Ultra (2 page)

“Go for it, buddy!” Kneecap shouted. “Kick some shins!”

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
So let’s discuss this superhero business. In her White House blog, Michelle Obama called you a superhero.

QUINN:
That’s a nice way of putting it. Most kids at my school think I’m a super-freak.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
They’re just jealous of what you’ve done.

QUINN:
I doubt it. Ultra-marathoning is about as cool as log-rolling. Nobody’s lining up for my autograph, that’s for sure.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
We should explain. For those viewers who may not know, ultra-marathoning is when people run any distance that’s longer than a traditional marathon, which is 26 miles, or 42 kilometres. Is that correct?

QUINN:
Exactly.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
And you were running a really long ultra — 100 miles. How do you train for a race like that?

QUINN:
I ran for 2 hours almost every day. I’d run to school in the morning and then back home in the afternoon. Tuesday and Thursday nights I also ran my flyer route. And every Saturday I
ran to Kendra Station for my piano lesson.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
How many miles were you running every week?

QUINN:
A hundred, maybe a hundred and ten. I wore out three pairs of running shoes in four months.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
I’ve heard that your body is different from most people’s.

QUINN:
Yeah, my heart is freakishly big. Twenty per cent bigger than other kids my age.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
How does that affect your running?

QUINN:
A bigger heart can pump more blood. The more blood your heart pumps, the more oxygen gets delivered to your muscles, and the easier it is to run. So I don’t tire out as fast as other runners. Plus, I have another advantage.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
I’ve heard about this — your body doesn’t produce much lactic acid, right?

QUINN:
Exactly. You know how, when you run really hard, your legs start to burn? That’s the lactic acid. It fills up your muscles and slows you down. But my body sucks at making the stuff. So I can run for a really long time without conking out.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
When did you realize that you had these superpowers?

QUINN:
A long time ago …

I was eight. Dad was training for a marathon that spring,
and every morning he’d get up early for a jog. One day he caught me watching cartoons. “Hey, Quinn, want to come?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I said. Why run when I could sit? That was how I thought back then.

“Come on,” he said. “Quality time with your dad! We never get to hang out, just you and me.”

This was true. Oliver was still a baby then, and between the feedings and diaper changings he was hogging my mom and dad all to himself.

“Come on,” Dad said. “I’m just doing one loop of the Headwaters Trail. You can run it faster than me, I bet.”

I tossed on my gym shorts and my Oilers jersey. I didn’t have any real running shoes then, so I just pulled on my Wheelies. Dad and I crept out the back door without waking Mom or Ollie, and then we crossed the field behind our house and jogged up Appleby Line.

It was a crisp April morning, and the trees were covered with lime-green buds. The sky was as blue as a swimming pool.

“I’m cold,” I said. “Can I go back for my jacket?”

“You won’t need it,” said Dad. “We’ll be sweating in no time.”

The trailhead appeared at the end of the subdivision. We trotted down the path in single file, skirting the little creek that leads to Watson’s Pond.

“Don’t go too fast,” Dad called out. “Save some energy for later.”

I sprinted ahead, to show him who was boss. No one else was on the trail, and I sang out loudly as I ran.

It was a song by Troutspawn, one of my dad’s favourite bands. Troutspawn was one of my favourite bands too.

The dirt path led up the side of the hill. I charged up the slope until I saw a stripe of orange. I stopped and looked down. Hundreds of caterpillars were crawling around in every direction.

“Woolly bears,” Dad said, pulling up behind me. “Skunks love to eat those guys.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Sure. The skunks roll them over and over on the ground, until they scrape off all the long hairs.”

The caterpillars pulsed slowly along. I imagined the skunks rolling them in the dirt as if they were pizza dough, then chewing them into ribbons of goo. “Not a very nice way to die,” I said.

“That’s Mother Nature for you,” said Dad.

We started running again. The hillside was covered in trilliums and forget-me-nots. The path got steep, and when I stopped and looked behind me, I couldn’t see my dad anymore. I figured he must have stopped to walk.

