Running on Empty (13 page)

Middlegate itself seemed emblematic. On the door to the little café/ bar/motel there, a sign reads: MIDDLEGATE: HALFWAY BETWEEN HERE AND THERE. Boy, that's about right: halfway between heaven and hell, no man's land. Congratulations, traveler! You've reached nowhere.

Yet one of the great things about being “nowhere” is that you're able to see the incredible beauty of the stars undiminished by city glare. In the desert after dark, the Milky Way provided a stunning shimmer of light. And the flashers of the van, always just a mile ahead, pulled me along like a tractor beam. As my night of running came to an end, I could see the “Starship” parked a ways up the road, where Roger had found a good camping place and left the RV's parking lights on to guide me in. That night, like many others in the desert, it looked as if a path of stars led to our traveling home, where I would find solace and a place to rest in Heather's arms.

The next day, as I ran down the main street of Austin, Nevada, two shop owners came out to see what was happening, which wasn't much, just the van passing through and me plodding along. One emerged from a gas station, a transplant from Mexico, I think, not saying a word but steadily looking at me from across the street. The other was a sun-baked woman wearing a flower-print working dress and standing near a store that sold snacks. She looked as if she had done this many times before over her fifty-something years. She calmly swiped a single wave, keeping an expressionless face as if my presence was an everyday occurrence and she fully expected me to be there.

We'd climbed our way from the desert floor into this town, set among undulating hills that rise gently to the horizon and sometimes break away to steep pitches. The area reminded me of many of the bluffs I've seen in Wyoming, and I was starting to notice pines and vegetation that marked an increase in altitude and available water. The brick Catholic church on the hill was in such good condition that it looked as if it had been built yesterday, with its new steel green roof and steeple, topped with the traditional cross. Yet it was the last one standing of the first four Catholic churches built in Nevada, back in 1866. We passed the international café, constructed of barn lumber, its second story set with oversized windows and spilling onto a covered porch held up by rickety posts. On top of the whole thing: a three-foot-diameter star. The signs on the main-street stores and antique shops looked as old as the buildings. It seemed a wonder to me that it had all remained standing, giving a glimpse of how things used to look back in the wild west: simple wooden and brick construction, squared-off buildings with the occasional brick church, one with a steeple that looked like a silver bullet piercing the sky.

Heading out of Austin and then off Scott's Pass, I was going downhill, both figuratively and literally. Now wearing a brace off and on to alleviate some of the unrelenting pain in my right knee, I stopped a long time for dinner at the RV and did something new: slept for an hour and a half in the middle of the day. Kathleen massaged my tired muscles, we iced my inflamed joints, and I headed back out, still sleepy. For the most part, the road was vacant and lonely, so I was especially relieved and glad to get some good news: Charlie was on the move again, about seventy miles behind me.

 

That night, my seventh on the road since we'd left San Francisco, I broke. At 3:45 in the morning, after running for almost twenty-one hours and now standing ten miles short of our goal, I told my crew I had to stop. Today, we'd have to be satisfied with sixty miles instead of seventy. I wanted to sleep and asked to be driven to a hotel in Eureka for a few hours' rest and a shower (my second of the run).

Getting up at seven and still feeling exhausted the next morning, I admitted to myself that this wasn't the last time I'd fall short of seventy miles. I couldn't keep it up and neither could my crew. We'd already lost Jesse to illness; he'd gone home the day before, and the remaining crew was feeling the strain of his absence.

Running all night on day eight sealed it. After sixty-two miles, I was stumbling around and babbling incoherently at 5:30 in the morning when Heather did something she'd never done before: She came out on the road, took me by the collar, and dragged me off the course for some sleep. This was just the kind of thing she'd known would happen, the reason she'd argued with me so strongly the year before we began. But now she was all tenderness as she took me to bed, an angel in the darkness. She took care of me while I slept, icing my legs. In less than five hours, she helped me wake up again and get back up on my feet for another day on the road, still tired but with a bit more of my wits about me.

Day nine, near Ely, Nevada: Word had it that Charlie was mounting a comeback and closing in on me. In my near-delirium, I couldn't give it much thought, though I was glad to hear he was running sound again. Despite the expert attentions of my crew, without whom I surely would have been roadkill, my days had become incredibly solitary, and it was heartening to know Charlie would be with me the rest of the way.

This is a great place for a prison,
I thought to myself as we passed the turnoff to the state penitentiary.
If someone escaped, they'd have to run an awfully long way to get anywhere.

No kidding. Those were the sorts of uplifting thoughts that kept me company.

At about seven o'clock that evening, I crawled into the RV for a nap. This was a horrible stop for both Heather and me, as she knew that I was in agony with every step, frustrated with my slowing pace. There was no way I was going to regain a daily distance of seventy-plus miles, much less do it in just fifteen hours as I had back in San Francisco.

So Heather consoled me, telling me everything was going to be okay, assuring me how proud she was of me, reminding me of how many miles we'd already come. She urged me to rest—that was the only thing to do now. I closed my eyes until eleven, getting maybe three hours of downtime, and then was off again, running in the dark, leaving Heather to her thoughts. I know now that she'd wanted to beg me to stop, that she'd been heartbroken to see me suffer, that she and the rest of the crew had been exhausted, too, but she'd kept her own counsel.

It was an unspoken code. She wouldn't tell me to quit, even if she wanted to yell it at me with all her being. She knew how hard I'd fought for this opportunity, how I'd given it endless hours of training and mental preparation during a year that gave me many excuses to stop. She knew that I wanted to (that I had to) finish this run across America, no matter what. So, unless my life was in immediate danger, she would bite her tongue and, out of love, support me. She knew that my mind was set and my integrity would be compromised if I settled for anything less than finishing.

Yet, despite her support and that of my crew, I covered just shy of forty-three miles that day, the ninth of the run, and had to stop at three in the morning. Dr. Paul ordered that I not go all night anymore. He said, emphatically, that I had to get more sleep. I couldn't disagree.

 

It continued to be hot, like most of the days before. And like most of the days to come, I imagined. I was moving slowly, dipping to about 3.5 miles per hour, around a seventeen-minute-mile pace, a shuffle barely faster than most people walk. We crossed into Utah close to midnight on day ten, and I went another 11.3 miles into the state, a bit faster now, finishing up my sixty for the day doing about 4.15 miles per hour.

When I stopped a little after two in the morning, Roger drove us back to Border Town, where we stayed at what Heather called a dive—and she was right, but it was a palace to me, because I had a shower and fresh sheets for the night. Heather was putting me to bed, gently guiding me from the bathroom to the bedroom, and trying in vain to explain to me what time I'd be getting up in the morning. We'd lost an hour when we'd crossed over into the new time zone, and I just couldn't get my head around the math and the mechanics of my watch. Physically, I was still able to move, but mentally, I was cooked. Heather gave up trying to help me understand and just allowed me to feel certain in my confusion, taking me by the hand and tucking me into bed like she would a child. She stayed up, as always, to ice my legs while I slept.

 

On day ten, I'd gone sixty miles, but I went only a little more than fifty on day eleven. Several days before, I'd acknowledged that my body had started morphing into a running machine, and now I had to acknowledge that the machinery was breaking down. My joints, bones, muscles, and soft tissue all hurt. I couldn't take a step without being reminded of the 650 miles that had already passed under my feet.