Burning River: A Love Story in Three Parts (2008)

Burning River was about breezes and watermelon.

I've been accused of "not suffering enough" several times in the past few weeks (jokingly of course - except for Kevin O'Grady) - and the truth is, this isn't a blow by blow or fall by fall or aid station by aid station account. I thought it would be at first. But for all the running - and that was a lot of running - Burning River was about breezes and watermelon.

My life has been moving fast for the past two years, and I have been so blessed with so much. But maybe that was a part of it - the so much and the so fast. I've been blessed (much of this shared with) with more pace team races, more pacers, more training, more travel, faster marathon times. More responsibilities at work, more responsibilities at my church, more adventures at home, more things to look forward to. And my life was moving fast, and I was always going and doing. And there was that indefinable, unforeseen moment somewhere in those two years that I stopped living my life and starting just doing it. I never lost the gratitude for the people or the places or the opportunities or the things - but it became one day down, one race down, one training period down, another trip to California down - and I stopped absorbing any of it. I stopped living my life, feeling my life, taking my life in. Even in the midst of the fun, it was always about the getting to next; the going and the doing and the checking it off the list.

I got a hint of where this was all going when I took that 11 hour walk on the trails with Darris last August. It took about two days to happen. The sleep deprivation wore off and I started walking properly again - and I knew. All I could think about was going back. Just being in that place, on those trails again. Yes, running 100 miles. But I had committed to Ironman, and I was excited about Ironman. But the truth that I couldn't even admit to myself for awhile was that Ironman was just another thing on the list. Ironman was to be checked off so I could do Burning River the next year. And for all the reasons and all the challenges and that long week of conducting a battle in my own head - I stopped. In taking on the training for a 100 mile trail, I finally slowed down and stopped running.

There's something about the trails that I just think defies description unless you find a home in them. Whether it's that patchy mess off to the side of the Olentangy Bike path (affectionately dubbed "junior trail"), the fire trails out at Highbanks or the big bad knotted root, stair and mud infested Buckeye Trail, it makes you stop and pay attention. Get a good nasty trail, and you don't have time to contemplate the minutiae of life anymore. You stop paying attention, and you fall. And it hurts. But when you start paying attention, there's a sensory overload. That white noise of everyday life goes away and you remember birds and frogs and crickets and that crunching sound that the leaves make under your feet. So in running those 95 and 100 mile weeks that I did to get ready for BR, I stopped running. And that's when I found my running again. I stopped chasing clocks and mile markers and that idea that every race had to be quantifiably "better" than the last one - to prove, of course, that I was getting somewhere - and I listened to the world around me, and everything that had passed me by when I was going too fast, literally and metaphorically, to notice.

Burning River was a long day. In spite of the fact that there is unfortunate photographic evidence of me grinning like a chesire cat from mile 33 right through mile 95, it was the most difficult thing I have ever done by choice. It was painful, it was exhausting, it was nauseating, it was brutally hot at times, it was demanding in a laundry list of ways that I continue to discover. There were a variety of new and unique chafing issues. One of those great memories is having one of my BR running buddies, Alex, ask me somewhere around the 60 mile point if I knew my armpits were bleeding. I didn't puke, but spent a good ten miles wishing I would. George will tell you I was fine. He has no idea how close I was to (accidentally) puking on him.

Darris asked me before the race what I thought I would learn from it. I told him that I couldn't go into the race looking to learn something, because that would end up framing what I learned in whatever context I was looking to learn. I learned a long time ago that I have absolutely no clue. So that big revelation was done with. I learned that there are no strangers in a 100 mile run. We might be strange, of course, but that's one of those long digressions that goes back to why anyone would ever want to run 100 miles. I learned that there are no strangers on a 100 mile run.

I learned that it can be perfectly comfortable to take a pee break (separate trees, of course) with the guy you just met four hours ago in the pre-dawn glow - and pretty humorous when you've been so good at starting in your direction that one of you takes off ahead, the other waits, and you start screaming each other's names down the trail. I learned that while we kids here in Columbus have the Vanderlei de Lima Honorary 50 Miler, there's a guy in DC (same guy) who once organized and put on the "Occasional Death Valley Marathon" - party of four - in the middle of the July. Chris Cannon and I shared the first 30 miles of Burning River, and I couldn't have asked for a better start to a long day, or better stories to start it with.

