Run or Die (15 page)

It’s midday by the time I start running again, in light rain but with a threatening sky and black clouds over the peaks of the mountains. The extra hours of rest have refreshed my legs, and trying to make up the hours we have lost, I set off with Greg at top speed along the paths that take us through the woods to Carançà.

The thick mist filters into the leafy woods, and we begin to have doubts about our route. With so many changes in our itinerary, we’ve barely had time to study the maps and are none too confident of the way, though we cling strongly to our intuition. By the
time our doubts start to make us anxious, a shirtless young man with a beard appears among the trees, as if he’s sprung straight out of the ground.

“Andreu!” I shout.

Andreu accompanied me on the central Pyrenees stages and has been a refuge guard for a number of years in Carançà.

“Follow me,” he says. “It’s quicker if we head into the woods.”

He immediately launches us off into a fast run up through the woods, along a stream that avoids many of the twists in the trail, and up to Rodó in next to no time. We start downhill, and after several hours, the rain starts to pour down once again. The hours go by, as do light rain, hard rain, eating while sheltering from the rain, thick mist that erases the path and soaks our bodies, mud, slipping and sliding, and gradually the miles, until I am alone again, running under the mountain walls of El Canigó.

I feel good. I don’t know if it’s still the revival I felt yesterday or if the daytime cold has invigorated my body. But today I have recovered my sensitivity. It’s not simply freshness and speed I have recovered but emotions and feeling. The moment I reach the northeasterly ridges of El Carlit, I can’t stop tears from welling up, and I sit on the ground and take in the view.

Behind me the sun is sending its last beams across the ridges of El Carlit. But that isn’t what brings me back to life, what makes me cry. I can see the sea again, for the first time since I left the Atlantic Ocean a week ago. In the distance, the Mediterranean appears before me for the first time.

I sit and wait, without thought, not reflecting on success or what we have achieved. I simply gaze at the wonder before me. Several thousand feet beneath me, the infinite expanse of the sea. Like an old man who has just returned home after many years in exile, I cannot help but feel moved by the panorama extending before me.

The sun has stopped shining on the rocks behind me, and the landscape is starting to fade. But I myself have just reignited, have rediscovered feeling and the strength to continue, and I am full of hope once more. I know where I am heading.

DAY 8

Waking up in the Els Cortalets refuge, more than 6,500 feet above sea level and a little over 60 miles from the nearest beach, is enough to give me the energy to persevere to the end. I start running, content with the knowledge that this will be the last morning that I get up not knowing whether my legs will respond, not knowing whether the pain has gone or will return with the first strides I take. Knowing that although I am in real pain, I only have to continue until the sun sets one more time is a huge relief that allows me to enjoy the adventure and indulge small whims, that allows me to make small concessions to a body that won’t have to pay for them the next morning.

It’s hard warming up my muscles under the hot sun, which has swept away yesterday’s rain, but gradually they spring into action, and when we reach Arlès after a long descent, I am physically and mentally equipped to face the last 60 miles. I make a small stop to eat a tasty cheese roll and start off again as the heat continues and my legs clock up the miles. The landscape has changed radically, becoming steadily more arid and dry. We have left behind the meadows and rocks of the high sierra to tackle the woods of Les Alberes.

It’s midday when I reach El Pertús, and we now face only one final obstacle before we can splash our feet in the cool waters of the Mediterranean: Mount Neulós. But joy hasn’t completely taken
over. The heat of the last few hours has brought back much of the pain I’d been feeling over the last few days.

The team and numerous friends who have come to keep me company on the last few hours start running up Mount Neulós with enormous enthusiasm, but though I try to look as if I share their glee, I’m beginning to feel ever-more-searing pain. As I run up the mountain, pain in my right calf starts to worsen, beginning not only to cramp but also to slowly stiffen. We finish the climb and I think the pain will end, but it has only just begun.

Accompanied by Marc, I start running along the ridges of Les Alberes, a sharp edge between the plains of Rosselló and the Empordà that spread before us as far as the sea. I try to forget the pain by contemplating the magnificent panorama and sharing with my companion the high points experienced on the run and the many other adventures I have had, and it works for a time, making me forget my woes as we enjoy the conversation and laughs or the breeze blowing us along as we fly across these ridges. However, at other times the pain stings and sears and makes me realize that by adapting my stride to stop pain from the cramp in my calf, I have now strained my left hamstring. I keep on slowly, try to lengthen my stride into a run, but not too much, to avoid that violent stab of pain when I overstrain my leg, a pain that brings on nausea and makes me want to immediately sit on the ground and immobilize my leg. I thus avoid any careless movement that would bring back the stabbing pain.

We arrive for the final food break, where the whole team is waiting for me, just over 18 miles from the sea, 18 miles from the end of suffering and the end of our adventure. I feel neither happy nor triumphant. Rather, I feel worried. Once again we are relishing the approaching end, and yet this is the hardest time. These final few hours are the most difficult of the whole run. The pain
from my hamstring is making me feel dizzy and sick, and it hurts whenever I try to stretch my leg and put my foot on the ground.

