I limped home as best I could and sat on the sofa, waiting for the inflammation to go away and for the pain to lessen. Quite the reverse happened: By the time it was dark, my knee was so swollen that my parents took me to the hospital, albeit reluctantly.
“You’ve broken your kneecap and the metacarpals of your right hand,” said the doctor. As she uttered these words, my world started to collapse around me. “It would be best, ideally as soon as possible, to operate and insert a metal plate. Hopefully, it will make you as good as new.”
It was a difficult decision, and at that moment I was unable to think very clearly. I was at a high point in my short sporting career, and as a mere 18-year-old, I couldn’t see any way forward. Was my career at an end? Would I recover from this injury? I could no doubt take up sport again, but would I return to the level I had fought so hard to reach? I wanted answers, and answers now. I couldn’t imagine spending a year not competing and not training. What should I do? These unanswered questions continued to trouble me even as I went into the operating room so that they could put a metal plate around my kneecap.
I decided I would have to look for other solutions. If I couldn’t compete at the same high level, I would have to find other goals and motivations to fight for. Consequently, in the three months I was in bed in a cast, I tried to find out all I could about mountain skiing. I looked at studies and experiments in technique carried out in the area of cross-country skiing in order to apply them to my sport. I read books on sporting psychology for ways to improve my tactics. I spent nights in front of a computer surfing pages on physiology and sport strategies in order to extend my understanding of my body and avoid sleepless nights with too many unanswered questions.
I went to the hospital in March to have the cast removed. I was very disappointed when I saw my leg for the first time after so long. No, that wasn’t my leg! It couldn’t be! Mine was muscular and strong. That scrap of hairy flesh couldn’t be mine! Good heavens! Then I got very gloomy. By way of consolation, I reminded myself that at least with the knowledge I’d acquired over the last three months of intensive research, I could continue with some kind of link to the world of sport.
The first sessions with the physiotherapist were horrible. I was unable to move my leg without electrostimulation; I was unable to stand up straight without the help of a cane. How would I ever run again if I couldn’t stand up straight? However, I gradually improved and my leg began to get stronger. Within a week I could stand up without the cane, and if I could stand up, I could stand up on skis, right? I tried to. I went to the ski slopes and put boots on for the first time in four months. I knew that my doctors wouldn’t be pleased to know I was skiing, but in the end I was simply standing up, with the boots supporting my feet. It was like being at home and doing physical exercise.
I started to go up slopes, and though I was in terrible shape, I realized that I could do it, that I could do what I used to do, and I felt the adrenaline spreading through my veins. I reached the top of the slopes as excited as someone who had just won a medal in the Olympics. I started to sing, dance, and shout as if I were alone in the world. The skiers around me stared at me as if I had gone crazy. In fact, after so many months of making no effort at all, I really must have suffered a wholesale destruction of my neurons. After that first rush of adrenaline, I calmed down and asked myself a basic question: How the hell am I going to get down? I was so excited to discover that I could ski again that I hadn’t thought about how I would get down after I’d climbed the slope. I started my descent on the shoulders of a friend who volunteered his back to support my weight. Halfway down we realized that wasn’t the best solution, so I continued my descent using only one leg—my good one, of course—with the frail one doubled under me so that it didn’t touch the ground.
From then on I had only one aim in mind: to persuade my doctors and physiotherapists that I could start training. It was difficult initially. When I smiled broadly and told the doctor I had been skiing and that it had turned out very well, her reply was clear and no-nonsense:
“I’ll put you back in a cast!”
“No, no, please, I’ll be a good boy. I’ll do whatever I have to. Gym, swimming pool, physio … but no more casts, please!”
When I saw that the medical route was completely blocked, I focused instead on my physiotherapist. He told me that when I could bend my leg 90 degrees, I could start on a stationary bike, and that in the meantime I should go to the swimming pool and walk underwater. From then on I did all I could to bend my leg. I sat on it to put pressure on it, used weights to make the joint more flexible, and made a few degrees of progress. I went once to the swimming pool, but walking around in a pool full of senior citizens wasn’t the most entertaining activity in the world.
I concluded that I could reinterpret the physiotherapist’s words. He had suggested walking in water. A swimming pool is water, and water and snow are more or less the same thing, if only in a different state, right? Was I to blame if physics played these tricks? So I walked in snow, with skis on my feet, for three weeks until I reached the longed-for 90 degrees and could mount a stationary bike. The first session went very well, and the physiotherapist said I could go to the gym in Puigcerdà for sessions on a stationary bike.
I went to the gym, got on the bike, and stuck at it for 15 minutes while watching video clips on the TV screen in front of the bike, and came to the conclusion that 90 degrees are 90 degrees whether on a stationary bike or on a road bike. I looked outside; it was sunny and warm. I went home, grabbed my bike, and went for a real ride, one mountain pass after another. That is how I started to alternate trips out on my skis and on my bike. So, in essence, I did everything I was told to do: walk in water and ride a bike. It was simply better not to mention the context if I was ever asked. I had my first problem when the doctor saw the results table from the Catalan Cross-Country Skiing Championship.
