The Second Last of the Mohicans

Very few events have the power to refine our souls. I use the word "soul" because it wasn't my heart, it wasn't my mind, it was literally my entire being. It went beyond the cobwebs in the head and the things we take up in life for no other reason than to complicate it. It went beyond those things that we can't explain but we can't ignore, and how we learn to live within them.

This is the story of an event that refined my soul.

It started when I landed in Minneapolis, and I knew something was wrong. I had a text from the girls at Mohican, and Dave had slowed considerably. He was still approaching mile 65. He and Steve had reached mile 40 at 1:45 pm, or just shy of nine hours in. Past 8 pm, six hours later, he wasn't yet at Mohican Adventures. I learned that it had hit 90+ degrees in the area and that the field was slowly being decimated. Just as we were about to leave Minneapolis, I got word that he was at mile 65 and "hurting a bit." I told Katie (his wife) to warn him I was on my way to kick his ass and started doing math.

I chugged more Gatorade and fed my raging headache Advil, trying not to let the word "dehydration" come into my head. The stress of my earlier canceled flight, of abandoning my runner, of not being able to fly the plane myself caught up with me. Darris announced that he, too, was coming to Mohican. I was torn between the utter stupidity of the decision (he had to be at work at noon the next day) and the excitement of having company on the adventure.

We touched down in Columbus at 10:16 pm. Dave wasn't yet at mile 72.

I called Katie. The irony of it all, she said, was that it was his good knee. No, not the one he had surgery on and rehabbed just for Mohican - now his good knee was acting up. He was emotional, she said. Overwhelmed. He tried to quit at Mohican Adventures, but Jay was there and talked him out of it. I would still probably get to him by mile 80 at Rock Point. He was pretty low, she said. "I'll get him running again," I said.

I wasn't a very good wife. I was frustrated and overwhelmed. I bitched about having to wait for the bags at the airport, about directions and distances, about how fast Darris was driving and exactly what he was going to do once we got to Mohican. I apologized. I realized I still hadn't heard if Dave had arrived at Bridle Station, 8 miles before Rock Point.

We got to Bridle at midnight sharp and Katie came running over. I had a sinking feeling that my "adventure" was about to end. He was mostly walking and needed to eat, but he was still moving. I'm pulling on my shoes and rigging up my lights as I tell her that I'm not going to get straight out of the car and start beating on him, but that he's going to get running again.

"I can hear you, Star," he said.

I ran over and hugged my beaten boy, remarking on it all. I was only seven miles late, and Dave was trying to drop again. Steve had dropped a few miles back, puking his guts out at Covered Bridge, and Dave had promised that he, too, was quitting at Bridle.

I talked. Darris talked. Katie talked. Leigh talked. We talked. And talked. And to be fair, he had a wicked task in front of him - the longest stretch between aid stations the entire race, 8 miles, with a few gnarly climbs and a nasty rocky section. "Four hours," he said. "Hey Katie - it's going to take me 4 hours to walk this stupid section."

Indeed, his attitude upon leaving seemed to be "whatever," but after a delightful invitation to walk with Michael Patton and his pacer, off we went. Darris took my extra light and was headed back to Covered Bridge to attempt to resurrect Steve.

We discussed the supplies I had promised to bring - a knife, a sword, a saber and night vision goggles. I had neglected to bring an extra knee. The boys amused me with the story of Jay's 50 mile win earlier in the day - 7:55 in brutal heat, and fast enough that when he arrived at the finish, no one was there. He stopped his watch and sat down at the finish line to wait. Only at an ultra.

Michael and his pacer moved ahead. I asked Dave what was really going on and he told me he was quitting at Rock Point. I began contemplating an eleven hour walk, and my dreams of heroically bringing him back to life and getting him a PR came crashing down.

We deal in discomfort. And I have seen Dave uncomfortable. In fact,we practice uncomfortable together. We practice uncomfortable before these things so we can deal with the discomfort when it comes. Dave can deal with discomfort.

The problem was that he was in pain. And pain is a much different ball game.

He couldn't go downhill because he couldn't bend his knee after his IT band locked up. And as our people go, there are bad feet. Dave has really bad feet.

But he said the flats and the uphills were okay. He could even still shuffle, he said. "So why aren't we shuffling?" Oh Star, you silly girl. Because he's quitting, so what does it matter?

Isn't this why we have pacers?

So I pointed to a tree and said that when we got there, we were going to shuffle. We shuffled. We hiked. I launched into the story of how I met Darris, and the story of our engagement, and a couple random marathon stories. He was really worried about Steve and didn't want him to think he had betrayed him since he had said he was quitting too. We looked for a walking stick for the downhills. I found the most awesome stick ever. As the Dave I remembered starting coming to life a bit, he told me he could probably part the Red Sea with it. That's how awesome that stick was. And, of course, how totally inappropriate. I hope I see that stick again someday, wherever we abandoned it on the way to Rock Point.

