Known Knowns

The Pike’s Peak Ascent 2007 is over. Thank the good lord above. While last year’s race was hard, for sure, I don’t recall it being as mentally challenging as this year. Not even close. As I told my parents, I think that having to focus on my dad’s altitude sickness really took the focus off my own pain. And there were other factors, too…

We got started at 7:30am, after two or three trips to the bathroom. One thing I learned from last year was to never, ever go out too fast, and this is especially important if you’re slow to begin with. There’s no reason to blow the race in the first mile, which happens to be some of the steepest terrain in the entire 13.32 miles (or however the freak long it was.)

This year I was running with my husband Josh, instead of my dad. We started nice and slow. I actually felt like we were a little farther back than I would have preferred, but no matter, at that point, it was more important to be too slow than too fast. By two miles in, I heard we were doing about a 21:50 minute mile average, which would barely allow us to finish in the allotted time. I admit that this scared me a little so I picked up the pace. I went ahead of Josh but kept waiting and backtracking to make sure he was still close.

We walked and walked. And walked and walked. I got a little farther ahead of Josh by running some of the downhills and straight-aways (and at the same time shouting “now I can officially say I ran part of the course!) I would say for the first five or six miles, I had a really irregular pace which may have led to some of the difficulties later on, who’s to say. I would speed up, run some small hills, then slow down, wait for Josh a little bit, then speed up again, make up some lost ground, and this cycle just repeated itself a lot. I noticed I was more tired at this stage of the game than I was last year, but I felt that I had a lot left in me at the end of 2006’s race, so I felt this was an okay place to be.

The weather was really quite nice. It was sunny and beautiful, probably in the 80’s (mid to upper) all day long. It never rained and barely clouded up, even when I finally made it above treeline. Although, I decided later that it was a dangerous level of warmth; the kind that feels perfectly acceptable but is really causing you to sweat profusely without your realization. I did notice my sweat (or more likely, my incredible stank) but I never felt “too hot.” I drank water and Gatorade the entire time, though not a lot. In fact, I didn’t pee at all. I don’t know if that’s a sign that it was the perfect amount of liquid or too little. I never felt dehydrated but it’s probably impossible not to be, when you’re hiking like that. I did keep rehashing the pathophysiology lectures on three types of dehydration and was intensely aware of my fluid/electrolyte balance. Thank you, Dr. Sampson. In fact, at the very first aid station, they had already run out of Gatorade, and I was concerned because I didn’t think it would be feasible to do a half marathon without replacing the elytes somehow. (And I hadn’t brought any with me, since it was all provided last year.) That problem solved itself, as every other aid station had plenty, not to mention all the salty food.

So, I had a relatively decent six miles. Out of thirteen. And they were the first consecutive six. The final seven were absolutely brutal, in my opinion.

By the time I reached Barr Camp, I had lost Josh. I barely made the Barr Camp cutoff time, myself. I was there about 3 minutes before they shut it down (which basically means if you don’t get there in time, they take your race number and you’re disqualified. They do this for safety reasons as Pike’s Peak gets lots of lightening and storms during the later afternoon hours, and they need to make sure everyone is either off the mountain or soon to be. Barr Camp is about 6 miles from the summit. As soon as I heard they were closing down, I started to panic, knowing that I hadn’t seen Josh in a few minutes, at least. When I knew he wasn’t going to make the cutoff, I completely lost control of myself, and started bawling. I mean, wracking sobs. (At least I knew I wasn’t completely dehydrated, because of the very real tears coming from my eyes.) Immediately I turned around and started walking downhill, thinking I would catch him and we would walk to the bottom together. Some (very smart) volunteer saw me leaving, grabbed the back of my shirt and said “he’d want you to keep going.” This volunteer was right, even though I felt an amazing, and completely overwhelming sense that I had just abandoned Josh by choosing to keep going up. It was just awful, and I can’t even explain having to make that decision. It was just awful. The other hikers were very comforting while I cried for about a mile. I can’t thank them enough for their support, but I still felt terrible.

That was kind of the turning point in the race for me. I have always thought the Ascent is about 99.9% mental, and I think this proved it. After I cried, and knowing Josh wasn’t with me, I felt very broken. I had a hard time catching my breath again. I stopped being able to control my pace, because I was now determined to get to the top for both of us, and I had lost a lot of time at Barr Camp, panicking, which I felt I had to make up (because there’s one more time cutoff where they can still send you back down.) It probably took  me an hour and  a half to mentally “move on” and try to let it go for at least the remainder of the race. And after that, everything started to hurt.

