I have to go to one extreme or the other for these next 50 miles. I either write about every pain, every rush, every Doug pit stop, every drop of rain, every time Gary took a crap in the woods (this alone would take pages), and every feeling of total awe…or I
cut to the chase. Be it that it is already 4 weeks to the day since I finished the race, I think I will cut try to the chase and end up talking too much as usual.Team Laga- Where else could I begin? Emily and Spencer slipped back to the hotel at some point. I remember saying goodnight and knowing that I wouldn’t see them until I potentially finished this beast, but it wasn’t until the first stop that they weren’t there that I missed them and realized that it was time to get down to the job of finishing this race for us. Emily ended up being awake most of the night fielding and sending text messages to a wide range of family and friends. She has put together an awesome transcript of it that I will include in it’s own chapter. I saw them again in the morning with only 7.5 miles to and really, for the first time, let myself feel the excitement of finishing. I was well into my 4th consecutive marathon and I was feeling better than the first.
Doug was the blessing and surprise of the race. I knew that Emily, Spencer and Gary were going to be nothing short of incredible. I
had no idea that it would all come together as incredibly as it did, but they have been in my life for a long time (or in Spencer’s case. I have been in his life since the first second) and I have come to expect the impossible out of each of them. Doug however, wow, he and I have a friendship that is 
forever changed because of this race. Neither of us expected the race to take on such a unified feel. He endured anything I stuck in his face. Really, check out some of the pictures of my feet…Doug took them all!When Doug made the decision to come and help my fever break at 11pm the night before, he also defined and solidified his role on the team. He was not just going to be the guy working his acupuncture magic; he was going to be the ambassador of all things good, the meteorologist, the medicine doctor, …really…our own portable Zen master.
I have never trusted
anyone in my life with the health and well-being of my body than I do Doug. He is a gifted and unique healer whom I am truly blessed to have crossed paths with. At each and every crew stop, Doug would be waiting, bright green chair at the ready, to listen to me talk about my body, and then just listen to what my body had to say. What impressed me most was his ability to give me the benefit of the doubt over what he potentially heard my body saying. It was a confidence the he helped me embrace that spoke to the true strength of the mind’s role in maintaining a strong and obedient body. An obedient body…I like that. As each mile paced behind me, the thing I kept coming back to was, “how is my body doing this? It is doing absolutely everything I ask it to do!”Doug stretched me thoroughly, graced me with gut-saving homeopathics, and worked my feet on a regular basis. He would remove my shoes and socks, dry my feet, grease between each toe, and a couple of times add some type of blister pad to pressure spots on my big toes. He mostly kept a careful eye on them and kept them as clean as you can keep feet that
are running through constant rain and mud (and at time totally submerged). Only once did Doug whip out the needles during the race. I think it was mile 69.5 when I told him that my left shin (Tibialis anterior) was very tight but not cramping. He asked if I wanted a couple of needles to loosen them up…Uh Yeh! I remember him working on both. Mostly what I remember however was the total elation I felt of having two brand new legs under me. The following 30+ miles were by far the best of the entire race (with miles 50-70 coming in a close second). In 100 miles I had only one insignificant foot cramp (miles 93-100)…1 cramp in 100 miles!If it isn’t clear, allow me to make it clear…I will not ever be able to say enough about Doug Bertram. As an acupuncturist and a friend, he is a chance encounter that has changed my life. Thank you. And from miles away in Milwaukee there was Jenny Bertram, whose presence on the team and healing hands were felt for each of the 100 miles as though she was right there. Thank you!