At the top of the hill, the trail popped out of the woods and crossed a grassy field. A little stone church stood not far away. I jogged over to the graveyard and sat down on a wooden bench to wait for Dad. He appeared a few minutes later. He was gasping for air and his face was bright red. He sat down on the bench, rubbing his knee.

“That’s a tough little hill,” he said.

“I guess so,” I said. I didn’t think it was that tough.

I walked over to the edge of the escarpment. Kneecap calls Tudhope a “flyspeck town,” but it looked sort of pretty from up here. I could see the water tower with the name of our town in block letters, and the empty parking lot where the bus stops six times a week. I could see the marina docks where, in another couple of months, the motor boats would be tied up.

I jogged back over to my dad. “Running’s really easy!” I said.

He smiled and went on rubbing his leg. “Told you it was fun,” he said.

My dad didn’t look like your typical runner. He had thick, short legs and a bit of a pot belly. He was five foot eleven and he weighed two hundred pounds. Most of that was muscle, though.

“Ready to run back down?” he asked.

“Of course!” I said.

Dad pulled himself to his feet and stretched his arms above his head. “Tell me if your legs start to burn,” he said. “We can always slow down and walk.”

It was a billion times more fun running down than climbing up. I thumped down the path, taking huge leaping strides, and at times it felt like I was flying. At a bend in the trail, I jumped over a pile of pebbly deer turds. I let out a yodel and I could hear Dad yodelling behind me. The scent of moss and mud filled my nostrils, and soon we were back at the bottom of the hill.

Suddenly, I heard a noise.
Rat-a-tat-a-tat!

It was Dad, behind me. He was farting. Popcorn farts.

Rat-a-TAT-TAT! Rat-a-TAT-TAT!

He farted with every step. It must have gone on for 30 seconds.

“Quinn!” said Dad. “Excuse yourself!”

The path rounded Watson’s Pond and led us back to Appleby Line. Kneecap waved from a few doors down.

“Yo, Quinn!” she shouted. “Hey, Mr. Scheurmann.”

She was standing in her driveway, shooting baskets. We bounded over.

“What’s going on?” Kneecap asked.

“We’re running!” I said.

“How far did you go?”

“Four kilometres,” said Dad. “Two going up and another two coming down.”

He’d stopped farting, which was a good thing.

I wasn’t tired at all. “Let’s do it again!” I said.

Dad raised one eyebrow.

Kneecap pointed at my feet. “Shouldn’t you wear some
real
shoes?” she asked.

Dad started to laugh. “You ran in
those
?” he said. “But they have wheels!”

I blushed and ran into Kneecap’s house, shouted hi to her mom, and yanked on a pair of Kneecap’s trainers. She and I had the same size feet. I came back outside and shouted, “I’m good. Let’s go!”

We began our second loop at 9:22 a.m.

Kneecap ran a clock on us. “Thirty-three minutes and thirty-six seconds,” she announced when we got back.

“Not bad,” said Dad.

“Again!” I said.

Our third loop was faster. 29:06.

“Pretty good,” said Dad.

“Again!” I said.

As we ran, Dad told stupid jokes.

“What happens when you double-park your frog?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“It gets toad!”

Mason Pond appeared around the bend. Turtles were sunning themselves on bone-coloured logs.

“What’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup?” Dad asked.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Anyone can roast beef!”

While we ran, Dad peeled off his shirt. Yeah, he was one of those no-shirt dads. Mom hated it when he ran bare-chested; she was always chasing after him with a bottle of sunscreen.

“Talk to me, Quinn,” he said. “It’s your turn to tell a joke. Better yet, tell me a story.”

I told him about school, about my teachers, about exponents.

“Tell me about that girl,” he said.

“Who? Kneecap?”

“Yeah. What kind of a name is that?”

I told him the story behind her name. He laughed and told me about all the nicknames he’d had. His friends had called him Pickles, Socks, Bubbles, even Floater. He hadn’t liked any of them. There was only one nickname he’d liked.

