Inspired

I’m not a runner.  

Until about ten months ago, I’d never run more than about six miles in a row.  Sure, I’ve jogged through a recreational BolderBoulder 10k or two, but that was my max distance.  It never occured to me to run any farther, and my 42-year-old body was just fine with that. 

Despite this, I now find myself a mere eight weeks away from running 100 miles through the Rocky Mountains in the Leadville Trail 100.

The short explanation for this unforeseen turn of events is I'm running it because my older brother Tim ran it last year.  Tim would say that I'm doing it because every time he tries something new, I have to try it too, and see if I can do better.  For example, when he tried to be a cowboy, I just had to be a cooler cowboy with a sweet vest and scrunched hat.


The Wild West circa 1971.

While there is a sliver of truth to his pet theory -- he is after all an accomplished ultra-marathoner and I am undeniably a coat-tail-riding neophyte -- it certainly doesn't capture my motivation in this case. 



The longer explanation is this:  Ten months ago, Tim assigned me the duty of pacing him for 10.5 miles over 12,600’ Hope Pass in his first attempt at the Leadville 100 last August. 


LT100 2010: Paul, Erin (pacers), Skyler, Spencer, Laurie (crew chief), Tim (runner) and me (pacer)

Note, he didn’t ask me, like he asked his other pacers, Paul and Erin; he merely told me my assignment.  He assured me that the three-day backpacking trip I’d done a few weeks prior was sufficient training, and I believed this lie.

So, last year, on August 21, 2010, I found myself climbing up Hope Pass with my brother, carrying his hydration vest and food and lying right back to him – “Not much farther…” “I can almost see the top…” “You’re looking great…” etc.  Of course, none of that was true.  In fact, after 50+ miles of running, he wasn’t looking all that great.  The altitude had taken its toll on him (a flat-lander from MI) causing his body – both his stomach and his quads – to rebel ferociously. 


LT100 2010:  Tim lubing some tender spots 30 miles into the race

Finally, at one point during the climb up the pass, with his leg pain becoming intolerable, he decided he’d had enough.  I sensed it coming for the previous couple miles based on his constant grimacing with every step, his audible moaning and grunting and the occasional knee-buckle and collapse.  He plopped down on the side of the trail and announced, through gasped breaths, that he was "done."  He said he simply could not continue up the mountain.  It was too much.  He just couldn’t get his legs to work.  Everything hurt intensely.  And even if he could move, he would never make the strict cut-off time at the Twin Lakes Aid Station. He told me he appreciated that I was trying to motivate him, to keep him going, but it was no use.  HE WAS DONE.

Tim’s not a quitter.  So for him to plop down and say “No mas” after all his training, all the money he’d spent, all the people who had travelled a long way to support him, AND to do this in front of ME, his younger (sweet-vested, scrunched-hatted) brother, of all people, he must have felt like he had reached the utter bottom of his well.  Dried up.  Nothing left.  Done.

I let him sit there on the side of the trail for a couple minutes (30 seconds really, but I told him it was two minutes), fed and watered him, and then explained to him that even if he wanted to quit right there on the mountain, he still had to get to the aid station where he could quit more formally.  So, he might as well keep moving forward.  And that’s what we did. 

We made it up and over the pass eventually, and Tim began to feel better.  The thought of quitting seemed to grow dimmer, like we left it on the other side of the mountain.  I knew we were up against the clock, so we upped the pace accordingly.  With a heroic final effort, he made the cutoff at the Twin Lakes Aid Station with no time to spare, and rather than quit there as he had planned, he changed shoes, fueled up and continued on into the dark night, as I knew he would, with Paul pacing him. 

And he kept going for about 24 more miles and nine more hours. 

Unfortunately, due to a miscalculation in distances, he eventually missed the cutoff time at Fish Hatchery (mile 76.5) by only a few minutes and was dropped from the race.  But to me, despite this disappointment, the real message was loud and clear:  His well was A LOT deeper than he realized.  

In my head, all I could see was the image of him moaning on the side of the trail announcing that he was “done,” but somehow finding it within himself to continue on for almost an entire marathon’s worth of mountain running through the middle of the night.  I tried to imagine a runner toeing up to the starting line at, say, the Denver Marathon, and before the gun even went off, feeling utterly spent, like he couldn’t take even one more step, yet somehow finding the strength to run the marathon anyway.  That level of mental toughness seemed inconceivable to me; an entirely new concept. 

And the really wild thing was… I saw many runners who had the same experience my brother had – the necessarily painful but rewarding experience of finding out that their respective wells were much deeper than they knew.  At some point during that race, almost every runner doubted whether they could go on, whether they would finish.  But they pressed on anyway.  The word I thought of that night, the word that still continues to resonate in my head today is “inspiring.”

No, I’m not really a runner, but I am curious to find out how deep my own well is.  That night I was inspired to find out how far I can go after I think I can’t go any farther.  

On August 20 (and August 21), 2011, I hope to find out.