Run or Die (2 page)

And that’s how our time flew by, between games played near the refuge and weekend and holiday excursions. Whenever we had two or three free days, we made the most of them to explore a new mountain. When we were starting to walk, we climbed the peaks closest to home and then gradually sought out new, more distant adventures. By the age of 3 I had already climbed Tossa Plana, Perafita, and La Muga. By age 6 I had completed four Aneto summits, and at age 10 I crossed the Pyrenees in 42 days. However, on these excursions we never simply followed the footsteps of our parents. They took us to the top and were our guides, but we had to find the path, look for the signs, and understand why a path went this way and not that. We weren’t passive observers of what was happening around us. The mountain took on a broader meaning than the space where we usually played. It was terrain with a life
of its own, and we had to get to know it so that we could explore it safely and anticipate the dangers. We had to adapt to the terrain where we were born. This was how our parents taught us to love the mountains: They made us feel like part of them. Because, in essence, mountains are like people: To love them, you must first get to know them, and when you do, you can tell when they are angry and when they are happy, how you should handle them, play with them, care for them when people hurt them, when it is better not to annoy them. But unlike any person, the mountains, nature, and the earth are much, much bigger than you are. You must never forget that you are a speck, a speck in space, within the infinite, and they can decide at any moment whether they want to erase that speck or not.

When I was 8, I went on a trip that became etched in my memory, and one that I often remember when I am running.

We took the train to A Coruña. The weather was cool, and although it wasn’t raining, it seemed likely that the first drops would fall at any moment. We took our bicycles off the train and started to pedal. I rode my mother’s mountain bike. It was very new, and although my feet barely reached the pedals, the brightly colored decorations on the spokes of both wheels meant that we were inseparable. My sister, Naila, was 7, and she had had her own bike for three years. Although the bike was still in perfect condition, Naila had grown over those years and now had to pedal very quickly to keep up speed. My mother rode an old Peugeot road bike with the gear change on the handlebars and carried a large backpack over the back wheel with everything the three of us might need on a week spent sleeping and pedaling in Galicia.

We rode out to the south and made good progress with few problems and at a decent enough speed. I rode in front on that huge bike, Naila rode behind me pedaling frantically, and my mother drifted between us, making sure we were each okay.

We rode to Santiago de Compostela in a drizzly mist that left us soaked for the whole day. On one of our stops, when she was looking at an ancient Michelin road map, my mother pointed to the white line along the side of the road and said, “Kilian, you must follow this line, and don’t leave it at any crossroads, since there will be a road that continues to the right. Okay?”

I understood her perfectly and started pedaling, focusing on that white line on a bendy stretch of road, while my mother followed a long way behind with Naila. The crossroads started to come, cars overtook me on my right and left, and buses and trucks honked and roared at me. But I faithfully followed the signs and made sure I kept to the white line. All of a sudden I saw my mother running with her bicycle on the side of the road. She was shouting at me to get away from the middle of the road.

“Kilian, what on earth do you think you’re doing? Get out of the middle of the road!”

As a result of how the roads were painted, the line I was following led straight into the second lane of traffic on the main road going into Santiago. And I had clung to my mother’s words and hadn’t left it for an inch. I rode over to where my mother was standing, sweating from the effort she’d expended. She hugged me, then got started repairing the wheel that had been punctured when she was chasing after me.

The next three days were a hard struggle against a fierce north wind. We followed the ups and downs of the coastal roads, with the wind constantly driving us back. Naila strained to ride uphill
on her small bike as I galloped ahead at top speed, and my mother did her best to keep an eye on both of us. Nevertheless, we reached Cape Finisterre on an evening with light clouds and a cool breeze in time to see a beautiful sunset over the sea on the horizon.

We had forgotten to take into account that the light would disappear quickly when the sun went down. As usual, we rode off as fast as we could, and all I had buzzing in my head was something my mother had said: “Stop at the campsite with green doors and two flags flying. Naila and I will catch up with you.”