*If any competitive athlete, or sufferer of chronic pain is curious about the work Doug and Jenny do, I could write a book on what they have done for my family alone. Best though would be to hear it from them. Contact me for there info. l_laga@hotmail.com
As praise and sap seem to be the driving vehicle for the remaining chunk of this blog, as they were for the latter part of the race…why stop now…
Gary Robbins-
I have rambled on in this blog in the past about this overly lazy and incredibly out-of-shape Neanderthal, so I will get to the race. Gary played a major role prior to him even hitting the course with me at mile 47.5. He played the role of, “just eat this and don’t think about it…okay, you can’t look at it without throwing up, well, drink this before I see you next. It is a mix with 1300 calories.” Gary, with his decree that he would fly to WI to run with me, fueled my last three months of training and gave me the confidence I needed to even conceive the task ahead. On the course, this sharing of confidence continued, and grew into an even larger coaching role.As I approached each aid station Gary
would be out in the woods a couple of hundred meters to meet me. Usually barefoot, he would trot his way back to the aid station next to me, pouring out words of praise for how I was looking and how ragged some of the other racers looked coming out of the heat/rain. He would listen to how I was feeling, ask how much I drank and ate, then tell me that Doug was
waiting and ready. The stops that I was lucky enough to see Emily and Spencer were the best! I would hear Emily’s cheer before I saw her every time. She would be telling Spen
cer that Daddy was coming, and helping him clap as I took him in my arms. I would spend 30 seconds with the two of them before hitting the chair with Doug. Once I was in the chair, Gary would pop up like a gnome, bringing me food, Coke, and anything else he could persuade me to put down. He would then go over the plan for the next section, and finally tell me the timetable for taking my electrolyte tablets (usually 1-2 every 30 minutes).Once on the course with me, Gary took careful note to my lack of consumption and forced me to find something that I could put down that was solid. I found it in an old friend…Ramon noodles. These noodles that once bonded Gary and I while living together on a Caribbean Island, once again became the nastiest source of all-things-good. I loved them like they were the freshest cut sashimi I’d ever tasted. After every two full cups of Ramon, Gary would hand me a can of Coke to drain before we hit back out. We got in a groove quickly.
“Get to Doug. Get Ramen. Get a Coke. Get your ass back out there!”
As we left each station, Doug would have me open my mouth and he’d pop a Sportenine tablet in (check them out, an endurance athletes one stop homeopathic). The first four miles after an aid station felt phenomenal.
After that, I would pull back for a mile or two, and then it was back to feeling pretty good. Gary on the other…well, aside from being the strongest athlete I’ve EVER been around, had an issue or two of his own. At first I thought that he really wanted to see as much of WI as possible every time he would run off the trail into the woods. And then I put together the timing of his trips into the woods and this crazy explosion that I kept hearing in the woods. Gary had some nasty gut problems! We figure that he took AT LEAST 20 of those trips in the 53 miles together. I’ll get to the punch line in a second, but first I have to brag about Gary some more. As one who suffers from a finicky stomach that reacts to many things, I was amazed that Gary, while clearly being in some GI pain (at one point his 6-pack stomach looked like he had a solid WI beer gut he was so grossly bloated), never complained once about his issues. He had them, they sucked, he took a trip in the woods, caught up with me, and life went on. Dude, this guy is for real!It turns out, Gary being a Celiac (allergic to wheat), was unaware that Heed sports drink contained, as the second ingredient, maltodextrin, and was the source of his now discovered allergic reaction. He was aware that is, until mile 95. At the waffle and sausage station (the final station before the finish), we ran into a woman who was also not eating a waffle because she too suffered a wheat allergy. When she expressed her displeasure with the course only having Heed, and having to carry her own Gatorade because of the Maltodextrin, Gary’s jaw dropped to the ground. So, for the final five miles, he drank water.
The middle of the night brought my best running. From 11-3 I was on fire. I felt so great I could not believe the response I was getting from my body. I wanted to run. Gary took
so much time with me on the course to teach new techniques that, training and running alone, I had never acquired. I learned how 
to effectively power walk hills…quickly, I learned/discovered how to convince my body that it was not in extreme pain, and most importantly, I learned that what doing naturally, was pretty damned sound. We talked about running, racing, women and drinking. We laughed about our time living next door to one another on Roatan. We admired Emily over and over and over. We created dreams for Spencer…then changed them…then changed them again. We sang old 80s rock ballads like Pour some sugar on me. But primarily, we put one foot in front of the other at a reasonable pace.At 3 am, just as Gary warned, I hit a wall and total exhaustion set in. Not a physical exhaustion like I expected, but an unforgiving tiredness. Of course this wall hit in the middle of the Hwy 12- Rice Lake section. This was both good and bad. The bad part was that this section, at night, in continued thunderstorms, presented itself as the toughest section of the course. The good part was…I was ready for this. I had trained this section a number of times. In fact, one Saturday morning at 5am I ran repeats of this challenging 9-mile loop just to conquer my fear of it. It is not terrible by day, in fact, aside from endless up and down hills with shady footing, it is really quite beautiful. However, in the middle of the night, relying on a headlamp and tired eyes, it was as tough as I had planned. For an hour, from 3-4am, I struggled with my footing, making lazy choices and getting lucky not to pay any real consequences. But, never closing my eyes, and knowing exactly where I was at every step thanks to long hours training, I never panicked. And, oh yeh, Gary kept singing those F*@^ing 80s songs as loudly as possible. Thank you for that hour my friend!
