Thanksgiving march

As the race director rattled through her morning announcements, Matt the ex-Marine pushed through the crowd toward me. He reached out and gave me a hardy handshake. "Happy Thanksgiving," he said.

"Oh wow, you're right," I said. "I totally forgot. It's Thursday. It's Thanksgiving."

"I brought a package of mashed potatoes," he said. "I'm going to eat them at the overnight checkpoint, the one with the hot water."

"That was a great idea," I said. "I didn't bring ... anything."

Matt grinned and turned to spread his holiday greetings to other Americans in the crowd. I sighed heavily as nostalgia pangs churned in my empty stomach. Warm images replaced the ashen faces of the crowd. My aunt shouting at the Dallas Cowboys above the chatter of my cousins. My now-deceased grandfather cracking corny jokes. My grandmother admonishing everyone to rattle off a long list of thanks as the turkey gets cold. My sisters and I sneaking Peanut M&Ms from the candy dish before dinner. My mother's pies. Oh, my mother's pies. Coconut cream. Heaven.

I returned to reality in a jolt of cold obviousness. "What the hell am I doing here?" The day's plan spread out before me like a sentence: "The Long March," 72 kilometers (45 miles) with 3,249 meters (10,659 feet) of climbing, on tough and often steep terrain. This in itself would make for a tough day, but now it followed four solid days of racing to a combined 79 miles and 18,600 feet of climbing, on rugged trails, running what amounted to a starvation diet of about 1,200 calories a day.

I felt nauseated from the morning's granola bar, or maybe it was nervousness. Honestly, I don't know how much of my inability to eat was remnant symptoms of the bug and how much of it was psychological. My body was exhausted and so tired of feeling sick, and my mind both blamed food and obsessed about it. I just wasn't sure how much farther I could go, and yet I had come so far. Of course The Long March was worth a shot.

And then, the race began. I think my expression in this photograph shows how I felt. My eyes were droopy and tired, my posture slumped and my legs were dragging. But there's a spark there, and a genuine smile. I was still enthralled with the landscape and culture, and excited to see what lay ahead.

And the morning was gorgeous. We had been incredibly lucky with the weather. The week before the race, it rained so continuously that the race organizers sent out an e-mail warning of a wet and cold slog with a decent chance of snow. And the week after the race, the mountains were always shrouded in thick clouds. But for that one week the sky was clear, and temperatures held a mild range from 1 to 30 degrees Celsius (yes, it does get quite warm in Nepal in November.) Plus, the mountains were always out. If Hindu karma does exist, the perfect weather was probably a fair exchange for how sick I felt.

After two rolling kilometers the trail shot skyward, gaining 600 meters in two kilometers. That's an average grade of 30 percent or a gain of 1,600 feet per mile. Pretty steep. I actually had to go back and re-read to course notes to get this number because in my memory it was not much of a climb at all. I don't think that's as much a result of poor memory as it is an indicator that our health really was improving. As we recovered, the miles seemed easier, even if they really weren't.

The miles were numerous though, and for much of the stage my mind fell into that Zen place that can often be described as "auto-pilot." Because of this, my memories of this stage are more fragmented than the others, so I have many pictures with fewer stories to tell. We were marching.

Nepalis seem to spend lots of time relaxing on the side of the trails, where I imagine the most entertaining action takes place. I was always impressed with the way they sat, with their knees fully bent or even squatting in a way that made my own knees ache vicariously. Steve and I discussed another seeming anomaly in rural Nepal — an almost complete lack of middle-aged people. We saw many hundreds of children, and strikingly beautiful young adults up to about age 25. Everyone older than that looked to be at least sixty, with wrinkles spread across their faces, sagging postures and tired eyes. We couldn't decide whether there actually is a large generation gap, whether most of the middle-aged adults were  working the fields away from town, or whether the hard lives in rural Nepal just leave people looking much older than they are.

After 15 kilometers, we traversed a mountainside jungle along a disconcertingly slippery trail. It actually felt strange to reduce our pace to a slow walk, as we had been jogging for a while. During our training, Beat was always significantly stronger and faster than me while carrying a pack. It's one of the reasons we decided not to race together, as I feared his pace would burn me out and mine would bore him. Even though I was stronger in stage five than I had been yet, following Beat's pace kept me right at my upper limit. And yet, the sensation of dripping sweat and breathing hard felt really good, because it wasn't sick, and it wasn't weak. It was running, which is what we came to our running race to do.