I started to pedal as quickly as my legs would allow and began to eat up the miles. On my right, the beaches started to disappear and were replaced by mountains.
How strange. I thought the site was much nearer
, I kept thinking as night fell and the road climbed higher and higher. I reached the mountain pass and began to ride down the other side. There were no lights in front or to my right and no sign pointing to a campsite farther on. I accelerated to get there faster. It started to get cold, and I felt sleepy. All of a sudden as I rounded a bend, a small red car overtook me and came to a halt. A small, tubby man got out of the driver’s door, shaking with laughter. My mother got out of the other door, still wearing her cycling shoes.

“Didn’t you see the campsite?” she scolded me.

“Hmm … no, I didn’t see any sign of it. I’ve seen only beaches and then mountains,” I said, thinking back to everything I’d seen since I’d started pedaling.

“And on your left?” she asked, looking at me incredulously.

I felt so stupid. There’d been a 50 percent chance that the campsite would be on the left of the road, but that had never struck me. I smiled, laughing at myself, and climbed into the car belonging to the owner of the campsite, who drove us to the tent where Naila was cooking dinner.

In the morning we got up early in order to reach A Coruña in the afternoon. This time we set off together to avoid more mishaps, but on the last climb before we reached the city, my mother’s bike decided that it had had enough, that it had fought too many battles, and its chain and gears jammed. As we hadn’t included any tools for bike repair in our backpack, we had to go to a small village shop to buy oil.

After several attempts, moving everything we could with our hands, we managed to sort the chain out, but the bike was left with a fixed wheel. Unless she wanted her legs to look like they were powering a dryer on express cycle, she had to put them on her handlebars when we went downhill. Naila and I rode behind her to ensure there was no accident.

We stayed overnight in a small hotel in the city center and the following morning got up early to catch the train. At the start of our journey we had had problems transporting our bikes, so this time we wrapped them up at the hotel. We didn’t have any large bags or cardboard boxes, so we had to put them in our sleeping bags. The only snag with this well-rehearsed solution was the question of how were we going to transport them to the station, since my sister and I were unable to carry parcels that were bigger than we were. We decided on the following method: I accompanied my mother halfway with one bike. She went back for the other bike and in two trips got the bike and Naila. We then repeated the process from the city center to the train station.

Our honesty prevented my sister and me from earning our first wage that day. When people walked past us and saw a boy or girl alone, face exhausted after so many days of hard toil, clothes dirty with oil from bike chains, sitting next to a large sleeping bag, they felt sorry and offered us money so that we could buy food. We stared at them in amazement, not understanding what made them
think we were hungry, as we had eaten breakfast only a few hours before. Naturally, we refused their money.

We finally reached the train station, where, on the inspector’s orders, we had to remove the bikes from our sleeping bags and stay by the door area and move them from right to left so that people could get in and out at each station. After a few hours a female conductor took pity on us and let us put our bikes in the room where they stored train equipment, and then we managed to sleep until we arrived home.

Our excursions went from games to activities and then to sport. Competition came onto the scene when I started high school and enrolled at the Center for Mountain Skiing Skills to use up some of my excess energy. Training began, with races here, there, and everywhere—first across the Pyrenees and later on throughout Europe. My first race results brought with them the desire to do better. Helped by Maite Hernández, Jordi Canals, and the whole team at the center, as well as by my mother, who drove me everywhere to train in the early morning before going to school, it seemed that I had started on my career and that my most important successes must still lie ahead, even though I had won everything at the junior level.

But life always places obstacles in our way. December 22, 2006, was the morning after winning what was at that time my goal in life, the Agustí Roca, for the first time. As I was going home from school, I jumped from one road to another as I had done so often before, but this time my feet didn’t coordinate and I crashed to the ground. I felt a searing pain in my left knee and right hand.

I limped home as best I could and sat on the sofa, waiting for the inflammation to go away and for the pain to lessen. Quite the
reverse happened: By the time it was dark, my knee was so swollen that my parents took me to the hospital, albeit reluctantly.

