Letting the Stone Roll

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the metaphorical wheels fell off. It could have been somewhere around mile thirty-six. Or was it forty? Regardless, there I was, shuffling along the trail, repeating a kind of mantra I used in the later stages of these calorie-depleting efforts. This is what you wanted. Not that it ever helped. With each step, the pain in my knee fired another signal along my overloaded sensory receptors. Dozens of downed red oaks draped across the trail like dropped matchsticks. Most were waist-high, which I’d somehow have to climb over. Starched hip flexors made lifting a leg difficult. This is what you wanted, I said aloud to the empty forest while scraping a busted shin against the bark. My vision blurred until shadows in the dying sun became moving shapes. Bear? I shook my head and the bear morphed back into a log jutting from the ridge ahead. This was it. This was The Dark Side.

Four months prior, I was clicking my way through the Ultra Sign-up website. Submit. Registration Confirmed, Thank You! This wasn’t the first time I’d signed up for the Shawnee 50. In 2018, its inaugural year, I gave my best attempt after a summer of disappointing training. At Camp Oyo, nearing mile twenty-four, I limped my way into the aid station and tapped. Even though we pretend we aren’t, runners are often haunted by our DNF’s (Did Not Finish). My Shawnee 50 DNF hovered around me for the next year like Barthelme’s balloon. It had somehow worked its way into my dreams, stood wispily beside me in the grocery checkout line, and bloomed into being each dawn with the sun on the horizon.

The Shawnee 50 covers a grueling fifty-four miles with over 11,000 feet in elevation gain, all inside the 64,000 acres of the Shawnee State Forest. There’s a notorious ten-mile section through the Wilderness Area, where no gas-powered equipment is permitted, which has been nicknamed The Dark Side. That morning, Kinz drove the Subaru along Lampblack as I checked my gear. Water - Check. Calories - Check. Light Jacket Just In Case - Check. Four Minutes Until Start And I’m Still In the Car - Check. The headlights cut like a beacon through the gravel dust as Kinz accelerated. We lived only five miles away from the lodge where the race began, but somehow I managed to almost miss it—two years in a row. I ignored the ominous foreshadowing of repeating patterns, jumped out of the Subaru, and ran toward the crowd waiting at the start/finish line.

“Let the suffer fest begin!” the race director announced over the speakers. Together the mass of runners descended the steep paved road leading away from the lodge. Globes of light from bouncing headlamps danced near our plodding feet. My breath created small plumes in the cool predawn air. The course had an “opening loop,” which eased one into the misery that was sure to come later. This opening loop I had repeated dozens of times that summer during training runs. Seven miles, 1,055 feet of elevation gain, keep it easy, I reminded myself as the group made the first right turn onto the trail.

It didn’t take long for runners to become separated once on the trail. The climbs in the Shawnee State Forest are steep and unrelenting, often confusing those who show up for the race thinking all of Ohio is flat. Here, in “Ohio’s Little Smokies,” it’s quite a different story. I stuck to the plan on the opening loop, crossed State Route 125, and began the first serious climb of the day.

The morning sun blushed over the horizon, splashing light onto the vibrant colors of October. Cranberry, yellow-ochre, and tawny leaves rippled in an unseasonably warm wind and fell onto the trail. An immense relief washed over me as I turned off my headlamp and was able to run in the golden light. There’s a trick to running long distances, you can’t think about the miles ahead, only the next step. Enter mistake number one of many that day. Twelve miles down, so that’s forty-two miles remaining. Forty-two? I still had forty-two miles remaining. How did I get there? Not physically to the trail attempting the race, but to the belief that it was possible to run fifty-four miles in a single effort.

Seven years earlier, I was in desperate need of a lifestyle change. I worked a sedentary job, ate mostly processed foods, and was inching closer to the diet-related illnesses which plagued my genetics. Fighting against the grain, I found myself staring at the quarter-mile track outside of the apartment I was living in at the time. One mile, I told myself, lacing up a pair of running shoes I bought secondhand. I made it a half of a lap before oxygen deprivation seemed to set in. Only an eighth of a mile was disappointing. I kept at it over the following weeks, walking between moments of running, observing the giant neon lettering I’d fabricated in my head which distorted the horizon in any direction I looked. DIABETES. FATTY LIVER DISEASE. HYPERTENSION. With each lap I ran, I lowered my chances and soon was doing more running than walking. Within six months, I’d lost sixty-five pounds and was running four miles each day. But fifty-four miles in a single effort?