"That can't be the church already," he said.

"Really? I'm pretty sure it is."

Past the church. Past the graveyard where just a month ago, we all sat around at 1 in the morning waiting for Mark Lemke with our rolling aid station on the midnight run. A short shot of trail - shuffling - and we're onto the rocky climb up to the aid station. In two hours and forty minutes.

"Ah, Star," he said.

"Nope."

The volunteers at the bottom of the hill started cheering us in. I turned and walked backwards up the hill, cheering for him. "Come on, Dave," I said. "Just up this hill is the aid station where you're quitting."

He liked that. Until I told him that I said it because he wasn't allowed to.

Rock Point was the last station on the course with a blister doctor, so he decided to get the really bad foot done. 15 minutes later, he decided he might as well get the other foot done. I was silently freaking about the clock, but tried to remember that if it got him moving better, the time might pay for itself. South Park was less than 5 miles away. I hung it on that. You can quit there, I said. You just spent over 20 minutes getting your feet done, we might as well keep going. Katie told us that Steve was running again.

We left. But his feet were actually worse now and he started falling asleep. I was peeing like a rock star since we were moving more slowly, and as I walked my way back to him, I could see him weaving. He didn't want caffeine because it might upset his stomach. We were shuffling less. The plaintive "Star" was coming more and more often, sounding to me like "Star this is stupid, Star I can't, Star I don't want to anymore, Star let me quit."

Shit. It was past 3 am and I was falling asleep too. I heard myself talking to him, but my voice sounded distant and far away. I didn't know what I saying. I didn't care if it made sense. I prayed for water crossings to wake us both up.

We did 18 minute miles to South Park. And I knew there that we were starting to look at cutoffs.

He had caffeine. I had caffeine. He realized he was in the 80's. He asked me exactly what he had to do. 20's, I said. We can't go over 20's.

It was going to be slow going, but he was back in the race.

In between our obnoxious number of pee stops, he told me about the last of Mohicans. Apparently, there's an award - or at least some notoriety - that comes with being the last official finisher at Mohican - the last of the Mohicans. I had a sinking feeling that he might actually want to be the last of the Mohicans. He told me that people have gone so far as to hide in the woods near the finish line to wait for others to pass so as to win this award.

Funny, I thought. Here I am worried I'm going to break you just getting you there.

The first signs of morning were the birds. I have seen the stars at Badwater, and now I've heard the birds at Mohican. I think he thought I was crazy. I was all "Dave! Listen to that!" I have been blessed in my two 100's not to see the second sunrise, so I was about to get into some brand new territory.

Sunlight struggled to break through. I turned off my headlamp. We stepped into a clearing, and morning had come. Dave was behind me a bit, and as I am prone to do, I announced myself to the world. "Hello, world!" I said aloud. And it hit me. Fathers Day.

And the twenty year old wound got ripped open at a time I could ill afford to think about my own stuff. "Hi, Dad," I said, looking up at the sky. Because really, there's nothing you can do with some of these things but look at the sky and hope.

I heard voices behind us as another runner and his pacer approached. "Okay," she said, "there's a lot of ankle grabbers out here in this field. You gotta do what you've taught me all these years, you gotta pick up your feet. Pick 'em up!" I hit the road we had to cross. I turned to wait for Dave.

"Come on, Dad," she said. "You did tell me this was what you wanted for Fathers Day."

And in that moment, I knew he was with me. I knew he was still there, somehow, and my girl Tracy Ross and I proceeded to hug and squeal at that high decibel level that only girls can achieve. Ron, Tracy, Dave and I stayed together briefly, but they slowly moved ahead on the way to Ron's 97th 100 mile finish or something totally insane like that.

And as Dave and I peed and hiked our way to the Fire Tower, I started freaking out about Darris, who had gone to sleep in the car around 2 am. I hadn't been nice to him and then I had to take off. I can be so stubborn. And selfish. I get annoyed so very easily. But he gets to do Burning River this year and I don't and it sucks and I've been on a frickin' year long layoff and my running life is on hold and I just wanted to have my adventure. I'm a real sweetheart, yes? I decided I sucked. This is a lot to have going through your mind while you're in charge of someone else's wellbeing the entire time.

Darris was waiting for us at Fire Tower. I took Dave in like a drill sergeant, telling him he had five minutes - five minutes exactly. I ran to Darris while Katie was with Dave. I suck, I say. I'm so sorry. You go ahead and pace him for awhile. God, I am such a brat.

