197 Miles Later

The 2010 Hood to Coast is in the books and Team Amazing Awaits proudly left the beach—some limping, some yawning, most doing both—knowing they set a new team record!  27 hours, 46 minutes, finishing 374th overall.

The picturesque scene at the Timberline Lodge at base of Mount Hood provided a fitting start for the race and it was all downhill from there! While there were 1000 teams—12,000 people—in the race, not all teams start at the same time and so there’s ample room on the mountainside. Start times span across a 12-hour period, beginning at 6:30am; our team’s punishment began at 11. After the traditional team photo with the Mt Hood backdrop, Jeano started things off for Team AA with a 5-mile steep descent, followed by another similar leg ran by Tasha—later dubbed “Puker.”  Puker then handed the wristban off to her boyfriend, Darin—later dubbed “The Puker Cleaner-Upper” who handed off to Chris, who relayed to this writer who gladly passed on to Courtney, a man more manly than his name projects.

Not one mile into my 6.08 mile section I came upon a Canadian woman who looked an awful lot like a random runner I’d met at about mile 5 of last May’s 56-mile Comrades marathon in South Africa. As I passed her and had that thought, she said, “Is that you, Paul? It’s Cathy from Comrades!” The moment “Is” crossed her lips I knew it was her. I ran along side her for a brief spell and made the expected small talk about how cool it was to cross paths on the other side of the planet at another amazing event. She then told me to stop talking and start running…

The finish of my first leg ended with a 1.5 mile uphill push which I truly enjoyed pushing, “killing” as many competitors as I could before handing off to Courtney. Other than the blister on the very bottom of Stumpy that I imagined might suck later in the race, I was happy with the effort which took approximately 43 minutes (the time keeping system lacks exactness) or just over seven-minute miles.

After Courtney’s leg, Van 1’s duties were on hold while the other half dozen team members comprising Van 2 did their thing. Meanwhile, we were treated to showers and a fine dinner at Jeano’s athletic club in downtown Portland (I had the grilled salmon and mud pie/espresso desert!), near the second van transition, pictured here.
The crowd at the van transition erupted as Van 2’s closing runner, above-knee amputee Sandy Dukat, came around the corner.

Sandy handed off to Jeano before that half of the team headed out for food and a rest. Had Jeano had the good fortune of starting ten seconds earlier, two hundred yards later she wouldn’t have been at the front end of 150 other runners awaiting the passing of a boat under a Willamette River drawbridge! The stall lasted six minutes which I’m sure seemed like 30 to those stuck there.  (Jeano second run marked the beginning of darkness and, fittingly, her third and final leg, 12 runners later, marked the dawn of a new day.)

After we all had our second run, Van 2 took over at around 2am and we drove directly to the next van transition at an open field where the organizers had roped off a couple large rectangles for athletes to throw down their sleeping bags. These areas are then awashed in 10,000 mega watt spot lights to add to the sleep challenge—although they say the lights are to save athletes from getting run over by sleepy van drivers as has happened in the past.

I was rudely awakened in my 67th minute of sleep when Van 2’s recon man let it be known they had arrived. Jeano was off and running and we were soon packed up and on the road again.

Perhaps it was the dinner, the stop-n-starting of the van experience, or both, that caused Tasha’s innards to disagree with her, but in any case her anxiety rose as Jeano approached the exchange. She was already having trouble keeping things from exiting both designated in-n-out orifices and I was told later that my comment to her, “If you pass out or puke or crap yourself, just shake it off—or wipe it off,” which I yelled from across the street among many fellow runners, brought her nary an ounce of confidence.  A mile later she earned the Puker moniker. Perhaps we should have been a bit more respectful as the tough young lady didn’t walk a yard of the rest of her alloted mileage before puking again after handing off the wristlet…

Said wristlet was handed off in proper succession before I grabbed it for my final leg which began with a steep three-mile ascent followed by an equally steep three-mile descent. Given a choice, I’ll take an uphill battle any day; for me downhills are stump pounding/soundside quad pounding punishment. Yes, I often run these backward to lessen the discomfort, but since I was looking to go as fast as possible and since it would be over soon, I did my best to let it fly. In doing so, that blister from section #1 opened up and I was soon reduced to walking backward in search of the fastest, most manageable means of covering the next two miles. Thankfully, the final mile was less steep and at the third reboot I thought to move a sweat-loosened preventive-maintenance laden Tegaderm bandage from one area to loosely cover the pink, moist under layer of derm. This made a 12-minute mile shuffle manageable and I reached the transition with minimal misery.

