“I’m not sure where it is we go,” I answered, “but let’s just hope that wherever it is, they have chocolate chip cookies like the one from that bakery.”
“Amen to that,” he chuckled.
We plodded along together for a bit longer, both of us enraptured by the array of colors lighting up the skyline.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” he asked.
I thought about it for a moment. “Do you happen to have a Band-Aid?”
“Let me think . . . yes, I should. There’s a first-aid kit in the trunk. I imagine there’s one in there.”
He pulled over and we stopped to have a look. The box was slightly rusted and looked as though it had never been opened, but sure enough, there were plenty of Band-Aids inside.
I sat down in the dirt alongside the roadway and undid my shoe. The heel of the sock was stained with a pinkish discharge the color of grapefruit juice.
“What happened?” he asked.
“It’s just a blister.”
Pulling off the sock revealed that the blister had ruptured and the flap of skin that had once covered the area was mostly torn away, only dangling by a thin thread of dermis.
His eyes widened, “Do you need stitches?”
I giggled reflexively, “No, it’s fine.” He was clearly more concerned about it than I was.
“Does it hurt?”
“It used to, but the pain’s gone away.”
Over the years I’d developed a means for overcoming pain. Instead of attempting to suppress the pain or trying to cast my mind elsewhere, I delve into it headlong and focus with all my concentration on the point of pain, trying to decipher the origins of the sensation at its core. Pain is ephemeral and fleeting, and the more I focus on the impulse at its roots, the more it dissipates and dissolves away. My belief was that the nerve endings could only accommodate so much stimulation and eventually would become saturated and thus unable to transmit any more pain signals to the brain. Whether this theory held any basis in science, I had no idea. But it was what I believed, and it seemed to work for me.
People think of pain purely in terms of a physical sensation, but there is also a very deep emotional connection to pain. Pain makes people uncomfortable. It hurts and is therefore viewed as a negative thing, as something that must be mitigated and cured. I’ve shifted that viewpoint and instead assigned positive feelings to the sensation of pain. Pain is good. I welcome pain, because it makes me feel alive. I like feeling alive, though I can’t lay claim to being the first to play the pain game. After all, Odysseus’s name in ancient Greek means “man of pain.”
I yanked that dangling flap of skin from my heel. It stung. I felt more alive.
He winced when he saw me do this, his face pale.
I slapped the Band-Aid across it and pushed down the adhesive on either side. “There, good as new.”
He continued staring at me wide-eyed, shocked by what he’d just witnessed.
I started lacing up my shoe. “You a runner?” I asked, hoping to diffuse some of his dismay over seeing what just transpired.
“Ah . . . not any more. I used to be as a kid, but then I started smoking and drinking, and that put an end to it. I just quit those vices a few years ago and have put on some weight since then, but I feel a lot better not waking up every morning hungover with a smoker’s hack.”
“Maybe you’ll start running again?”
“I might, though nothing like this,” he joked.
“I might not do anything like this again, either.”
“Bah. You can run forever, Kostas. And you will run forever. You make us proud.”
“I’m not sure about forever. Let’s just hope I can make it to Sparta.”
“You’ll make it,” he assured me. “You make us proud.”
I’m glad he had such confidence in my abilities, because I was starting to have some doubts myself, one of the chief concerns being a lack of nutrition. I needed to get some calories in my system fast, but the ongoing nausea was problematic. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure that chocolate chip cookie would have sat with me just fine.
Crawling back to my feet, I got up and slowly resumed forward progress. He drove alongside me for a while longer, but I could tell our roadside interlude was about to come to an end.
“I really should be going,” he said eventually.
I didn’t know where it was he would be going. Back to a wife? A family? And where was it he’d come from? Athens? Tripoli? These questions would go unanswered, and that was fine. We’d shared a moment together and it was good, but now that moment was drawing to a close.
“Thank you for the Band-Aid,” I said. “And thank you for the company.”
“Pleasure’s mine, my friend, my koumbáros (distant brother). I pray for you and Pary every night.”
Pary? His comment threw me aback. How did he know about my sister, Pary? How did he know about my life? It was yet another upending mystery that would go unsolved, another overwhelming enigma that pried open my heart and left me tingling.
I simply thanked him for the prayers. “Efharisto,” I said, “we will all meet again someday.”
“Amen to that.”
And those were the final words I ever heard from him.
The car swung around and in a slowly rising billow of dust disappeared into the night. Gone was he, in the flesh, at least, though in spirit I knew his memory would live on within me for many years to come, perhaps forever.
The sun had set and the luminous twilight aura faded to near black by the time I reached ancient Nemea, the midway point of the race. In the process of getting there the course had elevated some 1,200 feet above sea level, whirling its way toward the summit of this mountainous pass on which I now stood. The soil in this region is exceptionally rich and fertile, and many renowned vineyards are scattered throughout the terraced hillsides. Grapes that had been recently harvested for the crush lined the roadway, squished and splattered about like little burgundy paintballs. Many of the local townspeople made their own potent village wine, referred to as kokineli, and there was certainly no shortage of fermentable fuel about. As I ran into the checkpoint, which was set up in the churchyard of Archea Nemea near the site of the Panhellenic Games, the streets smelled of hardy red wine as if the entire city were engulfed in a giant cask.
It was here, in ancient Nemea, where Hercules had slain the mythical Nemean lion that had terrorized the city for years. Hercules hoisted the crucified beast upon his mighty shoulders and carried the carcass to King Eurystheus, thus proving his heroic deed. I should only hope to be possessed of such strength.
My crew was waiting for me when I arrived.
“You need to eat,” was the first thing Dimitris said to me. “Here.”
He handed me a piece of pasteli. It still tasted revoltingly sweet and syrupy, but I forced myself to choke it down even though I thought I might gag at any moment. Nikos handed me some water to wash it down, and I took a long, slow swig, sighing as I finished. They both knew I was struggling. Accomplished ultramarathoners themselves, they were keenly aware of these telltale signs because they’d experienced them firsthand. One’s energy inevitably ebbs and flows during the course of an ultramarathon. There are peaks and there are troughs. But typically at some point during the race a trend begins to establish itself, either to the upside or to the downside. Eventually this tendency takes increasing command and the duration of the race continues moving further in that particular direction. Rare is the ho-hum ultra where things go just so-so. More typically the race is either exceptionally strong, or a complete disaster. Unfortunately, I was trending toward the latter.
“I shouldn’t stay here long,” I said. “It will be harder for me to leave if I do.”
“Can you stomach any more food?” Dimitris asked.
“Not now. When will I see you guys again?”
“In Lyrkeia?”
“How far is that?”
“Twenty-five kilometers.”
“Ho
w far is that in miles?”
“Fifteen and a half.”
I should have known this. I did know this. He wasn’t telling me something I didn’t already know. My mind was losing its sharpness, which wasn’t good. Nikos handed me my headlamp. I would have forgotten it had he not.
“I’d better go,” I said, and staggered to my feet.
They both looked at me helplessly, unsure of what to say, feeling my pain but unable to do anything about it. I turned, stared numbly into the murky, dark void, and started slowly moving away into a universe of infinite black.
The road to Sparta
25
THREE DRUNK MICE
Finding my way out of ancient Nemea was like trying to navigate through a labyrinth in the middle of the night with a dim candle. In the darkness, streets crisscrossed and dissected each other with no apparent logic or reason, often doubling back upon themselves or coming to an abrupt end without forewarning. The course wasn’t marked very clearly and my mind wasn’t operating any more so, this combination of factors could result in big mistakes if I wasn’t careful.
My focus was so intent on trying to find the correct pathway out of town that I nearly stepped on something skittering across the roadway beneath me. By the time I saw the furry little critter, it had disappeared into a crevice between two buildings on the opposite side of the road. Then another one popped out from somewhere up the road; it spotted me coming and pulled an abrupt U-turn, scrambling anxiously back to safety. What were these small creatures, field mice? Another one darted out, this time right below me, scurrying about in a haphazard figure eight like one of those windup toys you find at the dollar store. I danced around on my tiptoes trying not to step on the poor thing. When it finally regained its bearings, it went rocketing off headlong into the side of a building. It sat up for a moment, no doubt seeing stars, then toppled over sideways and started rolling down the alleyway. Weird.
More appeared, and now that I was paying closer attention, they all seemed to be acting quite oddly, running into things and into each other and generally flip-flopping about purposelessly like a bunch of drunken sailors. Then it hit me—that’s precisely what they were! These little party animals must have been drinking from the small pools of grape juice that had fermented alongside the road in the warm autumn sun. This is why this city smelled so strongly of burgundy. I laughed aloud. Inebriated Greek field mice—that was a first. In Marathon, where the fields of wilting fennel ferment into ouzo, the mice must get really blasted.
This moment of levity served me well, at least for a stretch, though one needed to pay close attention in this area to avoid getting lost. Abruptly, the course made a sharp left turn off a city street and onto a farm track that was completely unlit and filled with deep ruts and potholes. A wrongly placed footstep could easily wreck an ankle, or worse. Complicating matters, the downward grade progressively steepened, descending dramatically the farther we proceeded toward the Inachos Valley. Every ultramarathoner knows that the downhills are often more torturous on the quadriceps than the uphills.
Mercifully, my leg muscles were faring quite well at this point, allowing me to maintain a steady trot even on the severe and gravelly downhill grade. There had been situations in the past in which just the opposite had been true—my quadriceps were all but shot—and these were not fond memories. On a descending path one should be able to make up some time, not slow down. Who wanted that? There were enough unforeseen factors conspiring to make one vulnerable during an ultramarathon, and weak quadriceps muscles were something that seemed to be under my control, so I had decided to dedicate considerable amounts of effort during training toward strengthening my leg and core muscles to withstand such rigors.
At some distance ahead of me the dim glow of a headlamp emerged. The shaky beam appeared to be moving up the trail pointed in my direction. As I proceeded toward the bouncing light, however, the faint disk of illumination didn’t seem to be getting any closer, or if it were, it wasn’t moving very quickly in my direction. Gradually as I grew nearer to this small oval of light, I realized that it wasn’t coming toward me at all, but moving away from me. The runner whose head this device was mounted upon was scuffling down the trail backward.
Then I realized there was another runner directly beside him, and that this individual was facing forward. As I drew progressively nearer, I saw that the two of them had interlocked their arms and were bracing each other as they shuffled along. The backward-facing runner was moaning audibly, gazing downward at his feet in an attempt to prevent falling. I don’t think he even noticed me as I ran up beside them.
Pulling alongside the two, I said hello to the runner facing in the forward direction. He glanced over at me and nodded his head a couple of times. There’s a particular technique we night runners use when looking at each other while wearing a lighted headlamp. You don’t want to look directly into someone’s eyes because your light will temporarily blind them, so instead you kind of fix your head off to their side and rotate your eyeballs to make contact. Initially, I thought that’s what he’d meant to do. But as we ran along together a bit longer, I realized that his neck muscles were so seized up he was incapable of twisting his head sideways.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He responded with a couple of grousing yet cordial grunts. Judging from their appearance and from the apparel and equipment brands they were wearing, it was obvious they weren’t American. Probably European, I figured, but where exactly they were from didn’t matter.
“Would you like some help?” I asked.
He said something in a dialect I couldn’t decipher. It was clear he didn’t speak English, and after I was unable to offer a response to his statement, it must have been clear to him that I didn’t speak his language, either.
Recognizing this barrier to verbal communication, I did the next best thing. Stretching my arm outward in front of us and directing the beam of my headlamp onto my hand, I gestured with the universal symbol of inquiry, a thumbs-up sign (i.e., You good?).