“You’ve broken your kneecap and the metacarpals of your right hand,” said the doctor. As she uttered these words, my world started to collapse around me. “It would be best, ideally as soon as possible, to operate and insert a metal plate. Hopefully, it will make you as good as new.”

It was a difficult decision, and at that moment I was unable to think very clearly. I was at a high point in my short sporting career, and as a mere 18-year-old, I couldn’t see any way forward. Was my career at an end? Would I recover from this injury? I could no doubt take up sport again, but would I return to the level I had fought so hard to reach? I wanted answers, and answers now. I couldn’t imagine spending a year not competing and not training. What should I do? These unanswered questions continued to trouble me even as I went into the operating room so that they could put a metal plate around my kneecap.

I decided I would have to look for other solutions. If I couldn’t compete at the same high level, I would have to find other goals and motivations to fight for. Consequently, in the three months I was in bed in a cast, I tried to find out all I could about mountain skiing. I looked at studies and experiments in technique carried out in the area of cross-country skiing in order to apply them to my sport. I read books on sporting psychology for ways to improve my tactics. I spent nights in front of a computer surfing pages on physiology and sport strategies in order to extend my understanding of my body and avoid sleepless nights with too many unanswered questions.

I went to the hospital in March to have the cast removed. I was very disappointed when I saw my leg for the first time after so long. No, that wasn’t my leg! It couldn’t be! Mine was muscular
and strong. That scrap of hairy flesh couldn’t be mine! Good heavens! Then I got very gloomy. By way of consolation, I reminded myself that at least with the knowledge I’d acquired over the last three months of intensive research, I could continue with some kind of link to the world of sport.

The first sessions with the physiotherapist were horrible. I was unable to move my leg without electrostimulation; I was unable to stand up straight without the help of a cane. How would I ever run again if I couldn’t stand up straight? However, I gradually improved and my leg began to get stronger. Within a week I could stand up without the cane, and if I could stand up, I could stand up on skis, right? I tried to. I went to the ski slopes and put boots on for the first time in four months. I knew that my doctors wouldn’t be pleased to know I was skiing, but in the end I was simply standing up, with the boots supporting my feet. It was like being at home and doing physical exercise.

I started to go up slopes, and though I was in terrible shape, I realized that I could do it, that I could do what I used to do, and I felt the adrenaline spreading through my veins. I reached the top of the slopes as excited as someone who had just won a medal in the Olympics. I started to sing, dance, and shout as if I were alone in the world. The skiers around me stared at me as if I had gone crazy. In fact, after so many months of making no effort at all, I really must have suffered a wholesale destruction of my neurons. After that first rush of adrenaline, I calmed down and asked myself a basic question:
How the hell am I going to get down?
I was so excited to discover that I could ski again that I hadn’t thought about how I would get down after I’d climbed the slope. I started my descent on the shoulders of a friend who volunteered his back to support my weight. Halfway down we realized that wasn’t the best solution, so I continued my descent using only one leg—my
good one, of course—with the frail one doubled under me so that it didn’t touch the ground.

From then on I had only one aim in mind: to persuade my doctors and physiotherapists that I could start training. It was difficult initially. When I smiled broadly and told the doctor I had been skiing and that it had turned out very well, her reply was clear and no-nonsense:

“I’ll put you back in a cast!”

“No, no, please, I’ll be a good boy. I’ll do whatever I have to. Gym, swimming pool, physio … but no more casts, please!”

When I saw that the medical route was completely blocked, I focused instead on my physiotherapist. He told me that when I could bend my leg 90 degrees, I could start on a stationary bike, and that in the meantime I should go to the swimming pool and walk underwater. From then on I did all I could to bend my leg. I sat on it to put pressure on it, used weights to make the joint more flexible, and made a few degrees of progress. I went once to the swimming pool, but walking around in a pool full of senior citizens wasn’t the most entertaining activity in the world.