Courtney then ripped into his final leg and soon Van 1 was headed to the finish line at Seaside beach for bratwurst, beers and bragging rights.  A couple hours later we were informed that our teammates in Van 2 were closing in and it would soon be confirmed that Team Amazing Awaits would set a new team record (this was the third year in a row The Hartford has sponsored this team). Sandy Dukat hobbled along the soft sand toward the finish line on her $30,000 above-knee prosthesis made with Ossur parts at A Step Ahead Prosthetics. The crowd cheered, the teammates put up the high-fives and it was confirmed, once again, that some segments of mankind are incomplete without self-induced suffering.

The Comrades Experience

Weeks ago I questioned the authenticity of all this hype I’d heard about and read about the Comrades Marathon. Last week, at the 85th running of “The Ultimate Human Race,” that hype was justified.

Every aspect of this race lived up to it’s reputation, a reputation mostly hidden from Americans, even the vast majority of our marathoners. South Africans, particularly the host Durbanites, tell you the race will pull you back for another crack, despite how good or bad you felt on race day. I found it hard to believe that the famed Heartbreak Hill in Boston hardly showed up on the superimposed course profile…until I ran it. The yet-to-be-released documentary we watched the day before instilled a concern not yet realized in these bones.

Even the flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg was special. President Jimmy Carter walked up and down the aisles shaking hands and asking the children their names. (I managed to squeeze a photo in with him as he rushed through the final rows.)

Without question, what made our trip extraordinary was not meeting a President, it was meeting the children we sponsor. “We” being members of Team World Vision—I wouldn’t have experienced the most transformational two weeks of my life had I not received a phone call asking if I’d be interested in joining the team to run 56 miles and commit to generating 100 sponsorships of needy children through the world’s largest program of its kind. (Sharon and I are new to sponsorship, as are most others on the team, at least of the children we visited on the trip.)

Tabi King, a long-time friend and well-connected former employee of both Ossur prosthetics and the Challenged Athletes Foundation, called me last December saying she was contacted by Andy Baldwin—you might know him from “The Bachelor” or as a Navy doctor (I’m proud to say we were roommies for most of the trip and I believe a long-lasting friendship has begun)—asking if she knew of an amputee who might be up to the task. Tabi has a tendency to ring me on such occasions.

My first reaction was a big, fat “No.” That night, after discussing the proposition with Sharon, it was clearly the next great challenge I was meant to face. I called Tabi the next morning asking her “Where do I sign?”

That signature went to Michael Chitwood, the tireless, focused leader and founder of Team World Vision. His recently formed friendship with Josh Cox, the American 50k record holder, led to the birth of the Comrades Marathon mission. Together with Andy, those three assembled the largest “team” from America to sign up for the event. Michael welcomed me to the fold. The next day I ran 12 miles.

You may have gathered through earlier postings that I embarked on a running regiment over the next four months that included a 10- to 15-mile Saturday followed by a 25- to 30-mile Sunday.  I stayed committed to those long runs and the training paid off with a completely unexpected transpiration on May 30. I was prepared for a lot of pain on race day. I’m happy to say the only real pain I experienced was in Stumpy; the rest of me held up quite well.

More importantly, a half dozen of us had the honor of meeting the children we sponsor the day before the race. At a boys’ boarding school 1.5k from the race start in Pietermartitzburg, where Team WV was provided accommodations (ten of us slept in each room, side-by-side!), the staff of World Vision South Africa brought the kids out of their villages for the first time ever for an afternoon lunch filled with photographs, soccer balls and smiling faces on both sides of the aisle. And lots of singing. The staff and kids treated us to closing entertainment, which was just a taste of the truckload of beautiful a cappella songs we heard over the next seven days.

