28 Hours: Chapter One

 Well.  I don't know that I will finish this.  Lord knows I have little time these days and no motivation to complete the simplest of tasks at times.  But, as I sit here working another Moosday (Monday-Tuesdays that run together in one long 48 hour day from 8-4pm, nap, work 11pm to sometime Tuesday, usually 4pm...) I am caught up in the idea of NaNoWriMo.  National Novel Writing Month.  Who knew it was still around?  I first took part in it when I was still in high school.  50,000 words in 30 days.  So.  Here is the start of a potential novel.  It's a fine line between fiction and reality.  Given that I am two days late in starting, I am writing it as 28 days.  But in the story, it is 28 hours of a runner on the race course.  Each chapter I write is one hour on the trail.   This is the roughest of rough drafts, so hopefully it does not read too harshly.  Also, I have not written in many, many years.  Forgive my rustiness. Here is the beginning:

Chapter One: The Starting Line

The air was crisp and charged.  Hundreds of figures stood in the darkness broken repeatedly by swaying headlamps.  The chatter surrounded the group as everyone spoke at once.  We all were here to toe the line, figuratively.  In an ultra race, runners massed together under the large archway marking mile zero.  They gathered into their respectful places according to the pace at which they ran.  The fastest and most elite were at the beginning of the group followed by the mid-packers, and finally, the back of the packers.  Some bounced in their readiness, others shifted from foot to foot as they chatted away with other runners, still others jogged up and down the outside of the group; some stood stretching in the darkness.  The line to the outhouses, once long, was tapering as everyone emptied their bladder and bowels before the start to their 100 mile adventure.  There were still a few stragglers gathering their bib numbers and frantically packing their race vests with food and supplies, deciding what to leave in their drop bag and what to take with them.  They would not see their extra supplies until mile 50, where the drop bags would be waiting as well as pacers, if a runner had one.  A dog barked somewhere.  A person shouted.  The buzz of voices was drowning, electrifying.  The megaphone voice sharp above it, giving a warning that soon they would be saying a few words before the start.

The sky overhead was still hovering between night and dawn.  It was dark and above the din of light pollution cast by the lights from tents, campers, headlamps, flashlights, etc, the stars shimmered faintly.  The morning star and sliver moon shone brightest of them all.  Puffs of vapor from the breath of many clouded in the air around us all like a fog.  It was 4:55 am.  In five minutes, the chatter would stop.  Everyone would start counting down together and the gun would fire and the group would all rush forward in a wave of human bodies.

 I found myself near the last quarter half of the large vibrating group.  I did not consider myself the slowest, but I was not the fastest, by far, and often was somewhere near the end of the middle.  I stood alone surrounded by many.  I turned my watch on and let it search for the GPS signal.  Mentally, I ran the checklist of supplies in my pack.  First aid kit, check.  Extra jacket and socks, check.  3500 calories in gels, bars, snacks, check.  It would be enough to the first aid station in 15 miles.  Batteries, check.  Water, check.  I was ready.  I was sure of that.  Months and months, years really, of preparation was behind me.  It was finally the day to test my endurance and my resolve.  I had attempted and failed several times before.  But I knew, 28 some odd hours from now, it would be done.  One hundred miles.

My watch beeped.  Signal found. 4:58 am.  Two more minutes.  I swallowed nervously, feeling the jitter in my stomach and pressure in my bladder.  No.  I did not need to pee again.  It was just my nerves.  I bounced on the balls of my feet.  A runner next to me, tall and thin, flicked their wrist and their watch beeped at the ready.  I had been in the sea of runner’s like this only a month ago at my last trail race of fifty miles.  It was a training run, fueled by aid stations and fellow comrades, so the start of it was little on the nervous system and had been casual.  Today was not that kind of start.  This was the day.  It felt like I had been training for years to get to this day.  In a way that was true.  Five years ago, I started my trail ultra journey.  Each year, I ran further.  And now, here I was.  Toeing the line to my longest distance yet.  The air was cold and chill, but I sweated.  The seed of doubt was in there no matter how much I tried to drown it with good vibes and positive thought.  Last year, I made two attempts at the distance and failed.  Did I learn from my mistakes and train better this year?  I was sure I had.  I knew I had.  I became a stronger runner every year.  