He tells me that there was no way he was letting me drive through deer and forests alone at midnight. He was afraid to tell me because I'm too independent for my own good and I would've ripped his head off. And he's right, and I wake up to those things that I forget when I'm so busy being annoyed and sanctimonious.

"Three minutes, Dave."

We suffer these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that end up being defined as a marriage. He's injured and working two jobs out of some sense of honor; I'm busy resenting him and myself because I'm forcing my body to do things it doesn't want to do so it will hopefully - eventually? - do what I want it to do. We disconnect. Somehow it becomes okay to take it all out on the other because our own issues are worse. Finally, blessedly, I'm tired. I'm tired enough to see someone caring about me, even if, lord help us, he doesn't understand me. And I hug him goodbye.

"Thirty seconds, Dave. We're out."

We were 46 minutes ahead of the cutoff at Fire Tower, and with 13 or so miles to go, I wasn't too comfortable. In fact, I was kind of scared. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. When I pace, I always remind people that in the end, no one can force them out of the chair; no one can force them to keep going but themselves. But I began considering my culpability in all this. I had indeed begged him to keep to going, and if I didn't keep him going now, he could finish past the cutoff. Oh my God.

We had to stay at 20's just to make it. And with the 2.5 miles from Fire Tower back to the Covered Bridge being basically downhill, there was no way we could do that on his leg. And I was again afraid I was going to break him, because now I had to make him move faster than I thought he could. We talked about how Leigh and Katie were studs, having decided, on the spot, that they would split the pacing chores for Steve, whose pacer had picked up another runner after Steve dropped. We talked about the near impossibility of Steve making the cutoffs, knowing he was farther behind us yet. I told Dave that I thought Steve would finish regardless, cutoffs be damned. I told him that once I got him across the finish, I was going back out for Steve. We passed the site of the snake incident a few weeks back. We crossed half a dozen wooden bridges. We both peed a lot. We got to Covered Bridge. We averaged 18's.

The lovely Tanya Cady was there to greet us. Dave impressed me by getting back on the trail before his three minutes were even up. I ate some candy, pounded a Coke, grabbed some fig newtons and headed out to catch up with him. We were on orange. I know orange so well. Orange had mile markers - I could get a real read on the pace. I continued to walk several steps ahead of him, trying to be the carrot. Thinking to myself, frantically, you've got to get up here. Up here, Dave. You have to get up here to beat the cutoff. I'm going to break him. I can't walk with him, because I can't get sucked into a pace that is even seconds slower. I'm still working here. You've got to get up here.

He made a good point. He said we weren't running until the last five miles because it was too much of a risk. If we were just going for the cutoff, he said, he could handle five miles in pain, but if he hurt himself with eight or ten to go, he might not make it. I saw the point. And I worried that he might not make it. There are mile markers on orange. We did a 20:30. I knew it couldn't happen again. You've got to get up here, I thought. I felt guilty for walking ahead of him so late in the game, but I was doing what I felt like I could do.

My mind was getting funky. My thoughts were clear but so fuzzy around the edges. Really, I felt kind of drunk. I realized my rings felt tight. I looked down at my hands and I suddenly got it. The drunk head. The distended stomach. The puffy hands. The unsettling lack of hunger after ten hours. The marathon less than 24 hours ago. The seventeen pee stops. Yep, I was hyponatremic. It was Badwater (crewing) all over again. I forced down some sport beans and pried my rings off, sealing them in the empty jelly bean bag and telling Dave that I had no choice but to give him a task, which was reminding me not to throw out the bag. I reflected on irony of taking my rings off at a moment that I was feeling so close to my husband. Dave was getting sleepy tired again. Oh, me too. But you still have to get up here.

I created some verbal digression for both of us about painting random parts of the woods with flour and lime. Why, I asked him, did they cover the huge and very obvious roots with lime? I would do the random stuff, I said. Like that crazy branch over there. And a set of poison ivy leaves. And maybe a single small rock. Stay awake, I thought. I searched my brain for stories he hadn't heard yet, as Dave and I seem to run distances of at least 30 miles together on a regular basis and he's already heard the stories. Laurel, I think. I haven't told him about Laurel. I tell him the story about Steve dragging me out from under an aid station table at mile 52 or so of Laurel Highlands.

And we're at Hickory Ridge, and we're ahead of the cutoff, and we're going to make it. I need salt, we both need caffeine, but I can breathe now, because he's going to make it. I give him 90 seconds for the aid station and he's out faster, ahead of me on the trail. I shove handfuls of potato chips in my mouth and chug Mountain Dew. I thank the volunteers and it's when I'm heading out that I hear him scream. Scream.