“What should we do?” I wonder out loud, even though my only option is to continue. We’ve not come this far not to finish, to give up today, 18 miles from our destination.

I don’t allow my body enough time to get used to the well-being brought by rest. And, above all, I want to ensure that the rest of the team doesn’t notice the pain I am in or how tired I am—even if my face makes that obvious. I start running very fast, with lots of rage. Probably too much rage. I can’t feel the ground, the branches catching against my legs, or the rocks hitting my feet. I can’t hear the voices of Marc, Pere, Pau, or Joan, who are talking behind me. I see only the images I want to see, those that enable me to continue to forget the pain and make me think that what I feel isn’t important. I think of Dick Hoyt, a triathlete with a son who suffers from a bone-marrow disease that has left him paraplegic. So that his son can experience the joys of life just like anyone else, Hoyt runs Ironman® races dragging his son in a boat behind him on swims, transporting him by bike, and pushing his wheelchair on runs. I picture fierce battles in the Middle Ages, when soldiers ran and dragged themselves along when wounded; even though they’d been severely wounded, they never lost the energy or strength to continue. If they could do this, if people can stand so much pain, why can’t I? And so I enter a spiral that has only one outcome as far as I am concerned: the sea. Nothing else exists. I am no longer myself; my reason is no longer in control of my steps and thoughts. Pain has induced a blindness to everything around me.

The miles pass very slowly, and my colleagues can see that I am dragging my hamstrung leg more and more and am slowing down. It’s not yet pitch-black when we start to see the lights of Llançà. It is at this point, when Joan realizes I’ve abandoned all reason,
that he decides to bring me back to the real world and rescue me from all those medieval battles and life-and-death struggles. He puts his hands on my shoulders, lowers his glasses, and looks me in the eye. I can hear his breathing, and his voice brings me back to consciousness and reason.

“You have achieved great things, Kilian. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody.”

I know I don’t
have
to prove to anyone but myself that I can do it. I
want
to prove it.

“I know you can get there today; we know you can reach the sea in two, three, or four hours, and that it’s not a problem for you. However, do you really want to get there today and provoke an injury that will stay with you for the whole summer, if not winter as well? Don’t you want to keep running through summer? Don’t you want to be able to do all those projects and races we were talking about only a few hours ago?”

He is right. It isn’t about being heroic. It isn’t a matter of proving to anyone that you can conceal pain; I’d already proved that to myself. We must be able to identify the difference between when our body is in pain because of the effort it has expended and when it is asking us to stop to avoid more serious consequences. The problem is that, in those moments, pain usually has the strongest voice, and to avoid it, our thoughts take us elsewhere, where colors don’t exist, where there is only black or white. Life or death.

Eight days and three hours after leaving the waters of Cabo Higuer, my feet leave the sand on the beaches of Llançà to enter the salty water of the Mediterranean. Only an hour ago I was on the Sant Miquel, sitting with Thierry and Sònia listening to “Island in the Sun,” our thoughts far away, looking out and remembering the
moments we experienced this week. The host of memories sailing through my head made me feel as if we had set out months before. Rain in Eina, snow over Goriz, thickets in the Basque Country, morning in Somport, Tor, Andorra, friends, food, heat, cold, blisters, joy, and sorrow …

Today there are only tears. Tears of joy? Perhaps they are, now that I can see we succeeded at last and can relive all these moments that will remain in my memory forever. Remembering the people who helped me get this far, remembering conversations and images etched in my mind.

Tears of relief? Very likely, with the peace of mind brought by the knowledge that tomorrow I will get up and not have 62 miles on my agenda and that I won’t suffer if my legs hurt when I get out of bed or worry whether I will be able to reach my destination before sunset.

Tears of sadness? Perhaps that, too. Sadness at leaving the Pyrenees and abandoning a routine so charged with emotion, at abandoning days that seemed to expand into weeks.

I really don’t know where the tears come from, but I let the calm and pleasure of living this moment fill my spirit for a few minutes before setting off on the path that will finally take me to the sea.

My legs feel light without the burden of knowing that many miles still lie ahead. I don’t have to manage reserves of strength, and the massage I had yesterday evening and the hours of rest seem to have erased all the pain I felt last night. Now I only have time for a pleasant run with friends and family, in this last hour before we leave these mountains.

W
e were in bed after a fantastic day’s training, and my eyes were still sparkling as I recounted the day to Alba. I was under the quilt and started talking, telling her what I had done and seen on the training session, reliving it, whispering when I wanted to suggest my fear or exclaiming jubilantly and even getting out of bed to show how exciting it was: “It was beautiful when we reached the top. The sun started to come out from behind the peaks, lighting up the glacier I’d just climbed. Then, because I was feeling good, I wondered,
Why don’t I scramble up the narrow gullies to the right of the black needle?
I started climbing and it went well; I ran all the way. If I’d been competing in a race today, I would have performed extremely well. The views were incredible! I could see every single lake, could see our house down below, a speck. And all that snow on the descent! What a descent!”