Black Mountain 50k, round 2
an eagle dance love story
I signed up for the Black Mountain 50k only 3 weeks before race day, which as you might infer, is not the ideal amount of time to train for such a thing as a 50k.
I typically prefer not to repeat races because witnessing new terrain is part of the thrill of running for me. I love to be swept off my feet (sometimes literally) by the unique and diverse expressions of the elemental configurations of new places. It’s more than simple awe and adventure that I’m seeking. There’s a primal importance to separating myself from familiar contextual cues that allows new physical and neuronal pathways to carve through my consciousness.
But probably too, the well trodden paths, the familiar firings need to be re-experienced in the context of a deeper and more vertically compelling stillness with which to allow them to achieve their full expression, no matter how unsophisticated or neurotic at the outset.
Without this purification, the familiar frameworks don’t just go away. They begin to rot into putrid and homeless rejections of a former self that I no longer want to identify with, taking up space as triggers rather than being celebrated for their usefulness and reintegrated to serve new, more inspiring purposes.
About 30 minutes before the beginning of the race, I realized that I had neglected to charge my watch, which thus implied a countdown to an unknown time within the race that I would lose access to established comforts such as knowledge of what mile I’m on, how far it would be to the next aid station and therefore how to ration my supplies, as well as the markings of a map of sorts, which sometimes helps me discern a meaningful direction, and sometimes just appears as a series of curious and unrelated scribbles.
I texted my group chat of endurance friends to inform them of my neglect and therefore heightened chances of getting lost, to which one of them reminded me that having a fully charged garmin has never helped me to stay on course before. And with these ominously foreshadowing words, the day commenced.
A short quarter mile or so into the race, the procession of runners quickly became a procession of mostly walkers in pursuit of a steep climb up above the protective marine layer into the dawning heat.
Above the clouds, the overstory trickled through tight trails laced with wild thyme and rosemary. In the midst of such an opportunistic olfactory occurrence, I am in so many places at once; past and future converging to extend beyond sequential reality. I wanted to stay in this elevated estrangement, but it was too early and I was still too unsettled, so my attention refocused on the task of running.
Unfortunately my attention did not also attune to the task of recognizing my surroundings as we approached the same volunteer we had passed by just a few miles ago, yelling the same directional incantation. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be passing by this same checkpoint, or if I had somehow missed a turn and gone off track. Fortunately, I was still with the same group of runners that I had started with, and given that almost anyone else’s sense of direction is superior to my own, I remained mildly comforted.
When we passed the same volunteer a third time, I resigned myself to either a day spent circling around the same hill, or some divine supersedence onto new topography. Neither of these options felt like they were within my navigationally deficient realm of control.
Gracefully, a short while later, the scenery shifted and we descended down into the marine layer amongst silvery and purple fields of thistle.
Around mile 10 we approached a water crossing where the options were to either walk through a shallower section of water, or step across the rocks that were lined up through a deeper section. Since it was still a little early for blisters and for carrying heavy wet shoes, I chose to step across the rocks, after which I promptly fell into the deeper water. This was the first and one of only a few times I felt tickled and welcomed into the abiding sensibility of my natural surroundings.
Primarily, I couldn’t escape the inconvenient urge to push myself, rather than my typical ultra mindset of existing in a world outside of linear time where rushing doesn’t even make sense. At first I brushed this off as a passing air of unsettled wistfulness, but I couldn’t quite pull its roots out, so the urge kept resurfacing like an uninvited invasive weed.
I was now hoping that my watch would hurry up and die, so that I would have time to move through the withdrawal of habitually noting my progress. But in a heroic display of technological tenacity, my headstrong device pulsed on.
At the aid station at mile 12, a few of the volunteers informed me that I was the 3rd woman through this checkpoint which increased my agitation. I didn’t want to be in 3rd place. I wanted to be lost in a faraway field of a greater imagination, under a sensuous spell of erotic encounter with land and sky.
But this well traversed terrain, the all too familiar neuronal firings that I believed myself to have outgrown in my days of competitive racing, were lit up and setting off a chain reaction, compelling my body into a place of distinctive edges: an experience of myself not as the world, but defiantly in it. Distinct and with the coinciding limitations of being singular and willful.
It didn’t help that my body was feeling strong and energized. I thought back to the halfway point in this race last year where I remembered that fatigue was already taking hold and I was blissfully settling in to its seductive slowness.
Viktor Schauberger, an Austrian forester, known for his keen observations of the natural world, especially in the high mountain lakes of the Austrian Alps, recounts one particular series of observations that have lived inside me as a grain of sand lives inside an oyster shell ever since I first heard this story:
He witnessed a particular hunting technique employed by eagles in which they circled above a lake until a trout would be picked up by the shadow. The trout would then follow the shadow as the eagle spiraled tighter and tighter into a vortex before descending down to pluck the trout from the lake. Years after publishing this technique, Schauberger was again observing a lake one day and noticed a trout swimming in a similar vortex. He looked up expecting to see an eagle flying above but could find none. Patiently, the fish continued circling and circling, when after some time, an eagle finally showed up and began following the fish into the collapsing spiral. At this moment, Schauberger realized that he had never actually seen an eagle reach inside the water for the fish but the fish had always jumped up to the surface into the talons of the eagle.
I used to revel in this edgeplace, passionately emboldened by the quest to know my limits and to press against them, to discern some notable definition of myself. But here, traversing through time worn trails and deep-seated patterns of drive and willpower, I missed the tender ease of being overtaken. As I surged on, I felt the chronic aching for some heavenly body to claim me. Some holy wind to reach down with its talons and carry me home.
I passed through the holy wind of a cloud of cannabis from a group of nearby hikers and I tried to elevate into it, but not even weed would have me.
Recently I saw a series of video clips of Olympians practicing positive self talk in order to reinforce their desired narratives of superhuman athletic achievement. Though an inspiring display of mental control and single pointed focus, I am not an Olympian, nor do I have any aspirations to be one. I actually don’t even aspire to be a runner, so much as a storyteller.
I run, not to impress my own narratives upon my environment, but to be defeated, as Rilke says, by greater and greater things. Surrendering as the yoginis do to their guru, as the Indian saints and mystics do in a trance-induced ecstasy to the all-consuming powers of the goddess.
The longer and farther I run, the more I loosen my tight grip of single pointed perspective and become available to nakedly encounter, and later translate a larger story that is thirsting to be told through me. These stories include me of course, but are not limited to my individual preferences or the belief systems that are subtly reinforcing addictions to any of my current or previous identities.
Usually there is consistent good natured chatter amongst the participants, but today, as temperatures stretched into the mid 90’s, the air was unusually quiet, melted into submission by the penetrating rays of the sun. After the aid station at mile 16, there’s a short out-and-back section to mile 17 and then back to the aid station, now at mile 18, before continuing on to the next part of the trail. It’s the only time in the course where you get to look into the bright eyes of the dynamic field of your co-conspirators, exchanging whatever encouraging grunts or gestures are available to muster.
Upon exiting this aid station for the second time, I failed to notice that I was running through the next section alone. The trails seemed to coax me forward onto what I assumed to be the race course but which I would shortly realize had been a series of extra credit bonus miles, meant only for me and my spiraling, and hopefully seductive, eagle dance.
Still not aware that I had meandered away from the herd, I found it strange that I began passing the same runners that I had seen on the out-and-back section, who had previously been behind me.
As if I needed proof of being a crafty and dynamic manifester of my dreams, here was confirmation. I hadn’t wanted to be in 3rd place and therefore, I suffused myself into a field of a greater imagination, (unknowingly) lost in the wilds of land and sky.
I was very much looking forward to the aid station at mile 22 where we would have access to our drop bags. In a day full of rookie mistakes, I had also mistakenly forgotten to bring my packets of electrolyte mixture and the on-course nutrition was less than compatible with my sodium requirements.
When my heroically enduring watch read mile 22, it was clear that I was nowhere close to the mile 22 aid station and this realization seemed to add to my increasing electrolyte imbalance.
On this solstice celebration, the midday sun consumed every inch of sweltering earth, leaving not a shadow in sight. The alchemy of light and heat complete and purifying. Heat, however oppressive, is the element that my body most readily and eagerly merges with. There are not too many other moments I look forward to more than the ones where I enter the altered state of consciousness of being consumed by something total and masculine in its containment. From this engulfment, I am graciously dispossessed of my conscious ability to choose my own pace, or way of being in time. The heat narrows the chaotic assortment of options about how to approach the remaining miles and it becomes simpler to persevere at the only pace that is available.
My watch finally died at mile 27, which was still a short ways out from the aid station at mile 25.
I’m quite sure that the temperature was approaching 200 degrees by now, and I entertained the idea of quitting. In the past couple years since retiring from Ironman racing, giving myself the option to quit if ever a goal began to feel unaligned was a remarkable and mind-expanding alternative that I had never previously allowed myself access to. Before this chapter, I had operated under the assumption that giving up on a goal was always bad, which caused me to persevere towards goals that had become outdated and passionless. At the time, this seemed like an easier alternative than confronting the feelings of uncertainty about not having a direction.
But here, at some unknown mileage point in the trails surrounding Black Mountain, I noticed that the window for quitting and that chapter of my life had ended. Blown away in the wind without so much as a sweet or solemn goodbye.
The last 10k of the course includes a relentless and exposed climb up to the peak of Black Mountain before a quick 2 mile descent down to the finish. I must have checked my dead watch no less than 50 times hoping it would give me some consoling notion of progress, but we had both discarded our souls somewhere back around mile 27.
Only the fire-breathing soul of Black Mountain remained. The storyteller. The vertically compelling stillpoint in the center of the circling and chaotic firings of unpurified self importance.
When I finally reached the peak of Black Mountain, my mind was finally, mercifully, absent of chatter. I walked slowly and peacefully the whole way down the mountain as eager, still driven runners ran past me, even stopping to stand in complete stillness on a few occasions, just to soak it in.
The last quarter mile or so curls around a park with regular every-day park-goers enjoying a casual Saturday, amidst the occasional interruptions of dirt-caked underworld survivors lumbering by in the background, on their way to passing through the finishing gates back into the realm of the living.
As I finished, exhausted and pain inflicted as I was, it was solemnly clear that 50 kilometers plus a few extra credit bonus miles, even on 3 weeks notice and a deficiency of training, is not quite long enough to break me down into a being who can nakedly encounter, and later translate the stories that are pressing to speak through me. The distance is too tame.
What does it take to tell the story of a mountain? Of wild thyme and rosemary? Surely time. Devotion. The alchemical merging of heat and the searing ache of being singular and willful. I don’t know why this passion so compels me, but like the trout, I know that there is reason to keep circling. These stories are, after all, as are the stories of eagle and trout, love stories.
When I die, it will not have been enough for me to love singularly. So with the tools that I’ve been given: these legs made of wind and fever, this body of tectonic words longing to be carved and hunted by a more fathomless imagination, I’ll do the only thing I know how to do, longer and farther still.