And his IT band had locked back up and his leg was straight and he could not walk. I asked him if it was like before and he said it was worse. We stood there, stuck in the moment. He tried to put weight on it and he simply couldn't. And my heart broke for him, for the miles and the hours and the fight and the ugliness of it all. Because it was over, five miles from the finish. I think he told me he couldn't get there. I honestly had no idea what to do. What to say. Even what to think. I just stood there, lost and hurting for him.

And then he lurched forward. And lurched again. And the lurch became a walk, and the walk became the fastest it had been in hours. And I stood up and I walked behind him and I prayed without words.

And then he ran.

And he kept running.

And suddenly, I had to get up there.

And I didn't speak a word for ten minutes, as he ran and I kept wiping teardrops from my eyes. Behind him.

I started offering quiet encouragement, just simple phrases here and there. The truth is, I was hesitant to talk at that point, almost to be there. He seemed to me to have gone to that place he had to go to to make this happen, that place I had had to go to last year after getting lost at Burning River, that place where you decide that you are just going to make it happen. I didn't know where his head was, but I knew I didn't want to interupt it. I just felt so very strongly that it was his moment, his time, his race, and that my only job was to be present. So I went with simple words like "I'm here." In a way, when I look back, I feel like this is when my job out there ended, and I became nothing more than a witness to his singular strength and determination. What a gift in that moment, to be no more than the trees and the rocks and the roots that we ran on. To simply be present.

At some point along this loop, he clipped a root hard. I had seen his feet already and I could see his body tense with pain when it happened. "It doesn't matter," I said. And that was partly because - from my viewpoint - that was kind of the place that he had entered into in these last five miles, that it could hurt and suck and be downright masochistic, but it just didn't matter anymore.

And as I ran behind him, my sleep-deprived and hyponatremic mind began reflecting on his race, my day, and these things that don't matter. These choices we make, these challenges we face, these unkind cuts that sometimes come - we all reach that point where the pain just doesn't matter. We deal in it and with it, and we find our ways - both on the trails and off - to somehow coexist with it. Sometimes things don't happen when we want them to. Sometimes we want things we can't have. Sometimes we give into resentment and impatience and have to find our way back. And the journey is indeed amazing, but sometimes it's about the destination after all. I thought about the people in my life and the ways they move me and how very complicated it can sometimes be. I realized that it was time, once again, to just let these things be.

Funny that as my weary mind was busy getting philosophical, I heard Dave for the first time in 10 or 15 minutes. It's one thing when random co-worker asks you why you do this. It's another thing when one of your trail brethren, 98 miles in on bandaged and blistered feet, poses that same question.

I told him why I do it.

He wasn't going to pee again, he said. Neither was I, but once he brought it up, I had to, and so I logged the last one, bringing the tally to eighteen. A few minutes later, he too succumbed. And that, my friends, is when Stevie Z. came around a bend in the trail.

I resisted a new set of tears, although I could have cried like a lost child at the time. The two boys were enthusiastic, gabbing like girls, and Ted (Steve's newest pacer) and I had to goad them on to keep them moving. They seemed to lighten the load for each other. We passed a runner - who would be the last of the Mohicans - and I asked Dave if he wanted to go hide in the woods. We heard cheering in the distance. We were closer and closer. And then we were there, finish banner in sight, they were there, both of them, there, done, finishing. I cut across the lawn to watch them, and in a split second, it was done.

29:44. Sixteen minutes to spare. Of 135 starters, Mohican saw only 50 official finishers this year.

Katie seemed equally worried about me as she was about them. I defined dazed and confused. I stretched out on the grass and watched them lance Dave's blisters. I drank a smoothie and ate Fritos. Jay slowly read me the list of ingredients on my cupcakes and offered unique definitions of some of the substances therein. Calories, not food, I said. Have another beer, I giggled. Jay has presence. He's good people.

I got to see Mark Carroll almost looking surprised he had finished, Shawn Pope walking as if we had finally hurt him and Roy Heger looking like it was just another 100 miler. I watched Dave and Steve both fall asleep, sitting up, at the awards ceremony. Jay had another beer. And at last, I was on my way home.

Leigh wasn't much for the drive, so Katie took over, and as Dave, Steve and Leigh slept, Katie and I began a new friendship over Cherry Coke, peanut butter cups and gummy savers.

I didn't run a hundred miler this weekend, but these things drain us. They empty us out. I walked into my house trail weary, sleep drunk and filthy. Too tired to shower, I settled for washing my face and checked for sunburn. The face in the mirror was gaunt and sallow, with hollow eyes - half closed - peering back. The shell of myself, emptied not just by travels and miles, but by revelations.

And I slept the sleep of the ultrarunner, filled with gratitude for this vivid and lush thing I call my life.