When I met our sponsored child, Sibongakonke—Zulu for “thank you everyone”—and looked deep into those soulful eyes, I saw an ocean on innocence mixed with hope. Sibonga, as they call him, was born to a 13-yr old mother whose partner left them when he saw his son’s physical imperfection. This boy was brought into the world with no arms whatsoever and one leg a bit shorter than the other. This boy has ample reason to be angry. I saw no such sign.

What I did see was a rather timid, beautiful being brought into our lives to help make Sharon and I better people. To help us to understand the most ancient of cliches: it’s better to give than to receive. Not long after meeting him I was so overwhelmed with gratitude for having been picked for this particular mission that I had to walk away from the excitement to gather myself. For a few minutes I stood solo, laying witness to this wonderful life I lead, feeling extremely blessed to look into those deep brown eyes and see the thankfulness reflected in them. I knew then that the next day’s effort would be merely a start to the commitment we’ve made to seeing this boy through the years to come…

Historically, I’ve been a great pre-race sleeper, save a few memorable all-night random thought fests. The night before Comrades fell into the latter category; we went to bed at 10PM and for the next five hours I flipped and flopped and flipped some more. The last time I checked my watch it was 3:05AM. Somewhere in the next eighteen minutes I fell asleep and dreamt about getting to the race having forgotten to put on my run leg. En route back to my room to get it I met a mounted police officer with a special horse-riding prosthesis (non-descript, but specific for the activity for some reason). I asked for galloping assistance but he couldn’t leave his post guarding a trailer-truck full of who-knows-what. Then the lights went on, someone said “Time to get up!” and the big day had begun.

Since we were “close” to the start, we were subject to—treated to, might be more appropriate—an energetic 25-minute walk to the corrals. Most of the team was in the “A” corral, but Thad and I were designated to “D,” pretty much right in the middle of things. At about 5:20 the crowd of 17,500 who made it to the start line busted out in the unofficial national song “Shosholoza.” This kind of national pride stuff we don’t get back in the states. It was a very special moment. Then the rooster crowed, signifying the gun would follow moments later. (The race is unofficially started by the speaker-blasted recording of a man cock-a-doodle-doing—I was told along the pre-race walk that some guy started cockling just for fun and did do for something like 30 years and so it became a customary legend. His performance had been recorded in the process before he passed away some number of years ago. The organizers have honored him with the recording ever since.)

As one might expect, it’s dark in South Africa at 5:30AM and remained so for the first 20-30 minutes of the run that had me shuffling along at 11-minute miles for the first 10k of the 89.28k that was our charge. This pace I chose was not so much dictated by the masses but by the heeding of the advice of our team captain, Josh Cox: “When you feel ready to go, don’t. Then when you feel ready to go again, don’t. And when you feel ready to go again, don’t…until you get to the mid-point of the race.” So, for the most part, that’s what I did.

Thad and I parted ways after about an hour and a half when I was first forced to pull over to give Stumpy his first break of many on the day. On just my second such break, I asked a man to lend me his shoulder for support. He obliged, mentioning that there was another amputee just 20 meters in front attending to his own maintenance needs. I figured this had to be Tom Davis, whom I’d met in our hotel lobby a couple days before. Like me, Tom is a left leg below-knee amputee from Colorado! He and I had never met or even heard of each other and there we were, running neck-and-neck, at the oldest ultramarathon in the world on the other side it!  He and I ran together for a spell before I slowly peeled away from him up one of the many hills. I’d see him soon thereafter when I pulled over for a reboot and watched him scamper by. This scene repeated itself several more times as I’d do that thing where I play leap frog with the masses: rebooting, re-passing, rebooting, re-passing… In mid-leap we would run together for a spell when more than once a fellow runner would comment “What are the chances that I’d be running Comrades between two amputees?” (Sadly, Tom developed a race-stopping blister that limited him to 50k.)

