this to be over. God, when is it over??!?!" He kind of laughed, and I just kept telling myself I was almost there, and reminding myself that in a few hours, I'd be relaxing with Kevin, Scott and Masako, and my sisters and brothers-in-law. A. l. m. o. s. t. T. h. e. r. e. ...
Part of the problem may have been that I had trouble eating during the day. I think I must have been dehydrated, because I usually get food down pretty well, but during the course of the morning, all I'd managed was a Clif bar and a handful of pretzels. And that didn't taste very good. I was disappointed by this, as I usually report that food consumed during a long run tastes particularly incredible, in a good way. Not this day.
At the end, we ran back downhill through a parking lot. I was pretty sure this was the end. I saw two women ahead of me, and I wanted to catch them. I remember telling myself that I had given it all I could, and that it was okay that I didn't have that final kick...it's funny, because I really did give myself this mental permission, and yet, some other part of me was still digging and my legs started turning over a little faster, and I started making up ground...and then I was gaining and I felt a little more hope, and then I was passing them...and then. That damn hill at the end. Turns out the finish line was not in the parking lot where I had assumed it was coming up, but rather at the top of an absurdly steep final ascent. As this became apparent to me, an obscentiy flew out of my mouth. I apologize for that. Somehow I made it up, and I kept thinking I'd be damned if those women I'd just passed caught me on that god-forsaken hill. I was either going to get to the finish ahead of them or collapse trying. So much for my whole "competition with yourself" ideals.
And then there I was. I love the final thirty yards of a race. I can't describe running those thirty yards except to say it is awesome, and when I use that word, I am never so regretful of the way it's real meaning has been diluted by overuse. If you've ever had a moment where you laughed and cried at once and felt the lightness of your soul reflected in your feet...even as someone who has experienced, and is in fact sort of addicted to seeking out, these thirty yards, words fail me. They're...nice.
Post-race was...long. I had a headache. I wasn't hungry, but I managed to eat a little, figuring I needed it for recovery. I met Michelle Barton- a sort of ultrarunning legend- and her daughter Sierra, and that was cool. I also congratulated Ashley Nordell, who had finished second among the women. I was impressed. I finished fourth among the women, second in the F 20-29 age group. Kevin also finished second in the M 20-29 age group for the 30K. We got matching trophies...awwww.
Post race pic:
The long part was when our drop bags weren't there...for, like, three hours. Calico, the town, isn't really much of an attraction. (In my humble opinion.) I was anxious to get on the road, on my way to family and friends.
We did get there eventually. It was...everything I had imagined and better. I'm tired of writing now, and really, there's not a lot more story to tell. Just know that after everything I said about the ultra, and what an incredible experience it was...spending the evening with my sisters and two of my heroes (Scott and Masako!) was the perfect finale. Kabobs, karaeoke and....love. I can't think of a way to say love that starts with "k," and in this case, using the right word wins out over my desire to alliterate. Forgive me, but "kabobs, karaeoke and love" it is. Anyway, the point is this: kabobs, karaeoke and love following a morning spent running 32 miles through the Mojave desert is a killer combo. In a good way. Dream weekend times 10. : )
Pictures: kellebelleruns.shutterfly.com
"Well hello Ms. D,
Haven't heard from you so I thought I'd say Hel. Not much terribly new with us except that we are planing to go to So Cal in mid Jan. We will be spending a month there and if we can find CHEAP flights to Argentina or Spain, we will go there for a month. If not we will go to Mexico.... Speaking of which, might you be in Cal. between Jan15 and Feb15?..."
Considering the rather thorough job I've done of breezing through the vacation days allotted to Assistants in my office, the classes I have scheduled on weekends, and the money I'm purportedly saving, one could pretty reasonably argue that weekend jaunts across the country ought not to be part of my life at this time, and therefore, that I would not be in So Cal in January...but, thankfully, I've started to realize that the kind of life I want to lead depends upon knowing that the right decision is often not the one that first seems most reasonble.
Note that I do not advocate unreasonable decisions. Rather, I think that reasonable decisions require a thorough examination of what you really value. As such, the thoughts that went through my head as I considered the email above were something like this: I don't think there's much in life more important than the people with whom it's shared. Scott and Masako live in Japan, and although California's a ways from New York, it's really just a teeny hop compared to the hop, skip, jump, leap away that is Japan. My two older sisters both live in Southern California as well, and I had yet to see the house my oldest sister and brother-in-law had purchased and moved into almost a year earlier. Okay, and on top of all this, New York was (and continues to be) too friggin cold.
I reread the email, noting that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and therefore a long weekend, was coming up, then clicked open a new search on my computer and looked up flight info. Just to see what was available.