But I knew my body was significantly broken down and couldn't even begin to recover until I rested, which wasn't going to happen during a 45-mile continuous march. I accepted this willingly, even gratefully, because I knew that life doesn't always hand you the best timing and I believed the journey was worth it.  But I braced myself for hardship.

One interesting aspect of climbing mountains in Nepal is that there is nearly always some kind of religious shrine at the top. This is one of the more elaborate pagodas we passed, but it represents well the strong Buddhist presence in the mountains. Even though Hinduism is the dominant religion in Nepal, Buddhism is growing thanks to a large influx of refugees from Tibet, as well as an explosion in the general population. The purpose of the pagoda is to house sacred relics and writings. I once looked into a small structure that housed a naked Barbie doll among the many candles, flower petals and glass bottles. It seemed more likely that this was just someone's idea of a disrespectful joke, or the work of defiant child ... but then you never really know what holds spiritual meaning to another.

I respect spirituality and believe my own lies in the awe of living, which is why I do the things that I do. When I was in college I read a lot of Joseph Campbell, "follow your bliss" and all that. He has one quote that particularly sticks out in my mind as closely paralleling my own beliefs:

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” ("The Power of Myth")

The rapture of being alive. It would hit me sometimes as we jogged along the rocky trail, even through a mental molasses of fatigue and physical deterioration. "I'm in Nepal. Those are the Himalayas. I'm really here." I do realize that meeting Beat has opened up opportunities for me that I would not have otherwise had, possibly ever. For that I am grateful. But more than that, I'm grateful just to have Beat in my life. He does understand that I'd be happy to spend all of my weeks and months in California with him if that's what it took, but I'm glad he too so zealously values the experience of being alive that he'll go to the other side of the world to find it. There is just so much to discover in the regions and experiences far outside our comfort zones. And I'm grateful that Beat not only values these experiences, but also values me enough to sacrifice some of his own experiences to stick by my side while I stumble through a sick fog. That truly made the difference in my struggle to push on or give up during the first stage. I am grateful. (Beat's probably embarrassed reading this right now, but my grandmother sitting in front of the Thanksgiving spread would be so proud.)

The general route of stage five wrapped around the Pokhara Valley and emerged on the far side of town via a rippling series of mountain passes, three big climbs in all. The second took place in the heat of the day, that 30-degree-Celsius range, and was a real crusher. A few times, I flirted with the notion of just passing out alongside the trail, and then I would eat another few gummies from my last oh-so-precious bag of candy. For all of this post-race blather about the rapture of being alive, if I am honest with myself, it was a 99-cent bag of candy that really got me through.

The sun set over the distant Annapurna range as we climbed the third pass. We reached the top, kilometer 45, just as it was becoming too dark to hike without lights. Racing the Planet set up what it called the overnight checkpoint here, meaning you could either stop and sleep for a few hours or keep on moving into the night. Either way, the clock kept running. I didn't care about the clock, but I was also intrigued by the prospect of moving through this strange land in the dark and quiet of the night. It was less intimidating because Beat was with me.

We pulled two stools to the edge of the ridge, and for the first time I saw the city lights of Pokhara spread out before us. Beat dropped his pack and fished out two packages of ramen noodles that he had purchased that morning in Birenthanti for 40 rupees (about 50 cents.) We cut empty water bottles in half, crushed the noodles into one cup, dropped packets of powdered cappuccino into the other, and then filled them with hot water. As I sipped the foamy beverage and devoured the still-crunchy soup, I felt a rush of well-being and warmth every bit as satisfying as a full turkey dinner served by loved ones. It was, for those fleeting minutes at least, the best Thanksgiving dinner ever.

Instead of collapsing on the couch with full bellies and football on the television after dinner, we chased our 300 calories of ramen and cappuccino with 30 kilometers of running in Nepal in the dark. The final 30K was less hilly and we actually did run some, although not fast, and of course with much silliness. Because it was not all that late, we still had to contend with dodging the lights of oncoming motorcycles and passing groups of local children and spectators who could see and yell at us even though we couldn't see them (Nepalis must have excellent night vision.)