The kilometers clicked by rather comfortably for the next, oh, 30 miles or so. In the process I had run up and down hills, the steeper downhills I ran backward. Yes, backward. I seldom do so on race day, but I’ve been running backward on down steep hills in training ever since I first struggled with the landscape back in New Jersey, 1995. I remember it well,…

[Fade into blurry-edged daydream.]

…on a training run, descending from the Palisades near my home in Weehawken down to the docks by the Chart House Restaurant, I turned around and began walking backward to alleviate the awkward leverage torqued onto my dear, short little Stumpy and the out-of-balance pounding my sound, right leg encountered. In this reversed, perversed orientation, I broke into a focused gallop to keep the pace, only able to hold it for 30-40 feet that day. I repeated this maneuver each time I ran that hill in preparation for the New York City Marathon later that year and soon I could run a couple of hundred feet in this manner. Over time I became perhaps the GREATEST BACKWARD RUNNER THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN!!!!!!

[Fade back to reality.]

My backward pace matched that of the other runners, each performance accompanied by eye-contact and commentary and smiles and a break from the quad-pounding. Later in the race, after the 60k mark, knowing that I’d banked some speed with those easy miles early on—and, ultimately, knowing that neither of my legs were going to fall off, I ran the downhills in the traditional manner—in my traditional let-it-fly manner—and picked off literally thousands of runners over the next 30k.

(The World Vision staff brought all the kids to the race at about the 60k mark. An extra spark of energy was provided when I saw Sibonga and stopped for some chit-chat and a photo.)

I would have passed even more had Stumpy not screamed for relief more and more frequently as the kilometers trailed me. Over the course of the run I suspect it was a linear progression: that first reboot at 90 minutes, then every couple miles about the half way point, and finally they came less than every kilometer.

It’s a general rule-of-thumb to aim for an even- to negative-split race. That is to say you want the second half of the race to take no more time, preferably less time, than the first half. I evenly split the course. The vast majority of runners walked many of the latter miles and hence, I picked off hordes of them as the finish line approached. (Because I’ve become so very accustomed to my inability to hold the pace due to stump pain, I no longer harbor the feelings of old: “If only I could keep running, just think how much better I would do.” I can state with sincerity, primarily due to the notion that my fastest days are behind me, that I’ve moved on to “I’m so glad I can still run.”)

And I’m so glad that I never really needed to heed the advice of every single Comrades veteran I’d spoken with prior to the gun (and what I’ve experienced in many Ironmans): the bad patches will pass, you must persevere. There was no real “hard” part of the race, just a gradual increase in stump pain and general decrease in energy. I was kept afloat with proper pacing, proper nutrition (PowerBars and Gel Bites) proper hydration (I was one of very few runners opting for the hydration back-pack, which carried my PowerBar Endurance drink I had trained those many miles with, and which also carried bags of powder that, twice, I mixed with 24 ounces of water from the aid stations).

My pace deteriorated some in the final 10k and the reboot respites lasted a bit longer. There was a point where I thought ten hours was a outside possibility, but that didn’t last long. As you might expect, the kilometer markers were deeply welcomed in the final stretch, a stretch that didn’t really stretch at all but continued to be uphill/downhill until the last 2k.

I entered the stadium—after one final dangle just outside the gates—feeling strong, excited and proud. With the Flip video recorder I carried throughout the race (another reason I opted for the back-pack) I captured my own finish as the announcer announced my crossing at ten hours and thirty minutes. (I couldn’t have split it much better as I crossed the mid-point mats at 5:11.) Just before crossing I turned to the crowd, doffed the leg and pumped it in the air sans commentary. I turned to the line to proceed when the PA man continued “…he’s gonna hop across the finish line folks!”

Fat chance buddy! I popped it back on and strode proudly across the line, reaffirming that anything is possible and that I’m blessed to know so.

In the end every member of Team World Vision—18 Comrades first-timers—crossed the finish line before the 12-hour cut-off time.

1500 kids are glad we did.

The fact is our team is now only half way to the goal. With 750 more kids to sponsor, please visit www.theultimatecause.org and choose the child that will change YOUR life.