Now. Based on the previously stated values, one would think I had a pretty no-brainer situation on my hands. I agree. But somehow, three weeks and much tentative planning later, I was still ticketless. Part of my hesitation was a result of two logistical details of my life: First, that I can miss up to three weekends of school every trimester. Missing a fourth weekend means I fail automatically. Besides the whole not wanting to fail thing, I love my school, and I'm committed to getting as much as possible from my education there. I already had trips planned for two weekends this trimester. The second fact to consider is that I love to run. An hour in the park before work makes me a happier and better person, and I am grateful for that and how lovely it is. But to spend the day out running in a wild and beautiful place, to reach and strive and remind myself in an emphatic and literal way the value of keepin on keeping on, and moreover, to share this experience with a handful of like-minded others...just...makes me tick. In that way that everyone who is human and alive and endowed with heart and soul ought to tick, someway, somehow. These facts in mind, I try to fit in as many races as possible during those three weekends I'm not at school.
So it came to be that one morning in January, as I checked on available flights for the umpteenth time (still there.), I became a little infatuated with the possibility that there might be a race in California the same weekend I wanted to go see so many people I love. If there was, I told myself, I was going. A google search later, I'd come upon the Calico Trail 50K- as the website said, "It's not just a trail run- it's an adventure." I was sold.
It's funny to me the way things seem to sort of fall into place when you've made the right decision. There was a flight Friday night after work into Ontario airpot (just east of Los Angeles), Monday the 21st was a day off to celebrate Martin Luther King and there was a redeye that could get me back to New York early enough Tuesday morning for me to get into work. My wonderful, superhero boyfriend agreed that sure, it'd be fun for him to come along and do the 30K (he runs on occasion to keep me company...but, uh, not usually 18 miles...), his parents volunteered to pick us up from the airport Friday night, feed and house us, and provide us with a car. My sister and brother-in-law said they'd love to have us, as well as Scott and Masako, over Sunday night after the race; they, along with my other sister, prepared a veritable feast. Scott and Masako reserved the evening to share with us, and in doing so, completed my dream weekend. I've got good people in my life, no doubt.
So ten days out, plans were made. We managed a couple- or one- long training run, and Friday night, January the 19th, just before midnight, Kevin and I arrived at Ontario airport. His parents were there to meet us, take us home, and provide us with the requisite oatmeal bedtime snack. My dream weekend had commenced.
We started our Saturday right with homemade Belgian waffles topped with mango (yum!), then a stroll and lunch in lovely Claremont (hometown of Mr. Ben Harper!), and a hard-core Simpson family scrabble game. Seriously, these people don't joke around when it comes to Scrabble- consider yourself warned. Overall, a sunny morning in a wonderful place, low-key relaxation with wonderful people, and wholesome, plentiful, delicious food...can't ask for much better pre-race preparation than that. Kevin and I set off for Calico, the Avalon equipped with snacks and good music, bodies and minds stoked and ready to go. Adventure, here we come. : )
Ahem. First we had to find our hotel, which proved to be slightly more trying than we might have hoped. But no mind, the delay made the pasta dinner at the pre-race registration site all the more satisfying. There we met Ashley Baker and her boyfriend, also Kyle Hoang, Robert and another friend of his (also Robert?!?! I hate forgetting names...), who awed and inspired me with tales from the Comrades Marathon in South Africa. Someday, I thought, someday...
Sufficiently full of spaghetti/running fuel, and inspired by some amazing company, we headed back to the Ramada to lay out clothes, clif bars, coconut water, vaseline, tiger balm, hand-bottles, ginger candy and whatever else we hoped would help us through the following day's endeavor.
5:30 a.m. Sunday morning we woke ready for adventure, or at least some breakfast from the lobby. I was irritated that there were packets of oatmeal, but no hot water...geez. Tap water from the bathroom and a microwave saved me- thank some higher power, who knows how I would have managed to begin a day, much less a race day, without my oatmeal. I have sort of a love affair with the stuff going on.
It was cold outside. Damn. Where was my Cali sunshine?!?!?! Fortunately I'd brought my hat and I had insisted that Kevin buy us new $1 gloves from one of the street stands in New York- the kind that you can throw away once your blood starts circulating without much regret. Or besides throwing them away, you could use one to...more on that later. There was one thing though, and handling that became the first real memorable moment of the day. I generally cut the tip of the right index finger off of my running gloves so that I can keep my hands warm, but still mess around with my Ipod, should the urge strike. The new gloves, however, hadn't yet undergone the requisite alteration. I ran around the start some to try to locate some scissors, and finally found a volunteer with a pocket knife. "Oh, yay! I'm so glad I found you!" I exclaimed cheerfully. Holding up my gloved hand, I made my request, "Could you just snip off the tip of the index finger right there?" Got a pretty good look there. Much to the relief of the volunteer, I realized what it sounded like I was asking and corrected myself. Much better.
