Ultramarathon Man (24 page)

“What seems to be the matter?” Julie asked.

“Basically, everything,” I said. “I'm worked. Not sure how I'm going to cover another sixty-five miles.”

After a moment she said, “Don't think of it like that. It's too daunting. Remember
What About Bob?
”

It was a comedy we both enjoyed in which Richard Dreyfuss plays the role of a psychiatrist treating a patient, played by Bill Murray, on his long road to recovery. “Baby steps,” Julie said, as Dreyfuss had counseled Murray. “Just take baby steps. Set your goal as that street sign sixty-five feet ahead, not the finish line sixty-five miles ahead. Just get to the street sign.”

At times I couldn't understand Julie, like the time she planted a coconut tree from Hawaii in our living room. At others times, like now, she made perfect sense to me. We seemed to connect best when survival was at stake. Running until I was on the verge of collapse stripped away all of the sappy higher-level needs—delicate things like feelings and esteem—and tended to make our relationship more of an instinctual union. Pushing myself to the brink of obliteration tore down the hierarchy of needs. We somehow loved each other more fiercely at these times, when primitive emotion was the main driving force. The goal was to get me to the finish line, alive. Simple. Straightforward. More powerful than you could ever imagine.

My cell phone rang. It was LeAnn Wood, Libby's mom, calling from Stanford Children's Hospital.

“I have good news,” she said. “Libby is doing better. She's asleep right now, and the doctors say that if she gets a good night's rest we can meet you at the finish in Santa Cruz.”

“Nothing would make me happier,” I told her.

With my vow to meet Libby and her family at the finish, my pace suddenly quickened. I could feel a tingling sensation in my muscles, as if my blood was once again flowing. The endorphins were kicking in. I was pulling out of the low. Sometimes you've got to go through hell to get to heaven.

Baby steps,
I kept reminding myself as I ran along,
baby steps.

 

 

 

It was
after 2:00 A.M. on this second night of running when I reached Stanford Children's Hospital.
Probably best not to stop at this hour. They might have me arrested, or taken in for testing. I'll be seeing Libby and her family tomorrow anyway. Right?

The Mother Ship was hunkered down for sleep somewhere behind me, and I trotted along in the darkness alone. At the next intersection, oddly, I nearly ran into a young man out for a walk. He was nattily dressed, if somewhat disheveled; what was he doing out for a stroll at two in the morning? From the look he gave me, I could see he was just as puzzled by my presence in running gear. Then I noticed the lipstick marks all over his face and neck . . . ah, a young Romeo exiting a nearby club with a warm send-off.

“You're out jogging pretty late,” he said, stirring the silence. “What time'd you start?”

Not anticipating seeing anyone out here, I looked at my watch. “Ah . . . let's see: today's Sunday, yesterday was Saturday . . . oh, a couple days ago.”

He blinked. “Where are you headed?”

“Well,” I responded slowly, “I'm trying to get to Santa Cruz.”

“Santa Cruz! That's fifty miles from here!”

“I know it's a long way,” I said. “We'll see how it goes.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I'm going to meet a little girl and her family.” The light turned green. “Take it easy.”

“Yeah.” He waved, still staring at me inquisitively. “You, too.”

Onward I continued, my thumping footsteps gradually becoming the only audible sound. The next hour was run with a mounting fatigue. I tried to remain alert, but the two nights without sleep and 155 miles of continuous running were catching up with me. My pupils grew so heavy that I couldn't focus. Everything was blurry, like opening your eyes underwater. I continued striding forward, my eyelids becoming heavier and heavier with every step. Then came an eerie calm . . .

Being awakened in the middle of the night by a loud noise is unsettling, especially when you're running. In this case, a blasting horn jolted me out of slumber. It took a split second to realize what had happened, but the flashing headlights quickly solved the puzzle. I'd fallen asleep while running. And apparently I had continued sleeprunning merrily along into the middle of the highway. Now I was about to be run over.

As the headlights bore down on me, I instinctively flung myself into the hedges like a human cannonball. The landing was rough, but the alternative would have been much worse.

Shaken—Jeeze, I'd been sleeprunning down a highway!—I decided it was time to take a break. Crawling with wobbly legs out of the bushes, I wiped off the debris from my body and sat down on the curb.

Unfortunately, sitting down wasn't all that rejuvenating. It was as though my system had adapted to running constantly, and stopping was a foreign state of being. Pain flared through every inch of my body. I had to get up and keep going—it hurt too much to sit still.

There was one slight problem, however. I couldn't stand up. My body was simply too weak and ravaged. I made several attempts and failed each time, just couldn't get up the momentum. It was hopeless. I was done. Cooked. Entirely spent.

The notion of my covering another forty-five miles seemed a desperately forlorn hope. I couldn't even get off the curb—how would I possibly run another 45 miles? The weight of this realization crushed me. Sure, I'd run 155 miles nonstop, no small accomplishment. But I'd fallen short of my goal. Succumbing to defeat is devastating to me. Rationalizations never worked.

What to do now? The Mother Ship crew was down for the night and wouldn't come across me until tomorrow morning. By that time I'd be incoherent. I thought about dialing 911. Surely over the years the police have encountered similar situations. Or maybe not.

Screw it. I may have failed, but at least I'm going to preserve a little dignity and stand up. Let them find me comatose, but standing.
If I can just rise to my feet, I'll be satisfied. Baby steps,
I thought.
Just stand up.

It took several attempts and plenty of bellowing groans, but finally I did it. I stood up.

