By Amy Donaldson, Deseret News
PROVO — As I entered the aid station at mile 30, I told the volunteers I was dropping out of the Squaw Peak 50-miler.
The words did not provide the
relief I’d convinced myself they would as I grappled with whether I could make
the 2:30 p.m. cutoff at mile 33.
By the time they spilled out of my
mouth, I had convinced myself I couldn’t make the cutoff. I based this decision
on the fact that it had taken me over an hour to run the last three miles.
The brutality of those three miles
leading to the aid station where I made my declaration wasn’t the terrain. It
was in my mind. So I kept telling myself that if I could just get to the aid
station and make the decision official, I’d feel relieved.
I did not.
In fact, when the aid station
volunteer heard me she told me I had 50 minutes to get to the cutoff. She said
it twice. I vacillated, trying to hide my humiliation and disappointment while
desperate for the comfort of a conclusion.
That’s when I saw Celeste Collman.
She was scooping beans into her
mouth from a can using a chip as a spoon. Then she poured cold water on her
neck and got up to continue the race.
As soon as I recognized her, I
told the volunteers I was continuing on to try to make the cutoff. And then I
hurried to Celeste's side and asked if I could run with her.
She welcomed me, and we set out
into the unforgiving heat and an unrelenting climb. “You probably don’t
remember me, but we’ve met,” I said. And then I told her how we’d met two years
earlier when my friends and I were training for our first 50-mile race on
Antelope Island.
“You gave us some great advice,” I
said, as I tried to keep up with her. “Really helpful.”
Almost immediately, I felt
overheated.
I had begun to experience symptoms
of heat exhaustion during the three miles before I joined Celeste. Recently,
I’d been struggling with hydration and electrolytes when running anything over
10 miles. I was frustrated that I couldn’t seem to solve the puzzle my body had
decided to throw at me the past few months.
I drank generously and distracted
myself by engaging in a conversation with my new friend.
Celeste was all business. And she
was all in.
When I said “if we make the
cutoff,” she quickly corrected me.
“When,” she said. "Don't talk
like that."
And then she laid out the plan.
We’d run 50 steps and then walk and then run 50 more. We did this for more than
a mile. We talked when we could. We ran in silence when we couldn’t.
She told me that in the year
between when I met her and our chance reunion, she’d lost her mom and had been
diagnosed with Parkinson's. This was a woman who took up running after beating
thyroid cancer in 1995.
“They gave me less than a year to
live,” she said. “I was one of those, and this is no kidding. They said it was
medullary, the worst kind.” She lived in Florida at the time, and her brother
convinced her she’d get better treatment in Utah so she came home.
“I always say when I came from
Florida to Utah, God changed the slides in my suitcase,” she said smiling.
“Because when I got here they said it was papillary. …Three pathologists made a
mistake? I don’t know how they did it. That’s why I say, maybe someone up there
changed things.”
She took up running after that —
partly to regain her health and partly because her youngest brother ran ultras.
“If my brother could do it, I
could do it,” she said laughing.
The 62-year-old Ogden woman,
recognizable because she dresses head-to-toe in pink, has run so many ultras,
she’s lost count. She has two 100-mile finishes (The Bear 100) and dozens of
others, including more than 10 Squaw Peak 50 finishes. So there was no way
Celeste was quitting today. And if I could hang onto her, I thought, I can
borrow her determination until I recover my own.
I thought the monotony of counting
would drive me crazy, but it calmed me. It helped to have a focus and a reward,
and it didn’t matter that it was small.
At one point, I was about a
quarter mile ahead of her. Then she caught me on a steep incline. As she passed
me, we exchanged more chatter. In any other setting it would have been
meaningless. On this day, it felt like shelter in a relentless storm.
As the gap between us grew, I
looked at my watch. We wouldn’t make it. It wasn’t humanly possible. I was
overcome with disappointment. I thought meeting her had been an omen of good
fortune. I really thought that if I could stay with her, I’d make it.
She faded from view, continuing
her plan, while I abandoned it for self pity. Then I heard her yell back to me,
“Don’t you quit, girl!”
And I couldn’t contain a giggle.
How did she know I was
contemplating sitting in the shade for just a few minutes? So I sped up. I
pushed as hard as I could to catch her. I wanted to at least arrive at the aid
station with her.
She politely asked if they’d make
an exception, as we were just 12 minutes past the cutoff time. They declined,
and she accepted offers of cold drinks and salty foods as she sank into a chair
next to me.
She said she was taking care of
her terminally ill mother when she began experiencing symptoms of Parkinson's.
“I couldn’t put my hair in a
ponytail,” she said, stuttering, another symptom of Parkinson's. “I couldn’t
tie my shoes, couldn’t zip up my clothes. I didn’t know. My mom died, and I
wasn’t paying attention to myself.”
She admitted it was devastating to
hear a doctor tell her she had Parkinson's. But then, she’s been dealt
disappointment before.
“I figure, everybody’s got
something,” she said with a shrug. “I did pretty good after they gave me
dopamine. But it’s getting tougher. Sometimes you have to change the
medication.”
The medicine can cause fatigue and
other side effects. But she said she’s had some great races in the wake of that
diagnosis. When I asked her if signing up for ultras is an act of defiance, she
doesn’t hesitate.
“Yeah it is,” she said. “It’s just
fun.”
Her disappointment mitigated my
own. She’d never failed to finish Squaw Peak. I’d never failed to finish any
race I’d started. But I was new to ultra running, and more than once I’d been
warned that failure was a necessary part of the growth process.
I’d also let the fact that I’d
never failed to finish become a sort of pen. The truth is that I’d stayed
safely inside my comfort zone, only attempting races I knew I could finish. So
what had I really achieved?
And as I sat with Celeste, sipping
cold sodas in someone else’s lawn chairs, I realized how lucky I was that I ran
into her that day. I wish we’d made the cutoff, but not because I wanted a
medal or the easy confidence that comes with finishing something so
challenging.
I wish I’d had the benefit of 17
more miles of wisdom from a woman whose fearlessness and determination make
even her failures enviable. She isn't philosophical about it — at all. As we
rode to the finish line, she started talking about the ultra she was running in
two weeks.
“It’s cheaper than Prozac,” she
said with a shrug. “And I’ve got a lot of nice friends from it.”
http://health.einnews.com/article/332888052/bpcEiCPECrNWroWq
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