· Date: Wednesday July 31, 2019
· Where: Lancaster, New Hampshire to Portland, Maine
· Total Distance Covered: 121 miles
· Running Partner: Justin
This morning, I was happy to be leaving Lancaster, New Hampshire. Last night’s incident had creeped me out and sent shivers up my spine. Rob and I felt like people on the team questioned if we were exaggerating what had happened, and soon we started to question ourselves too. This caused us not to reach out to Becca, the coordinator of 4K, to tell her what had happened. Even though we hadn’t reached out, the two of us agreed we didn’t like at all what had happened. For the last few days of 4K, I was extremely cautious about where I went and with who. It made me realize how lucky we were as a team that we had made it as far as we did without any sketchy incidents.
Last night, something else had happened that I didn’t appreciate. We were running into a teammate’s hometown of Portland, Maine today. This teammate had proposed simply driving to Portland to complete our miles there. I would say about half the team was split down the middle. Half the team wanted to drive to Portland and forgo the route like what happened on Day Thirty-Nine. The other half, including me, wanted to continue running the route as we were supposed to. Apparently, the route from here to Portland wasn’t runnable. I couldn’t understand how anyone could say that one hundred and twenty-one miles of road, part of which were through a National Forest, were so heavily trafficked we couldn’t run. It seemed like some people on our team just wanted to go to Portland right away so that they could complete their miles and visit with friends and family. My suspicion was confirmed when they started talking about everything there was to do in Portland.
I couldn’t believe it. It seemed people had completely lost sight of everything the 4K for Cancer was about. This wasn’t supposed to be a vacation. Yet people wanted to treat it as such. There had been multiple nights, especially in the past few weeks, where people on the team had gone out drinking, getting drunk, and partying with locals. During the day, they put in minimal effort, complaining of injuries and aches and pains, even battling hangovers. For anyone who knows me, this wasn’t like me and it wasn’t what I ever pictured the 4K for Cancer to be like.
On a day, where we would be arriving on the other side of the continent, to another ocean, after literally running across America, some people on the team wanted to drive there. What about those we were running for? What about our family, our supporters, our donors? What about the feeling of accomplishment we could achieve if we ran into the coastal city of Portland and put our toes into the Atlantic Ocean? The last saltwater we had seen was the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles away! I was flabbergasted where this idea had even surfaced. I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was selfish.
With the most brutal honesty, I was glad today when I was placed in the first van without those who wanted to drive to Portland. The second van would end up driving and completing all their miles in the city. Those of us in the first van ran as much of the route as we could.
I was glad that those of us who didn’t want to forgo the route had spoken up. We were all placed in the same van and ended up enjoying our day together. I remembered talking with the small group of us in Niagara Falls who had been disappointed in the day. I realized, as I looked around to see who was in the first van today, that we had kept our promise to each other. Our conversation that night in Niagara Falls had been in earnest. We were all in the same van and were honoring what we had come here to do. I was proud of us, but I was also disappointed that we had to be proud of something like this. This should never have been a problem for the team.
Running out of Lancaster brought us from one small town to the next. We hardly saw any chain stores on our portion of the route, and certainly no urbanized industrial centers or strip malls. We were in the backwoods of New Hampshire. The homes were mostly old and weather-worn, but they were simple and got the job done. Occasionally, we passed an inn or a bed and breakfast overlooking an amazing view. Anytime someone passed us running, they always waved. Although there were sometimes where we found that we had to stand to the side to let cars pass on certain back roads, they were always polite. The cars slowed down and often motioned for us to pass through. On other main roads, the shoulder was small but runnable. It wasn’t anything I wouldn’t run back home. There was a significant portion of the route, about six miles or so, where we did shuttle because tractor-trailer trucks were barreling down the road at a terrifying speed. In this portion, there was no shoulder at all. The white line disappeared into the dirt. For the remainder of our miles though, we ran. It felt wonderful.
New Hampshire was and always will be one of my favorite areas I have ever been to. Even now, after visiting Montana and Wyoming, New Hampshire is still in the top three favorites. Maybe it is all the memories, but the scenery is beautiful and brings about a certain peace in me that not many other places do.
I ran with three people today, Justin, Luke, and Tyler S. Justin and I were officially running partners again. Luke ran a few miles with Justin and I because his partner was injured. Tyler and I ran a few extra miles together for fun.
When Luke, Justin, and I ran together we all agreed how happy we were to be running. Luke and Justin hadn’t seen much of New Hampshire and loved the scenery. The mountains were so different from a lot of the ones that we had run through. Instead of the rocky, dry, and desert-like climate of the mountains in the west, the White Mountains were abundant with life. There were trees everywhere and as we ran, we often heard birds calling to each other. This, I explained was one of the reasons I loved New Hampshire so much. The wildlife was incredible.