While the hum of voices surrounded me, I thought back to the last time I tried.  It had been a self supported venture.  When all races had been cancelled due to a pandemic that stopped the world in its tracks, runners all over the world kept going with virtual races.   I might have….okay I did go overboard.  Virtual races were so easy.  They were affordable and could be raced locally.  I ran 25k, 50k, 100k, and 80 miles over the summer all training and leading up to what I hoped would be a hundred mile virtual race, run on a ten mile looped course with my truck as my aid station and resupply point.  But, one loop in and I knew I was not going to finish.  The summer miles had finally taken their toll on my overtrained and exhausted body.  I completed a 50k that day and called it a DNF: Did Not Finish.  Thinking about that day, sore and battered from multiple trips and falls, I stretched and tested muscles, ligaments, and joints.  I felt fresh.  Nothing was sore, not even my hamstrings, which often gave me trouble, as they did most runner’s.  I had been careful this year to incorporate a lot of glute work to prevent hamstring overuse.  It seemed that had paid off. I stretched forward and touched my toes.  I was ready and felt a surge of excitement start in my toes and bubble up into my chest.  It caused a spontaneous grin to stretch across my masked face and crinkle the corners of my eyes.  I rocked from toe to heel, adjusted the buff to cover my ears against the early morning chill.  My fingers and toes felt numb.  Whether it was from my nerves or the sub-freezing temperatures I was not sure.  It was probably both.  I knew once I was moving the flush of heat would flood my extremities and I would soon be taking layers off.

I arrived here yesterday morning and spent the day alternating between hiking the campground trails and sitting by my fire planning and prepping for the race.  I had meticulously kept lists and checked everything off as I packed drop bags and my vest.  I had even counted all the calories as I put them in respective pockets on my vest.  I had no support crew, nor a pacer to pick up in fifty miles.  I had arrived alone.  I would race alone.  And I would finish alone.  I was fine with that.  I felt the kinship of fellow runners around me.  Some of them I was familiar with and had seen them at races before or knew them from Strava, a social media platform for athletes.  The familiarity of some was enough to make me feel less alone.

I saw a small child, perhaps four, run and give a stocky man, dressed in long shorts, calf sleeves, and orange shoes a hug.  He leapt into the man’s arms as a son would do so with his father.  I frowned. I left my children at home in the care of my sister and felt a twinge of homesickness upon seeing this interaction between parent and child.  This was the first time I had been so far from my family, especially my children.  I wished they could have come with, but the expense of a family trip and leaving behind horses, cows, and dogs, was too much.  Someone had to stay home.  Most of my races were the chance for a family vacation.  Last month we had all spent five days camping for my 50 trail race/training run.  It was my last big run before the month-long taper before this day.  The race had been relaxing, as had the entire time spent in the quiet campground.  The kids rode bikes and played in the lake and made friends with other campers. My sister and I spent many hours just sitting around the campfire drinking wine, talking and laughing.  We celebrated my youngest’s birthday in style with a cake made over the fire.  Though the center had been gooey and only half cooked, it was good and the chocolate batter caked all of our faces.  He was now the same age as this small child wishing his Dad good luck, complete with hug and kiss, before scampering back over to a slender woman, bundled in a puffy jacket, flashlight in gloved hand.  She smiled at the man, her husband perhaps, and took hold of the child before moving out of the crowd.

“Runners!” The sharp voice cut through above the chatter.  Near the back as I was, I did not make out much of what was being said, hard as I tried.  We had all attended a race briefing yesterday evening, so I knew the safety precautions, masking, aid stations, and what not.  I half attempted to listen anyway.  I did finally hear the call for one minute.  I checked my watch.  It was ready for Start.

Thunderstruck! Thunderstruck!  I heard the music roll over the mass of energized runners that started counting down.

“Ten….Nine….”

Thunderstruck, you’ve been thunderstruckI

“Five, four…” the voices rose in unison.

My heart skipped a beat, like a pinch in my chest.  Then it raced in a wash of excitement.  My fingers and toes tingled.  Oh, god.  This was it.  After all the training, the day, this moment, was finally here.  I honestly never thought it would come.  I never imagined I would finally be at an out of state race, somewhere alien and unfamiliar.  On terrain I did not know.  In a region I was completely unfamiliar with.  It was all unknown.  I was at the mercy of course markers and a map I had in my pack just in case.  Gaia was loaded on my phone.  A sudden panicked thought of losing the trail shuddered through me.  

The crowd of fellow runners huddled close, surging forward in anticipation.

“Three…”

No.  No, I would be fine.  The course was well marked.  I had studied the map until it was burned permanently in my mind.  The unknown was good.  I would see new places and amazing geographical features.

“Two!”

I jumped, feeling the crush.  It seemed like it was not that long ago that we all thought races like this might never happen again.  Social distancing.  Mask up.  The anxiety that came with being surrounded by a throng of people crushed me.  This was the part of the race that I loved and hated.  The atmosphere was addicting and electrifying and exciting.  But, the swarm of people that surrounded me was suffocating.  I would not breathe easy until the lot of us found our places on the trail and the bodies thinned out along the 100 mile course.

“ONE!”

As though the dam had broken, a sea of bodies moved forward in cadence to Thunderstruck!