Is This Cool?

If You Have to Ask, You Might Not Understand the Answer.

To my mom, who lusted after mountains and tall trees first and who was—as often as life allowed—the coolest mom.

our path is charted by questions. When you come to an intersection, you ask of it: is this healthy? Useful? Profitable? Logical? Based on the answer, you swerve or you drive on. That’s the theory.

In practice, such stuffy questions and their civilized cousins don’t venture into my head too often, and when one does, the stay is always brief. They touch down gingerly, and a crowd gathers ’round. An airlock hisses open and a figure emerges, well dressed and respectable looking. Preparing to address what it mistakes for a captive audience, it clears its throat, then chokes, dies, and gets eaten by the locals.

Inside my head, one question rules unchallenged. It has sharp fangs and battle scars. It wears running shoes, faded jeans, and sleek sunglasses. It routinely rescues babes in distress. It has a pet wolf. It is: is this cool?

In case you’re wondering—and rightly so—what, if anything, the previous paragraphs have to do with running, they are just my artsy way of saying—by way of introduction and preemptive excuse—that questions of health, profit, or logic (especially of logic) don’t exactly weigh in when I’m deciding on a course of action. What tips the balance is most often the question of coolness. It has little to do with illumination and much with ignition, combustion. That is to say, the answer does not teach me a damn thing, it merely fuels me, propels me.

This story begins on a Wednesday, and it begins—as do most of my stories— with me daydreaming and wondering: wouldn’t it be cool…

THOUGHTS OF THAT FIRST ULTRA

…torun a 50-mile ultra? Not that the question hasn’t crossed my mind a hundred times. But today I’m ready for the answer. The wind is blowing just right,

and the spark catches. Spontaneous combustion. Just like that, all prior plans are consumed little piles of smoldering bones.

With a little help from Google, by the end of the day I’ve found a race: the Mount Hood 50/50. By the end of the week, I’ve mailed my check and started training. I have less than a month to get ready.

This has the feel of that place in the tale where the cautious author reminds the eager reader that this stunt was performed by a trained professional and should not be attempted at home. But no one has ever accused me of displaying particular—nor, for that matter, any—caution, to say nothing of training or professionalism.

Thursday. Training begins. I stuff a couple of overdue rental movies into a backpack, fill my water bottle, pocket my credit card, and leash up Orca, my dog. Irun the six miles to town. There I buy a tub of glucosamine powder to strengthen my knees, scoop some of the stuff right into the water bottle, and throw the rest in my backpack. I return the movies, rent new ones, and run back home. I cook dinner and watch the movies.

Friday. Trail-shoe research day. (Actually, I’m recovering from yesterday, which, incidentally, was my longest run in months.) I settle on the Brooks Cascadia based on one line of one review: a combat boot disguised as a trail shoe. Cool.

Saturday, 1 p.m. My whole morning is wasted in pursuit of an imaginary Brooks outlet. This is my third Cascadia-less store. Enough, it ends here! It comes down to Montrails or Mizunos.

Montrails have a compelling know-my-way-’round-mountains swagger. The Mizunos are mostly white, sparkly, and roady—far from cool, at least until they have been soaked in mud for a day. But ’twas a pair of Mizunos that carried me through the Lake Tahoe Triple: three marathons, three days, just one T-shirt (an adventure chronicled elsewhere). So in the end, I settle for the Mizuno Antihistamine (or something). Then I head off to the mountains to break them in.

Over the next three weeks, a training routine coagulates. Fifteen miles of urban running during the week. Saturday, 15 miles of trail, followed by a movie, for there is nothing sweeter than coasting down from a mountain-bred endorphin high in the comfort of a movie theater, peacefully sipping on a giant smoothie. Ahh (or is it just me?).

Before every run, I chug a shot of glucosamine powder mixed with lemon juice and honey, a concoction so magnificently foul that it must be, if nothing else, doing wonders to strengthen my character.