He shook his head back and forth a couple times (i.e., Not so good).
Then he pointed at me (i.e., you?).
I tilted my hand side to side a couple quick times in rapid succession (i.e., so-so).
He sliced his index finger across his neck like an imaginary knife (i.e., we’re finished).
I put my hand upon his shoulder (i.e., sorry, man. I feel your pain).
Aristotle had said, “A friend is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” We didn’t know each other. We didn’t speak the same language, and we may never see each other again. But none of that mattered because for a brief moment in time we had connected on a much deeper level. It was impossible not to feel this union.
We ran together a couple minutes longer, and then I nodded to him that I was going to proceed onward. I shone my headlamp on my outstretched arm once again and continued the hand-mime, waving goodbye (i.e., until we meet again).
He smiled, moved his hand into the beam of light, and gave me a thumbs-up (i.e., Good luck, brother. May the wind be at your back).
With that shared moment I nodded farewell and started gradually peeling off ahead of them, the sounds of moaning and groaning slowly fading to a distant murmur behind me until eventually there was no sound at all, save for the soft tapping of my feet upon the ground.
Until I got closer to Lyrkeia an hour later. The Lyrkeia Taverna was alive with music; I could hear it blaring from miles away. Eventually I came upon this bustling little township of late-night revelry, and as I huffed down its crowded streets, overhead sparkled bright lights that had been strung festively along its cobbled roads and alleyways. When I came running in to the tavern, people cheered and clapped. The sweeping porch of the open-air structure stretched outward like a welcome mat. Music blared from street-side speakers, the smell of souvlaki and grilled meats drifting into the atmosphere. There was sand on the floor, which may have seemed odd because we were many miles inland and up in the mountains,
except this was Greece. Every taverna, no matter how landlocked, seemed to have a generous layer of sand coating the floor as though the patrons had just come in off the beach in flip-flops.
Lyrkeia was 93 miles from Athens and a separate galaxy unto itself.
My crew was already there waiting for me. They had a table for us beneath the taverna’s thatched rooftop. I plopped down in a chair and looked around. The place was mostly filled with support crew and other runners. Some of them looked ashen and nearly dead, while others were a bit better off, though not much. It was easy to distinguish the support crew and spectators from the athletes because the athletes looked like they’d been through hell. On the tables were platters of half-eaten souvlaki slathered with tzatziki sauce and triangular wedges of pita bread with crescent-moon-shaped bite marks out of them. Bowls of Greek salad lay strewn about, with big chunks of feta cheese, olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers coated with glistening olive oil, oregano, thyme, and other Greek spices. During any other occasion this would have all been delectable to me, but at the moment I felt as though I might vomit.
I asked for the restrooms, and a waiter led me through a narrow hallway to the back of the building where they were located. I needed to rinse off my face, but the bathroom wasn’t such a pleasant place. The lighting inside was yellow-brown, and the cramped interior smelled of ammonia and stale cigarettes. Above the washbasin was a small, cloudy mirror with badly corroded corners. Through the foggy glass surface I peered at my reflection, inspecting my constitution as if seeking answers. My cheeks shone like freshly lacquered mahogany, and my hair was rumpled like an old burlap sack, untamed and frizzing wildly at the edges. I splashed some water on my face and it felt good, refreshing. My trapezius muscles were aching, and I reached my hand around the back of my neck and soothed them with the cool, slippery liquid, rubbing the water all around. It had been a long day, and it was sure to be a longer night. But these are the moments I lived for. Life is at its most extraordinary during the struggle, not during times of idle contentment, and this was sure to be an epic contest. As horrible as I felt, and knowing that untold adversity still lay ahead, there was still something tugging at me to get going, an inner voice compelling me onward, back into battle. I swished some water around in my mouth and spit it in the sink. I glanced at the mirror one last time, reassuring my own reflection that it could carry on. Life was waiting on the outside, and it was time for me to get back after it.
The Road to Sparta Page 19