The Pilot Pointed Northwest in the early morning hours, I had failed miserably the night before at building a pre-race playlist (there are way too many songs with run in the title); I hope it wouldn’t be a bad omen.  But as I left the gas station, Tupac reminds me that Marvin Gaye made him feel like black was the thing to be, so I felt like it was going to be all right.

 

And she was.  All the anxiety about if the rain would wash out the race, or if being sick was going to keep me off the trails faded as the fledgling sun illuminated the fog atop the trees and the interstate.  Flipping through stations gave track after track of great jams until Tom Petty ran down a dream; demons of doubt are in the rearview and I really started feeling grateful for all the wonderful things that I get to do in life, including, this morning, getting up and running a muddy trail.

 

North, north, north, and then west off the interstate.  The Charlotte stations started to fade a bit as I passed the carcass of a speedway NASCAR abandoned long ago, convinced that they had outgrown this small town.  Another left off the four lane, past a gas station, and I’m on a two lane road, winding through trees and lakes and park entrances.

 

By 8:20ish, I pulled into the park.  It’s a bit of a drive for a trail run, especially since the White Water Center is pretty much in my geographical backyard and was holding a dog-friendly 5k today.  (Sorry, Juno) How grateful I am for that resource, but something about this race, buried away in small-town mountains of North Cackalaka, called me.  Often, in all the miles I trained, falling and scraping and sweating, doubt would arise and I would ask myself–what is it all for?  As I snaked around unseen corners, I’m still not sure I had a good answer.  

 

Soon, I was parking the Pilot on the side of the road because even though there are fewer than 100 runners, there was still limited parking. It feels intimate, not claustrophobic, even as a Prius with Cali plates pulls off the road behind me. I find this intimacy endearing as I walk up to the registration, where there’s already a fire pit going.  It’s cold, but not unbearably so, and anyway, I’ll be creating my own heat in about a half an hour, so what does it matter? I get back to change and warm-up, and realize what Spotify has done to my playlist. I probably never would have chosen “Life During Wartime,” but it seems to work.  

 

 

Shoes on.  Time to put on the race bib.  You have to respect a race that quotes Lao-Tzu on their bibs.  I’ll have 13 miles to try to master myself. But this mastery won’t occur in silent meditation of Taoist koans.  This ain’t no party.  This ain’t no disco. I’ve a starting line to surmount.

The race director talks this small group through the basics.  It seems the the guy who organized this race just got tired of it and decided to stop.   After a two-year hiatus, a few friends have decided to jump start this sucker back. It’s not the fine-polished event that I’m used to back in the city, but I’m digging the idea that there will be a small tribe of misfits with the mountain to ourselves this morning.

 

We start  down the asphalt hill, turn left into the trail, and jockey for position for the first mile or so until the crowd breaks up.  I pass a guy in a kilt. A bald guy in a blue top passes me, but I pass him back. For the next several miles, I’m in the immediate proximity of a lady in purple and a guy in yellow in front of me, and an older, tall dude behind me.

 

It’s been raining all week, so the trail is sludge throughout, but I’ve got my legs underneath me.  It often takes me a few miles to get into my lungs, though, which can make me worry that I won’t make it.  My first demon of doubt shows up around Mile 2, telling me that getting sick last week was going to make me too weak to finish this sucker.  It told me that I should have run more to prepare. I met this demon last week, the one who tries to make you not enjoy the running you’re doing because you should’ve run more to get ready for this run.  Bitch, I’m running now. Not today, Satan.  

 

I settle into the groove–legs and lungs now working harmoniously– in which I start writing long-form prose in my head: love letters to my wife, Christmas cards to my cousins, notes of gratitude to my mother, a counter-argument to the Problem of Evil, magic words that will right the universe for my brother, words of encouragement for my downtrodden students, suffering through the hell of end of year IB, a hell to which I contribute.  I think about how I can avoid that the next time around the sun and how I can make the last three days I’m in school before I bolt for Texas a bit more edifying for everyone.  All this talking in my head.  I have ambitions to do all these things, and running the trails in good, steady movement, they all seem in my grasp. 

 

I hit a bump in the mental road as I reached the second “aid station”, which is essentially a folding table manned by a few volunteers graciously handing out water and Gatorade.  This one had promised bacon in an email. There was no bacon. I wasn’t disappointed. If I ate it, it really would’ve been out of sheer curiosity anyway. But I look down at my watch.  The itinerary had said 6.5. I just passed the six mile marker. My GPS, however, says, 4.8, a slight blow to my sense of rolling accomplishment. As I trudge up chunky peanut butter trail hills on what looks to God like a Scottish moor on the lake, I want to revel in the fact that I’m halfway home, but my GPS steals my thunder.  I’m befuddled for a while, but as I re-enter the woods, I settle into the beauty of the trees whizzing by trail, trying to ignore the analytics for the experience. The lake is placid. The trails, though slick, slice through the trees in the silence. My consciousness pulses unobtrusively through the trees. Purple and yellow are still ahead of me.  Everything is good. I decide to believe this time dissonance means I’m making better time than I had originally thought. Halfway done. So far so good.  

 

It seemed my weeks of prep would carry me, but over-caution almost undid the effort.  I had decided to bring some energy snacks on the trip–a “just in case” I completely bottomed out..  I usually don’t worry about this stuff, but I also usually don’t–check that, never have I ever– run a half marathon on a trail. I’ve only run three in my life on the road. Once, I used on a Mile 10, but then bonked climbing Morehead St.  So, I figured that I would have them in reserve for a boost, even though if I didn’t have them, I’d just have to trudge au naturel.

 

 But having them means thinking about when you want to use them.  And even though I thought I was doing good,the urge to hit the Power-Up button began to creep in between miles 8 and 9.  I’d only have four more miles, and that could carry me home. As I got to that point, I reached in the pocket. Which one is the lucky winner?  Lemonade GU. I ate every gelatinous drop of that packet.  

 

You’d think this would work like a video-game power-up, suck one down and you get a boost up the trail.  But I’ve never been one for hard-core stimulants, and this one hit me in a weird way. My heart started racing, which is the exact last thing you want as you’re trying to calmly make your way through the switchbacks up a hill.  It felt like all the harmony that had been working in my body got out of kilter. Lungs fighting legs right as I’m about to climb a hill. And then, I conceded to the demon I had been fighting all day,

 

I stopped and walked.

 

Perhaps it was inevitable at some point.  But I could not keep climbing the hill with my heart thumping out of my chest.  And the problem with walking once is that it’s really easy to allow yourself to do it again.  This demon tells you it’s okay to stop just once. But if you stop just once, you’ve broken the seal, and it seems an accessible release each time you get to a new hill.  You’ve already stopped once. Who cares if you stop and walk again?

 

This solitary self-accountability opened the door for the demon at mile 9, the Demon of the Doldrums.   The miles of flowery prose composition are long gone, and all you’re doing is holding doubt at bay. I realize that at some level my walking is faster than my running, which is deflating.  The third aid station, which should’ve shown up by now, seems nowhere in sight. Purple and Yellow are long gone. Tall Older Dude has passed me. It’s just me and my despair on the trail. I think that even when I’m playing basketball and I don’t want to hustle and run up the court, I can’t let me teammates down.  But there’s no teammates. No trick of guilt or shame I can use to motivate myself. No ruse to tell myself it’s going to be okay. No talking in my head to distract me from this task.  It’s just me in the woods, in a section of seemingly never-ending switchbacks. I laugh perversely, I think of a student I once told to “embrace switchbacks as character building.”. I can’t even make this a metaphorical battle.  There is no sermon, no axiom, not Taoist quip that is going to make this any better. It’s just me, trying to master and will myself up the never ending trail.

 

I only keep running because I can.  I resolve I’m not giving up on this.  I pop a few beans, stop long enough to take off my long sleeve and put it back in low gear.  I pass one guy struggling and try to cheer him up.  

 

“You got this.  We’re all in this one.”

“Tell it to my knee.”

“Will do.  I’ve been telling it to my thighs for miles.

 

Soon, I surmount the aid station.  My watch says it’s been nearly five miles according to my watch since the peanut butter hill.  All signs point to four more miles 

 

A cup of Gatorade later, and I’m back on.  But just as I get it going again, a bit ugly sign makes me think I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.  I could be on a Road to Nowhere.  I start to spiral. What if I do all this running, but I’m on the wrong trail? I see yellow dots on the tree–it’s not a hallucination, I swear–which I seem to remember being the blaze, so I faithfully, one foot in front of the other, plod on.  

 

Soon, I hear a cowbell, which makes me think the finish line is the area and I’m going the right way (or I’m going into a cow pasture), but it’s not clear if that’s another hundred yards or another couple of miles. It’s been nowhere near four miles, but it gives me hope that I’m closer than I thought.  Switchback, switchback, switchback, and finally a forest tunnel through which I can see light and human movement. This Must be the Place.  I plod on, calves screaming, and push through the cones that constitute the finish, and someone calls my number to the official timer. 

They hand me a wooden medal and then I’m on to the hospitality table; two folding tables with cut-up apples and other fruit, bagels, animal crackers, a big jar of peanut butter and some liquid.  I graze and graze like mindless cattle. I’m simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated.  The race director gives us some round the way directions to a store with a motley colored roof where the awards and food wait. I walk back to the car with the dude from Winston-Salem with Cali plates, and we talk the trail and other races we’ve run.  Back at the Pilot, I let Nic know I didn’t die. Soon, I’m out of the sweat and on the road.

 

What looks like a broken down restaurant from the outside houses our afterparty/awards, where the small crew that puts on the race has made BBQ and Mac and Cheese and brought in a cooler full of beer in this remodeled clubhouse.  I grab a High LIfe, chat up the guy in the kilt, and wait for the results to roll in…in the form of the race director brining in his laptop and reading them to people who are still hanging around. My unflattering finish would be a good place for new demons to raise their heads, but they don’t.  

Frequently, I wonder why I chose to undertake this seemingly suicidal run.  It surely wasn’t to win, and this slow finish is nothing to brag about. But on this trail is where those demons arise; facing them down both the fear of failure and the lure of success (both illusions, according to Lao-Tzu)  is its own form of self-mastery, one muddy step at a time.  

 

I’ve written much, but I hesitate to write much more. Let’s not make more of this than we should.  It’s just a small, community race on a super badass trail, and I’m not sure I want to broadly advertise it’ but if you’re smart enough to read geography, it’s probably not hard to find.  Despite my own shortcomings, I left feeling warm and fulfilled and hope that December will find me running these trails again next year.