JUN-B-11
AH THE WONDER OF IT ALL!
YES, I DID IT ONCE AGAIN-- THE BIG HORN ULTRA!
JULY 16---18, 2001
“Oh, Thank God—to be alive, and on the run, and in the Big Horn
Wilderness, on a beautiful day amid a profusion of wildflowers, wildlife, and
a few friends in the Big Horn Ultra!”
I may have yelled that at least six times in the first eighteen
miles along the first third of the Ultra run—the part I hade labeled on my first
“Oh, the Wonder!” part of my run!
THE DRIVE UP THROUGH WYOMING,
THE PRE-RACE ORIENTATION AND PRIZE CEREMONY, AND
THE BEAUTIFUL FOUR PINES “B & B” STAY
This Western “Bonanza” spread is beautiful—a very different world than the much more confined world of the urban race.
Jeff Johnson came over on Friday morning to Gene’s
house, about the time that Gene came back from operating all night, including
one lethal six-times gunshot wound victim. Jeff had run the Steamboat with
Gene, and me and was about to take on his first Ultra, while I am doing one
less Big Horn than Gene and four more than Jeff. Each, of course, had trepidations,
but there is but one thing to do, and that is to go out and do it, and see what
develops along the way! I have run out to the edges of my limits before, when
climbing, when running, or when hunting up very heavy mountains with a big backpack
and multiple encumbrances. When I have run out of all reserves, and am out
at the edge of the envelope, what have I done before? I have said:
”Hey, I know this, and have been at this place before! What did I do then?
Well, I sucked it up, and kept on going! So, Kick Ass!”
I was not at all sure I was ready for this event—but then rarely do I ever feel otherwise. Jeff did not know—and for good reason; he had NOT been out this far “Into the Envelope” before.” Gene and I just shrugged and said: “I do not know now; we will get out there and see what we have left!”
Jeff had been chief resident at DG and CU and had been assigned by Alden Harken to a part of the Trauma Center Grant that had a heading “Genomics.” “What’s this?” he asked. Alden said: “You are.” So, he is the “Father of Surgical Genomics” at Colorado in his first year of employment at the Denver Health under Gene, and is going to be hiring two hands in the lab this summer—Hunter and Peter Moore. He just finished his Boards and is new on staff, and had run regularly on Wednesday mornings with Gene to prepare for Steamboat and did credibly there. I delivered to him the pictures I had taken on the run of his family cheering him on along the Steamboat course along the Elk River. He had inherited a 1993 luxury BMW from his in-laws that had us cruising along the route north through unusually green prairies of Wyoming, watching pronghorn antelope everywhere along the way, as they were dropping young ones. We each sucked up a liter of Gatorade at each gas stop, and munched on caloric foods that we would probably not be eating on any other day, as each of us checked the Vyoxx stocks we were counting on to get us back.
Sheridan Wyoming is the staging area where we have come together to meet in the obligatory Orientation Meeting. Formerly, we met at the cattle auction ring, but now, it is large enough in the number of entries that it meets in the Sheridan High School (SHER is 44* 48.22 N, and 105* 58. 54 W) I went in to pick up the kits, making up the birth dates of each of those I did not know (one of whom I had never met) although I knew Gene’s birthday—which is the day after Father’s Day, a day we will celebrate on Sunday after the race at Longview near Boulder, as we have each of the last several, although this year, sadly, without Sarah’s father. He died when I was in Alaska in August, after having been on home oxygen therapy for several years.
As soon as I walked in, several friends from widely scattered parts of the running world recognized me. The Baltimore minister who had been on the Antarctic expedition greeted me, as he had been convinced by me to try to run this Ultra. Since it had closed when he tried to enter, he is running the 30 K along with the Danish fellow who was also on our Antarctic cruise. We will all be doing the Baltimore Inaugural Marathon together on Oct. 20. Two other folk whom I had run with in the last couple of years, one named Kevin from Alberta who attributes his survival last year on my talking and walking him through the last twenty miles after he had given up and almost came in behind the cutoff at Dry Fork. “Oh, he is with me!” I said—to help him past the cutoff, never having seen him before. So, we got to know each other during the next many miles.
There were a couple of surprises. Laurie Medina, a Peruana from the surgical residency in Saint Joseph Hospital whom I had met when she had a trauma rotation at Denver Health had done some climbing in the Himalayas and survived an “Epic” on Everest. She is now a surgeon in Vail. Ed Kim, joined us. He is a former Colorado surgery resident and now a Steamboat Springs surgeon, whom we visited in Steamboat, but he does not like to run pavement, so he had not recently done the Steamboat Marathon. And Kathy and Bill McKinley were back. It was Kathy that had so impressed me before when she resuscitated Eric, the Steamboat Springs anesthesiologist, when he finished the race, but then collapsed. She had given him three liters of IV fluids even before he was taken to the Dayton Hospital and got another three liters over night, even when he had been combative and unaware of his surroundings when he was carried in in extremis. She impressed me even more this time since she knew a lot about warm blood horses. She is a nurse in Steamboat Springs and she and Bill are wonderful people who stayed with us into he Four Pines B & B.
We each paid our $8.00 to load up on spaghetti, and to see if we could eat enough pasta to burst, as the rules of the race were repeated. Wendell, who was the race’s organizer and still is active in laying out the course and getting the National Forest Service permits for it gave the same rules as always. I have laid out the “Fall Derwood MCRRC Geelhoed Run” which is ten miles, and I know it takes three full days, so I can well imagine what it takes to flag and chalk fifty-four point three miles! I needed that flagging also, since, although I have “been down this trail many times before”; I was alone for most of the trip this year. He introduced Michelle, the Race Director, and the real spark plug that has kept this going and growing. She is the least likely to be gung ho race fan, since she is a very big non-jock who is introduced by Wendell as “definitely a non-runner,” but from her post in the Sheridan Sports shop she has kept this going and set up a web site and a poster set, in which pictures of mine appear each year.
There were 22 Canadians from Alberta this year, almost all of them running the 30 K except for the friends I knew and a few new ones I met, including Ahmed, and another fellow from the University of Lethbridge. The only group I missed this year that I had seen consistently before were my Tarahumara Indians—who may return next year when it expands to include a 100 mile event by having the finishing runners finish the course and (perish the thought) reverse and run it back with headlamps!
As part of the opening ceremony, there was a table full of awards that would be given out as a random set of prizes. Michelle drew them out of a box and then announced who could come up and choose their award. I was eating my spaghetti, and several of the group had already gone forward to collect, when she pulled out a tag and announced, and “Here is an Old Favorite! Glenn Geelhoed, from Maryland!” I got up and asked “What you mean ‘Old?”’ I picked up a wrapped packet with a bow around it almost without looking, knowing only that I did not need or want one of the water bottles, since I was packing my camel back water pack.
When I came back to my seat, I had Kathy McKinley unwrap it. It is a microfiber running jacket that is supposed to be waterproof for rain but transmits air so that it breathes—like a new ultralight Gore-Tex synthetic fabric. Gene’s eyes lit up, since he was carrying a jacket, but it was heavy. He would like to run with it, so we took the labels off and he will run with it tomorrow in the race. I was planning on starting with my Antarctic Marathon jacket (as Wendell had advised us it would be cold at the start, and that fifty milers might think of wearing tights and hats and mittens as well as jackets since it had been snowing earlier in the week). I hoped to be able to find out on the run whether I could unzip the sleeves and also whether I would be able to curl it up and have it fold into its own built in fanny pack. I had loaded a Photo Works camera for the run, and also had put my earphones and dozens of tapes into the two check in bags we would have taken to the Foot Bridge aid station at 18 miles in, and the second at Dry Fork, the 34 miles station that is the 4:00 PM cut-off check in point, with the Upper Sheep Creek Station which is a 6:00 PM cut off, with a planned 8:00 PM cut off at Lower Creek Station, each o f these assuming3 ½ miles per hour between these latter stations almost all of which is on treacherous downhill slopes on either side of the second “wall” climb. I never changed my shoes at the Foot Bridge station just before the Great Wall up the Big Horn Canyon climb, although I did have to change my socks, since I never got into deep streams and sucking mud, and avoided the snowpack early in the course in the tree line from the snowfall that had come down as recently as last week. But, I never pulled out the earphones, either, whichmay have made the long stretches in which I would be alone for eight or more miles. However, I also thought it would be one more thing I would have to fiddle with and carry if anything went wrong with the temperamental tapes and player, even with a separate pack of fresh batteries. This would be an ideal place for an MP 3 player and a download of a full book on tape into the disc.
FOUR PINES B & B
A BEAUTIFUL RESTFUL SPOT FOR OUR STAGING AREA
Sue, our hostess at this pleasant B & B, had been introduced two years ago by Michelle who had tipped us off. Before that we had had a delightful stay in Arrowhead Motel far up and in to the Big Horn on the first of my trips (we had spotted and photographed a pair of bull moose browsing in a pond on the way in and had seen lots of mule deer, and even a band of bighorn sheep on the drive up to Arrowhead.). But, the Four Pines beats anything we had expected. Last year we had met her husband who was making himself tube feedings in the final stages of an unusual from of head and neck cancer. He had given up hope for treatment, and was just trying to stay alive at that point, and had computerized all the working s of the B and B. In October he died, and then there was a computer failure in which all the records were nearly lost, and were only recovered with the help of some computer guru who came in to see what backup files might hold them. Sue has continued, and does a magnificent job with the meals and the setting—down to the fresh cookies placed at each room, and a magnificent breakfast.
We sat on the back deck and watched mule deer hopping over fences behind her high grass horse pasture. Here I had learned about the thoroughbred and warm blood horse mixtures that Kathy knew about and I had her talk with Virginia about the best of places to keep such a horse in Northern Virginia if that is what she was contemplating doing. We heard meadowlarks, and watched purple martins coming into the bird boxes. I could hear lots and lots of pheasants with the crowing of roosters all around the valley. One of the fall groups that had signed into the guest book had been a group that had come up to go pheasant hunting—and I discussed this as a possibility with Gene, since his Uncle Harvey had given Hunter a 12 gauge pump shotgun for a graduation present, much to Sarah’s consternation, but it might be time for each of the two boys to know how to use these devices and they are going to go through the hunter safety course soon.
It was so idyllic sitting on the back deck of the Four Pines, (FOUR = 44* 52.31 N, 107* 14.31 W) that I wanted to enjoy the long summer evening—coming up on the longest day of the year, by admiring the valley wildlife outback. However, I am also reminded that I might see more than one sunrise on the run if I did not want to add to the one sunrise and one sunset I was already probably going to see; and since I wanted to avoid an all day and all nighter on the trail. So, recalling that I had missed the prior night by riding a bus through Denver, I went to bed after each of the last of the runners doing the fifty miler had retired, although Bill and Kathy as 30 K runners could sleep in and leave at a more leisurely 9:30 AM, while we had to get up at 3:00 AM and be on the bus to the start about an hour and a half away starting at 4:00 AM.
THE LONG
BUS RIDE IN THE DARK
FROM THE WARM NIGHT ALONG THE TONGUE RIVER
AT DAVIS PARK TO THE COLD MOUNTAIN SNOWFIELDS
OF PORCUPINE RANGER STATION
OF THE BIG HORN NATIONAL FOREST
We had tried to pack in a brief breakfast of oatmeal and a banana, with a bit of juice and a lot of Gatorade. When we got to the park in Dayton only a few minutes from our “out of town” Four Pines, we got on it and immediately lay down. As uncomfortable as it might have been in this semi-recumbent position on the bench seats of the schoolbus, I was “zoned out” in minutes, as the bus groaned along toward the mountain roads in the dark, and made altitude in switchbacks. I was in a delicious, fearless state of pleasant anticipation--a property of the survivor of multiple jumps from the aircraft before as a smoke-eating fire jumper, in which the prior experience has only served to enhance the value of the minimal rest achieved in the bouncing semi-recumbency of the schoolbus. The first-timers were white-knuckling through the dark, and I was pleasantly anticipating the run, but not as much as I was treasuring this transient present moment of the calm before the storm. Getting HERE was almost half the fun!
By the time we had arrived at the basin near the gravel road that leads off to the ranger station, there was enough dim light to see that there were still fields of rotting snow along the treeline. I did not stay upright long enough to do my usual hunt for moose, which I had seen in numbers on my first ride in now over three years ago. I could see Jeff Johnson’s head upright, as he was no doubt thinking “What on earth have I got myself into, since it takes a couple of hours driving at highway speed to get here, and I have to run back through these mountains?” I know, since I was thinking those same things on my first view through the dawn of my first Ultra here, and now, I just lay down and thought “Well, there is nothing much that this can throw at me that I have not witnessed before, and nothing that I need to prepare myself for now, since I was not prepared then and had to do it anyway, so let it begin when the 6:00 AM start is called, and I will shuffle up the long trail I have got to know already, and remember foggily enough to have signed up again for another go at it!”
We got out and gathered around the pot belly woodburning stove in the rangers’ cabin. It was there that I met one of the Canadians who approached me when he saw the Antarctic Marathon jacket and asked multiple questions of me since his grandfather had been with Admiral Byrd on the earliest explorations. I told him he should definitely go and carry with him a talk on the family and the photos and recollections they could put together of the early explorations.
Gene had sketched out a hopeful sheet of times to be attempted for arrival at each of the ten aid stations scattered around six to eight miles apart in the wilderness, and we made a special note of the two cutoffs where we would be “DQ’ed” if we did not make it on time—Dry Fork by 4:00 PM ( ten hours into the race at 34 miles) and Upper Sheep Creek by 5:30 PM (eleven and a half hours at 40 miles in). The first aid station is Spring Marsh where volunteers had backpacked water in and camped over night to await us about seven miles from the start. The next major landmark of consequence is the Footbridge Station—the first of two places that they could pull a runner out on a 4-WD ATV, and the site of our first drop bag. It precedes the crossing of the Big Horn River on the Footbridge and the start of the awesome “Wall” where we have to scramble up the opposite canyon wall of over a half mile vertical rise in about a hard won mile. If I did not know about that part, I could think that the beauties of the first one third of this course mighty be considered all joy. Gene had thought that we should “make time” on the front third of the course in the treacherous downhill part to attempt to arrive at Footbridge at 9:30 AM, or covering eighteen miles in 3 ½ hours. I had seen the roller bearing rocks and thought that 10:00 AM might be more reasonable.
Despite the chill, I striped to shorts, while some runners wore tights, but I had a singlet, tee-shirt and jacket on, with the idea of dropping the latter two off at Footbridge bag drop. I did not wear gloves, which any had carried, since I had packed mine in the Dry Fork drop bag, anticipating the cold evening to return on the last twenty miles. I had books on tape in the drop bags (which I never picked up) and otherwise carried only my camelback hydration pack with its siphon and a Photo Works camera.
Michelle had called upon one of the runners to say grace in Wendell’s absence, and he prayed that we be kept safe—“Keep us from the turned ankle, the twisted knee, the split head—and keep us from fighting!” If ever there were a less competitive more helpful group of runners—this would be it. We all knew that no one had prayed “Keep us from pain” since we would not be here if we did not know that a large dose of that came with the territory—all 54.3 miles of it—yet if anyone needed help, the first responders would be other runners if they could find the downed runner along this long trail in the wilderness.
AND, WE ARE
OFF!
6:00 AM AND A GLIMMER OF SUNRISE,
AND THE ENGINE TURNED ON TO GENERATE THE HEAT WE
NEEDED AS WE HOPPED AROUND THE RESIDUAL DRIFTS
No one said it would be easy, nor did anyone think it would not get worse as we went along in the lonely distance after the first third. But, let us say what I had said all along the first third of each time I have run this Ultra---“Oh, the Wonder!” I am hurtling along in a pristine piece of spectacular wilderness at daybreak, as the sun comes up to illumine long before it warms the crest of the mountains, with alpine mountain wildflowers in profusion along the meadows, and sheer cliffs falling off toward the river. A lot of what is front of thinner in epic vistas, is only glanced at, sine the focus must be on every footfall ahead of where the center of gravity will be in split seconds—lest the cliffs be not the only things falling off the sheer precipices toward the river below. But, I literally sang out and shouted, even when no one was near me to hear. “Thank God, to be alive and on the run again in the Big Horn!” I saw an elk cow, whom I startled with my spontaneous praise.