“Seriously?” I said. “Those guys call you Yoda?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“But why?” I asked.

“Because sometimes, even though I’m just a grunt, I actually say some pretty smart things. And even though I’m slow and fat, I can still kick butt when the going gets tough.”

Our fourth loop sucked. We ran it in 34:20. I could have gone faster, but Dad was losing steam.

“Again!” I said.

Dad grimaced. “Aren’t you tired?” he said.

“Nope!”

It was weird: the longer we ran, the stronger I felt.

The fifth loop was our fastest yet: 27 minutes, 40 seconds. When we finished, Dad lay down on the driveway.

“I am totally done!” he said. “No, Quinn, I am
not
running another loop!”

Kneecap’s mom gave us kiwi juice and toasted bagels. Dad stood up and stretched his legs. His left hip made a gruesome clicking noise.

“Ew!” Kneecap cried. “That’s disgusting!”

Dad stretched it again. “What, this?” he asked.

Later, when we got home, I told Mom how far I’d run. She didn’t react the way I expected.

“You can wreck your own knees for all I care!” she told my dad. “But don’t wreck his! He’s just a kid!”

“But you should see him run,” Dad said. “We ran for three hours and he wasn’t even tired!”

This was a tactical mistake. “You made him run for three
hours
?” Mom cried.

A couple of weeks later, Dad took me to a special clinic. They put me on a treadmill and took about a hundred vials
of my blood. Two weeks later the results came back.

“It’s confirmed,” Dad said. “What colour cape do you want?”

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
So let’s get back to the 100-mile race. You’d just started running. You were about to
kick some shins!

QUINN:
Right. There were seventy-seven runners in the race. And the trail was only a metre wide, so it was a traffic jam at first. All I could hear was the sound of seventy-seven pairs of sneakers slapping the dirt, and the sloshing of water in seventy-seven hydration packs, and the farts of seventy-six middle-aged long-distance runners. Luckily the pack spread out pretty quickly. The greyhounds zipped off, and the slowpokes fell behind, and soon we were all stretched out in a long, thin line.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
And how were you feeling?

QUINN:
Pretty good, except I had a knot in my stomach. Plus, I was still mad at Kneecap.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
Because of what she said to you?

QUINN:
Yeah.
Fun vampire
. It’s not exactly a compliment.

Still, I was happy to be out there running. The sky was pink, and the air smelled of damp wood. The forest was full of all these golden stripes of sunlight. Tiny birds were zinging between the trees.

After about 10 minutes we passed a red signpost. Mile 1, the sign said.

“Only ninety-nine to go!” someone shouted.

“This isn’t so hard after all,” said someone else.

I was running behind a group of grey-haired men. They laughed and horked up gobs of phlegm and bragged about all the races they’d run.

They also talked a lot about body functions. Like, Hey, Bob, did you have a bowel movement this morning? Yeah, Steve, I had three! Wow, lucky you! I guess today’s gonna be a fertilizer run, huh?

(Pause)

QUINN:
Oh, wait; you probably don’t want to hear this, do you?

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
I’m not sure our national audience wants to hear about bowel movements, no.

(Audience laughs)

Quinn, I’m still trying to understand how anyone can run 100 miles. I mean, that’s like running four full marathons, back to back. I know you have superpowers, but … And how did you keep from getting bored? Did you listen to music along the way?

QUINN:
No, but I sang a lot.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
What did you sing?

QUINN:
My own songs, mostly. I’m a songwriter. I’ve written ninety-three songs so far. I can play some of them on piano; others I just keep in my head. I’m always singing them, even though I’m not a very good singer.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
So singing helps you relax? What about running — does that help you relax too?

QUINN:
Yeah. It quiets down my brain, you know? My brain is always screaming crazy stuff at me. Like, when I walk down the hallway at school, it tells me that my clothes look stupid, or that everyone hates my guts.