“400 Meters To Go,” “200 Meters To Go,” “100 Meters To Go,” and “17 Feet To Go” banners. It wasn’t the glorious, all-out sprint to cross the finish as I had dreamed about, and about 10 yards before crossing the finish, I watched the two guys in front of me raise their arms as they crossed the line.

This is how slow I was going.

I had time to think, “Wow, how cliché. I mean, I guess it’ll look good on the race photos, but honestly, how many race photos actually look good? At the same time, completing a marathon is a terrific accomplishment . . . but, it’s also still kind of lame.

Needless to say, I crossed the line with my arms above my head.

I staggered over to get my medal and then my cape of awesomeness. My legs were totally like “Dude, Terry. Not cool, man. Not cool! We’re gonna pout for a couple days.” They’re still pouting.

A volunteer guided me to the private Sub-Elite finishers tent, where I high-fived a few sullen-looking guys and then gave up. Come on guys, cheer up. RUNNING (with the exception of blisters, cramps, side stitches, black toenails, chafing, knee injuries, stress fractures, and muscle pulls) IS FUN!

So now for the official officialness:

° Overall: 3:03:45 (gun), 3:03:42 (chip)

° Half split: 1:27:29 (Holy crap. That’s a nine-minute positive split for those of you scoring at home.)

° Place: 713 (overall), 667 (gender), 2 (age)—Honestly, how many 19-yearolds run marathons?

WHAT A TORTUROUS (and fun) RACE! I accomplished my sub-3:10 goal, which got me the BQ I was hoping for. The sub-3 didn’t work out, but I don’t mind. I never thought I’d actually have a shot at a sub-3 my first time in the trenches, so coming close was totally cool.

Congrats to all of the runners who smoked up the course this year in New York!

Da End.

For three easy installments of $29.95*, you can own your own copy of Terry’s NYCM Totally Rockin’ Race Report! !!! It comes in a beautifully fashioned, breathable, open-mesh, bound carbon-rubber frame. Customize your edition with your name, your race number, and the name of your favorite My Little Pony.

*Payments may also be made in pizza, iPods, beer, Body Glide, homemade baked goods, or GU. Residents of Canada may also pay in toques, maple syrup, or calling me every day for like a month and saying stuff like, “What are

you laughing aboot?” while we die from laughter. i

Redemption at the Rio Del Lago 100-Mile Endurance Run.

ou’ll be back.” “No I won’t. There’s no point to it. It’s a godless course, and you can’t tun it. I don’t see the point. I want to run 100 miles, not climb them!”

“Nah, you’ve got to lose that weight.”

“T just lost 6 pounds in 16 hours! What weight?”

“The weight you’re carrying around now with that monkey on your back. It’s going to start gnawing at you soon, and you’ll be back. You’ve got unfinished business.”

Eo * *

Unbeknownst to me, the guy at Massanutten was right. I covered 65 miles when Thad set out to do 100, and I had left something undone, a thread hanging from my sweater, a race shirt I couldn’t wear, a monkey on my back. I left Virginia in May with the primate in tow. How I got through airport security is anyone’s guess, but I flew back, monkey and all. Monkey got the window seat, stole my peanuts when I went to the bathroom, and pretended to be asleep when I returned to discover he had crapped all over my seat. Got back to California and went to the doctor to see about my sprained wrist, iliotibial band syndrome, and sprained ankle. She sent me to physical therapy for those, advised me to try something called cross-training, but told me there was nothing she could do about the monkey. “You mean you can see him too?” I asked.

The monkey took up residence in the garage, followed me everywhere. I would be walking the kids to school, and the vice-principal would come running out hollering at me about gorillas and safety and children and disease and general common sense and was I raised in a circus and following up with some direct and pointed questions about my lineage. He would show up in odd places, that monkey. The kids would ask, “Dad, can we go to Starbucks?” I would say, “Yeah, sure. Id like another shot at 100 miles.” They would ask me back, “What?” Went to dinner with the missus, and we were turned away, having been told about health codes and mention having been made of table manners, and as if anticipating an argument about health codes and table manners not specifically proscribing

monkeys in so many words, nor even roughly indicating primates for that matter, made with a heightened pitch of indignation a final proclamation about seeingeye dogs and not seeing-eye chimps. Kind of tired of this monkey business, me, even if it wasn’t a real one.