When we saw Doug back at Hwy 12, we all knew it.
We knew that we were going to finish this beast. By that time I had heard the rumors that this race had seen more attrition than ever before. People dropped in the heat early, and kept dropping as the thunderstorms came in and pounded the course. I don’t know how I was not one of the almost 100 DNFs, because I know they were just as prepared as I was. I just kept thinking, “Everyone needs a Doug. Everyone needs a Gary. And, everyone needs an Emily and Spencer!”Doug knew we had it, and I could sense it in his energy. Getting to Doug got to be a game for Gary and I. Coming into Hwy 12 the first time, we were so pumped because we knew we ran the previous 7.5 miles faster than Doug would have anticipated, and we couldn’t wait to sneak up to his car and wake him up. Leaving Hwy 12 for the last time, it was just so great to know that with 15 left (over a half-marathon), we had a walk in the park to go…it was just a big park.
Every time I spoke of feeling great and finishing Gary was quick to remind me that there was a lot of trail left to run. It was helpful to be reminded of this, especially when those thoughts began shortly after the 100k mark, with 38 miles remaining.
Gary made sure that I enjoyed the good feeling while I had it; he just kept me focused on the moment, rather than getting ahead of myself. This was not only helpful, it was a wonderful lesson in enjoying each moment of race. I found as the race went on and the small pains became increasingly more intense, it was best for me to focus on my running and just forget about “getting past” the pain. If the pain hung around for a while, it was okay because I could still run. If the pain went away quickly, I usually didn’t notice its absence because I could still run. I found a good place, and hope that I can find it in the future many times!As the sun rose, again, just as Gary promised, my body fooled itself into thinking that it was time to be awake. With 15 miles left, the tiredness was over and I was back on a high. Gary began a paradigm shift and let me start flirting with the idea of the finish line. We didn’t spend much time on the thought, but we let it float in and out of conversation and create some great energy. At this point the pace was quicker and the up hills were powered through more aggressively than they had been yet. With 7.5 miles to go, we were delighted to see the whole team together one last time before the finish. Emily and Spencer were up and cheering, Doug was laughing at our energy and smiles, and we were ready to give a couple hugs, high fives and hit the road. Now Gary let me pull out all of the stops. I ran the up hills if I felt like it, I ran the down hills aggressively if my feet could handle it. I had earned this 7.5-mile run more than I anything, aside from my happy marriage, I had ever worked for.
The trails were absolute slop at this point. Many of the single-track was up to 2 inches of slushy mud with every step. It was in these last several miles that I past some of the most inspirational runners I have ever been on course with. I past 12 people in the final 15 miles, some of them running, some walking, and some getting to the finish with nothing left but guts and courage. As Gary and I ran past these true competitors fueled by something from deep within them, I could not help but be inspired. These were runners who, on any other given day, could and would run circles around me. But for today, something caught them; some force of nature beyond their control, some force of the body that picked this day to rear it’s nasty head, some unknown tried to beat them down. The difference between a regular person and these competitors is that they were not beaten. They dug a hole so deep within themselves to find strength that most of us will know, find or experience. They were going to finish this race! On another day they may have finished this 100 miles in the top 10, maybe with a course record, and although they will not take home a coveted belt buckle today, they will take home the pride of finishing a race that gave them no chance to finish.
*To the man at mile 97 who we ran past and startled out of a world of your own; thank you for showing me what true perseverance is. You were walking with a limp, almost dragging your body over the terrain, and you sir brought the first tear to my eye of the entire race. I knew you would finish, however, what I did not know was just how many miles you had spent in this other world. I hope you enjoy this finish as much as you have enjoyed past victories. On most people’s best day they would never even consider a race like this. For those of us who do, there are still only a very unique few who have what it takes to finish it on a day that stacked everything against them. For some reason you had that day, and still you beat it down. Congratulations.
With 1 mile to go, 27 hours after it began, Gary and I stopped to take a photo. A moment I will never forget…
And then it was over…
Emily, Spencer, Doug, Gary and myself…Team Laga! It was sometime around mile 50 that I realized that I was just one person a five-person team; no more or less important than any other member. My job was to be the vehicle, and to never let that vehicle stop going forward. Thank you to my team, who kept that vehicle working and pointed in the right direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment