· Date: Sunday June 23, 2019
· Where: Ely, Nevada to Delta, Utah
· Total Distance Covered: 154 miles
· Running Partner: Tyler (Ladyler)
It was an early start at half-past four in the morning. As the rooster woke everyone up, I tried to retreat to the furthest depths of my sleeping bag. Part of me thought maybe it was a dream, but I knew it wasn’t. As we gathered our things and got ready for the day, everything was delayed, and we ended up not even departing until two hours later. We had woken up early knowing the church wanted to provide us with breakfast and say some last words. But there was only one toilet for the whole church and somehow it overflowed. We also had so much food now that we were legitimately concerned about how we were going to eat it all before it spoiled. I remember having to leave some behind since it didn’t fit inside our coolers. As we waited to start, stories of the night began to go around. Apparently, there had been mice that people heard throughout the night and some teammates had seen them scurry over sleeping bags. I silently thanked myself for being such a heavy sleeper. If I had woken up to that I would never have gotten back to sleep!
Today, I was in the second van. This meant that we drove to the halfway point to start our miles for the day. Running in the second van had its benefits since you could sleep for a few hours before your first leg. This morning, I enjoyed this but was also a little jealous of those who were running with the sunrise. Those runs were always so special. The drive showed just how different the scenery and the lifestyles are that we encounter each day. We passed large blue lakes, massive wind farms with blowing turbines, and manicured fields. We passed fields for miles and miles. But as we got farther from Ely, and away from civilization, we reached a more arid, desert-like climate again. At one point, we filled up for gas just as we drove across the Nevada-Utah Stateline. The first van would have the honor of running across the state line today. As we drove farther into the desert, we soon began running our portion of the day’s route.
When we got out of the van, the cool morning had given way to the heat of the day. Dried grass and plants that stabbed into our socks and shoes found their way into the van. Frequently, we found ourselves taking the sharp, dried grasses out of our belongings in the van. It didn’t seem like anything could survive in this dry environment.
My running partner today was Tyler B., or Ladyler. As we started our miles, we realized we were at lower elevation today. Our breathing was easier to control and we found we could run faster than we had been the past few days. Although we were still at 4,000 feet in elevation, it was extremely easy compared to the 7,600-foot summit Evan and I had run yesterday. It seemed that everyone in van one had lucked out and gotten the downhill portion of today’s route which brought us to the lower elevation. To Tyler and I, it felt like we had gotten all the biggest hills! There was only one leg that wasn’t a gradual uphill climb, and this ended up being my favorite run of the day. Not because it was easier and enjoyable to run down, but because the scenery was amazing. The road was twisting and turning down the hillside with cliffs on either side of us providing us cool shade. Large boulders, small shrubs, and piles of sand and dirt were scattered across the cliffside. It was amazing to see. Even though it was so dry in this part of the country and I found myself wondering how anything could live out here, I found it beautiful.
Throughout the day, Tyler and I had great conversations that hit a lot of topics. What I remember talking about most was our experiences with cancer. Tyler’s experiences reminded me of my siblings. She was running for her sister who was a lymphoma survivor and it was great to hear her perspective. I felt as though she had experienced similar things that my siblings had through my diagnosis. The conversation reminded me of how tough a diagnosis is on a family and not just the person who was diagnosed. It was amazing how every day of the trip so far, I was sharing perspectives with so many different people, but in the end, all our perspectives were very similar. Regardless of how anyone’s experience affects their lives, it seems that most of the time there is someone out there who is in the same position. Someone can always relate. No one is alone.
At one point during the day, we were waiting for runners to come in when we noticed on google maps that there should have been a massive lake to our right. When we looked in that direction, we only saw a desert that disappeared into the horizon. We decided to take a lunch break and investigate. When we got to the part on the map where the lake should have been, there was cracking clay and sand that was damp. The lake had all dried up due to the climate! I couldn’t believe we were seeing something like this. When you looked off in the distance, the moisture in the ground and the heat in the air played tricks on our eyes. It seemed like as you looked across the dried-up lakebed, there were mirages anywhere your eyes went. It was the strangest thing I think I had seen yet, but it was mesmerizing. Someone realized the lakebed had more of a clay-like consistency, so we decided to make a small sandman. We gave him arms with the dried grass that was stuck in our shoes. This part of the day is something that I will always miss about 4K. Although running was hard, I don’t think I appreciated the simplicity of our days until 4K was over. We had such a carefree lifestyle stopping at anything that piqued our interest, knowing we would make it to the host site later in the day. If we had never stopped, we would have never even known this area existed.
When we got to the host site, we realized we were staying at the Delta High School. This meant warm showers again and a big ice machine to massage our muscles. We traded stories again between vans and talked about our days as we shared subway sandwiches that had been donated. Leah and Tyler S., also called Guyler, were stopped by a car today that flagged them down. They were asked what they were doing in the middle of the desert running with no type of support. After explaining what the 4K for Cancer was and how the van was only a few miles away, the driver took a picture of their jersey. Later in the night, he donated! It was incredible.
I remember calling my parents as well since today was my Mom’s birthday and tomorrow would be my Dad’s. It was nice to catch up with them and tell them about the past few days. Service had been extremely spotty, and I wasn’t able to talk with them or send any kind of pictures for a while now.
That night we had another team meeting. This time it wasn’t about our motivations for running across the country, or how to improve the functioning of the team. It was a reminder about how to be supportive of each other. As a team of extremely diverse runners, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Team Boston had runners who had run in college, runners who had been running recreationally for years, and runners who had literally started running to do the 4K for Cancer. Because of that, we had some people who were averaging twelve minutes a mile and others who were averaging splits much lower than that. Some people were already beginning to show signs of injury as well and it was affecting their running. Because we ran with different people each day, people were worried about the changes in stride length and potential for injury. It resulted in a few partners dropping or leaving behind their partner, over the past few days to maintain the pace they were used to. But that was not what the 4K for Cancer was about. Besides, there are plenty of methods to run at a slower pace than you are used to running at while remaining injury-free. If you use these methods, running at varied paces has been proven to improve overall running capabilities as well. Dropping your partner and being concerned about running times was not what the 4K for Cancer was about. We are paired with different members of the team so that we can share our lives to connect on a more personal level each day and grow as a team. If we were matched based on pace or stride length, we would run with the same people day after day. Running like this would not achieve the friendship, compassion, and support that results from 4K for Cancer for the individuals on the team. We reminded each other that we were running for those affected by cancer, our loved ones, and our donors. We were not running for our own physical gains. If the miles we were running this summer were looked at as training in any context, it would simply be to put miles under your shoes in preparation for something else. Runners call this building a base and is similar to training in an offseason. Even though we were averaging more miles per day than any of us had previously, we were not in a competitive season per se. We were not here for that. The 4K for Cancer was so much more than running, and this meeting reminded the team of this.
Something I started telling the team was that what matters isn’t whether or not you run across the finish line or finish all the set mileage. What matters is that the names on the back of your leg make it across the country. This is what I pictured the 4K for Cancer to be about and after working together, this is what our team became throughout the subsequent days of the summer.
I think this meeting largely contributed to the strength of our team that would appear in the weeks ahead. We became a group of diverse runners who started supporting each other in the way that the 4K for Cancer intends its participants to do so.
Comments