“YES!” I shouted, forgetting for a second that I'd just accomplished something most infants can do at twelve months. As I stood under the pale glow of the street-light, basking in my victory, my fighting spirit resurfaced.

So I set my new goal of reaching the reflector some twenty feet up the road.
If I can just reach that reflector, I'll be satisfied.
Although the going was laboriously slow and agonizing, eventually I made it and let out another triumphant yelp. Then I set my sights on a bush along the roadside some 50 feet up.
Baby steps,
I kept repeating to myself,
baby steps.
The momentum built, and gradually I found myself ambling along in something that resembled a patient in traction with two full leg casts. Both arms jutted forward to balance my lower torso, since neither leg could bend at the knee. It wasn't pretty, but at least I had hope, which is more than what I had five minutes ago. Then, unexpectedly, the living daylights were scared out of me by a loud voice.

“KARNO!” someone yelled from behind. I jumped in shock. “Karno, what are you doing? You look like Frankenstein.”

It was my old friend Christopher “Topher” Gaylord. The cheeky little deviant had nearly given me a coronary.

“Listen, you little shit,” I yelled back at him, knowing full well who it was without having to turn around, “I don't care if I look like the Loch Ness Monster, at least I'm standing.”

The headlight of his bicycle illuminated me from behind and cast a long shadow up the road. “What seems to be the problem, son? A little excess mileage on the chassis?”

“Yeah, yeah. Real funny, buddy. I'm on the brink of destruction, and all you've got for me is a bad joke? Make yourself useful. Where's the food?”

He pedaled up alongside me and handed over a PowerBar.

“That's more like it,” I said. “Now liquid.”

“Easy, homie. Don't push your luck.”

I reached over and snatched the water bottle from his bike holster. “I'm not beyond poaching at this point.”

“You're ornery, Karno. What's gotten into you?”

“Two nights without sleep, a hundred fifty-five miles of running, plus I haven't had a full meal in at least three hours. It wears on a guy.”

“If you were wise,” he said, “you'd be nice to me. I've got a pouch of kryptonite.”

“Oh, dude, out with it!”

“Not with an attitude like that.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a baggie of chocolate-covered espresso beans. He held them out in front of me and rode slightly faster than I could run. As I lurched at the bag and ran faster, he sped up, like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey.

“Get back here, Gaylord. Gimme those things!”

“Be nice, Karno.”

I stopped running and stood hunched over in the road, trying to catch my breath. “All right, you win,” I puffed. “I'll be kind and polite. Just get over here before I strangle you.”

He rode back and handed me the beans. I popped a handful into my mouth greedily.

“Thought you might
appreciate
those,” he said sarcastically.

“I
do
appreciate them. Thank you. It's just that I took a standing eight-count back there. These work better than ammonia capsules.”

We proceeded down the road together, chatting as though we hadn't talked in months, even though we spoke to each other nearly every day. He had called the Mother Ship earlier to approximate my whereabouts, then ridden his bike down from San Francisco. Alexandria had told him that Daddy didn't look very good, hence the espresso beans.

The hours seemed to pass more easily with a companion by my side. Misery loves company. There were still plenty of miles left to cover, but for now at least, the prospects were more encouraging than they had been an hour ago. As we began ascending what would be the highest climb of the course, the game was still on.

—William Feather

Sunrise on Sunday morning,
this second morning of running, lit the eastern horizon on fire. Bright-red cirrus clouds burned in the sky with blazing intensity as the sun crested the distant mountaintops. The beautiful display was clearly visible from our roadside vantage point midway to the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Silicon Valley lay somewhere below, underneath a blanket of fog. Had you not been familiar with the region, you never would have known that this center of technology and commerce even existed. We were miles above the clouds.

Alexandria and Nicholas with Grandpa inside the Mother Ship

The climb to the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains ascends a vertical 2,659 feet and is so steep at points that it's astounding the pavement remains stuck to the ground. My progress up this harsh incline was arduously sluggish. I took short, small steps in a stiff shuffling movement, barely covering any distance per step. The rise I'd gotten when Gaylord first joined me had long since ebbed, and we now hardly exchanged a word.

Then came footsteps behind us, and the first of the team runners approached. He was not moving much faster than we were—given the sharp incline, it was nearly impossible to move swiftly no matter how fresh you were. As he came up behind us, he muttered an unceremonious, “Keep it up.”

“Yeah, you, too,” Gaylord replied. I just nodded, too exhausted to say much. As he passed, it was clear why the runner's footsteps were audible from behind. The man was built like a refrigerator.

After a few more minutes of drudgery, Gaylord said, “Hey, Karno, I'm going to ride up to the summit and bivouac. I'm falling asleep. I need a little power nap to recharge the batteries.”

“Go for it,” I said. “I'll see you at the top.”

Before long, other team runners began passing me. They had names like “Dirty Dozen,” “Old Blues,” and, “Just Watering Your Flowers, Ma'am.” Sensing my state of fatigue, they offered words of encouragement. “You're almost there,” one guy said. “Hang in there, it's your last leg,” cheered a lanky female runner as she passed. “Less than a mile and you're done.”

Of course, it wasn't my last leg: I still had six remaining. And I didn't have less than a mile until I was done, I had something like 35 left. But there was no way for these other runners to know that. This was their third and final leg and then they'd be done. I still had a long way to go. To them I was just some struggling, exhausted neophyte trying to complete his final leg. Which was just as well, because that's how I felt at the moment.