I hurtled down through the upper meadows, with a brief glance around at the pack of runners who were already scattered out so that there were multiple miles even in the first third in which I saw no one fore or aft of me. I marveled again at “”Leaky Mountain”—a broken artesian spring, in which the white water gushes straight out of the side of the mountain, and thunders over a cascade, which we crossed on logs lashed together. I paused there long enough for Kevin and another Canadian named Richard came up and I took photos. Kevin had said to Richard, “Get right behind Glenn and follow his pace, as I did last year, and he will keep you moving but not wear you out to early, since there is a much tougher two thirds to come!”
So, now I was pace setter as I plummeted down the canyon over the roller bearing rocks. I had about twenty occasions to do a full face plant into the user-unfriendly mountain, since I was constantly kicking rocks, and the momentary arrest of my foot would mean that I would have to scramble to being my feet up fast to be planted ahead of me before my center of gravity made it down the mountain more thane body length ahead of my undercarriage. Several of these near-desperate lunges were cause for alarm from my pace crew behind me, who could se that I was doing some serious “hang time, catching major air” as I stumbled my way down the trail at a speed barely in control even without the hard ball bearings under foot. Somehow, I recovered each time, and kept on moving. I saw from some runners cuts and bruises, that not all of the pedal arrests were successfully recovered on the run. All of us had scourging from the swatting of the age brush and branches along the way; no one was unscathed.
But the exhilaration held. I am still just as thrilled as I can be at the very thought that I am running a wilderness Ultra---even attempting it, let alone finishing it, or doing any kind of time that would be considered a superlative performance. A young fellow set the course record for this run this trip---8:02. I always say that it is my goal to finish most big marathons in something less than half the time of the winner (or, put another way, that I reach the half before they cross the finish.) Even then, I am usually in the back of the front half. Not in this race—I am delighted not be on the course, and especially if I make it through on the cutoff times, even if I am the last person to finish. I would even consider it a grand success if I ran a third, half, or two thirds of the course and was pulled off at the Dry Fork for coming in late At least I would have had (as the “Penguin” says) ”The courage to start”. And I would still have the “Wonder” part of the wilderness awe of the first third---because coming up will be Part Two---“Oh, I wonder, How am I ever going to survive this?”
As I had come into Spring Marsh aid station signaled by the smell of burning campfires, I heard angels before I saw the camp. A woman, (I hardly dared glance, since this is an area where I have to run through brush above my knees so that I cannot tell what my feet are falling over except by feel and I still have to try to see through the scrub to where the marshy mud and rivulets are) was sitting high above under a tree in the 8:00 AM cool morning daylight playing a fiddle. And rather well at that—strumming out “Oh come sit by my side if you love me” in honor of the Red River Valley, as we were coursing over the Big Horn River Canyon .
When I sailed into Spring Marsh where the paramedics and their sign-in clip boards and radios were keeping score “424 coming in!” I shouted that I loved whomever was up in the heavens playing her harp just for me. “A woman, playing a violin in this wilderness? What, are you crazy?” asked the aid station backpacker.
“That is a purely rhetorical question when addressed to any member of this group” I responded, noting the time, as I yelled “424, over and out!”
From this point, I hurtled faster than was safe down in the canyon along the rock walls, trying not dig in for Footbridge in a decent time and to change—if not my shoes, at least my muddy chafing socks. I was already feeling the hammering of my quads, from lunging and hitting the breaks in my barely controlled free fall. But I was keeping a good pace for the Canadians behind me. Ed Kim, who I thought was ahead, came up behind me and passed. I tried to zip the sleeves out of my “Best of Times” Antarctic marathon jacket, but pulled one of the zipper tabs off. I then tried to take it off and roll it into its own self-contained fanny pack with a waist belt---all on the run without breaking stride. This brought on a veritable epidemic of stumbling lunges. But, I still managed to be catching myself, and had not done a faceplant as I had the first year while admiring calving elk above me, when I found myself upside down in sagebrush, with no more residual injury than the strong smell of sage with which I was stuffed. I had largely stripped down to the running gear for the “middle passage” second third when I ripped into Footbridge, at 9:40 AM
HITTING THE
WALL---NO, NOT THAT FIGURATIVE ONE—
BUT A VERY REAL AND VERY STEEP
VERTICAL RISE THAT BRINGS OUT ANOTHER WONDER:
“I WONDER HOW ON EARTH I AM EVER
GOING TO SURVIVE THIS?”