I was amazed I didn't feel worse in the final miles — if fact, except for the struggles during the hot climb, my physical state seemed to remain in a state of equilibrium for the entire day, as though the pace of my continuing recovery from my illness perfectly matched the deterioration of endurance racing. I didn't feel great, but really, I didn't feel bad either. In fact, I felt a lot less bad than I believed I should after 45 miles even under normal circumstances. My knees were still okay. I didn't have any blisters. I didn't even have any chafing from my huge pack. Most importantly, I didn't have any foot pain. I've never traveled that far in one shot without getting "hurty foot," at any speed. For that, too, I was grateful.

But most of all, I was grateful to be done. We finished at 11:47 p.m. for a finishing time of 16 hours and 32 minutes (the race started at 7:15.) It was good enough to come in about 95th or so, which out of 170 who started the stage wasn't an awful position (at least not as awful as tenth from last.) Despite all, we really were improving, and all of the hard parts of the race were over with. Or so I thought. 

Steps forward

In my mind, the real challenge began after the stage ended. Other racers had already devoured their late lunch and were moving onto pre-dinner tea and, for the heavier packers, snacks. I watched them tape their blisters (of which I had none) and massage their sore knees and shoulders (mine were fine.) But as I observed them shoveling in spoonfuls of slop with glee, I would have welcomed all of their maladies just to have what they had — an appetite.

They looked happy and content; I felt ragged and empty. They sprawled out comfortably in the sunlight; I was unnaturally tense and my muscles ached all over. My body was consuming noticeable portions of itself that I was convinced included a fair percentage of muscle (there are conflicting studies out there on the science of starvation, but I have read about research which concluded that a depleted body in motion turns to muscle proteins, which are more easily converted to energy than fat, even if there's plenty of body fat available.) Of course I don't know exactly what was happening biologically, only that I was losing weight and weakening by the hour.

But it wasn't such a simple dilemma as just stuffing down more food. Food I had. It was my stomach that seemed to cease functioning with any sort of effectiveness. As long as my body was in motion, I was fine. I could consume my simple carbohydrate energy food and feel restored as the glucose passed directly into my bloodstream. But simply eating my bars was like using kindling to stay warm on a winter camping trip. The flash-flame wore off too quickly, and if I burned up all of my bars, I stood no chance of igniting the disgusting freeze-dried logs that comprised the rest of my energy source.

One of our tent-mates, Patty, overheard Beat and I analyzing our dinners and offered us one of her bland meals, a benign-sounding, low-fat entree called Chicken Noodles. When we tried to trade one of our meals, she refused. Patty and her husband fell ill with the bug during the second stage. Her husband dropped out, but Patty, miserable but determined, continued. I felt guilty because I was the first one in our tent to catch the bug, but I had been as careful as possible with removing shoes, using wet wipes, and dousing myself in hand sanitizer. Anyway, how could any of us really have known?

Beat and I shared the chicken noodles. They went down well, but not long afterward my stomach revolted. After two dashes to the open-pit toilets, which were perched precariously on a rocky ledge above camp, I was fed up. "I'm not really digesting any of it anyway; what's the point?" I skipped the camp social scene and planned second dinner, and went to bed early again. I was still nauseated, but more than that, I was frustrated.

Morning came with a renewed spark of hope. Waiting out sickness in camp was such a tedious challenge compared to hiking tough terrain while burning kindling. Even through my weakness, I preferred the latter. I prepared a strawberry jam granola bar for breakfast, and, with temporary vigor, practically skipped to the starting line.

Stage four connected us with a portion of the Annapurna Circuit, climbing to an elevation of nearly 3,000 meters before plummeting 2,000 meters into another narrow valley. The route itself was 27 kilometers (17 miles) with 1,524 meters (5,131 feet) of climbing and a soul-crushing 2,275 meters (7,463 feet) of descending in that relatively short distance. But before that, I told myself, at least we could enjoy a big climb. The first six miles alone gained 4,100 feet of elevation. Since the steep climb of stage three had been my strongest section of the race so far, I looked forward to another ascent.

The climb actually went well. Powered by bars, I marched up the stone steps, happy to breathe cool air and absorb awesome views of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri. Beat and I actually held a solid spot in the front half of the pack that I knew would disintegrate on the way down, but I didn't mind. We were climbing a mountain, glucose was coursing through my blood, and all was right with the world.

The views during stage four were striking, but, as part of the Annapurna Circuit, the route had a decidedly different vibe than the other stages. For starters, the trails were packed with tourists (in a relative sense. There were still probably more of us than them.) Instead of seeing Nepalis herding buffalo and carrying massive loads of straw, we saw Australians carrying bulky external-frame packs and a large group of Japanese teenagers who took photos of us as we passed. Instead of farm villages constructed around animal shelters and grain paddies, we saw three-story hotels and signs in English advertising hot showers (heated by firewood), clean rooms and "best mountain views." This wasn't a bad thing, just different — the modern (and lucrative) face of trekking in Nepal.

It was also terribly tempting. Outside each of the tea houses were friendly-looking cafes stocked with soda, Mars Bars, and other valuable sources of kindling. We had already heard rumors that the night's accommodations would be in village tea houses. We also had a sense that the race organizers might be more lax than they let on about their "no outside food" rule. But I wasn't quite willing to go there yet, not unless I knew that everyone had been given the okay to buy food. I may have been close to desperate, but my own race ethics aren't willing to defiantly break rules.

The descent soon took my mind off obsessions about Sprite and Fanta, and planted it solely on a few square feet of uneven stones directly in front of me. The course notes indicated a descent on "thousand-year-old Gurung steps" of which there were reportedly more than 3,000. The problem with that description is that the 3,000 steps only comprised the steepest two kilometers of the descent. Just to get to the Gurung steps, we had to descend thousands of stone steps. Racers who were keeping track started to lose count at 5,000; some reported 6,000. For my clumsy feet and weakened legs, it was a slow grind. My right knee began to hurt for the first time in the race. Lots of people passed us, including casual trekkers and 5-year-old children wearing flip-flops (the last one was not surprising.) I am certainly not the master of descents.

I like to think that I at least looked like this down the 7,000 vertical feet of steps ...

But more often I probably looked like this.

I was grateful to see the bottom and the final water stop at checkpoint two, where an extremely upbeat Marshall Ulrich was helping racers take off their packs and refill water bottles. He's quite famous in the ultrarunning world, and I admit I (wrongly) assumed that he'd be too busy or filled with a sense of importance to actually remain with the race like he said he would. But even though illness forced him out of competition, he remained to volunteer for all kinds of exhausting checkpoint jobs. The guy has class.

The final five kilometers into the village of Birethanti were enjoyable jeep track. I had mowed through my day's supply of bars and was feeling pretty good at this point. I mainly posted this photo to prove that we actually did do a little bit of running during our running race.

We finished at 1:53 p.m. for a stage time of six hours and 53 minutes. The rumors proved true; Racing the Planet had rented out what appeared to be the entire village and put everyone up in various tea houses. Beat and I were assigned a simple room with two single beds and one light bulb that worked occasionally. The walls were paper thin and the floorboards were right above a large local family's living quarters (and open-fire kitchen.) I think I preferred the tents but I wasn't complaining, because we also received a meal ticket to eat Dal Bhat — a nicely bland local dish consisting of lentils and rice — and a wink-wink-we'll-look-the-other-way okay to order extra side dishes. Beat and I drank three 250 ml bottles of Fanta each and shared a small plate of fries and an equally small pizza with a Canadian racer, Patrick. After the sodas my stomach felt full, but I managed to work through the food and it seemed to be sticking. Which was good, because tomorrow, we had 45 miles to run.

Toward Annapurna

I dug through my pack to find the blandest, highest-carbohydrate dinner possible. I purchased all of my freeze-dried meals back in August and couldn't even remember what I had in there. Each one sounded progressively less appetizing ... Chicken Korma, Chicken Tikka, Vegetable Tikka, Pad Thai, "high-energy" Spaghetti Bolognese with more than 60 grams of fat in a serving, and one whose name struck particular fear into my nauseated stomach, Kathmandu Curry.

"They're all curry," I said to Beat with dismay. "Every single one of them is spicy, fatty curry. What the hell was I thinking?"

Beat dug through his pack and found he mostly had the same. He had one meat lasagna that sounded marginally okay — but, no, I couldn't think about it. I couldn't even think about it. Anything freeze dried only evoked horrific memories of the demon Thai Chicken. "I can't deal with this," I said.

"You have to eat."

"I'll eat tomorrow. Breakfast. Promise."

"You need to eat tonight."

I wandered miserably around camp until I found Martina. "You should talk to Jack, he has soup," she said. Jack was Martina's tent-mate. The South African was developing a reputation for being the MacGyver of RTP Nepal, because he had a 15-kilogram pack that contained practically everything under the sun. Jack offered me a small package of powdered corn chowder. Corn chowder is probably the last soup I would choose of all of the soups in the world, and it only had about 80 calories, but it was a start. Anyway, my body was low on electrolytes. However, when I added water and tried to eat the corn chowder, I only made it through half before my stomach protested with lurching grumbles and an instant urge to use the restroom. I dumped it out when Beat wasn't looking.

Beat insisted I eat more, so I went back to my pack and dug out one of two Snickers bars that I had brought specifically for use during the long stage. But if I didn't even make it to the long stage, hoarding Snickers bars wouldn't make a difference. "I'll eat a Snickers," I told him. "Sugar I can eat."

The Snickers did indeed taste like a little chunk of heaven, and melted perfectly into the hole in my stomach. "I should know this about myself by now," I said to my friends. "Candy just works for me. I always think I should try to eat healthier while I'm racing, but in the end my body just wants sugar."

Breakfast was not much more successful. Beat brought out a package of "high energy" strawberry porridge that was loaded with powdered cream and tasted to me like strawberry porridge that I had thrown up already and was trying to eat post-regurgitation. Again my stomach lurched and hurt after just a couple bites, but I did manage to chase the disgusting taste with a Nature Valley granola bar slathered in strawberry jam. It would have to do.

Just before the race started, a man turned around and approached me. I instantly recognized him from the author photo in a book that I recently downloaded (before I even knew he'd be at RTP Nepal) — Marshall Ulrich. "I just wanted to say that I'm proud of you for being out here today," Marshall said. "I saw you after stage one. I got the bug, too, and I was so sick. Just so sick. I couldn't continue. I had to drop. I'm going to stay with the race but I'm not racing anymore."

"Oh wow," I said, a little bit starstruck. "I'm sorry to hear that. Really."

Marshall smiled sadly and reached out to shake my hand. Being complemented on my own grit by man who's accomplished what he has — climbed all seven summits, ran across America, and completed more than 120 ultramarathons, to name a few — meant a lot.

The night before the race began, RTP finally revealed the final course notes and elevation profiles that had been shrouded in secrecy until then. I was stoked when I saw the profile for stage three:

Under normal circumstances, I am an enthusiastic climber and a terrible downhiller, so a stage that was entirely uphill was exactly my kind of thing. Stage three was 38 kilometers (24 miles) with 1,478 meters (4,850 feet) of climbing. The final three miles gained 2,200 feet by themselves. In my current state, "On the Bug," I flip-flopped from enthusiasm about stage three to dread. It was like an steep uphill marathon with 25-pound packs. How was I going to finish this one if I didn't have any energy?

I packed my day's allotment of two granola bars, two fruit bars and one Clif Bar, and added a few extra bars because I knew I was still running a severe calorie deficit and because I didn't eat any on day one, I had a few to spare. In an effort to fire up my fragile digestive system, I started the stage by snacking on the second of three precious packages of gummy candies. The bug was definitely subsiding, but my stomach still seemed to protest everything I tried to put in it. I theorized that the 36-hour purging session so fully scrubbed my system that I lost all the good bacteria I need to aid in the digestive process. My stomach is sensitive under normal circumstances; on endurance it becomes especially persnickety. On "The Bug" it was all but useless.