“It just happened to be near our house,” I replied, head bowed but unable to repress a smile. “I went over to check out the atmosphere, and as I’d done well the previous year, it turned out they had a number for me, and I can never say no and accepted. I started at a steady pace, not intending to finish the race, but it was easier to finish than to get to the top by car, because the roads are in such bad shape. However, I came down using only one leg. …”
“Well, as there’s nothing I can do to stop you,” she said, “at least make sure you don’t fall until we remove the metal plate from your knee.”
And with that carte blanche I began to train like a trouper and gradually not only got back to the level I had enjoyed before that wretched fall, but even improved on it.
A day comes in life when you have to decide which train to take, and once you are aboard, there is no point in thinking what might have happened if you had caught a different one. You have to make the most of what you find on your route. We can never know what the other trains have to offer, even though we lie awake many a night dreaming that they are better. In truth, perfection only exists within us, in what we think is perfect. Each track leads us to a different place, but it is our choices that lead us to find moments of happiness on any particular track.
At age 18 we all reach a decision point: You must choose a career, a car, an apartment to live in, a bank account; whether you want to have a family, pets, kitchen furniture, cutlery, and napkins; must decide on a television channel you want to watch, a contract for a cell phone, what to eat for lunch, how to kill time on a Sunday afternoon. Choose your future; choose a life. However, I decided to choose none of that. I chose a different kind of life.
I lived in a 194-square-foot studio in the Grand Hotel in Font-Romeu. I lived with a friend, although there were usually five or six people sleeping on our floor. It was on the ground floor of a huge building that dated from the beginning of the last century and that looked down on the back of Font-Romeu. The room was on the right of a large hall with winding stairs and marble banisters that showed they had once belonged to the g
lories of the French bourgeoisie, although it was now dark, uninhabited, and more like an imitation of the hotel in The Shining. The door was made from sturdy wood and was painted a nondescript color, paint that was beginning to flake. The small gilt plate on the door, inscribed with the number 18 and redone with a marker, was the only feature to distinguish my room from the more than 50 doors on that wing of the building.
Once inside, on the left was a toilet separated off by a sliding door and on the right a bathroom with a sink, mirror, and small bath in which there was only enough space to stand up. The room was square, with a single window that made up the whole northern side and that was often left ajar in anticipation of days when we returned home and the doors were locked and we’d mislaid our keys—something that happened often. A thick blue carpet covered the floor, and the only piece of furniture was a bunk bed fixed to the left wall. On the right were a small freezer (rarely full) and the stove, with three burners and an oven in which we kept two saucepans, a frying pan, and an iron. Next to the burners you could usually find a box of chocolate cereal, packages of cookies, some boxes of spaghetti and macaroni, a salt cellar, a pot of oregano, a bottle of olive oil, two jars of tomato paste, and a packet of grated cheese. These were the ingredients that made up our diet. In fact, what we usually cooked was a saucepan of pasta with tomato sauce that we reheated whenever we got back from training and felt our strength was fading. It was vital to consume as many calories as possible in order to keep running as long as possible.
Facing the bunk beds, on a chair, was a small television set that always carried the same DVD, The Technique of Champions, featuring footage and technical sequences of the greatest ski mountaineers of the moment. Before we went out to train, a video session motivated us to give 200 percent and try to imitate the turns of Stéphane Brosse or the audacious skiing of Guido Giacomelli.
Our clothes were piled on the floor, lined up in two rows. At the back, pants, T-shirts, and sweaters for normal wear, and in front our training gear, skiing overalls, thermal shirts, pants, leggings, gloves, caps. Next to our clothes were our tool kit, the iron, wax for the skis, scissors, cutters, bits from all kinds of televisions, and cord and string, with which we built and destroyed, made and unmade all the equipment we had. The rest of the room was taken up by what we called “our first girlfriends”: bikes, trainers, boots, and skis that received preferential treatment in the studio apartment. We hung a poster of the 20th edition of Pierre Menta on the wall, a mountain skiing race for teams of two that lasts for four days and is known as the Tour de France of mountain skiing, the race won by the greatest mountain skiers in the world, the race you had to compete in at least once in your life, the race we dreamed about day after day as we trained, slept, and ate. We hung the Skyrunner’s Manifesto on the back of the front door, a declaration that gave us the strength to keep going as long as we could in adverse weather conditions.
That is how, between those four walls, joined by our deep desire to destroy our bodies through hours and hours of training, Fuenri’s Factory was born. A group of friends with just two ideas in their heads: miles and yet more miles. Nothing else mattered. Where or how you slept, what you ate or, if necessary, did not eat. What mattered was to train and compete to the maximum.
I remember leaving home on my bike with my skis tied to my backpack and riding 37 miles to reach the snow, skiing until it was dark, and then returning home at night, my headlamp frozen. I remember setting up a tent in the car park in Astun the night before the Spanish championships and waking up to 5°F and not being able to take down the tent because it was frozen to the ground. I remember lots of Saturday nights sleeping in the car or with my boots in a sleeping bag in order to compete on Sunday.