Got the knee and the ankle and the wrist serviceable again and then ramped up the mileage gradually and actually paid attention to what the physical therapist told me. Things progressed, and I started thinking about the Rio Del Lago 100Mile Endurance Run (RDL100) in September right here outside of Sacramento, California. It was at RDL100 that my brother acquired his second monkey last year. He had two for a time but sent his first one walking the day I got mine. He took everything Massanutten had to throw at him and plowed on to the finish.

Started training for RDL100. And despite the fact that I didn’t get either the volume or the quality of training I had wanted, the monkey signed me up the last week I could. What I had going for me was a fairly good idea of what went wrong at Massanutten, which was probably less the 100-plus miles and more summed up by the words “rocks,” “up,” and also “down.” I think it was mostly the down, to be honest, but there sure were a lot of rocks, and you don’t often have down without there first being a like amount of up. So really, it was the combination I think, with the worst culprit being the down. RDL100 had the length but not the same up or the same down and really none of those godforsaken rocks. The monkey made that simian sign language for “You excuses make” and then, “You my bitch, bitch.” Then he slapped his red monkey ass at me.

* Eo *

Got to race day, and I got up at 4:00 a.m. and had the only oatmeal flavor I knew my daughter would never touch. Then the monkey and I sat down for some coffee, and I tried to strike a deal. “Finish,” I said. He signed, “No, bitch.”” My missus came down and kissed me and the monkey good-bye and promised to see me at the Auburn Dam Overlook aid station (mile 21) if I was still alive. The monkey slapped her on the butt and made that monkey sign language for “Don’t too long wait” and somehow managed to convey that confounded monkey arrogance they all seem to possess. He asked me to pull his finger. I didn’t fall for it though. I had learned back in June not to pull that monkey’s finger.

Arrived at the start, and it was dark like the Congo must be, and I knew that monkey was feeling confident. I looked around to see if anyone else had brought monkeys. I thought I saw one runner with an ax to grind and maybe a few monkeys. Six A.M. arrived and Helen Klein’s hubby, Norm (the race director) said, “Go,” and we did just that. You know you’re at an ultra starting line when half the field starts walking. The delicious irony is that there’s a good chance these folks will finish up near the front. I thought maybe I wouldn’t walk but that I would get to jogging, albeit in a quiet, shuffling sort of way. It was dark, and I used a

handheld flashlight to make sure I looked like all the other runners; but truth be told, every step looked like a grayish, dusty thing, and the rocks and roots and little eroded gulleys I needed to avoid weren’t distinguishable from anything I wasn’t trying to avoid and really, the whole stretch was just a series of leaps of faith—each about a short stride-length long.

It got light. [looked at my heart rate monitor, and it told me something shocking and altogether impossible for even a high-strung individual with a monkey, so I decided not to look at that instrument anymore. Had a little Gatorade and moved on down the trail, listening to some guys talk about chain saws. I wondered if all 100-mile race participants talked about chain saws. Probably. Probably I just didn’t hear them back in Virginia. Or maybe in Virginia, 100-mile runners talk about smoked ham. There’s such an awful lot of time, so much time that any conversation is bound to reach the topic of chain saws or smoked ham at some point. It’s inevitable. For my part, I remained silent, listening to the talk of lubricants, then coin collecting, followed by the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, just waiting for the conversation to make its inexorable turn toward the topic to which I would contribute: mayonnaise, Great Danes, whatever. Those subjects must have come up at other points in the race, as I never heard them mentioned. We were 12 miles along, and I stripped out of my running pants and my sweatshirt and put ’em in my pink drop bag at the aid station there and shuffled off down the trail. The sun was up, and we were running along the river and it was nice and I was thinking that on another day, I would have resolved that 15 miles was enough, but here I was thinking I had barely gotten started. The monkey told me I could be calm all I wanted, made that monkey sign language for “Dead you. Ha, ha. Bitch, bitch.” I told him to leave me alone for an hour. Maybe go find a girl monkey and make monkey whoopee. Better yet, go find a bear up the hill trying to fatten up for winter. He was having none of it. Damn monkey.