The first 14 kilometers of the stage fluctuated between a flat jeep track and rocky shoreline along a river. The gummies started kicking in for me and Beat was feeling quite a bit better, so he suggested we try running some. We upped our 17-minute-mile hiking pace to an 11- or 12-minute-mile shuffle that most every cell in my body seemed to object. My stomach churned and growled, my legs burned with lactic acid, my arm and back muscles ached, my shoulders slumped and my head spun with exhaustion. I was in no shape to run in this running race. In fact, I felt like I just might be in the worst shape of my life, like I hadn't trained for the race at all, like I hadn't done anything all year but sit on my couch and eat peanut butter cups. Oh, if only I had some peanut butter cups.

I felt incredibly weak, and so dizzy that I began to fear for my coordination and safety, even on a dirt road. I believed my body had coped well up to this point, but now I was nearing the bleeding edge of an absolute and binding bonk. We crossed the big river on a foot bridge and began to follow Kaligandaki Nadi, a roiling whitewater river that tore down a stunning gorge. The rolling jeep track became steeper, which forced more hiking. For this I was grateful, because it gave me a chance to finally try to eat some of my bars. I started with an all-sugar fruit bar. Just a few minutes later, I felt a surge of energy in my blood — so much joy, happiness, sheer elation at the simple act of moving and breathing that makes a person believe they finally understand exactly what it means to be alive. And then, just a few minutes after that, crash. The needle dove back to empty. Bonkville.

So I ate a granola bar, and for a few more minutes there was joy, happiness, elation ... and then it was gone. I ate a fruit bar, and experienced a surge that felt a little closer to a normal burst of energy. Then it was gone. Beat and I alternated hiking the uphills and running the short downhills. I sent another granola bar down the hatch that quickly disappeared. I didn't have many bars left in my pouch, and wasn't sure I wanted to pillage the next day's supply of bars, given bars were the only food I could stomach so far.

"I feel like all of my bars are going down a black hole," I told Beat. "But I guess, well, at least I can eat again."

The Kali Gandaki Gorge began to open up, revealing the bald face of Annapurna South, 26,545 feet into the stark blue sky. Annapurna is a Sanskrit name that literally means "Full of Food." In Hinduism, Annapurna is the "universal kitchen goddess, the mother who feeds." As Beat and I shuffled along the road, I gazed at Annapurna's snow-swept slopes, jagged knife ridges, terrifying coloirs and almost unfathomable mass. I remember reflecting on the stories I had read about the mountain and giving silent thanks for my ability to eat again. I mentioned to Beat a book I read, written by British mountaineer Chris Bonington, about his harrowing Annapurna expedition in 1970 — the first attempt on a big wall at altitude.

"I can understand why people come to these mountains and become obsessed with them, and risk their lives climbing them," Beat said. "I thought the Alps were incredible mountains, but the Himalayas are truly incredible mountains."

We took a 20-minute break at checkpoint three. Beat traded me a precious Payday Bar for my Clif Builder Bar. I felt a new surge of life-giving food energy, and charged open-eyed and joyful into the 2,200-foot ascent. We climbed hundreds of stone steps as the Kali Gandaki Valley dropped swiftly below us. Each step seemed to pump fresh blood into my aching muscles, for a self-perpetuating cycle of endorphins and vitality. I remember wishing the climb could just keep going the next day, just up and up and up, maybe all the way to Annapurna's summit. I hadn't felt so awake in three days, and I hadn't felt so alive in a long while.

Beat, unfortunately, had been stuck with the protein-packed Builder Bar, so he felt significantly more weighed-down on the steep climb than I did. But he kept up just fine as we climbed over a small pass and approached a mountainside dotted in rural villages.

What seemed like the entire population of the village of Ghara came out to cheer racers at the finish line of stage three, perched as it was on a narrow ledge above the town.

It was gratifying to see so many people, who had so much hardship and yet so much natural richness in their lives, show their support for our little racing endeavor. I hope they understood how grateful I think all of us were to be there.

School children adorned us with flower garlands. We finished at 1:59 p.m. for a stage time of six hours and 59 minutes. We were getting faster, and slowly beginning to feel stronger. Even though freeze-dried dinner still sounded to me like the third world war in my mouth, I let myself believe the worst was over.