THE PERFECT RUNNING COMPANION

Orca—who, at barely 1 foot tall, can somehow run circles (6-inch legs ablur) around me while chasing squirrels, birds, and all manner of imaginary forest creatures—

is loving life. In spite of her walnut-sized brain and abbreviated stature, she is a matchless and fearless outdoor companion and training partner. She never shows the slightest sign of waning energy or enjoymen (except one time that I fed her some breakfast leftovers right before a run, then spent the next hour reproving her for falling behind; finally she stopped, produced six undigested sausages, looked at me as if to say “You were saying?” then tried to eat them again). She follows me even when, at the turnaround point in one of our mountain runs, I take my shirt and shoes off and swim to the far shore of a Cascades-nestled lake (which was all well and good, until she actually caught up with me and tried to climb up my back to my head).

And then, just as I am beginning to get the hang of this training business, I suddenly find myself busy with last-minute packing (PowerGel, aspirin, and my least-dirty pair of running socks). It’s time. It’s the day before the race.

I leave Everett at 4 p.m. and thud into bumper-to-bumper Seattle traffic. Fortunately, my anticipation of tomorrow’s battle is fueling a traffic-jam-proof grin. Between bumpers, I sing and practice lobbing smiles into the fields of vision of cute girls driving past in faster lanes.

It’s a long drive. I stop twice for gas and once for pizza and beer. At 2:30 A.M., road weary, long past singing and smile lobbing, I finally arrive at the Clackamas Lake Historic Ranger Cabin. A cardboard sign on a tree has the words “Race Central” and an arrow pointing into the woods.

I turn off the engine and mountain silence floods in. I go out barefoot for a lung-and-mind-clearing stroll. It’s cold, and my headlamp lights my breath clouds. Orca immediately disappears into the woods in hot pursuit of some terrified creature of the night, real or otherwise. Although we’ ve shared every training inch of road and trail, she will be spending race day inside the van. The race Web site is clear: dogs may cheer, but they may not run.

I go back in the van and clip my toenails, the theory being that a little glitch— like a toenail rubbing the front of a shoe—could turn into big problems tomorrow, around mile 40 or so. I figure it’s like reentry from orbit. First, a toenail-tiny chunk of heat shield peels off. Next, the whole thing turns bright red and—before anyone can think “Oh dear!”—flies apart.

Disaster averted, I climb onto the mattress in the back of my van, read a few pages of my book, and fall asleep—for two hours.

0532, race day. Fierce e-chirping needle gunning at the walls of my comatose human brain. My mammalian brain tries to swat it away with a tail it no longer commands. My reptile brain thinks: food?

The shiny bloodsucking parasite on my wrist doesn’t relent, forcing me to look at its face. Good God! The early starters began at 0530. Is that possible? Maybe not… too dark? … early .. . nice (yawn) … warm. . . . outside cold … just a little.

IN THE MISTY MORNING

Gray forest light snakes into the cool darkness of my van, around the pillow squashed across my face, and through my jammed-shut eyelids. I give, open one eye, pull a curtain, and look. Two parked cars. No movement.

Aha! I launch the theory that, somewhere between Seattle and Mount Hood (almost directly south), I drove through a time-zone change of the sort that will allow me one more hour of oneness with my sleeping bag.

Ordinarily, I’m not that stupid. But in this defective mental state I am extravulnerable to the machinations of my excuse-generating inner sloth. For a few minutes, time-zone crossing is perfectly plausible, and I cling to it. But something harder in me prevails: I really have to pee.

I roll off the bed feeling the way people feel who wake up at 0530 in the back of a van after spending 10 of the last 24 hours working, 11 driving, one consuming beer and garlic-saturated pizza, and two sleeping. I need mouthwash and coffee. Intravenously.

Orca and I walk over to Race Central. I fill a little paper cup with black coffee and collect my race-bag-o-goodies. She tries to pick fights with dogs four times her size. We split three slices of leftover pizza.

The race starts before I’ve had time to make my peace with sunlight, and life is radically simplified: I run. The rest of reality will have to take a number, grab a magazine, and have a seat.

Mile four. I bite the dust. I give my feet credit: hard workers but easily startled. Show them an unexpected tangle of roots, and they panic. Somehow I manage to parry the hurtling planet and throw it off to the right. With only a light sprinkling of dust and blood, I’m up before the runner behind me has had the opportunity to trample me.

Mile six. The ground rises steeply to the right. To the left, trees start thinning out and whole patches of sky begin to shine through, until finally the woods fall away completely and the trail is left naked, clinging to a wall. Below, a magnificent valley, vast and green. Across this, Mount Hood.

Now, in pedestrian life, views and destinations don’t mingle. However, the cheerful, double-fisted, water-bottle-carrying crowd peppering this trail isn’t made up of common pedestrians. The huge mountain on the far side of the huge valley of huge trees (home, no doubt, to many huge squirrels) is our destination. Every runner I see has a full-on grin.

THE BODY COMES ALIVE, ONE PART AT A TIME

Mile eight. Different parts of my body gradually come aglow into my consciousness like guitar strings tensioning to a higher pitch. I worry until the feeling subsides, to resurface later on a different body part.

Mile 10. I take a deep breath, and (I read this in some running magazine many years ago) picture myself as a cheetah. The vision runs outside and around me like one of those prints you find in Western-themed souvenir shops of American Indians superimposed by translucent eagles or bears.

Then I look at the woods below and think: wrong predator. I widen my grin and imagine it to be a dog’s toothsome, pure-joy-in-running grin, only not a dog. I picture my eyes turning the color of fog, wind parting around long, clean fangs. I morph my plastic-clad feet into giant, gray furry pads. I sniff the air. Little Red Riding Hoooood, where are yoooou?

Mile 15. On the whole, I feel great. The air tastes sharp and new. My legs feel strong. I see other runners occasionally. They grin. I grin back.

I’m singing, sort of. Each note syllable of Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” turned into a hiss or a fiss (depending on whether I need to inhale or exhale). It’s a sort of mantra. “Oooooh Black Betty bam-balam” sounds like Hssssss-hss-fs-hs-fssshs-fs. I’ve got rhythm.

Later, to my despair, a different tune will burrow its way in. “I can do everything you can do better. Everything you can do I can do too. No you can’t. Yes I…” Stop! I will attempt in vain to harness Black Betty again. Alas, she is by then running much too fast for me.

Mile 20 or so. A little calculation demonstrates conclusively that by mile 26.3, I will have run my worst marathon time ever.

Mile 24 finds us trudging: dozens of runners, hands on thighs, ankles sinking in soft, miniature avalanches of sand. To our right, the face of a glacier. Gorgeous! I think, followed by, this sucks!

High above all this toil and grandeur, a small gray-green building floats. A window overlooks the winding line of runners shimmering in the heat. Inside, T imagine the devil sitting in a rocking chair with a tall glass of lemonade at his side. He watches as I battle the sand and, hour after hour, get no nearer the accursed turnaround. Some weeks go by.

Finally bored, the devil flings me up the mountain and out of the sand and the rocks, and, the sweat cascading into my eyes, a parking lot materializes, as does a small crowd of fashionably winterized folk. I smile at a few snowboardtoting cuties as I drip past them. “I just ran 25 miles up this mountain,” I never tell them. I grab a mouthful of fruit, a handful of Gummi Bears, and head back the way I came.

SOMETHING ALIEN THIS WAY COMES

Mile 30. Something inside me does a double flip. Feels like the creature from Alien. It scares me, not that I imagine some unpleasant critter is about to burst through my bellybutton, hiss at the audience, then start feeding on ultramarathoners.

I’m scared because whatever this thing is—spasming muscle, convulsing intestine, predatory life-form in larval stage—it feels awfully strong. If it were to wiggle in the wrong direction, it could easily bend me into a pretzel of hurt. Game over, man!

Mile 40. I have been running for some time through a red fog of pain. I think about things I might write. I wax philosophical. Why am I here?

There’s the ruling question, of course. For some reason, my mind construes prolonged raw hardship amid epic views as cool, ergo coveted, experiences.

Also, there’s . . . this affair I’m having.

Not love. Nature is not lovable. She lies beyond, impenetrable to sane human minds. She is sweat and blood and very little rest for the weary, no place for humans. In nature, you run or you starve. You run or you get eaten. In short, mostly, you run.

But man, is it beautiful! I can’t help it. I must feel her, smell her, get near her, so I do this. I run and let my sweat flow into her. I have my lust affair.

Mile 44. Last aid station. I discover that the experience of putting on an icesoaked ball cap in 100-degree weather after running 44 miles is best, but insufficiently, described as “orgasmic.”