It's Gonna Suck to Be You -- cont.

You Are Here:

Home >> It's Gonna Suck to Be You -- cont.

Today's Question
What should you do if you run into a cougar in the backcountry? answer

What is the number one backcountry skill people should learn? answer

Today's Question
What are the five best environmental movies of all time? answer

What are the greenest colleges? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine July 2001

Page:

It's Gonna Suck to Be You -- cont.

TEN MILES FROM the finish, Todd Burgess forgets how to walk a straight line. Counting, he decides, will solve the problem. If he can put eight steps together, one ahead of another, without wavering, and name the number of each step, he won't swerve into the wilderness and be lost forever. He is sure of this. He counts aloud for an hour.

When he steps onto the abandoned rail bed that will take him the last two miles to Silverton, Burgess can see the gentle, aspen-covered hill ahead. Once he climbs that, he'll be able to look down into the town. He'll be able to see the finish line below. He knows he's going to make it. Only one thing can stop him.

He knows it's a silly fear, most likely the result of exhaustion and chills. If he knew about leaking capillaries, he might ascribe his anxiety to that. But Burgess's attempts at rationality won't banish a dreadful notion, born of sleep deprivation, or cellular rioting, or the desperate, fearsome need to finish under 48 hours:

"This would be a terrible time for a nuclear bomb to fall."

BURGESS ISN'T THE only one losing his mind. Gigantic june bugs wriggle from the soil and onto the damp and wobbly legs of Hardrockers unlucky enough to find themselves on the course after dusk on the second day of the race. Ghostly condominiums waver on top of mountain passes. Severed elk heads bob in the arms of grinning aid-station volunteers.

It's probably not capillary leakage. The visions seem to visit the slower runners, the ones who have been awake the longest.

"We know that people who have been sleep deprived have been noted to have visual, auditory, as well as tactile hallucinations," says Dr. Clete Kushida, director of the Stanford Center for Human Sleep Research. "They can also suffer irritability, as well as changes in memory, focus, and concentration. And psychomotor deficits."

That's one way of putting it.

After 40 hours, phantom Texans in ten-gallon hats walk beside the sleepiest Hardrockers at 13,000 feet, drinking beer and laughing. Grass turns to snow, rocks morph into Chevy Suburbans, plants transmute into Gummy Bears and bows. Before he died, Joel Zucker saw Indians.

Burgess finishes at 47 hours, 41 minutes, and three seconds, the 58th of 60 finishers (none of them Silvertonians). Then he sits on the ground.

Race Director Dale Garland walks to Burgess and asks if he would mind turning off the digital clock when it hits 48 hours. "I think this is good therapy," Garland says.

Burgess sits next to the clock and stares at it. At 48 hours he pushes a button, but the clock keeps going. Burgess keeps sitting, staring at the running numbers.

Jonathan Worswick finishes sixth, at 30 hours, 46 minutes, 16 seconds.

Kirk Apt wins in 29 hours and 35 minutes—beating the course record by more than 35 minutes. His legs tremble, and he weeps. Some onlookers get teary, too, even a few of the old hands. They don't like to talk about it, but they know that some of the fastest finishers are the most patently competitive, the loudest, the least liked, and the most likely to quit when outright victory seems impossible. Then there's Apt, who bonked and walked the last 25 miles of the course last year, enjoying the scenic vistas and the lonely ridgelines. Cramped. Limping. Having fun.

Local newspaper reporters gather round the champion. It's almost noon, clear and sunny. Apt tells one note-taker that he consulted a nutritionist before this year's Hardrock and that his "homemade goos" (various combinations of blendered hard-boiled egg, potato, tofu, avocado, rice, yogurt, salt, honey, and chicken liver) helped him stay the course. He tells another, "I'm really not that competitive, but I saw I had the opportunity to win, so I thought, Why not?" He mentions that he ran about 60 of the 100 miles—"the flats and downhills, and I ran a few uphills, too."

The reporter from Durango has one last question.

"What interesting things happened in the race?" she asks.

Interesting things? Mr. Mellow grins.

"The flowers were just amazing."

Page: