It's been a year and a half, but despite the passage of time, I have very distinct memories of this leg. At least the beginning, the end, and everything that followed.
I remember the asphalt, how the bitumen was sunk and pocketed, rougher then the surfaces of city streets. The white shoulder paint was worn in places, and layered thickly in others. I remember the forest and fields, dewy and unsympathetic. The creek watering by, cold and tuneless. The light starving for warmth.
I remember watching the muscles of a runner in front of me contract expand and contract expand and contract expand like it might be enough for both of us, but he drew away from me and I was left to suffer the work of moving my own legs.
I remember the betrayal of marked pavement miles. This, I will never forget.
It is cold in the coastal mountains just past dawn, and we are moving toward the 29/30 exchange at a crawl, still more than a mile from the start of my final leg. On this final stretch of the course, the rural roadways become a clustered fuck of idling vans pushing toward the exchange, trying to arrive before their runners. In a pique of impatience and discomfort, I get out of the van and start to slowjog speedwalk to the exchange. I feel weird and crampy and porous. I convince myself it is excitement.
At the exchange, my runner arrives well before the van. He runs back, and I forward.
It is experience and pain tolerance that get me the first mile down the road. It is not easy but I know how this works. I know the anatomy of discomfort and how to submit to it. This mile passes quickly, and with relief, I notice mile marker HTC 2 stenciled, small and faded, to the side of the road. It measures up to my perceived exertion so I press on faithfully, prayerfully, hoping for deliverance, counting on the downhill to pull me home.
But I pass HTC 1 mile marker, new, white, and bold, a gaping two miles later. I am sure, certain even, that it has been more than one mile. Yet I suppress a tremble of fear.
And miiiles beyond the HTC 3 tired ghost marker, a shiny clean HTC 2.... I am weak and filling with despair.
Each old and faded mile comes fast, but the new are yawning out along a fibonacci sequence of spacetime. When I reach the newer HTC 3 marked mile, I am in place I've never been. There is no order. There is no comfort. It is entropic freefall. The baptism of sweat is a lie. Faith in the virtue of this pain hallow. The gods are smote. The temples crumble. I exhale ashes in vaporous clouds of disgrace. I am consumed, ataxic, seized by cramps, crying out to stop, afraid I'll be unable to start again if I do. I'm in exquisite suffering, but it no longer matters. This is the end of times. The crops fail. The birds fall from the sky, already crawling with maggots. My hips grind over top of each femur until they splinter in long sharp fragments. I move by falling but the pavement doesn't stop me. I just keep falling and falling and falling in to the sharp shattering exhaustion...
Past the false prophets that HTC 4
HTC 5
There is no downhill.
The light still has a shitty bleak quality when I reach the exchange. The baton passes over, cold with sweat. I see a face I think know, and empty like I am, follow it into a shush of damp crowd, vans, mud, vans, people... But it's not anyone I know. No one is any one I know. I wander around on the reedy trampled mud grass, splintered and without grace, cold and without heat. Just about the time I am found, I begin shivering in earnest.
Back in the van, I am still shivering. We trickle back out to the road and leave the remains of the race behind. It's still a long drive to Seaside.
I'm shivering through wet cloths, but I don't have the energy to peel them off. I add layers, and shiver through them. I shiver with every muscle in my body. I shiver until the tips of my fingers become numb.
But we are done. We have completed all three of our legs, and we are done. I am done.
4/14/19
__________________
7/22/22
But I wasn't done. Coming down from the coast range is a whole change of seasons. Down here it's summer, doggedly summer, and everyone is looking for a refreshing breeze. It's hot and goddamned bright. We're driving south on Hwy 101 to Seaside and I'm still shivering. It takes a full hour in the sun until the cold deeeeep in me begins to thaw. The shower at the high school feels like needles on my skin, but when I'm dressed, I feel about as well as could be expected running something-teen miles, sleep deprived, underprepared, and starving. Finally in cell range, I called home to tell them I'd made it, but am feeling profoundly de-electrolyted and maybe a touch hypothermic. THEA'S BEEN UP ALL NIGHT WITH A FEVER OF 103, Clark says.
Oh, dear, I say, well I hope she feels better soon. I'll be home this evening after our second van arrives.
Nothing clicks.
Van One finds the nearest restaurant and we crowd in. I order breakfast, coffee, and a bloody mary. About three sips into it my appetite evaporates. I don't want this, I don't want that, I have never wanted that less. Food is indecent, eating an act of vulgarity. The caloric deficit doesn't manifest any sense of urgency or need. I push my plate away and wait for everyone else to finish.
By the time we get to the beach, it's almost noon. The sun is high in at the extremely blue sky and it is hot. We get beers but I can't. I remember staring at the plastic pint, light breeze, the sun on my skin and sinking into myself. I push the beer away and find the medical tent. Sounds like a norovirus, nothing you can do but let it run it's course. haha, I already did that. I made it here. I wander out onto the crowded beach to a constructed platform with mats and beanbags for tired runners and fall asleep in the hot hot sun. I'm sweating and overheated, but still with an untouched cold at my core. I don't know how long I lay there.
At some point, I get the keys and curl up in my sleeping bag on a stretch of lawn next to the van behind the public restrooms. I sleep there, hot and cold, some place in-between belonging there and being nowhere. The temperature climbs into the mid-90s, but I'm already in the 100's and rising. I don't know how long I'm there but I'm there when the second van arrives, when the team crosses the finish line, while they drink beer, while they go out to eat, while they celebrate and retell stories. I'm still there in the late afternoon when the few people going back to Portland finally come back. I take the farthest back bench seat and sleep in my sleeping bag all the way home, sweltering and unable to feel warm.
It's still light out when I get home, like a pinkish dreamy haze, like lingering smoke. I make my way into the house past my husband who says in the hearty way of someone vigorously not-sick WOW, I'VE NEVER SEEN YOU LOOK SO SICK and he takes carries my bag inside for me.
I hobble in to join my sick child in a mess of bedding and we lay about out in feverish delirium. Except I'm the parent. She is the child. I am the one barely able to walk, cleaning vomit at 1:47am and 3:22am and 5:38am, struggling to move in a body aching with fever, prickled nerves, and extremely sore and stiff from running 17.65 miles up and down two mountain ranges. It's an exquisite viral misery heightened by the microscopic trauma I've sustained in every single muscle in my body. I can't tell what is delayed-onset muscle soreness and what is the raging virus. It's at least 10 days until I can do more than climb the basement stairs without becoming utterly exhausted. Thea missed the first day of third grade.
It makes sense now, why it was so strenuous and exhausting. why I couldn't get warm. couldn't eat. why I didn't have the strength to remove my wet cloths, why I shivered so hard my teeth hurt. What the fuck is wrong with me.