I was glad when Justin and Luke wanted to take our miles slowly. Even if the end of the day would be at sea level, we were still running through rolling hills most of the day and I wanted to go easy on my muscles. Tomorrow, Tyler and I had scheduled my last time trial. This would be the last attempt at Project:Return, during 4K. I guess running ten miles today wasn’t ideal the day before a mile time trial, but we had done worse on 4K. In Austin, Nevada, we had a ten-mile day at elevation when we decided to do the first time trial. This helped to ease my nerves as I thought about running the mile tomorrow.
Later, Justin and I ran another set of miles together. This time, we ran up a massive hill. Although the hill wasn’t as long as the one Tyler, Justin, and I had climbed together on Day Forty-Two, it was steeper. We tackled it together and got out of breath ridiculously fast. No one in the van had wanted to climb the hill, so Justin and I had gotten out specifically to do so. When we reached the top, we were so happy we had decided to run it! This is when Justin told me that before 4K, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything like this. This made me so happy, and I was hoping we would be able to demolish another monster hill together before reaching Boston.
Next, Tyler S. and I ran together. His partner had decided not to finish the miles due to an injury, so I didn’t want Tyler to run alone. As always, we had a blast running together. As we were running, we told each other we were glad to share a few miles today. We didn’t think we would be able to!
The van continued rotating through runners for a short time, and then we stopped. It seemed that some of us in the van were getting jealous of hearing about the fun the second van was having in Portland. As we approached an area on the route where we would have normally shuttled through because there was no shoulder area, the van decided to drive the rest of the way to Portland. I was sad. There isn’t a better way to describe it. I was just sad. As we drive by the area where we would have stopped driving and continued running, the shoulder opened again. Most of the drive into Portland was a very runnable portion. I felt like some people had jumped at the opportunity to declare the roads unsafe, and the rest of the van had gone along with it. Yes, it would have been a day with more shuttling than usual, but we could have and should have continued running.
“What has happened to us?” I remember wondering to myself.
As the drive continued, we officially entered the White Mountains National Forest. As we pulled off to the side of the road to take a picture of the sign, memories of summiting various mountains with my family came flooding in. When everyone was taking pictures in front of the sign, I realized I had to use the bathroom. So, I ventured off into the woods to go pee. When I was done, I noticed we were near a river called the Androscoggin River. I ventured down to the water and sat on a rock, contemplating the day’s events thus far. I think Justin and Tyler joined me and we momentarily enjoyed the beauty of the area together. It was like no one had touched this area of land. We were visitors to the realm of animals now. The superiority of humans didn’t mean anything here.
This National Forest, I was realizing, was so much different from the National Parks out west like Yellowstone and Grand Tetons. Here, there were so many areas where it could be just you with nature. At least where we had been in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, there was no escaping the crowds. Even after all the visits with my family to this part of the country, it was something I never fully appreciated until now.
When we got back to the van, a few of us wanted to run our miles on the road through the National Forest. It was a small, quiet road with a very faded yellow line. The entire time we had pulled off to the side, there had been no cars. When I voiced this, I was told we couldn’t run here because there was no white line and no shoulder. If a car came barreling around the corner, we could be in its way. Ridiculous.
Eventually, we crossed the border into Maine. There was a small sign marking the accomplishment. I felt like the size of it reflected the amount of excitement I had. Before 4K, I always pictured so much more excitement and fulfillment once we reached this portion of the route. We were now in the state that bordered the Atlantic! We had done so much to get here, yet at the same time, we hadn’t done everything we should have. Especially with the circumstances surrounding today’s miles, I felt like we had cheated, and I didn’t have any right to celebrate. My morale was low.
Before leaving the White Mountains, we pulled off at an overlook named Evan’s Notch. A sign explained that this was the point where the watershed for the Androscoggin and the Saco Rivers divided. To the left of the sign, water would join the Saco River and to the right, the water joined the Androscoggin River. Although the trees and mountains blocked our view of the water, it was still amazing to stand in this spot. The view was incredible and overlooked the greenest valley I had seen in quite some time. It made me want to put on my hiking boots and go explore down there.
To anyone reading this, this probably sounds very boring and unimportant. But to me, I thought it was amazing to see. The Saco River was often a place we had driven by in our family vacations to the area. To finally be running in areas where I recognized different landmarks when so much of the summer had been unfamiliar, was exhilarating. These familiar areas showed me we were getting closer to home, closer to being done, and closer to my family. I know my family was supporting me the entire summer, but these areas made it feel as though my family was closer. I could feel the support.
As I stood at the lookout, shuffling around and taking a few pictures, I noticed another geographical survey pin like the one I had seen a few days ago. This one marked the elevation at 1,458 feet, nothing impressive by any means, but it showed that Evan’s Notch was a summit. I will always think these pins pounded into the rock are the coolest thing!