Our whole lives revolved around competition. We slept and ate enough to be able to train, and we trained to the maximum to be able to compete and try to get the best results possible. All our income, which came from study grants and race prizes, went toward paying the rent and buying the best gear—gear that we then took apart in our workshop to make it as light as possible, with the obvious consequences. We kept changing shops to buy our boots, since we were embarrassed to go into the same shop for the fourth week in a row to buy yet another pair of boots.
The climax came one Wednesday in March. We had no electricity in the studio, since we had decided it was more important to have a good pair of carbonite ski poles than electricity. Álvaro, my roommate and racing partner, and I were sitting on the floor with the rent for the month scattered over the carpet, wondering if it was more important to give the rent to Madame Levy, our landlady, or to leave that afternoon for Arêches Beaufort, the center of the world as far as we were concerned, and where the Pierre Menta was to start the following morning.
Obviously, we both knew what we would decide, and so within minutes we were loading our bags and skis into our white Peugeot Partner. We picked up my sister, Naila, and my best girlfriend, Mireia, and set out on the highway until we reached Arêches seven hours later. That was when the real odyssey started: convincing the organization to let us take part. Registering for the race was highly competitive, and even though we wanted to race in the junior category, places were restricted and had been filled some time ago. However, we didn’t give up hope, and after spending hours going to and fro and talking to all the organizers, we finally got a number. Our number to take part in the Pierre Menta! Our dream began there. We slept in the girls’ room, since we’d spent our rent money on registering and couldn’t allow ourselves to spend more money on a hotel. The race was wonderful: an incredible atmosphere, good vibes, a victory on Sunday and a second-place finish in the general race for youngsters, and, above all, the adrenaline of waking up in the morning knowing that only one thing mattered that day: competing.
I love to compete, and competing is about winning, the high you feel hitting the tape. Turning that final bend and seeing it at the end of the final straight. Looking back one last time to check that nobody is about to overtake you. Looking in front, closing your eyes and accelerating, feeling the spectators urging you on to victory, forgetting the pain, forgetting your body, being aware only of your mind, which is spinning with the emotions of the last seconds before you register how your stomach, dripping sweat, smashes the tape to the ground. It is the pent-up rage from the pressure lived over years, months, and the last hours of the race exploding in the final few yards, when you realize that all the sacrifice and effort have been worthwhile. It is what you feel for all those who have accompanied you in your career and contributed to this victory.
It is my mind that told me I could do it and now tells me I have done it. Everything comes together for those few seconds before I break the victory tape, and I feel a rush of amazing strength; I could run faster, leap higher and farther. But at the same time I feel weak with pure emotion, and I laugh, cry, and finally fall to the ground to kiss the earth. It brings goose bumps and tears of happiness. It is incredible. And it is what makes all the sacrifice worthwhile.
The taste of victory hooks you, addicts you like a drug, forces you to crave that feeling again, forces you to start back in on the process so that in a few months, or perhaps years, you can once again feel those moments of extraordinary strength and emotional fragility, moments of irrepressible happiness.
I have lost count of the weeks I have spent away from home, of the countries I have visited, and of the beds I have slept in. I began to compete 10 years ago, and it has been 10 years of seeking to relive again and again these emotions and sensations that take me to the peak of ecstasy and make me live life at a pace more suited to rock-and-roll musicians. Like a hard drug, it was enough at first to experience all of that two or three times a year, but my body could never get enough and each time demanded more and more insistently that I compete again. And so I finish one competition and immediately seek out another where I can get my next dose of pleasure. Road and bed. Week after week, day after day, I seek out new, ever-greater challenges to satisfy the needs of my
body. Championships and world cups in Europe and Spain, prestigious races winter and summer, and in the weeks when there is no challenge in my diary, like an addict deprived of his fix, I scour magazines, the Web, and calendars for a race on the near horizon where I can satisfy my longing until it is time for the next important event on the schedule.
I’m sitting on the side of my bed, undressed and ready to sleep. The usual chaos from our get-togethers or the days before a race has vanished. Now my race kit is tidy: neatly folded white T-shirt with race bib already pinned on. Underneath, black pants. To their right, a pair of red-and-white socks, a windbreaker, the chip for my shoes, and my watch. A little farther to the right, next to the chair, three energy gels for the race, an isotonic drink for the warm-up, and my iPod with the list of songs all ready before the competition starts—16 songs especially selected and arranged to accompany me on my warm-up and help me go from a state of total relaxation to one of intense energy-burning activity. My spotlessly clean shoes on the floor. Jacket and pants to protect me from the cold in the morning while I go down to breakfast and wait to go out and warm up. All the rest—clothes, computer, the book I’m reading—is packed neatly in my bag so I won’t be distracted in the morning. So my brain can concentrate solely on the race. As if my surroundings were an extension of my body and the neat orderliness of my surroundings was also vital for the orderliness I need in these hours before I fall asleep. My kit is all set.
I quickly review the course. I imagine I’m running. I imagine the path I’ll find with each step and the pace I’ll adopt at each point. I try to imagine the state of my body at every turn. I identify the exact place where I will take each gel, when I will drink water, and when I must accelerate or let the others set the pace. Everything is under control.
Run or Die Page 2