Right before one of my runs this weekend, a teammate asked
me if I was nervous. I did an internal check because my initial response seemed
wrong: no, not nervous. Just happy. So happy to be about to take the baton.
I went into the whole thing sort of nervous. I’ve done River
to River, an 80-mile, eight-person relay, four times before. It’s always been a
marvelously wonderful time. But the last time I did it was in the before-times,
April of 2019. Since then, I’ve run very few races at all. Partly that was from
a hip injury, and partly it was Covid. For me, everything is still Covid-tinged
to some extent, particularly large events that will put me in contact with
large numbers of people who may or may not put effort into not spreading Covid.
I was nervous about being in a van with people for three days. And then, to
make it worse, I have a sore hamstring. I wasn’t sure I could finish the
distance with any integrity. I was, frankly, worried about the pain. Also, I
figured that doing the relay might finish off my running for the season. I
decided, though, that I was going to do it poorly and with pain if that’s what
it took. I preemptively lined up an appointment with a doctor who has helped me
with running injuries in the past, and I asked for the leg with the easiest
runs first and the only big hills at the end.
I was nervous about what to pack. The weather reports
shifted so many times: warm and partly sunny, cold and raining, everything in
between. And, to be fair to the weather forecasters, all of those things could
be simultaneously true over an 80-mile spread in April in Illinois. So the
clothes were, of course, hard to pack efficiently. Efficiency matters when
there are eight people with the gear and food needed for everyone to run three
races over the course of 13 hours. And the food is a thing too. What and when does
one eat when she gets up at 3:30am and then runs three times before finishing
at 8pm? My friend JJ calmly reminded me of some things I already knew, so I
stopped by the grocery store and bought too much and stayed up too late packing
and repacking food and clothes and got myself ready.
After meeting up, loading the van, driving, going to the
packet pick-up, finding dinner, and going to the race meeting, we finally
arrived at our rental house in time to go to bed for a few restless hours
before rising at the aforementioned 3:30am for a 4:15 departure.
Driving to the race through what was still night to most
people, I had one of those peak moments, one of those moments when you
metaphorically stop at a high spot in life and pause to look around. I looked back
at all of the experiences that had brought me to be in that passenger seat in
those running clothes looking up at those stars in the National Forest. I
thought about how as I was going to be running a relay that I love, my son was
going to be initiated into his fraternity. It was going to be a big day for
him, too. It was going to be a day that had nothing to do with me and in which
I did not have a role, and so it was perfectly--even wonderfully--good that I
was doing something I loved. My daughter would be waking up in a few hours to
run in her own relays for her high school track team. I didn’t know then, but
she was about to achieve the goal she set weeks ago: to run the mile in under
six minutes. I knew that everything I had done, either well or poorly, had
somehow gotten me to this moment where my children and I were just where we
wanted to be. I knew that anything could happen, either good or bad, in our day
or the days ahead, but we were right at that moment right where we were
supposed to be. The past and the future were just the past and the future, and
the present was the only and the perfect thing. I was free from both regret and
fear. It was a moment of perfection.
Moments, by definition, pass, but that sense of combined
wonder and rightness stayed with me for a while. The morning was still chilly
as I stood at the first exchange waiting for the baton. I was not nervous.
When I started to run, the sense of wonder and rightness
expanded to fill me. My hamstring was not yet sore. My legs felt fresh and
powerful. My segment of the race was in a valley filled with the soft yellow
light of the just-risen sun and, ahead of me, a great glowing cloud of rising
fog. The fields around me were sprouting and the trees in southern Illinois
were already covered in either blossoms or tender green. Everything around me
was starting anew, rising, beginning. I ran a little harder than I had planned
just because I could. I ran until I started to feel my breath shift, and then I
held that pace, perfectly balanced between ease and effort.
Here, I break up the beauty with a dark but interesting
touch of reality. As I was still running past the vehicles of other teams in
the exchange, I saw a small group of people looking down at something in the
road: a flattened armadillo. Huh.