I blew into Footbridge station and noticed that over half the bags were already gone. I was determined to stay very little, but did notice that a large amount of food was uneaten. I changed my socks, with a layer of Vaseline applied before putting on the same shoes, and had the camelback recharged with Gatorade. I am drinking a full pack of 1800 cc between the six miles stations, and this one is going to be dry when I complete the next two miles of sheer climbing—someone was kidding when they called this a part of the “run.” In the past I had walked most of the Wall. Not this time. I walked ALL of it.
I dug in, knowing that at least I could get rewatered at the “Bear Hunt Camp” at the top of the mountain, which seemed to be retreating continuously away from me. If it were not for the panting into the now-hot sun, I could have appreciated the staggering beauty of a huge mountainside filled to overflowing with cascades of wildflowers in yellows and blues. I snapped a couple of photos as I was passed by a fellow on a “walk!” He asked: Have you done this run before? Is this is as bad as it gets?”
“By a factor of four!” I responded. “It don’t get no better than this!” This was the last runner I saw for the next twelve miles—until after Kearn’s Cow Camp—which I always considered the “Marathon Point” in the race, if you ever need discouragement, consider that you have just done a six-hour marathon, and you now have another one to go, on a long slow uphill incline after you have had the stuffins’ kicked out of you by the “Wall” nearing the end of the first half. I usually always do sub-four marathons—but that is in a road race. And, besides, I keep reminding myself, Kearn’s Cow Camp is at 28 miles, not a mere 26.2. Right!
Last year I had met a Special Forces Ranger who had seen the finish times at this race, and figured he just might come out here and show these soft civilians a thing or two, and win this bloody race. He caught up with me approaching Kearn’s Cow Camp at about the time he had predicted for his overall finish. “What made you think you would win this race in seven hours?” I had asked.
“Well, I had done a fifty miler in Atlanta in about that time” he said. “It was on a five mile course around Stone Mountain, and we spun around this flat course ten times.”
“This one is a little different from that one, at sea level where your only real hazard is falling over from rotatory nystagmus in ten turns in the same direction,” I comforted him. “I believe you will run considerably greater hazards here, but the scene changes every minute as it probably does not in Stone Mountains circumnavigation.” He has his wife and baby meet him at the Dry Fork where he had waved me on last year, and here I was looking around for anyone to accompany and keep moving—even chatting long enough in the Kearns’s Cow Camp to have a real Western sheriff’s deputy with a real Western belt buckle make me a turkey sandwich when I reported I was hollow hungry. I figured I had drunk about five liters at this point and had not ever stopped to pee, so I may still have been behind. I popped a Vyoxx carried in my running shorts, since my quads had tightened as they do in the latter stages of a marathon—which, after all, this is—a “Marathon on Steroids.”
“How are you feeling? Do you think you can make it to Dry Fork?” asked the portly sheriff, as two pheasant dogs, a German short-hair and a blonde lab, cavorted around the 4-WD pickup truck with a 22/250 varmint rifle racked up in the back window.
“Shore ‘nuff fine! I’m only sorry that I have to wait until next year before they will let us turn around at the end and let us run it back!” He looked at me, and tried to tell if I were serious. I was muffled into the turkey sandwich, so he turned and said to the others: “I must really be a wuss, since I cannot believe anyone can do even this much of this crazy run!”
“424 signing out!” I yelled—as I took off, too, with not the slightest assurance that I would arrive at the end of the long hill at Dry Fork six miles off in anywhere near the cutoff time. But, I can do only what I can and must, and, for now, that is enough to “get me to the church on time” and even collect the Finisher’s Prize for which my size had been requested at the time I had signed up months before. I kept thinking of the prestige value of running my next raced in the special Big Horn Fifty Finishers shorts---and trudged up the long slope.
What I was doing at this point was probably best described by the term that simply never otherwise else applies to me. I am not—as Christa in Dharamsala would ask “Going for Jogging.” I am a runner, who does not jog. But here, a rapid shuffle of falling forward and catching myself would probably to the outsider be called a “jog” and if it got me to the end of the hill—you can feel free to call it anything you want to.
