The sun was quickly setting and we still hadn’t completed a full rotation of runners yet. By the seventh leg, we were already almost two hours behind projections with seventeen more legs to go. The minutes were hemorrhaging with every new runner. I am not militant about other people’s paces as long as everyone gives his or her best effort. Normally missing projections wouldn’t phase me but shortly before we started the race organizers announced that every team needed to finish by four o’clock the next day.
This was maddening because our assigned start time was based on the team’s collective road pace. Considering the difficulty of the course, the fact that most of the competitors were coming from significantly lower elevations, and knowing that trail running is always slower than road running even under the best conditions, the time allotted by the organizers was grossly inadequate. Our ability to complete all twenty-four legs by four the next day was looking impossible based on how far back we were already. Even though this was mostly the fault of the race organizers, I couldn’t help but feel personally responsible and tremendously disappointed.
I had already run what turned out to be the reputedly most difficult loop, and I was gutted about the amount of walking I had to do. I consider myself a solid runner and believed that A and I had trained well for the hills. But we did most of our training at sea level and lack of oxygen is a condition that’s hard to simulate. I knew this going in, but nevertheless I told myself before the start that I was not going to walk, even if I had to dial my effort down. Yet not even a mile done and here I was, walking. It was especially frustrating since I knew every time I stopped to walk, I was pushing us closer to the possibility of not finishing. My legs hurt, my lungs were screaming, and worst of all, my pride was wounded.
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