Nearing mile fifteen of the race, I met up with another runner. In trail running, it’s common to ease into conversation without really looking at the person. This man, who was leading a descent on a rocky hill, told me about his goal of bettering his finish time from the previous year.

“You from the area?” I asked the back of his head.

“Yeah, me and my wife live over on Mackletree,” he told me.

“Mackletree? I live just off Mackletree.” The man turned around and I finally got a good look at him. It was my neighbor, Rob. I use the term “neighbor” loosely. Rob lived four miles away from me. We knew of each other, gave kudos over Strava, but we hadn’t run together despite doing our summer training on the same trails. The thing I knew about Rob was he was experienced. He’d been doing ultra-marathons for the last fifteen years. If I wanted to make it across the finish line, it’d be wise to stick with Rob.

The miles passed by easily, as is the case when there’s good conversation. “That’s fifty kilometers down!” Rob shouted with his charismatic joy. I didn’t say anything. The day’s effort, just under eight hours of running at this point, had started to take a toll on my body. I was limping on my left leg. I felt myself becoming an anchor weighing down Rob’s performance.

“Look man, don’t let me slow you down. The finish line feels like a long way off for me,” I admitted aloud for the first time that day.

“You’re getting a finish this year. I can promise you that. It’s just one foot in front of the other. One foot. In front. Of the other,” he said, speaking in rhythm with his strides.

We entered the Upper Twin #1 aid station together. Kinz met me there and brought more calories via rice cakes and bananas. My feet were wet and blistered. Nothing sounded as revitalizing as a change of socks. I was still working on the first foot when I saw Rob get up and leave the aid station. As he was turning back onto the trail, he pointed at me, “I’ll see you at the finish line.” His positivity was starting to erode my doubt.

At this point, I wasn’t only physically spent, but I was having a difficult time getting calories in. There’s a joke among long-distance trail runners that races are actually just a big eating competition. If I couldn’t eat, I wouldn’t be able to run. I laughed aloud at my logic, climbing over a down tree. I’d already lost my ability to run. It was more of a brisk and odd-looking walk. I chugged Tail Wind (liquid nutrition), despite my growing revulsion toward it, which felt more like Heavy Guts than any kind of Tail Wind. The sun was setting and the temperature was dropping. The positivity I felt only hours earlier had transmuted into a burden I carried with me.

So this was it. Just when the finish line felt within reach, my hopes of crossing it dissolved like an apparition. To add insult to injury, not only had I chosen to be out there, but I’d paid to be out there. I finally understood The Dark Side. It wasn’t a section of the trail, but a section of the mind. It was a serious existential abyss. Failure, I might have said aloud, rolling my stone up the hill. But what did it mean to fail? I felt the previous DNF loom over me. Then a realization hit me. What if this race had no meaning? What if I’m not my failures or my achievements? Can’t I be independent of those and find fulfillment in the everyday, in the process versus the product? Don’t I get to decide?

And then I decided. I sidestepped, letting my stone roll down the steep hill I’d just climbed. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and kept putting one foot in front of the other. I made it to the Mackletree aid station, downed a cup of the rocket fuel commonly known as Coke, turned on my headlamp, and kept moving. I wiped the sweat from my watch and looked at the time. I had only two hours to travel eight miles on dead legs.

There’s an important axiom in the trail running philosophy—never do math on a tired mind. I moved with such intention, not realizing my calculations were off. In fact, I wouldn’t come to this realization until the following evening. I actually had four hours to make it to the finish line before the seventeen-hour cutoff. A first quarter moon shone in the satin sky as I climbed the last hill. I saw Kinz and my mom, who drove over to watch me run the last tenth of a mile across the lodge parking lot. Fifteen hours later, I crossed the same start/finish line I’d left in the dark hours of morning. The race director placed a finisher’s medal around my neck while I tried not to puke. Rob and his wife, Johna, pulled their car to where I was standing. They’d been waiting for me.

“I told you I’d see you at the finish line,” Rob said, reaching a fist out the downed window.

“I guess I finally believe you,” I said, connecting my fist with his.

Running a race like the Shawnee 50 has the ability to strip one of all that isn’t necessary. Run for long enough and eventually one becomes a blank page. I didn’t know it at the time, standing in the shower that night in a shivering state of shock, but this race acted as a closing chapter to my twenties. Those mistakes I carried with me for the last decade were scattered along the trail like ashes of a former self. Now, when I find myself in a situation that tests my endurance, I just calmly say to myself — this is what you wanted.