Evan’s notch was also the gravesite of Errold O. Donahue, a World War One Veteran who died in 1963. I wasn’t sure of the reason for his burial being here at Evan’s Notch, or what this man’s story was. But I did know that this man was at peace. There was no way that one could lay here for eternity and not be at peace. Later, I looked up the Veteran’s name on the internet and discovered that the road to Evan’s notch had been built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Donahue had been the foreman during this time. In his will, he had requested to have his ashes spread at this site. This was the first, and last wish of its kind that the U.S. Forest Service ever granted. After reading this, I knew why Donahue had wanted his final resting place to be there. It was one of a kind. I felt honored to have soaked in the peace of the area. Knowing this information and history of the area made the experience much more special.
As we got closer to Portland, the houses got closer, the business got bigger, and the crowds became more suffocating. We drove to Portland Headlight and Fort Williams Park, which surrounds it. Tyler and I ended up getting out of the van and running about a mile and a half together. We looped through the park, various picnic areas, and ended by the lighthouse. The crowds were crazy, and we realized that it was the peak hour of the day. Even on a Wednesday, what was probably the most photographed area of Portland, was overcrowded. It took us a long time to wait so that we could even take a picture of the lighthouse!
Even the crowds and my low morale couldn’t take away from the feelings that came forth when I saw the Atlantic Ocean. We had finally made it. We had gotten across the country. Even though it hadn’t happened how I expected it too, I had gotten a lot more out of the experience than I ever expected. When I saw the waves crashing against the rocky shore and heard seagulls calling above us, I knew that I was a different person than I had been at the Pacific Ocean. I was hopeful that this new person would continue to make his experience with cancer a strength, but only time would tell. I was hopeful I had made Laurie proud and even dared myself to say so. I felt like new.
I wanted so badly to jump into the ocean and celebrate but felt I had to wait. Despite the emotions and thoughts that were going through my head, we still had three more days of running until we reached Boston. I hadn’t realized we would reach the Atlantic before we were done, and it already started to play head games with me. What was the point of going to Boston now? Boston was south now, not East. My entire thought process was thrown off now. One thing I did know, is that I had to wait to jump into the water until we finished running into Boston. I couldn’t celebrate like that before we finished!
Our van realized that Fort Williams Park was much too crowded, and small, to get the miles in that we needed. Ironically, it was as if we should have remained on the route to run our miles. But now we were in Portland and there was no going back. We ended up meeting up with the second van who was running their miles along a sidewalk on Portland’s bay. They still hadn’t finished their miles because many of them had gone swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. This meant that everyone on the team who could run and had miles left to complete finished them on this sidewalk. Writing this is embarrassing, humiliating, and sad. It isn’t at all how I pictured finishing out miles, especially on the day we reached the Atlantic Ocean.
As we arrived at the host, I claimed my spot in a small room where I could sprawl out. I was happy to have a place to call my own and stayed to myself for a bit. I wrote a bit and relaxed. At one point I think I may have even fallen asleep. I also spent a considerable amount of time talking with my advisors at Sacred Heart to make sure I was clinically compliant before clinical started in the Fall. This was always a stressful time in the summer. Making sure that my information was aligned properly for the start of the school year was especially stressful being I didn’t have a computer or reliable cell phone service. I was happy today when everything was finally set up properly.
Later, a few of us showered at a Planet Fitness before heading to a teammate’s house for dinner. Her family had kindly made dinner for all of us. We all relaxed for a few hours and enjoyed sitting on clean couches in the air conditioning. We talked with her family and I found myself talking for a while with the father who was a cancer survivor. We had a great conversation, but I wish we could have spoken longer. After the dinner was over, we went back to the host for the night.
Our host was an old church with no air conditioning, but the windows provided a nice breeze that cooled us down. When I was laying down in my sleeping bag with my headphones on, my secret room was discovered, and a few others came in and set up their stuff beside mine. I didn’t mind this though. As our small group sat watching an episode of criminal minds on someone’s laptop, we found ourselves relaxing and glad to be in our own area of the church. We worked on more of the team’s journals and I found I had almost completed all of them. Eventually, we would go to sleep early. As I fell asleep, I didn’t know quite what to make of the day yet. Most of the thoughts and feelings I had about finally reaching the East Coast would continue to circulate through my mind. It would be a few days until I could finally formulate these thoughts and feelings into words. I don’t think I fully comprehended this day until we reached Boston.
It wasn’t until the morning that we found out that the group who had gone out to explore the bars and the nightlife in Portland had come back to bats in the church. Our small room was secluded from the bat infestation, but the larger area was not. The windows that had provided such a nice breeze also provided a nice entry for the bats into the church! Oblivious the entire night to the commotion that was ensuing outside our door, we slept peacefully. It was one of the best night sleeps I had in a while.
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