Ten minutes later, index finger freed, bathrooms visited, photo-taking responsibility assigned to Kevin, we toed the starting line. Actually we sort of stood there shivering, trying to borrow warmth from a small, but tenacious, pack of fellow runners. And then we were off.
The race started on a pretty good downhill road, the kind you just sort of cruise on. I took this opportunity to display my great running wisdom and expound to Kevin, who was, by the way, cruising along just fine, "Stop bracing yourself, you're wasting too much energy, and you'll miss the benefit of the hill. Use the hill, just let yourself go...if you fight the downhills like that, you're gonna get exhausted and sore..." Note that I include this lovely little display of my unsolicited advising only in order that I may make fun of myself in a paragraph to come.
Another important bit of conversation in that first 1200 meters was the one where I insisted on giving Kevin a detailed description of the meal my sisters were planning to serve when we got back to Orange County that evening. Those of you who have run ultras might understand the motivating power of visualizing that post-race meal, where you're showered, in comfy clothes, relaxing, reflecting on the day's highs and lows...or maybe it's just me. I like a good meal. : ) Enough so, in fact, that I also felt it necessary to jump into a conversation I overheard around mile 4 or so. Two guys were talking about the Spartathlon, and had somehow shifted into postrace recovery eating. In Greece. Yum. I couldn't resist the urge to announce my affinity for grape leaves and hummus...and tea and baklavah...and tabouleh...I think post-race recovery in Greece would be fantastic. And now those two guys know I think this as well.
Kevin had stopped to stretch a little (and probably also to let me go do my thing a bit...because he knows me) around mile two and I wished him good luck and went on. I also told him to "take pretty pictures," something that I later decided was not what I wanted my last piece of advice/encouragement/statement of support to be. Fortunately, he passed me a couple miles later and I was able to correct myself. "Hey baby!" I called as he passed , "Um, when I said 'Take pretty pictures" before, what I meant was..um...kick some ass!" He laughed and told me he knew. : )
Not that ultra running is about kicking ass. It's really not, at all, unless you're talking about your own. That's one of the things I love about it. Any competition between runners is far overshadowed by each runner's competition with himself. Twenty five miles in, when you can't see anybody else, and you're in the middle of the desert and it's getting hot and you're getting hungry and your legs are tired, and nobody would see if you stopped to take a rest, but something makes you want to see how many more steps you can run...
Of course, as I am always trying to explain to my non-trail-running friends, it's mostly not a dig-deep super challenge. It's mostly beautiful. Inspiring. An insistent reminder of a great big world out there, within which we are only a little bitty traveler. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right, don't forget to breathe and to take in the world, left foot, right, see how vast and beautiful it is, soak it up...
Not all moments of an ultra are so profound though. Like the eighty seven times (okay, well it seemed like eighty seven) I almost went off course because I was so busy "soaking it up" that I lost track of those damn little arrows intermittenly chalked in the sand. Or when around mile five, I realized I really needed to use the restroom. Actually, I'm being polite. I had no hope of a "restroom." I just needed to pee. It was then that I took a strong dislike to the barren, sparse nature of the desert. Modesty was going to be difficult. I also had forgotten my little pack of Kleenex. So. After a few miles of nagging discomfort, I rounded a bend with a rockface I could sort of crouch behind. Nobody else was in sight. And I used one of my $1 gloves. Afterwards I dug a little hole and buried that glove in the sand. Second "restroom" break was at an aid station around mile 26. I ran in, and volunteers offered me water and fig newtons. "Um, can I just use a paper towel and the area behind your truck?" I sheepishly asked. Fortunately they also had a little fire going in a roasting pit, so I was able to dispose of said paper towel without digging any more little holes in the sand. Profound and beautiful, not so much. Necessary, yes.
The course was hard. Really hard. The drop bag station at mile 18 was at the crest of a hill, and the wind was blowing hard enough there that I had to use by body as a sort of windscreen, crouched over my hand bottle while I refilled it with coconut water. I got some sand in my eyes as I was ran on, and this was the first moment where I recall thinking, "This sort of sucks. Keep running. If you just keep running, you'll get somewhere else, less windy/miserable." Then there was some serious downhill. Definitely not easy, but quite fun in a wild, adrenaline-y kinda way. Even as I used all the core strength I had to brace myself, I still felt slightly out of control. It was just that steep and slippery, and I was pushing forward with momentum. Halfway down I remembered the advice regarding hills I'd so matter of factly doled out to Kevin hours earlier. I hoped he hadn't listened to me. Anyone who had tried to "use" that hill, rather than "fight" it, would have been seriously injured. As a reward for making it up to the drop bag station, and then back down into the depths, the mad dash descent was followed by two or three miles of refreshingly easy downhill coasting. I zipped along and told myself I had made it through the toughest part. Feeling good...little did I know.
Then began the hills that would not end. I feel like I should have a lot to say about them, because they certainly seemed monumental. But somehow I don't have a lot of words. Just hard. Tough. Steep. Too steep. I did a lot of counting as part of the mental games I invent to keep myself moving forward. As in, "Okay, twenty five steps running earns ten steps walking. " Or "Okay, let's see if I can get to that cactus up there in 14 steps." There was one hill where I stopped in the middle, and I really wondered for a second how I was going to get to the top. It only lasted a second, and it made me think of life and the blatant parallels one can find in an ultra. It was hard, and a little part of me wondered if it might be impossible, but the only real choice is to keep putting one foot in front of the other as best as you can. I love the honesty and simplicity of it.
By mile 29 or so, I was ready to be done. This was a new experience for me. I kept thinking, and at one point, I told a guy who had run up near to me, "This isn't like me. I'm one of those blissful runners...but I just want this to be over. God, when is it over??!?!" He kind of laughed, and I just kept telling myself I was almost there, and reminding myself that in a few hours, I'd be relaxing with Kevin, Scott and Masako, and my sisters and brothers-in-law. A. l. m. o. s. t. T. h. e. r. e. ...
Part of the problem may have been that I had trouble eating during the day. I think I must have been dehydrated, because I usually get food down pretty well, but during the course of the morning, all I'd managed was a Clif bar and a handful of pretzels. And that didn't taste very good. I was disappointed by this, as I usually report that food consumed during a long run tastes particularly incredible, in a good way. Not this day.
At the end, we ran back downhill through a parking lot. I was pretty sure this was the end. I saw two women ahead of me, and I wanted to catch them. I remember telling myself that I had given it all I could, and that it was okay that I didn't have that final kick...it's funny, because I really did give myself this mental permission, and yet, some other part of me was still digging and my legs started turning over a little faster, and I started making up ground...and then I was gaining and I felt a little more hope, and then I was passing them...and then. That damn hill at the end. Turns out the finish line was not in the parking lot where I had assumed it was coming up, but rather at the top of an absurdly steep final ascent. As this became apparent to me, an obscentiy flew out of my mouth. I apologize for that. Somehow I made it up, and I kept thinking I'd be damned if those women I'd just passed caught me on that god-forsaken hill. I was either going to get to the finish ahead of them or collapse trying. So much for my whole "competition with yourself" ideals.
And then there I was. I love the final thirty yards of a race. I can't describe running those thirty yards except to say it is awesome, and when I use that word, I am never so regretful of the way it's real meaning has been diluted by overuse. If you've ever had a moment where you laughed and cried at once and felt the lightness of your soul reflected in your feet...even as someone who has experienced, and is in fact sort of addicted to seeking out, these thirty yards, words fail me. They're...nice.
Post-race was...long. I had a headache. I wasn't hungry, but I managed to eat a little, figuring I needed it for recovery. I met Michelle Barton- a sort of ultrarunning legend- and her daughter Sierra, and that was cool. I also congratulated Ashley Nordell, who had finished second among the women. I was impressed. I finished fourth among the women, second in the F 20-29 age group. Kevin also finished second in the M 20-29 age group for the 30K. We got matching trophies...awwww.
Post race pic:
The long part was when our drop bags weren't there...for, like, three hours. Calico, the town, isn't really much of an attraction. (In my humble opinion.) I was anxious to get on the road, on my way to family and friends.
We did get there eventually. It was...everything I had imagined and better. I'm tired of writing now, and really, there's not a lot more story to tell. Just know that after everything I said about the ultra, and what an incredible experience it was...spending the evening with my sisters and two of my heroes (Scott and Masako!) was the perfect finale. Kabobs, karaeoke and....love. I can't think of a way to say love that starts with "k," and in this case, using the right word wins out over my desire to alliterate. Forgive me, but "kabobs, karaeoke and love" it is. Anyway, the point is this: kabobs, karaeoke and love following a morning spent running 32 miles through the Mojave desert is a killer combo. In a good way. Dream weekend times 10. : )
Pictures: kellebelleruns.shutterfly.com
posted by bella.calamitas at 8:30 AM
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