I learned that a good crew can lift your spirits in inexplicable ways, and I am grateful to have remembered to try to lift theirs as well. After all, they pretty much spend their day waiting around for you to show up and need something. I was reminded, as I have known for a long time, that the definition of family can be far and broad and has nothing to do with last names, and how lucky I was to have to the people I consider family there with me. I was also reminded that family will take the piss out of you if you spend too much time at an aid station.

I learned that pickle juice smells disgusting at 6 am. Look, I get the benefits, but ugh. I wasn't the one drinking it and I didn't want to be smelling it. I learned that even though the Triscuits were fine on long runs, for some bizarre reason, they went down like sawdust during the race. I seriously think Chris thought he was going to have to Heimlich me. I learned that there are a million stories out there from Alex Nemet - that would be the guy that had just done Badwater two weeks before, and showed up with his still hamburgered feet at Burning River. I ran with Alex three times - the Station Bridge loop, the Boston Store loop, and the trickiest part of Pine Lane. I shared my margarita salt, my potato chips and my Tylenol. Alex supplied the veteran's advice - most importantly, at Pine Line. Pine Lane is a section of the course where you run on top of roots. These are roots coming up out of the trail - this is where the trail has receded and the roots are the trail. Everyone else was walking/hopping - I was running. And Alex called ahead "hey Star - 30 miles to go. Are you sure that's what you want to do to your ankles?"

I learned that those young and spry pacers who come in at 60 or 70 miles with nimble legs and flexible backs are to be revered, not cursed, as they effortlessly limbo under fallen tree trunks while you try to figure out whether your lower back or your quads are in worse shape. That's a critical assessment prior to deciding whether you're going to scale and climb over, or limbo/shimmy/army crawl under. The truth is, as you watch them bound over the course with those fresh, unbloodied and bruised toenails, you're reminded - when you might be starting to forget - that this really is outrageously FUN.

I learned that whether it's a race or not, you stop to let your niece tell you about the toy fish she's holding, even if her dad is heckling you to get moving. I learned that you never, ever pass up a popsicle at an aid station on a hot day. Lucky, I learned this before I had left the aid station. I had grape. It was outstanding. I learned that when it gets really hot, tar actually does bubble and crack on the road, and it gets in the grooves of your shoes, and then when you go back on the trail, all these little sticks get stuck on your shoes. I learned that civilians on the trail don't understand when you high five a guy that's just announced, quite gleefully, that he has to pee. This was a huge moment - it had been close to six hours and Alex was getting worried. I learned that you share what you have - I gave out sunscreen, margarita salt, potato chips, jelly beans and Tylenol - and that you leave behind what you don't need. And yes, I also mean that in the deeper sense. I learned that you slow down when you know you're going too fast for the plan, and that you also have to push when you're simply getting lazy.

Volunteers - and this includes my crew - are next to godliness. I was blessed with fantastic company in Chris and Alex for the first 39 miles of the race. I then ran the next 16 miles alone. That's when I discovered the watermelon. I ran into the mile 45 aid station - one of the best in the race - and saw the deepest red watermelon I had ever seen. I grabbed it while they were filling my water bottle. One volunteer was holding a salt shaker and shaking the salt for me. Another volunteer was putting ice cold towels on my neck and shoulders. This was mid-day, mid 80's, and we were coming off a hot open road stretch. Life was good. But as I told them, the goal was to get me out of the aid station, not keep me there. (Honestly, this whole thing was about 3 minutes long.)

I don't even have the words to describe or properly thank George. He was astounding. I was most definitely a hater a couple of times, most notably when he announced at mile 86 that we would begin running the uphills as well, but I think (hope/pray) that I was able to conceal those moments. I have since told him that shortly after this announcement, I was thinking to myself "that's just great, George. And when you turn around and I'm not there, come back and check the mud pits where I'll be dying a slow and miserable death because I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!" Luckily (like the puking) that didn't happen.

George had a task. The first segment was great and he told me fantastic stories about a trip he and Dale had taken to Alaska and some race stories. The second segment was where the nausea made its entrance. I was more than convinced, for more than an hour, that I would be taking an eleven hour walk to the finish. I had my freak out moment. "George, I am FREAKING OUT. Like seriously, I am totally FREAKED OUT. George. Seriously. I can't. What the hell?" etc. George insisted we "keep the blood moving.." I thought to myself that the blood was going to move right up my throat and be puked out on him. (Seriously, George - I suffered!) But he was right, and it worked. I stopped eating solids for about 2.5 hours and stuck to margarita salt and flat Coke for the calories. And let me tell you - when I hit Covered Bridge in the mid-80's, I was ravenous and ready for my cupcakes. Hostess chocolate cupcakes, with the little white squiggle of icing, the chocolate frosting you can peel back, in all of their transfatty glory. That helped.