The first round of runs was such a delight. The second runs
were, of course, harder. We were a little tired from our first races, most of
which were hilly. The coffee we had started to sip at 4am was gone and worn
off. The third round of runs, though, is always really rough. Everyone is very tired
and possibly sore in some joint or muscle. People start getting headaches from the sun or fatigue or some unmet nutritional need or just because they do. This
year, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped, and we were cold standing
in the exchanges cheering each other on. Given my pending hamstring injury, I
had requested a leg that has the easy segments first and the hardest run last,
thinking that I’d just give whatever was left in me at that point, and if my
injury was terrible at the end, then so be it. It would have been worth it.
Obviously, though, it’s a challenge to run the hardest segment already tired
and sore and ready to be finished.
My last run was shaped like my leg overall: easy at first
and hard at the end. What the elevation chart could not show, though, was the
wind, which was at our back for most of our afternoon runs. My run, however, turned
just when it started to go uphill, and yes, it turned into the wind. So, in the
last half of my last leg, I looked up into my steepest climbs and the wind blew
me back down. I passed a woman who seemed to be committed to power walking the
whole hill. The guy who had blown past me in the flat miles stopped and walked
and never caught up to me again. The guy in front of me walked every now and
then. I started to gain on him. The hill was steeper in some places than in
others, and a couple of times I stopped and walked for 20 seconds—long enough
to settle my breathing just a bit—and started again.
I had told my teammates that my goal for the last run was to
be fully there—to see it and feel it completely. When I was out there, though,
what I thought about was my teammates. Several of them had never run any relay
much less one that is pretty much all hills. And yet, knowing we needed to meet
a time goal for our race to count (the finish line closes at 8pm,) every one of
them pushed themselves to go a little faster than they thought they could.
Every one of them faced the big hills. The hill I was on wasn’t anything more
than what everyone else had already done that day. I was inspired by the calm
and cheerful steadiness of the woman who had handed me the baton and the stoic courage
of the injured woman who would take it from me. I was inspired by my teammate
who had really only run 5Ks in the past. I was inspired by my teammate who
agreed to be runner six when I got injured and said I couldn’t—she’d done it
before and so could do it again. I was inspired by my teammate who will be
running an ultra in a few weeks and so agreed to take an extra segment if
needed. I thought about my teammate who faced that first big hill in leg five
and just…did it. That is what one does when one is on a hill. You move each
foot and then do it again until you get to the place where your friend can take
the baton.
Partway through the day, just when we were all feeling
incurably grumpy and tired, just when the wind was picking up and the
temperature was dropping, my husband sent me a text that my daughter had earned
her “sub 6” shirt in her mile race, and he sent a picture of her standing on the
track waiting to take the baton in her relay. In the picture, the track is
covered and the air is filled with hail. Then he sent a picture of her running
with the baton. Again, the track is covered and the air is filled with hail.
Her legs are stretched out in full stride and neither foot is on the ground.
Her gaze is focused, and the baton is in her right hand. She looks strong and
fast and beautiful, and she looks stronger and faster and more beautiful
because she’s running in hail.
After the race, after marveling at the luxury of the running
water at the Chill and Grill by the finish line, I thought about why we do
something that is very hard and tiring and sometimes gross and often painful.
And more than just doing it, we rejoice in it. We look forward to next year. I
suppose we all have our own reasons, but this weekend, I was acutely aware that
the relay offers me a moment to appreciate my own life and makes me brave.
There are hard things all around me—parenting, teaching, work politics,
politics politics, scary changes, growing older—but the relay reminds me that
we can enjoy doing hard things. When I am halfway up a steep and/or long hill,
I know I can keep going. My teammates have done it before. I have done it
before. And what’s more: I WANT to keep going. Life is hard, but it’s also so
beautiful. The hills and the hail actually make it even more so. Sometimes the wind blows against you or it starts to hail while you’re waiting for the baton. Sometimes
the sun rises and shines on the spring blossoms and the flat armadillo on the
road. So be it. Pass me that baton.
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