Lawrence Block - Step by Step

I’ve done 50 kilometers in seven hours, and I want to sit down. Actually I want to stop. I don’t feel sleepy, it’s not that kind of exhaustion, but something gets me over to the chair and I sink gratefully into it. I gulp Gatorade and chase it with water, and decide to change my socks.

I’m wearing two pairs, a thin pair of toe socks to keep the toes from rubbing against one another and an outer pair for cushioning. I take off both and replace them with fresh ones, and I think Lynne brings me something from the refreshments table, but I can’t remember what. And I just sit there. Lynne asks me if I’d like to go to the room so I can stretch out, and I’d love to, but I’m not really ready to stop.

There’s a New York Road Runners race in Central Park in late November, a 60K, and I’ve been planning on doing it. Two more laps would give me 60K now. Can’t I manage that? Sheesh, just two laps.

I get up and head out. Of course everything hurts now, all I can do is hobble, with my calves and hamstrings all knotted up. I pause in the parking lot and use a car to support me while I stretch out my calves, and that helps, though not much. I take a few more steps and realize that my right foot is not happy. The toes are horribly crowded. I take off that shoe, peel off the outer sock, put the shoe on again, and press on.

That’s better.

During this lap, I exchange greetings along these lines with a passing runner. We’d talked before the race, and now he mentions that he’s back after having stopped and slept for an hour. God, imagine stopping. Imagine sleeping...

I’ve finally worked out how to slow my pace. Just keep going for 55 kilometers and it slows by itself. The tenth lap, as I’ll find out later from Lynne’s careful record keeping, took 42:05; the eleventh takes 47:15.

And it’s hard to keep going, hard to do it right. I can feel that I’m bending forward and struggle to maintain proper posture, but it’s difficult, and my back’s not up to it. It’s also difficult to maintain the arm swing that facilitates the hip pivot and lengthens the stride. There are stretches during this lap when any racewalking judge would DQ me without hesitation.

But I keep going. And my form and posture improve markedly when I turn the last corner and head for the finish line, where there’ll be people to watch me.

Ah, ego. Only avarice can match it as a motivator.

Lap Twelve: 3:50 a.m. 37.92 miles.

Sixty kilometers completed, and I go straight to the chair and lower myself gingerly into it. I’ve gone ten kilometers beyond my second goal, and am only four laps from my dream of fifty miles. I remember the fellow who took a nap and got back on the course. If I stopped now, would I come back? Do I give a rat’s ass? I tell Lynne I want to lie down, and we go to the room.

I’m in desperate need of a shower. It’s cold and clammy outside; you sweat and it doesn’t evaporate. But all I want to do is lie down. I leave my shorts and singlet on, shuck my shoes, leave my socks on. And stretch out.

Lynne asks if she should set the clock and wake me in an hour. I tell her to make it an hour and a half. I close my eyes, and I’m gone.

Remarkably, I hear the clock; even more remarkably, I hop out of bed immediately, knowing that I want to do my four laps. That will bring me to fifty miles. I never really believed I could go that far, and I don’t entirely believe it now, but it’s only four more laps. Lynne is ready to go out there with me, but that’s carrying support to an absurd level. I convince her to go back to bed, that I’ll be fine out there on my own. She’s not all that hard to convince.

After a sponge bath, I get out on the course again. Earlier, I’d looked forward to watching the sky lighten as I walked on through the night and into the morning, but it’s too late for that; it’s already light out. And it’s like, well, duh, night and day. I’m walking with good form, standing tall, and zipping along, and I feel uncommonly good about the whole enterprise. I don’t have my lap times for the next four laps, as my record keeper’s getting a well-deserved rest. But I think my pace is about the same as it was at the start of the race.

I do two laps and stop to bandage a couple of blisters. While I’m at it, I put Band-Aids over my nipples. As a child I’d wondered why men have them, and now I know: it’s so they’ll get rubbed raw from friction with the fabric of your shirt. This never happened in the past, but then I’ve never walked this far before.

At the food tent, I discover a boundless capacity for junk food, which they have in good supply. In real life I stick with Atkins, which works perfectly for me, but an ultra strikes me as a perfect excuse to gorge myself like a pig, and I do. Oreos? Peanut butter and jelly? Oatmeal cookies? Doughnuts? Bring it on! And, mirabile dictu, they’ve got coffee! And I can take my time eating, because all I’ve got to do is two more laps and I’m done, with fifty miles in the bank. I have a second cup of coffee and get back on my feet.

It’s fourteen hours and two minutes since the start of the race, and I’ve gone around that lake 16 times, and that’s fifty miles. (50.56 miles, to be precise.) I’d figured it would probably take me a good thirteen hours to go that far (assuming I could manage it at all) but I hadn’t allowed for a nap.

I feel wonderful. Sheesh, I just walked fifty miles.

I go to the room, where Lynne is awake. I strip, shower, get in bed. She asks when she should wake me. I tell her not to bother.

It’s almost one o’clock when I wake up. There’s over six hours left in the race, and no real reason why I can’t add to my mileage total. After all, another four laps would bring me to 100 kilometers.

I never mentioned this to anyone, never even said it out loud to myself, but before the race it seemed to me that 100K — 62 miles — might actually be possible. And now I’m pretty sure I can do it.

Outside, the sun’s blazing away. At 9 a.m. it was completely overcast, but now there’s not a cloud in the sky, and it’s pretty hot out there. I decide to wait until at least two before I go out, and wind up hanging out in the room until closer to 2:30. I’d just as soon not spend that much time under the midday sun, as there’s virtually no shade on the course.

I remember some words of advice in another ultrawalker’s prerace email. He talked about the difficulty in getting through what he called the mental twilight of hours 16–18. No problem for me — I just slept right through ’em.

I pin my number to my shorts, leave my singlet in the room, and head on out barechested. I’m stiff and sore at first, of course, but able to walk, and I have to say the sun feels good. And four laps seems a manageable distance. But I find myself letting my arms drop from time to time. My legs turn over at about the same speed as before (I know this from step-counting; I gave up keeping a running total back in the eighth or ninth lap, but still find myself counting breaths on each lap more often than not; it gives the mind something to do, and also gives me a sense of where I am in the lap) but my stride is shorter, and it takes me more breaths (which is to say more steps) to finish a lap.

Interesting.

Interesting, too, that my lats are sore now from the arm pumping. Never happened before. Chalk it up to the distance.

I polish off the lap and keep on going. Early on I move up on a runner, and he matches my pace, and for the first time in the entire race I’m walking side by side with somebody. His name is Paul, and we get to talking, and it’s fascinating. This lap, #18 for me, is #28 for him. He’s been at it without a break, but this is the last lap for him, because he has to leave early in order to get to the airport in time to catch his flight to San Francisco, where he’s entered in the San Francisco Marathon in the morning.