There is a lot of horse shit on this part of the course. Many of you have heard me joke that by about 80 miles, I had decided to change my name. George was doling out the increasingly short break periods (since we were now running the uphills, the flats, and the downhills, that left stairs and water crossings as my only hope of relief!) by calling my name. Every time I heard him say "Sta-ar" I would shudder behind his fit little back. (Seriously, I was suffering!) This part of the course became: "Sta-ar - root - rock - horse shit. Root. Horse shit. Root. Rock. Horse shit."
Good times, good times.

At mile 95 - the last aid station - this girl asked me if my legs needed iced. It sounded great, but I wasn't stopping or sitting. She just reaches into this huge plastic tub of ice water and a little rubbing alcohol, grabs a couple towels, and starts wiping my legs down. While I'm eating salt and watermelon and gulping Mountain Dew. I stink, I'm filthy, I was wobbling a little bit on my achy feet - and she's just icing me down and scrubbing the mud and horse shit off. Well, some of it. Again, I was only there about three minutes. And then - and it really seemed sudden - we were climbing the stairs (stairs!!!) at mile 97, 98, onto the precarious ledge at Glens Trail - where, as a reward for making it through the first 100 miles, they practically threaten you with death - a four foot wide ledge of trail with a 200 foot drop into the river on the right - and turning onto Front Street for the finish. When we got off the ledge, I made it a point to stop and thank George and give him a hug. The point of doing it then was that I wasn't grateful to George for getting me to the finish - I was simply grateful to him for being there. For carrying my wedding rings and both of my grandmothers' wedding rings when my hands started swelling. For pushing me and pulling me and never once babying me or letting me baby myself. There were many miles, despite the alleged lack of suffering, where George believed in my ability to keep moving a hell of a lot more than I did.

What can I say about Robin and her parents, Bob and Leetha? Robin's parents, in their 70's, out all night doing everything they could to help, doing bug spray and food fetching duty and maybe heckling me a little. Most of you know Robin, so I will tell you what I already know - that she is one of the most amazing women anyone's life could be blessed with. And she was amazing as ever throughout that long day and night.

So remember how I said I ran sixteen miles alone? Those sixteen miles were some of the most beautiful on the course. It was a gorgeous day. I was crunching through the sticks, bounding over roots and roots and mudpits. I was following those little streamers and blue blazes on the trees, and believe it or not, the girl who gets lost on 315 and makes wrong turns on the morning run after 3 years didn't get lost! The sunlight was shining through the trees, which were the most astounding shade of summer green against a blue sky. It was blazing hot. It was hot and I had been running for 9 hours. And then, like magic, there was a breeze. And I realized that I didn't want to learn anything. Because learning anything in that moment would ruin it. I didn't want to know how the sky got blue or the leaves got green or what animal was making that weird sound, because it was too perfect of a moment. Faith is a bit empty without spirituality. The world was really quite overwhelming at that moment, and I was really quite small, and thirsty, and hot and dirty, but I was exactly where I belonged and exactly where I wanted to be. Just this tiny little thing that had absolutely nothing to do with any of it at all besides the fact that I had happened upon this moment in the middle of the woods when a breeze came through. About a mile later is where they gave me the watermelon. I think I ate watermelon at almost every stop after that. Watermelon is the bomb. Watermelon is like the most amazing food ever. Have some today.

It happened at night too; rather, early in the morning. Maybe around 2 am or so. We were walking by/through this cornfield. Wide open area. Just a vast expanse of space somewhere in Ohio. There was an inky black sky with stars strewn across it. There were fireflies dancing around in the glow of my headlamp. There were all those "night sounds" - crickets and bugs and owls and just stuff. And I was just - there. Almost an interruption to it all in fact, with my fake light and loud footsteps breaking into the scene that's normally not meant for us to see. I was there and I felt so blessed just to be witnessing nature, in all of its forms, doing its thing in the middle of a summer night.

If you've read this far, that was Burning River. If there were questions, I have no answers, never had and don't want to, because the answers ruin the moments. Yes, I suffered. Yes, it hurt like hell. I'm still not fully recovered physically, I couldn't get my left heel to touch the ground for five days, and I had these really cool phantom tripping/twitching things going on in my feet for 48 hours after the race.

That's the one answer I do have. Of course I'm doing it again next year.