The Rise of the Ultra Runners by Adharanand Finn

Author:Adharanand Finn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2019-02-19T16:00:00+00:00

The warm afternoon has been replaced by the chill of early evening by the time I get to the forest. The race organiser Quentin had delighted in telling me the story of the people who got so lost at night in the forest the year before that they eventually decided to bed down and wait for morning. I’ve been worrying about it all day, so I’m relieved to be here well before dark. I’ve got to the point now where I’m having to talk to myself to keep moving. At first it’s just a quiet ‘Come on’ every so often. Then, about 50 miles or so in, I start getting bullish, almost angry. ‘You can do it. Only 10 more miles and you’re done with this shit.’ Everything is aching now. The pain oozes through my muscles, through my joints, my groin, my hips, my knees. I know that if I stop, it will go away. But I carry on, because I’m in this stupid race.

For a while I find myself singing a long-lost song from my childhood. It was the late 1970s and my parents were followers of an Indian guru. We were at a festival to hear him speak. It was the summer, a baking hot day, when a thunderstorm broke out. I must have been about five years old, but I remember it clearly. My dad took me to shelter in this tent where an Indian man was singing a song. It was a song I knew, my parents played it at home, but here in the storm, it stuck in my memory. The song was called ‘Downpour of the Holy Name’. I know it sounds strange, but for some reason this is the song I start singing to myself now, remembering that tent and the feeling of that moment. And for a while it helps. I feel easier, running smoothly, the pain easing away.

I think about that later, why it was that song that came to me, and why it helped. I had also tried chanting a mantra a friend had given me, and repeating my children’s names over and over, but neither had the same effect as that song. That may sound cold-hearted, but I wasn’t doing this race for my children. They didn’t care whether I finished or not. No, I was doing it for that small child buried deep within me. And somehow, making a connection to that child through this song put me in a state, like a dream, where everything else faded away.

Suddenly, just like that, I’m through the forest, arriving at the penultimate checkpoint. Mile 60. Six miles to go. I sit down on a chair and try to eat something. A peanut butter sandwich. I realise I’m still in about eighth position. The competitive side of me is still fighting, still looking around, chattering about finishing in the top ten. But the rest of me doesn’t care. Just finish, it says.

I haul myself up, but I’m so stiff. I shouldn’t have sat down.

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