Run or Die (8 page)

Our excitement gradually subsides, and our strength begins to abandon us as well. Not only our strength; the battery in my headlamp is running out, as if it were a metaphor for my state of mind, and a few minutes later, Sean’s gives out as well. It must be 10 or 12 miles to Echo Lake, where the team is waiting with new batteries, though probably by the time we get there, the light of day will have resolved that little setback for us.

Running in the dark isn’t unpleasant; on the contrary, it keeps you awake, activates your senses, and puts your whole body on the alert. Your senses work toward a common aim: to avoid falling down or colliding with a tree. I recall our outings in the dark when I was a child and try to achieve maximum concentration. I dance around the shadows on the ground, react playfully with my feet and balance. I accelerate and feel my feet adapt to the ground, touching and exploring as my body attempts to keep balance by juggling with my hands and arms. I like this kind of game, where I feel I’m about to drop but manage to keep upright at the last minute by swaying a hip or grabbing at the air. This is exactly what I had hoped to do on this adventure: Take my body to the limit of its strength and resistance, and train my mind to withstand pain. I’m attempting to climb to the very tip of the blade of the sword without falling off the other side, and I think I’m succeeding.

A few hours later we reach the bottom of the valley at Echo Summit, a broad, open track in the first light of day. I have been running for more than 24 hours and am pleased that my body has stood the test so far, apart from pain in my thigh muscles, tendons, and hamstrings; soreness in my hip and knee joints; a few blisters on my feet; fatigue; cold; and slight stabbing pains in my knees. Apart from all that, I feel wonderful, that I still have reserves of inner energy and strength left to draw on. I can feel that my muscles, though
hurting, are holding up well. My head stays calm and focused, and I know my body can still accelerate if I put my mind to it.

As we reach Echo Lake, daylight reveals a complete change in the weather. Threatening clouds are gathering over the mountains on the other side of the lake, exactly in the direction we now have to run. After resting and drinking steaming hot tea in which we dunk cookies and slices of energy cake, Jean-mi and I get ready to take on the longest section of the course without any support: across 31 miles of the Desolation Wilderness. It is a stony terrain, with huge slabs of granite that cross the countless lakes of Aloha and Velma. In the soft light beneath those dark clouds, it is as if we were walking across a planet where no life exists, where we are the only people left alive after a nuclear explosion and are trying to find other living beings in a vast desert. Or perhaps my eyes can no longer distinguish between the reality they see and what goes on inside my head. Monotony has taken ahold again, and exhaustion, after more than 125 miles, feels very different. Now, fatigue isn’t pain in my legs, isn’t stabbing pain in my knees, isn’t about drowsiness or breathing. Instead, everything has come to a halt. Everything. I am empty, my legs have lost their strength, I can’t move my arms, and my body can’t accelerate uphill. I’m breathing through my nose, with my mouth shut. I don’t have the strength to send very much oxygen to my lungs; my diaphragm can’t contract and distribute it. My feet drag. Above all, my head is empty and my gaze aimless. I don’t feel the usual elation, or even react at all, as I contemplate the splendid views over Lake Tahoe and the spectacular crags of Jacks Peak. I can’t keep up a conversation. Words spoken by my companion and even the sounds of nature all echo in the far distance. Snowflakes start falling, but I don’t feel the cold; I can’t even feel the pain that only hours ago was torturing me. And
thought has vanished from my mind. I can’t summon a song to help keep my rhythm; I don’t have the strength to remember a single one. I can’t think how many minutes it will take to reach the next hill I have to cross. I have lost the notion of space. I can’t imagine the future, the finish line. The future doesn’t exist in this void of mine. I can’t daydream, can’t even wonder what I’m doing here, why I’ve come and why I’ve chosen this accursed sport. Memories, thoughts, and dreams have faded; there is only a void in my head. Everything has disappeared, and I’m moving forward like a robot, not knowing what my destiny is, not knowing what to expect. Inertia keeps my legs running; my heartbeat and breathing continue to work without a conscious will to drive them on.

Time passes; the snow passes; rocks, valleys, peaks, lakes, meadows, clouds pass. The sun crosses the sky from east to west, but time has come to a stop as far as I’m concerned. None of that exists, nothing is real, and nothing is imaginary. My spirit seems to have disappeared, and my body merely follows the impulses for which it is programmed. I hear voices disturbing the void within me. But there is nobody around for many miles. I look behind, look at the peaks, then immediately conclude it must have been the wind, rustling leaves and tricking me into believing I am at the end of this stretch, where all the team will be waiting.

Or maybe I have started to hallucinate. Colleagues who have run the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc or the Diagonale des Fous and have been running for more than one night have told me that sometimes on the second day, chairs appear in the middle of the track, and as they take a seat to rest, they fall on the ground as the chair vanishes. Or that trees come to life on the second night and attack them with branches. No, I haven’t had a hallucination.
I should be so lucky
, I think,
because then I’d have something to fill this void
.

Emptiness. A step, a snowflake. Another step, wind, yellow grass. Sand, another step. White, 33 hours, another step. These are my thoughts over the last six or seven hours. I try to think in monosyllables so as not to waste the energy necessary to connect two neurons.

A field of yellow ears of corn on top of sand extends in front of me. The wind sways the corn, and though the sun has swept away the clouds and the snow, it has not warmed the air. Figures are visible in the distance among the undulating gold, and sound starts to return. I look at the ground, at the sand, and look up again to see whether the figures are in the same place. Now they’re not only appearing between the ears of corn, but are also swaying and waving their arms. I realize that they are not hallucinations: I have reached Barker Pass, where my support team is waiting. My mind reacts, driven by a desire to run toward them, but my body remains impervious to the orders issued by my mind. Finally, I just sit on a stone, and Lotta brings me sandwiches, tea, and cookies. I’m not hungry. My stomach has shrunk and lacks the strength to digest anything it might be given. I feel totally powerless. I’m not the one dictating my movements. Where has my spirit gone? Where is my strength? I close my eyes, which are looking aimlessly at the horizon. No, I tell myself, I can’t have gotten this far, can’t have run 156 miles only to throw in the towel on the last 17 miles. No, I have not reached my limit yet. With a renewed sense of purpose, I open my eyes and look toward Tahoe City, on the other side of the peaks looming before me. I force myself to eat a couple of cookies soaked in tea, knock the dust off my shoes yet again, and for the first time in many hours a smile spreads across my face.

I stand opposite the trail and shut my eyes once more. I can feel the cold, and the wind riffles my hair and clothes. I choose a
song, one of my favorites, one of those that when you hear it, your hair stands on end and your heart speeds up with the beat. In my head, I can hear how the bass begins at a gentle pace—
toom-toom
—and the drums riff, underlining the rhythm. I see the stage in the dark, the musicians in the center, heads bowed, listening to the bass resonating into the distance. It gets louder and louder until, at the moment of climax, I imagine the stage suddenly lighting up and the singer and the electric guitar joining in an explosion of rhythm. The sound is true and fresh. The mountains loom where the stage was, and clear and precise, like the singer’s voice, a path opens up between the mountains.

I feel fresh and light now, without the heaviness I had accumulated over the last 156 miles. I turn and burst into a run, not touching the ground, disappearing at top speed between the mountains to the beat of that electric music. I open my eyes wide and feel a wave of strength surge up from my feet to my hair. I run strong, at a pace my legs have not enjoyed since yesterday. It’s not that all the pain has disappeared. It is there, and makes itself felt, but rather than stealing the focus of my attention, it is now tucked away in a corner of my mind. So what is it that makes me feel lighter? My tiredness is even greater than before; my legs feel heavier and are straining more. Then why, despite tiredness, can they run so quickly? What has changed in my body? Absolutely nothing. But one small thing has changed in my consciousness: I now know I can do it and can see the finish line at the end of the path. It is within my grasp; I can already touch it and feel it.