* Eo *

We ran through a nine-mile stretch to a thing called Cardiac Hill. I’ve seen people get flushed on it and look a bit off and maybe in need of those electric paddle things and some guy yelling, “Clear!” before zapping them. But for me, Cardiac should be called “!#$/ Your Quads Hill,” and not because you have to get up it. That’s problem enough for a flatlander like me. No, my grievance with this hill is occasioned by the trip back down it, which comes later. For now, though, it’s about a mile up a series of switchbacks and points where you really need to watch your balance and somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000-plus feet of climb: took 20 minutes to get to the top. Ran alongside the little canal at the top for about a mile and came to Maidu aid station. This is here for people nearly dead from climbing up Cardiac without benefit of a Sherpa and who might not make it the next mile and a half to the Auburn Dam Overlook (ADO) aid station. The volunteers

here don’t get much business. They’re like the little town trying to compete with the big city next door. I tried to tell the monkey, “Hey, I’m just going to go look over this way for a minute. You wait here.” He didn’t go for it. The monkey and Iran over to the next aid station, where the family was waiting with fresh socks, a cold Coke, and conversation about Happy Meals. I had to weigh in. I was up 3 pounds? Hyponatremia this soon? No, it was the monkey. He had thrown some horse poop onto the scale. There’s a lot of horse poop lying around up there—what with all the horses and whatnot. A smooch from Little Miss (daughter), and off I went down the trail, remembering how grim my brother looked returning to this spot the year before. I don’t like the section between ADO and No Hands Bridge. It’s only four miles, but it always seems like 10 ugly ones. Got to the No Hands Bridge aid station, and despite my warnings to the missus that she would freak out with the kids near that narrow bridge (gravity and all that), she brought ’em anyway. She’s bold, that missus of mine, taking care of her hubby. That was 26.6 miles into the race. One marathon down, about three to go. Wait, that’s a bad way to think of it. I’ll just run to the next aid station is what I’ll do.

Up K2, the other hill. No switchbacks, just straight up a fire road. I had timed myself up it in training. Thirty-four minutes was the best I had done and that was at 170 bpm, walking. I did not want this hill to wreck my legs before I had even

Deanne O’Connor

A No Hands Bridge is a famous landmark of the northern California ultrarunning landscape; race director Norm Klein has his Rio Del Lago entrants cross it twice, once at the marathon mark, and again at 40 miles. Here, the author crosses it for the first time.

gotten to the halfway point. I took it easy, very easy. Made it up in 26 minutes feeling fine. Like Cardiac, this is about a mile up and 1,000 feet of gain. The monkey’s getting nervous, but it’s early yet. I shuffle on down through sweet brown and green meadows, following pink ribbons and chalk all the way to Cool, California, the aid station at 30 miles. There’s the family again. Here, my missus proves she has seen it all and done it all. She proves you don’t love a person because of his fine qualities. You love him in spite of his feet. I went to put on a fresh pair of socks and reached for the Vaseline to add another layer of blister protection. She grabbed the Vaseline and mumbled something about being able to wash her hands and me not being able to and proceeded to lube up my nasty feet. She doesn’t have to do that again, and now I owe her something with a diamond in it. My male progeny proudly presented me with a peanut butter PowerBar he had picked out special-like for me at the general store, and I thought about how much I really didn’t want to eat a PowerBar, but the young man would be crushed if I didn’t. I thanked him and stuffed it into my fanny pack.

Off I went, following the horse poop and pink ribbons, to do a seven-mile loop around Cool. Got to the remote aid station out there and had a nice conversation with a guy I see at virtually every race I run but never manage to introduce myself. Nice guy, manning that far-off aid station. He told me I was in 18th place overall and 15th male—impressive in a larger race; however, that put me square in the middle of this thing. Ran back to Cool at that 12-minute pace I had been practicing like it was some kind of Buddhist chant. Back at Cool, the family had been joined by my very sweet mother-in-law. She presented me with an apple. I tried to trade her the monkey for a banana, but she’s a devout Christian and doesn’t think much of that Darwin stuff at all. I grabbed my little radio and shuffled off to listen to the A’s game—the first of three complete baseball games I would listen to during the race.

* Eo *

Back to No Hands Bridge, but this time the long way down, missing out on sliding down K2. In great shape. I was waiting for the first sign from the monkey—a twinge in my knee, a trip over a rock, a twisted ankle—but there was nothing. I passed No Hands Bridge and back up to the overlook. I came out of the woods at the bottom of the hill and remembered seeing my brother Brian at this point the previous year. He had been slowly grinding through with an injury that would eventually cause him to drop after a display of stubborn fortitude the likes of which Thad never seen before and wouldn’t again until I watched him cross the finish line at Massanutten the following May. That’s another story altogether, and I was here focusing on this next mile. I could see my son’s silhouette dancing on the horse trough at the aid station, and I knew before I reached him that he would be soaked in water and horse spit. Another change of socks and another weigh-in.

