The wind battered the manufactured house all night. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep well, but the rattling of the window didn’t help. My 3am alarm didn’t even wake me up, I rolled over and saw it was 2:57am so I got up anyway.
In 2 hours my race would begin. A race a year in the making, a year of sacrifice, planning, pain both physical and mental. A year of dirt and sweat, blood and sadness. A year of victory and majik, of mountains and valleys, ominous sunrises and fleeting sunsets.
A year of deconstruction, of rebuilding, of healing. A year of fighting shadows.
My mom slept in the living room of the ‘tiny house’ so when I went into the kitchen and turned the light on she stirred. I prepped my smoothie by throwing everything in my blender. When I was packing all my gear in my car, the blender fell and hit the driveway. Thankfully it was plastic so it didn’t shatter, but what I didn’t know was it had cracked almost the length of the pitcher. So when I turned on the blender and the smoothie started liquifying, it also started leaking out of the side of the pitcher. This was the 1st malfunction of the day. I was reminded of my 1st marathon where the countless mistakes and gear failures made my already miserable day even worse. But I wasn’t going to let a small leak deter me.
Everything was packed, I was dressed. I took stock of all the things I had and needed. Everything I forgot or misplaced from my first marathon was accounted for. I felt like I packed a week's worth of clothes just for 34 hours. Better to be over prepared than under.
It was 35 degrees in the high desert with 30-40 mile an hour winds. The stars in the predawn sky glistened blue and white. They sparkled as if the wind was helping to move their light. The quarter moon shone enough light I could see my way in the dark while loading up the car. And it was cold. My light clothes did little to protect me against the wind chill. But it was tolerable, not like the wet 40 degrees of my first marathon.
With everything packed, smoothie and supplements taken, water bladders filled, we drove the short mile to the start line.
There was a trailer at the inflatable gate. The event staff greeted me and gave me my timing chip. I asked if I could set up my tent and they said yes. I found a flat spot and began struggling in the wind. Setting up the 6 man tent in the cold gale was harder than I anticipated. I wanted to get it set up so I could mentally prepare myself before the race started but it was taking longer than I wanted. Also, the tent was well worn, the sleeves that held the poles ripped, one of the poles was already broken and another broke while I was setting it up.
The tent stakes did little to hold the tent down. The relentless gusts of wind made the struggling tent look like a half inflated balloon about to fly off into oblivion at any moment. If I had left the tent there, I would be worrying about it all day during the race. So, I changed my mind about the sad shelter. If I needed to, I could change in the porta-potties. I tore down the tent, didn’t bother folding it up, I had already wasted enough time struggling with it. I wadded it up like plastic trash and threw it in the back of the car where my mom waited hiding from the cold.
I stuffed all my gear in a plastic trash bag, lay my folding chair in the sand and began preparing myself for the start.
In my struggle with the tent I had already broken a sweat. There were sand burrs all over the ground and as I wadded up the tent I got a dozen of them stuck in my hands. I even scraped my ankle on some evil sticker bush in the dark and was slightly bleeding. It still wasn’t as bad as my first marathon, but I didn’t want any more setbacks for this one.
The runners were assembling. We all looked similar in the dark illuminated by a generator run construction spotlight. It was hard to see faces, but the bodies were distinct. Headlamps were checked, clicked on and off. Runners were stretching, jumping up and down, adjusting backpacks, tightening shoes.
Soon someone made an announcement “Runners gather up please”. My mom had come to the start line bundled against the cold. She took some pictures of me and wished me good luck. The announcers briefed us, gave us warnings and reminded us of safety and aid stations…
Then they started the countdown.
The emotion swelled like it had so many times before. I choked back tears, took a drink and swallowed it all down. I remembered all my Spartan Races, my marathon, my tournaments. This was the cumulation of it all: a year of running away and self punishment through exertion.
There was some rock and roll music playing on a struggling bluetooth speaker. I hugged my mom one last time and approached the start line. The flood light obscured the sparkling stars but I could still see the moon.
“3...2…1…GOOO!”
And we were off, bounding into the cold darkness, our first steps on a 100 mile course. The staticky music faded behind us. As it did, the sound of the runners surrounded me like the cloak of the early morning. Feet crunched on the coarse sand. There was the muffled rattling of contents in packs, and I could hear my water bladder sloshing on my back. I was needing to find a good pace, slower than my 5k speed, probably slower than my 10 mile pace. I had a whole day in front of me and 100 miles. I told myself this is my race, I’m not competing with anyone. The runners around me knew this, we were all thinking the same thing. The head lamps in front of me and behind were like glowing specters. Every100 yards or so there were reflectors hanging in trees to mark the trail spinning in the relentless wind.
We began to ascend. The trail was narrow and rocky. Every 2 or 3 steps my foot would slip on loose rocks. I had to keep my headlamp pointed down to find footing in the dim LED fog. Occasionally I would look up at the brilliant sky, the moon looking down on me indifferent, and the cold stars in the distant emptiness.
The race had begun, it would be a long grueling trial, full of inspiration and beauty; grit and pain…
But that, dear reader, is a story for another day….
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