DRY FORK
CUTOFF:
PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS
The very labor intensive crew at the Dry Fork station were all members of a single family. The youngest was in a car seat under the pickup truck out of the wind, and all the others were wearing parkas, hoods and mittens, as I cam chugging up in shorts and singlet. I opened my drop bag only to get out a long sleeved tee shirt and put it on, since I knew this would be my “evening wear.” I had been passed on the approach to Dry Fork by four wheelers going down the trial to retrieve runners—one who wrenched his knee, and one on crutches with a blown ankle. Two were lying down shivering on the tarp at Dry Fork with GI crud that had ended their race. I was in a good position to sit around and soak up the abundant foodstuffs which had lain out all day, but few of the other runners had eaten much before plunging on. I asked how many were behind me, and they reported ten (of about 80 starters) for us fifty-plus milers) “But, I only think that about four of those could make it and you are the only one so far well within the time limits and I have no idea between here and Cow Camp where they might be.
“424, signing out!” I shouted and ran the last one third of the race (subtitled “Beyond Pain,” dealing with it and fighting it,) the alleged DOWN hill third. Piece of Cake, Huh?
I cranked away up the road after Dry Fork, watching for flags and chalk marks, since I was all alone, and a missed turn here that put on extra miles—no matter what it did to stiffening muscles and joints—would be soul-crushing at least. I could remember a few of the turns, such as I had made on my first year up the last long “wall” climb along with the Mormon fellow I had met when I had yelled at the Dry Fork Camp that he was with me, sparing him the “DQ” as he dragged over the hill. He was so weary at the end that I took a picture of two mule deer who were staring at him “threading the needle” between them, and they realized he was so little threat to them that they did not bolt. I remembered that the Upper Sheep Creek aid station was the last one in which my check in time made any difference, since at this point I would finish if I could even crawl the last 14 miles. I ha heard there were still a half dozen people behind me, still on course so that they did not get “DQ’ed” at Dry Fork.
Last year, I had met a cowgirl with wildflowers in her baseball cap visor. She had been with some fellows who had fly rods and spinning gear and had been trying for rainbow trout in the Sheep Creek which looked spectacular behind the aid station as it was almost buried in blooming wildflowers as the tangential light of late summer day was gilding it. I had asked her, as I staggered into the camp to get my second to last water refill,” Do you come here often?” She said she was looking for a man. I was wearing my Marine Corps singlet, and she added “Maybe one of these.” She asked if I were single and I said I was, and got down on one knee.
She and the rest of the crew were excited about this scene and took a picture of it, since it certainly looked like I was proposing, with my eyes down at the level of he big silver cowboy belt buckle. I was also aware that this deliberate stretching of my tight muscles would help me up the hill that followed, if I could get up at all after the kneeling down. This year, the other attendants at the aid station reminded me that Jennifer—as they told me her name was—still considers herself proposed to and has been thinking about leaving her cowboy boyfriend for the vastly better deal she figures she could get from the only Easterner she had ever met, and that was right here in Upper Sheep Creek Camp. In fact, they had brought along the photo, and although Jennifer was not here this year, they would bring the photo along for me at the Awards ceremony in the morning. This was a very hopeful sign, since it \implied I would be alive, and finish, and at the Award Ceremony at some clearly implied future date, when all of my future was staring at me in the form of the second and last (major) wall I had to climb.
I set off on a downhill shuffle to wobble across the logs that were the bridge over Upper Sheep Creek, and then walked deliberately up through the dense wildflowers of the wall climb. I kept reaching for the end of the hill, looking for the downturn after it, as I would begin the first-slow, then-rapid descent into the Tongue River Canyon. I had not realized just how spectacular this piece of eroded rock is, since I had entered it in sunset on the previous occasions and had no flash camera or light enough to appreciate the spectacular shelves and mesas. On my first run, I had seen peregrine falcons wheeling up over the ledges, before they, too, were lost in the dark.
FUZZY MATH
Now, I know my analytic powers are rather poor at this point, and I probably could not do “serial sevens”, but I have always been inordinantly annoyed at the measured mathematics of the end of this fifty-miler. At Lower Sheep Creek Trail Aid Station, where the downhill lunger has just skirted multiple lacerations by stumbling alongside a barbed wire fence against which the trail is flagged for the last several miles of downhill, the station has a couple of jugs of water and a paramedic as well as a mark that declares it the 44 mile post. The paramedic invariably asks “How are you feeling?” I do a quick inventory and reply: “Well, my teeth are fine!”
I then stagger up along the side ledge slashed into the canyon over the roaring Tongue River—which looks like superb trout fishing water that one should just admire from up here since it looks life-threatening to try to get anywhere near the roaring white water—like a Himalayan stream, where the velocity starts at Class V—impassable—and two miles along this ledge, I encounter the cheerful sign, “You now have eight more miles to go.” Now, I do not know what malevolent demon has posted that depressing sign, which must be the last bit of information I would be interested in seeing at that point. As I would have figured it out by now—taking a long time to walk and writhe forward for that two miles, I would have added 44 and 2 and come up with a mileage yet to go of half the posted number. Cute trick, Huh?
I came around the area where there were 4-WD vehicles and tents and the smell of beer and sacrificial burning of meat. I came, at last, to the gravel road—where this should be an easy shuffle. I ha always walked this stretch no matter what—since there is that depressing matter of the road stretching on in front of you, just as I get to it and figure if I could only run this easy part, I would be in before dark. No luck; this is “Sunset Strip” for me. I have a rule that seems to be that for any Ultra, I must start and stop in the dark. This last stretch at the crawling pace in which I walk the road is where the time goes to between fifteen to sixteen hours at a day approaching the summer solstice—the longest period of daylight of the year—and I will becoming in “under the lights.” The real crusher would have been if someone had come along behind me and passed me while walking. I actually turned around to see if there were any runners on the road behind me wearing numbers, and if there were, I would have sprinted.
The last aid station is on that gravel road, where a bunch of people sit around talking at their pickup trucks with only beer and water, the latter being the exclusive service for the runners. Without my asking, and in a gratuitous insult, one fellow said “Just four and a half miles to go!” “Right!”
Fortunately, I have done this four more times than he has and I know he is off by three miles. It turns out to have been by ignorance and not malice, since as I was limping along with a foot now completely numb as my left pyriformis went into overtime spasm, now that I had passed over the heavy duty exertion and it could act up as it will after the crisis is gone, so as to create a crisis of its own making, I turned to see a slow-moving pickup truck behind me. “That fellow was wrong: you only have a mile and a third!”
“Yes, bless you my son!” I said, as I could see the tarred road at the intersection of the new bridge that carries the road way over the Tongue River at the entrance to Dayton Wyoming, near the Ugly Woman Bar (or words to that effect—“What’s in a Name?”) There were two kids at the bridge with road stop signs, who stopped vehicles in either direction long before I got there, and rather unnecessarily at the speed I was going, but they did so for all the best reasons: “Congratulations on your achievement! I admire and envy it, although I doubt that I will ever be able to do it myself!”
“Sure you could!” I said, and that little gesture of kindness got me kicked up to make the turn into the park. As I was familiar with the backside of the park, where the flags were barely visible in the dark, I sprinted around with my head and arms up high, as the applause and cheers came from the dozens of die-hard (mostly Canadian cadre) spectators who lined up to give me high fives as I cruised in to the picnic grounds. I took off the Gatorade-filled camelback, and grabbed the opened beer bottle thrust at me as Ahmed and Kevin yelled in my direction—“Hey, what do you have against coming in during daylight?”
“I’m photophobic!” I answered back. This is the one point in my life when a big greasy hamburger should be considered “Health Food” and I held out my hand for the plate they handed me, which was field with politically correct ham sandwich and ruffles potato chips. I ate it anyway, figuring at the dietary discretions I have observed in exercise and intake of calories today, if I got any healthier I would die!
Rather than whooping it up in triumph, I merely said that I did what I could, and, for today, that was almost good enough, at least to the slender point of getting this year’s Finisher’s Prize, the coveted Big Horn Run 2001 CoolMax Shorts, now part of a consecutive collection of premium prizes.
I earned them