The same. All’s well, and off I went. I had gotten the two worst uphills behind me, and all I had left was to go down the quad-wrecker, Cardiac. I pulled out my cell phone and called my brother back in Maryland. “I’m running along the canal. I’m about to go down Cardiac.” As we discussed before the race, he commenced to lying at me about how I was doing great, and wasn’t I a big stud, and some more about down Cardiac being better than up Cardiac, and I was thinking that just the opposite is true. I told him I would call him when it got dark.

I caught up with a lady called Michele, and we chatted a bit before she lagged behind with a minor maintenance issue. I got to the bottom of Cardiac with quads intact, and I saw no monkey. Now I just needed to get to the Rattlesnake Bar aid station at mile 55. I caught up with a guy limping, and I asked him if he needed help. He lied, I’m sure. I don’t remember exactly how long it took, but the baseball game was over by the time I got to Rattlesnake, and I was waiting for the second one. Two marathons down and two to go. I told them there that if they didn’t see Runner X in the next hour or so, they should send someone down the trail looking for him, *cause he had his own monkey hunting him and it looked for all the world to me like his monkey had been beating on his knee with a club of some sort. Missus was there and this time, she let me do my own Vaseline. Oops. Blister starting. Well, it was inevitable, really. Not abad one and certainly wouldn’t be stopping me with all the grease

» The American River as seen from atop Cardiac Hill.

Chris O’Connor

Thad just put on it. Oops. That left big toenail I had just grown back after Massanutten suffered an early demise. That wouldn’t be fun on Monday. Smartly got the shoes back on before I noticed anything else. The monkey had just poked his head in. Horseshoe Bar aid station was just two miles ahead. Smooched the missus and headed on down the trail. Passed through that next aid station and here came the test.

* Eo *

The next section is (to me anyway) the most technical of the whole thing, best traversed with sunlight. It’s 5.86 miles long, and I paced my brother through it last year in five hours. He had injured both calves in the early miles, and his legs had stopped bending by this point, so all of his ability to step up and over rocks came entirely from his hips, and that never was God’s plan for the hip joint I don’t think, because by the end of the section, his hips didn’t work either. He was naught but a plank of wood and in a world of hurt. With that uncomfortable memory in mind, this was the only time the entire race I actually tried to hurry. I could see Folsom Dam in the distance, and light was fading. I got to within one mile of the Twin Rocks aid station before dipping into my bag for the headlamp. Thad gotten through the worst of it and I believe slightly ahead of when Missus thought I would get there. A can of Ensure, refilled the Gatorade, thanked the aidstation people, and smooched Missus. I pretended not to see her nose wrinkling at the prospect of any contact with my soiled self.

Sixty-three miles down, four to the next one. I had written down “8:30” on Missus’s sheet of times to expect me. I pulled in at 8:30, don’t you know? I had caught a few folks who were slowing down in the dark. One guy walking along turned to me and declared he could still run—proclaimed it, really—but he just couldn’t see. He wanted to know if I knew when we would get to the nice fire road, and I proceeded to describe for him the next 500 yards of trail, complete with rocks on left and right, trees, gates, and roads. It was then I realized the monkey was screwed. Having run it hundreds of times, I knew the rest of the course inside and out. All my worry about running at night without a pacer was for nothing. I was on my home turf. I just needed to avoid a bad fall.

Made the next aid station, passed another runner and his pacer. Seventy miles and still not walking unless the terrain demanded it. It was hard to see footing, but I was either starting to trust my feet or taking it all for granted. I had no pain (thanks, ibuprofen) and all the synapses were firing. That, or I was hallucinating. My father-in-law had been at the previous aid station and shared one of the marvels of hybrid vehicles. His pickup truck has 110-volt outlets in the cab. He had brewed fresh coffee for me. Not fresh thermos coffee. Fresh coffee. Good coffee. Hot, warm your belly, sweep out the cobwebs coffee. Screw the monkey coffee. Monkey was on the run now, and the look I got from Missus says she knew it

too. She wasn’t jinxing anything, but this was going to happen. I had been waiting for the wheels to fall off, and they hadn’t, and I had started to believe they wouldn’t. I was going to finish, under 24 hours, which I had thought was a pipe dream—even on this very moderate course. The terrain got easier and started a gradual downhill that lasted the next 10 miles.

I made it to the next aid station. I kept moving. I got to the next one at 77 miles. This one is on a high bluff, just a few hundred yards from my in-laws’ house. More coffee. Three marathons down and a badly measured one left to go! Off I go, me! I crossed the river and headed back up to Folsom on the other side. This is a regular 10-mile route I do. I could do this one blindfolded and backward. The aid station halfway up wanted to know why I was so chipper, and did I arrive at such a mood via some foreign and perhaps illicit substance? Nah, I told them. It was just the continued surprise of a first-timer at still being on his feet. I moved on to the next aid station, the final turnaround point. Change of socks, shook out the shoes, and off I went again. The next aid station, 86 miles. The one after that is the high bluff again, 90 miles. I was well into my third baseball game. I had discovered that at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, that little radio of mine picks up stations from L.A., San Diego, and Seattle. I had been listening to a rebroadcast of the Mariners’ game.

* Eo *

I called my brother. “I’m into mile 91!” He started talking to me about how it was going to happen, and it might just be under 23 hours, and we got to gabbing, and the people passing me coming the other way, and I told ’em I’m talking to my pacer. Everybody lies to everybody at night at an ultra. We tell each other, “Looking good!” and “Keep it up!” and really, we don’t know any of that, because all we are is just headlamps nodding in the dark at other headlamps. What I think we really are is showing our gratitude that there are other nut jobs out there running all night with a light strapped to their heads, because it would be a lonely world for just the one of us like that. So my brother and I were just gabbing away. Even 3,000 miles apart, we found a way to do this stuff together, and it meant something, because he knew exactly the sensations going through my feet, knees, hips, heart, and head. I was floating through that space between midnight and predawn when your teeth feel loose, and he knew it. My phone beeped at me that the battery’s about to go, so I told him thanks and promised to call when it was over, and he hung up knowing I could walk it in under 24 hours at that point but that I wouldn’t.

Just before I hit the next aid station, I saw a light bobbing oddly on the trail ahead of me. I caught up to the guy in a few minutes and asked him if he was OK, and he told me the thing I was hoping to hear all night long, which was, “Do you have any spare batteries?” And I said, “Triple A?” and he said, “Yes” right

back at me. Back in May, I made the rookie mistake of assuming my headlamp was still in great shape even though it had been in the cupboard, unused for more than a month. It’s not the terrain you want to don the lamp and discover your batteries are dead, but that’s just what I found. A guy came along and figured out what was happening, and like some kind of backwoods Santa Claus, he dug out three triple-A batteries from his pack, thus saving my life. That’s the kind of thing you want to pass along, so I was carrying extra everything at RDL100. I dug into my pack and produced three triple-A batteries, and the guy started gushing appreciation like I had done five months ago, and the monkey wandered off to cry. The guy kind of stumbled into the next aid station just as I was leaving. He sat down in the chair, which I think is a dangerous thing, as gravity pulls hard in that chair late in a race. I don’t know if or when he got out of it again, but I think he did. I think he just needed a minute. I shuffled off, telling Missus and her dad they could skip the next aid station, as I had only five miles left to go, and I had no need or intention of stopping until this was done. They waited anyway and shortly thereafter waved to me from the aid station as the guy manning it called out for my number as I passed by at what felt like 5K speed but which was probably closer to 8:00-minute miles. I don’t really know. Things get distorted a fair bit, I imagine.

The gradual downhill I had been so happy to see earlier became a gradual uphill. Strangely, my muscles could pull—there being no monkey anywhere in sight—but my joints were feeling the day. I had had the frightening experience at mile 87 of stopping to pee and seeing dark, dark urine in my headlamp’s glow. Blood in the urine. Hematuria. That had never happened to me before. Either my bladder or my kidneys were taking a beating. I knew I was at my limit and really needed to set my body down soon.

I followed the little green glow sticks hanging now and then from the trees. I passed Folsom Prison on my right and thought about Johnny Cash, which is what I always do when I pass by Folsom Prison. Then it was down the levees of Folsom Dam just above the prison, made a left turn onto the dirt road leading back to the school, and was actually sprinting. In part, I was still hoping to beat 23 hours, but mostly because I still was able. It’s a mighty empowering thing to sprint after 99-plus miles, I find. I saw the lights of the finish line and could make out the shape of the woman I love most in this world, her father, and the official scorer—and the clock, which had passed 23:00 already. The scorer told my wife not to worry about missing me. He told her exactly where she would see my headlamp first and that it would take me a full three minutes to reach the finish line from there. She saw my lamp first, and the guy told her I appeared to be going a bit faster than was customary, that in fact, I looked like I might be on a bicycle (which would be a violation of some kind), that I was conducting myself with some unexpected urgency.