The prize is not at the finish line | Ammi Midstokke
“Hello?” A voice echoed through the trees, like the afternoon sunlight streaking between the boughs. I was standing on a tree myself, a mess of woody carnage that had blown down in a recent gust – the kind that uproots and snaps behemoths as if they were kindling.
“Hello!” I called back in some direction that was definitely not the direction of the trail. “Are you lost?”
Earlier that morning, my running buddy, Brian, and I had left the Frater Lake recreational area outside of Ione, Washington, to sweep the Kaniksu Ultra race course. The event uses miles and miles of the trail system, creating a network of different distance races from a half-marathon (ish) to a 100K run. Organized by a crew of Air Force SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) active and retired individuals, the ratio of muscled giants to scrawny runners favors the beefy.
With each new introduction, I am compelled to ask, “How many grams of protein are you eating a day?”
Equally, getting lost cannot be too common among this group.
“Yeah,” the voice said, now accompanied by the crunching of branches.
The thing about getting lost is that it’s both really easy to do and nearly impossible to imagine when you were literally just standing on a trail. Jon had been tromping in circles for 30 minutes or so, and who knows how often he clambered over the trail in his search for it. It had been wiped out by the trees, where the landscape undulated and the trail curved unpredictably this and that way.
Our wayward runner emerged from the brush with a bottle of blue liquid in each hand and a requisite fanny pack that screams “unprepared,” though is strangely common for many trail runners. Jon, who was not even halfway into his 100K, was in a bad way. He wasn’t bleeding or anything, which struck me as funny, because everyone else who battled the brush came out looking like they’d lost a fight with a bobcat. Jon just looked defeated.
The only thing worse than being deep within the dark and miserable pain cave of ultra suffering while your stomach turns inside-out, is having a couple of chipper runners chatting with you for the next 5 miles. We’re like clucking mother hens, offering up NSAIDs and electrolytes.
“Where are you from? What’s your story? Why are you doing this race?” We peppered him with questions, then answered ones he didn’t even ask. He must have been hoping we’d stop talking and his internal organs would stay internal, but he was far too polite to ask us to shut up.
I could not help but think about how apt an analogy for life it is, getting lost in the woods. So often, we have a plan, the resources we think we’ll need, and we’re even close to where we want to be going. But we can feel so utterly disoriented and discouraged, and not even see what is right before us, be it a path or a solution to a problem we’re mired in.
“Are you a SERE guy?” I asked at some corner in the trail. By then Jon had my trekking poles and a dose of Brian’s Imodium on board. His answer came out in a sigh. “Oh man,” I laughed. “You’re never going to live this down.”
And it was true. There were and would be all kinds of jabs and jibes, evasion-doesn’t-mean-evade-the-trail, and various other predictable comedy.
There’s been a shift in our world, exacerbated by a political culture in which all manner of cruelty is publicly acceptable, a media culture in which we consume with rapacious appetite the ill-fortune and suffering and insulting of others. Vultures that we are, even a still-moving body of perseverance will be picked to the bone with the shame of imperfection.
Our party of three trotted, marched, scuttled and scuffed down the trail in the afternoon sun. The spring blooms were inviting the summer blooms, and sometimes we stopped talking long enough to enjoy them. As we neared the transition, where Brian and I would be finished with our 18 miles, and Jon only had another 30 to go, none of us asked whether or not he would quit. It was on all our minds.
It would have been so easy.
Imagine running 30 miles of narrow trail, navigating rocks and sticks and one standing bear, and a mess of tangled trees, up a mountain, down a mountain, and around some smaller ones. Imagine then that your breakfast doesn’t agree with all the jostling about, then demands your intestinal tract rebel by tying itself in knots. Imagine running anyway. Imagine arriving at the halfway point, which is also the finish line, where many people are eating burgers and drinking beer, sitting in comfortable chairs, because they’ve either finished their race or are just there to spectate. It looks like a cheerful afternoon picnic. There’s a lake you can jump in.
Imagine seeing your mom and wife and newborn baby sitting in the shade, and all the comfort and reprieve they promise.
Imagine sore knees, angry muscles, and ankles covered in dust.
Imagine knowing it is unlikely you will finish the race, even if you keep going.
Imagine standing up, walking away from the comfort, toward the suffering, and slogging out mile after mile until you time out at the final aid station with only nine miles to go.
In no world I know is running 51 miles of trail anything other than a triumph.
“It’s good to do hard things sometimes,” Jon had said, when I asked about his reasons.
Doing hard things means finding our limits now and again. For my grandmother, it’s getting out of her chair without using her hands (at 95, she does three sets of 10 a day). For some, it is struggling through a new language, learning how to take a bus, battling mental illness, trying to sing, cleaning house, running a 5K, surviving Thanksgiving with the in-laws, surviving Thanksgiving with your own family, looking people in the eyes, accepting help.
There was no medal at the end of Jon’s day, but I’m sure what he received was far more meaningful.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted ammim@spokesman.com