I somehow managed to re-focus my energy, but my body felt like it was dying on me, and fast. I was starting to stumble and dropped my water bottle several times, probably due to slow asphyxiation. I finally reached A-Frame, 10 minutes under the cutoff time (so I definitely gained some momentum after Barr Camp.) After A-Frame, you are basically above treeline for the remaining three miles, and if you feel like crap when you get there, you will want to die by the time you’re done. Which is what happened, basically.

Knowing the importance of positive thinking in this race, I tried hard to keep the negativity from creeping it.  I cannot even explain how hard it was; my whole body hurt, I didn’t know where Josh was, I was working off about 50% of the oxygen I had when I started…all these things make for a very emotional, whacked-out hiker. I was starting to feel dizzier, and it was all I could do to focus on the shoes of the person in front of me.  Several times, I honestly wished someone would shoot me. Other times I swore I was being punished for every sin I had ever committed. Or that this was the most emotionally difficult thing I had ever been through–the amazing urge to quit, I mean, it was earth-shattering. I also begged the mountain for mercy, repeatedly, but to no avail, apparently. Of course, when you’re in that much O2 deprivation, you’re bound to be overly emotional. But there’s no denying it was just hard. Real hard.

The other problem was that because it was sunny, I could see the summit (as well as hear the announcer.) This served only as another level of torture. I mean, it was torture. It just looked so far away…I swore I would never get there. All I could do was tell myself to take one more step–for three very long miles (like, probably 30-45 minutes a mile.)

Not quite six hours after I started, I stumbled across the finish line, somehow managing a smile that made my ears hurt, fighting the urge to cry. It was a little disappointing, at first, because I didn’t hear the announcer call my name (which they generally do for every single runner), and all of my friends had already gone back down, and I so wished that Josh and I could have crossed together, so there was no one cheering or taking photos or hugging me afterwards. I simply grabbed a handful of animal crackers, hobbled over and got my Finisher’s jacket, and got on a bus where I shut my eyes and fell asleep (mostly to avoid getting carsick; the ride takes about an hour.) None of this mattered. I finished. I don’t care who saw. I finished and I did it and I felt like absolute trampled crap, but I persevered and fought hard and got there. God, it sucked.

As it turns out, Josh continued hiking after Barr Camp, thinking he would be able to summit and, while it would be “unofficial”, he could still get a bus ride down. Well, at A-Frame (10.2 miles through the hike, only 3 miles from the summit) the race officials made him go back down. So Josh ended up hiking 20.5 miles today, while I only did 13. And I kid you not, if I had been forced to hike downhill, I think I might have shot someone myself. I don’t do downhills. Josh said his legs were shaking like a sewing machine needle. I cannot imagine what he went through, both physically and emotionally. As far as I’m concerned, he was successful today, just as much as I was.

After today, I have decided that I will not being doing the Ascent again. I kinda had a feeling this would be my last, but the emotional roller-coaster today really solidified it in my head. I feel good about my accomplishment, and I have a new respect for Pike’s Peak. I have a new appreciation for my marriage and my husband, too. You can’t know how awful I felt when I knew I had to keep going. It felt good to be sitting in a car with him again. And Josh wasn’t mad at all–he told me he would have been totally pissed if I had come back to get him after all that. I hope that in the same position, I could be a total champ like he was.

I have also decided that I’m done forcing myself to do sports that I hate. I don’t really like hiking all that much to begin with. I like short hikes that test your mental strength and suck every ounce of courage from you body. I like hikes where I can take my dog, and he can swim and chase the ball. I like kickball where the players dress up like people from SNL. I am a low-key athlete, and I’m done trying to prove anything otherwise to myself or my friends out here. I’d love to volunteer at the Ascent, and will definitely do that if Josh decides to run again. Maybe when I get my RN license, I can volunteer with the folks who give oxygen to the totally depleted; like me. I don’t know what the future holds, but endurance sports ain’t it. Maybe I’ll get back into running (I’ve been kind of craving it) but it’s no pressure, no races, no nothing. It’s fun or it’s not happening at all.

And now, I’m going to bed.