The Joy of Last

This is the story that hooked me.

(You should definitely read the whole thing; you can find it here.)

It’s the story of Mosi Smith, a former Marine, running the Badwater 135 ultramarathon in July 2018. The Badwater 135 is known as the “world’s toughest footrace,” taking select runners, in the hottest part of summer, from the bottom of Death Valley to the portal to the summit of Mount Whitney inside of a 48-hour cutoff.

The number “135” represents the number of miles runners traverse in those 48 hours. That’s 135 miles, in the middle of summer, on the hottest place on earth, running from below sea level, up to the portal to the highest point in the continental United States. You have to complete an application on par with a Harvard admissions portfolio, plus complete at least three 100-mile ultramarathons, to even qualify to run this race.

Mosi Smith is a killer athlete, better than I’ll ever be, better than I would have been if I’d started running in kindergarten. He’s finished Badwater before, an unbelievable feat. But this year, in 2018, he doesn’t. The run thrashes him, and he has to drop.

He fails.

After bruising, brutal miles in the punishing, unrelenting heat, giving it everything he has, he cannot finish.

I read this brilliantly written essay about Mosi Smith about 18 months ago, and by the last paragraph, I was hooked on distance running.

What happens to you when you’re running an insane distance, under insane conditions? What truths do you begin to encounter? What deep reserve of strength do you unearth? What does it mean to push yourself beyond all human limits, and what was that race really about? Did he even think about the other runners through the long night hours and scorching days as he ran? What do you have to be made of to drive yourself that hard?

Most importantly, how can you not want to find out?

And this was the line of thinking that lead to an early morning in Fort Yargo, Georgia, on Saturday, June 6, a day where the humidity was clocking in at 95% and we were expecting a high of 89 degrees.

Fort Yargo was hosting three simultaneous races on the course that day. There was a 15k, which is a 9.3-mile trail race. There was a 25k, a 15.6-mile loop around a lake on mountain trails. And there was a 50k, which was two loops on that same course – roughly 31 miles.

I’d signed up for the 50k in a spate of optimism in February, and after I paid the non-refundable registration fee, I refused to admit that I had any doubts (I had lots of doubts). Charles, my husband, would say something logical, like, “Wow, June in Georgia sure is hot,” and I would offer an answer that amounted to, “I’m not listening to you right now,” and then move on.

I did have the good sense to break down and find a running coach, after I realized that I had no idea how to train for a 31-mile run, especially in light of the fact that I had done a terrible job of training for my two previous marathons, and afterward had felt like an army of lumberjacks had gone to work on my legs with meat tenderizers.

Which all brings me to June 6, and that starting line, and the Fort Yargo Ultra.

Here is the thing about new challenges: your baseline is very limited. If you tried singing in the choir, and the choir director shrieked in horror at your voice before bursting into tears and running from the room, and then blogged to her 900 closest friends that you were more tone deaf than any 12 people she had ever heard, you sort of know what’s going to happen on karaoke night, but you’re not 100% sure. I mean, maybe the standards are much lower at the karaoke bar, or your shower-based belting to Elton John has really made all the difference.

I knew enough about distance running to know that the race would be hard. I knew enough about trail running to know that the course was going to thrash me. But this race was about to show me that I really didn’t know what I was in for.

I hung around the starting line with Charles, waiting for my wave to be called. Because of the pandemic, they were letting the runners go in waves of 10. In addition, the 50k runners were starting at 7:00 am, and the 25k runners were starting at 7:30.

Charles had been limitlessly patient helping me get ready for this race, massaging muscles that felt wrecked from a 20-mile training run, making dinners and breakfasts with exactly the right balance of carbs and protein. Now he was sending me off, willing to wait the 17.5 days that it would likely take me to finish.

The starter gun went off for the second time, and my wave of runners pounded toward the trail. The heat wasn’t too punishing yet, for which I felt grateful, and the dirt trail curved into a lovely, lush wood, thick with trees. I felt optimistic, and grateful for the opportunity to run.

This lasted for a little while. “Remember, you GET to do this,” my running coach, Alex, had told me when we discussed strategy for the race. “This is something most people don’t get to do. This is a privilege.”

I held onto this as the next wave of runners started to pass me. And then the next wave. And then the next. The trail was narrow; I stepped to the side and just waited as groups of three, five, six runners plowed by me, without apparent effort. By the time I was about 5 miles into the race, the 25k runners, who hadn’t been slated to start until 7:30 am, started passing me.

And then, by mile 10, as I slowly realized that this trail might be significantly more hilly than advertised, I was at the back of the pack.

This wasn’t because I was failing to work hard: I was working as hard as I knew how to work, while still trying to conserve some energy for the 21 miles I knew were ahead of me. It wasn’t because I had skipped a training run (I hadn’t), or failed to pack enough water or food.

I was just slower. I was slower than everyone else out there running that day. The roll of the hills was sapping my speed even more than I had predicted it would, and I couldn’t maintain a pace that would even keep me within eyeshot of the other runners. The empty path ahead of me testified to this fact.

I slogged ahead, my optimism waning somewhat. The trail rolled up and down hills that, while they wouldn’t have challenged me on a leisurely hike, felt like anything but small: my hamstrings and calves clenched on the way up, my shins and quadriceps took the punishment on the way down. Although the race website claimed a total elevation gain of only 1,500 feet over 31 miles, my Garmin watch would later tell me I had gained more than 5,200 feet. The day had grown so hot that my clothes were drenched; my hair dripped sweat down my neck. I wasn’t feeling especially lucky to get to do this anymore.

I was learning other things about ultramarathons, in addition to the dynamics of the terrain. This included the realization that port-o-johns were not necessarily a given. Also, it was pretty easy to get lost or misdirected. At one point an aid station worker sprinted up a hill to let me know I was running the wrong way.

By Mile 13, I was fully wondering what was wrong with me. This race had been most of what I’d thought about for months. I’d fixated on it, dreamed about it, sacrificed other hobbies and interests to train for it. What had it all been for? The ability to spend a whole Saturday hot, suffering, working as hard as I could, and in search of a toilet?

By the time the halfway point – the end of one full loop of the run – came into view, I was exhausted, covered in sweat, unbelievably hot, and already in pain. I was ahead of exactly one person: a 25k runner who had decided to walk it in about 3 miles ago. I was so happy to see Charles, waiting at the aid tent with a cooler and food, that I almost wept. He passed me cold Gatorade and water and snacks and fresh socks and refilled my hydration vest, like a bearded, sweaty angel.

The woman at the aid tent, however, was the incarnation of Satan. “You know you can just stop here and get the participation medal for the 25k,” she said. “A lot of people already have. 25k is a really good distance.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m going to push on.”

“It’s only going to get hotter,” she warned, her Lucifer tail twitching.

A man surrounded by kids was setting up his camera tripod near the finish line. It turned out he was waiting for his wife, who was coming close to FINISHING the 50k, the very race for which I hadn’t yet started the second half.

The race director, Jeff, came by the aid tent. “I hear this is your first ultra,” he said to me.

I admitted that it was, and lamented my lack of speed.

“It’s not about speed,” he said. “The only bummer about being slow is that you’re alone out there. You can go hours without seeing someone.”

This was both a prophecy and a curse. Charles started the second loop with me, clocking a mile and a half before turning back. And then it was just me, in the woods, alone, indisputably last, boxed in by the trees, and the heat, and the humid silence. 17 miles down, 14 to go, nowhere near finished. This wasn’t my first time being dead last: years ago, I ran a 15k in which I’d finished so late that they’d packed up the finish line and put away all the sliced bananas by the time I got there.

I was more or less hanging in there until I hit the first aid station, around mile 20. Or rather, the place where the first aid station was supposed to be. The tables were folded, the supplies packed away. Nobody was in sight. Because I was in last place by such a significant margin, they had decided to literally collapse the tent and leave.

I burst into tears and called my running coach. Alex answered on the second ring.

“Hey!” he said, his voice full of all sorts of encouragement. “How’s it going?”

“They closed the aid station before I got here,” I sobbed into the phone. “There’s no aid station.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s hard, that’s really tough,” he said. “I once ran up a mountain and found out they’d closed the aid station at the top. That is really, really hard.”

“I was just barely hanging in there,” I told him, “and now this.”

“I know,” he said. “But I want you to think about this. You’ve got everything you need right now. Did you have any aid stations on your long training runs?”

“No,” I whimpered.

“And do you have water right now? You have water in your vest, right?”

“Yes,” I said, sniffling.

“And you have food, right?”

I admitted that I did, in a quavering voice.

“Then you have everything you need. You can do this. You can push through this. Walk on the hills only if you need to, but if it’s flat or downhill, I want you running.”

I thanked him, and I hung up the phone. I dried my eyes. I was walking downhill, so, just like I’d told Alex I would, I started running again.

By the time I hit the second aid station which was, thankfully, open, I was throwing up the solid food I’d brought with me. Melissa, who was running the aid station, pushed water on me and recommended pretzels, and then kicked me back out on the trail.

By the time I hit the third aid station, at mile 27, my left shoe had begun to come apart. Not only were my legs on fire, my back and kidneys were lanced with pain. I could feel two of my toenails coming off in my socks, and my shoulders were cramping. A headache had begun between my eyes and spread to the back of my skull.

Jeff, the race director, was waiting at the third aid station, helping pack it up. “You made the cutoff,” he said, “by four minutes.”

Four minutes later, and they would have pulled me from the race. I threw back some water, and I was off again.

I had run about 7 miles in a haze of pain and heat, but as I ran down the hill from the final aid station into the last 4 miles of the race, I hit my moment of truth.

This was torture in every meaningful way. The fact that I was doing it to myself did not make it less tortuous. In fact, it might make it worse, because it was voluntary. Nobody threatened to burn down my house or insult my ancestors if I didn’t complete this race. I had nobody to blame but me.

I was not going to impress anyone, not even myself, with my finish time.

I was not going to finish ahead of ANYONE. I would be lucky if they still had a finish line set up for me to cross. I was running by myself, and had been for hours.

There was nothing glamorous about what I was doing, nothing that wasn’t vicious and raw and just a little bit gross.

And I was SO GLAD I was doing it.

I started to smile, slogging up yet another hill. Everything hurt, everything, even my fingernails and eyebrows, but I was finding out that I was strong enough to handle it.

I was lucky to be last, I realized, because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was doing this for myself, not for anyone or anything else. I didn’t have to worry about anything except finishing this race. I could relish the ways it was making me push myself, not just physically but mentally and emotionally.

I looked through the trees at the lake, and realized it was beautiful. I looked up at the sunlight pearling through the emerald green of the trees, and realized the world was magnificent.

I wasn’t running for anyone else, for an award or recognition or even passing respect from other runners. I was running because it made me feel alive, and the harder and further I ran, the more alive I felt.

When Ernest Shackleton began planning his ill-fated 1914 endeavor to cross Antarctica, he placed the following ad in order to recruit fellow explorers:

Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

And he ended up with a full crew. A crew who knew there was a high chance of failure, that they were risking their lives for something that might not be achievable.

Doing hard, challenging things only to win cheapens them. Winning is awesome; I love winning even more than I love being right. If I had won that ultramarathon instead of coming in last, I would have been elated. But when winning takes the primary slot in your mind, I think that steals your joy. It’s not just that you’re at the top of the mountain, it’s how you got there.

I loved the story of Mosi Smith at Badwater because it wasn’t about Mosi’s triumph over other runners. It was about Mosi looking for his truth on a brutally hot, outrageously lonely stretch of desert, trying to touch the thing inside him that called to the universe and heard something back. This is what all of the best quests are about, and the way they end matters so much less than the journey itself.

My running pace was now barely faster than a walk. I would eat a pretzel, and be okay for about 5 minutes, and then need another one. But the miles kept turning over, with a sky above me that I had just barely noticed was blue and a forest around me I had just barely noticed was breathtaking. A giant tree had toppled next to the path; I ran past a cluster of roots that stretched skyward, higher than my head.

Mile 29. My breathing was hard and labored; the little water left in my hydration vest was warm and brackish. Mile 30. The arches of my feet started cramping.

And then, on my right, I saw it: the lake pavilion, where the race would finish. Nearly certain that if I walked anymore I wouldn’t be able to make myself run again, I kept up my slow running clip and pressed into a clearing, made a right turn on a street, clambered down an embankment, and plodded around the final path.

I crossed the finish line to the applause of my husband, Jeff the race director, Melissa from aid station 2, and a handful of other race volunteers who had stayed behind to watch me finish. As I staggered to a halt I felt everything: relief, pride, satisfaction, a sort of manic joy, and the sort of peace that only seems to come with the sort of reckoning I’d experienced around mile 27.

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with my mom, who turned 68 this year. My mother has always been obsessed with the creation of all kinds of art: music, literature, visual art – even woodworking and cake decorating. She told me that she’d set up an art studio for herself in one of the unoccupied bedrooms in the house she shares with my dad so that she could do some sketching or painting.

“I’ll never be a Great Artist, though,” she said in a mournful voice.

“Well,” I said, “is that why you’re doing it? To be a Great Artist?”

She paused. “I mean, I’m just not very gifted. “

“Yes, so is that the only valid reason to create art? Because you’re gifted, and going to be a Great Artist?” Even as I spoke, I wasn’t sure where my words were coming from or going to.

She was quiet for a minute. “I don’t know,” she said.

“If you’re doing it because it makes you happy and brings you joy,” I said, “it doesn’t matter if you’re any good. In fact, maybe if you’re not a Great Artist, you’ll be lucky enough to just create things because you want to. And that’s a much better standard to use than how well you match up to Boticelli.”

After running 31 miles in the blistering heat and punishing humidity of a Georgia June, I feel that I can confidently say this: last place can be a tremendous gift. Not only does it force you to understand why you’re really doing what you’re doing, it helps you to appreciate the process of doing it.

And last place is a million times better than never trying.