Running the last few miles, surrounded by the whole team here to accompany me and make this dream come true, I realize finally that the threshold isn’t in my body or in my legs. I see now that I could have gone faster along the whole course; I could have gone at the speed I’m traveling now. Why had I put on the brakes? It was
my mind. My mind had led me to lose concentration and motivation, had placed difficulties and obstacles in my path and blurred the image of the finish line, disorienting me and making me lose sight of my goal and my determination to get there, made me think it wasn’t possible. But I’m not disappointed. On the contrary, I’ve made a great discovery: Thresholds don’t exist in terms of our bodies. Our speed and strength depend on our body, but the real thresholds, those that make us give up or continue the struggle, those that enable us to fulfill our dreams, depend not on our bodies but on our minds and the hunger we feel to turn dreams into reality.

As the path ceases to wind between the trees and flattens out to follow the course of the river, the clock strikes 7 p.m. Finally, I can let myself go. There is no limit, the pain has gone, and my legs have recovered their full range of motion. Strength has come back to my lungs and heart. As if it has returned to the starting point, my body erases everything it has suffered since I set out and regains the sensations felt 38 hours ago, the same strength I started with, the same motivation. In the last few hundred yards before I close the circle, the pain and heaviness of all the miles I have run disappear. I don’t need to hold anything in reserve or take precautions. I break into a sprint, jump a barrier in the middle of the trail rather than go around it, and shout as floodlights illuminate the finish line. I look at the ground and can’t hold back my tears. Images rush into my head of everything I have experienced over the last couple of days—the light from the dawning sun, the lakes, trees, heat, cold, snow, waste, sorrow, and happiness. Right now I don’t feel proud of myself, of what I have achieved, of the fact that I have shared in this physical and emotional adventure; all of that will come later, when the tears are done and I can analyze more coolly what I have accomplished. Now I can only let pure emotion flow, emotion from seeing that I was able to achieve what I had
set out to do, despite the difficulties and suffering. I can’t begin to describe this emotion; it is like taking a firm grasp on happiness, ecstasy, and joy and raising them to the power of infinity. It is as if my body and mind have shrunk to a point where they disappear, along with time and space, and only my heart exists, thudding loudly and powerfully.

Nevertheless, after the hugs and laughter, after tears of happiness, my body does reappear and reminds me of the price I will pay next week for achieving these moments of joy now. However, tomorrow is not today.

I
wake up all of a sudden. I don’t know how many hours I have been asleep; I don’t even remember stopping to stretch out to get some sleep. I only remember running over snow. It was a dark night, the kind where the cold creeps into your bones. I had kept on, one step after another, trying to find the trail in the blizzard.

However, I feel warm now. Outside, the storm seems to have died down, and high in the sky the sun is melting the snow and warming the rock walls of the shelter that has shielded me against the cold night. I am next to a meadow sheltered by 60- to 100-foot-high cliffs. To the right, a small fir wood protects the meadow from the fierce easterly winds. And beyond the meadow, a broad balcony extends before me, opening up a vision of valleys and green peaks that finally fade and give way to the plain.

This shelter is a stone building. It isn’t big enough to call a cabin, but neither is it small enough to be a kennel. It comprises four walls made from large blocks of granite piled 5 feet high. There is no sign of the passage of time; the rock is new and still retains bits of mud and grass from when it was dragged out of the ground. Shepherds or hunters must have built this as a shelter for autumn nights like last night. Inside, a floor dug out of the ground with pick and spade
protects against the cold of wet grass and allows you to stand up straight, as it adds an extra foot of space. A few handfuls of straw and branches on the ground along with a blanket that has likely endured countless freezing, rainy nights mean that I can stretch out fairly comfortably.