Posted on August 28th, 2016

Words: Filippo Canetta

Photos: Gary Wang

Clumsily, I hit the button that lights up the alarm clock. It's two in the morning, I've only slept a few hours, and I keep tossing and turning in bed.

It's been a week since the race, and I still can't figure out how I managed to lose my bib. I don't care about medals, trophies, or recognitions, those I don't want. But bibs, on the other hand, I keep every single one. Dusty, mud-stained, crumpled, they represent the story of the race and the effort it took to reach the finish. Sometimes I think that if my house caught fire, I'd save my bibs. It brings me close to tears. Bib number 130 from the forty-first Western States will never make it into my bib box.

In the darkness of the night, images I never actually saw, but that got stored in my head during the race, start to surface. I did everything I could not to think about it, I wasn't very happy with how it went, and exhaustion helped me not remember. Then they come back, and there's nothing you can do about it. As always, they're scattered, blurry images. Some are wonderful, others dramatic, and, as often happens on a long journey, one follows the other.

The first image is the most moving, and it has nothing to do with the race.

During the pre-race meeting, my nerves are through the roof. I'm exhausted and still a bit jetlagged. The room at the Squaw Valley Olympic Village is packed beyond belief. Wherever I turn I see some incredibly strong athlete who tomorrow will finish hours ahead of me. This year's field is impressive.

In the middle of the chaos, I spot Gordon Ainsleigh in a corner, working on a portable table doing physiotherapy treatments (chiropractic, actually, as he later explained to me). During the top runners' presentation, the table is free, so I timidly walk over and, in my broken English, ask if I can have a go too.

Gordon, with his white beard and calm, gentle manner, looks like Santa Claus. Makes you wonder if Santa Claus also ran a hundred miles a year for forty years.

Speaking right into my ear the whole time, to be heard over the applause for the athletes on stage, he has me shift into different positions to loosen up my back in various spots. I put myself in his hands and, finally, I relax. I've always been fascinated by Gordon Ainsleigh's hands. In the thousands of photos of him out on the course, his hands look enormous, almost disproportionate to his body.

Only now do I realize that the legend of Western States, the man from whom it all began, managed with his powerful hands to loosen bones and joints in my stiff, wooden body that no physiotherapist had ever been able to shift. I hug him to thank him, and I want to stay by his side a little longer.

I wish I had a bit of his calm to face the long journey ahead.

The second image is wonderful.

From a trail race, especially a very long one, you forget so many things, there are so many hazy stretches, but the starts, you never forget those.

It's almost dawn, the tension finally eases, now there's nothing left to do but run. From Squaw Valley the course climbs up the ski slopes toward Emigrant Pass. It's already warm, but the air is still mountain air, crisp and clean. As I try to figure out how to pace myself, I turn around and see the sun rising behind me over Lake Tahoe. The colors are the kind only the great American landscapes can produce. It's so beautiful it barely seems real. Another magical sunrise added to my collection.

I run calmly along a stunning trail lined with wildflower meadows lit up by the orange morning light, alongside Stephy Howe and Magda Boulet. It feels like a dream, and it lasts for the next fifty kilometers, during which I savor the pure essence of American Trail Running.

In every race there's always a moment when time stands still, and I find myself, as if by magic, in perfect harmony with the world around me.

The third image is the most dramatic.

I'm around the seventieth kilometer. I stop to pee. It seems like a good sign that I need to. I've been running the whole way so far, and I figure a small break might help me take stock of things. The moment I stop, the apparent wind created by my movement suddenly disappears. In the forty seconds I'm standing still, I can feel my body temperature climbing, distinctly. I start moving again, but the magic moment is over. I wake up from the dream. The climb to Devil's Thumb feels impossible. I'm getting hotter and hotter, I can't remember how long it is.

The race's elevation profile no longer seems to be available anywhere in my memory. And yet, up here we should still be at altitude, and according to my calculations the heat should come later, in the lower part of the race. I feel trapped inside an oven. Panic sets in, I stop, I feel like I might faint. Like it's happened to me twice before, when things really go bad, I see myself from the outside, from a viewpoint about a meter above my right shoulder. I see myself on my knees on the trail, with Joe Grant passing by and touching my left shoulder. Given that Joe has long, curly blond hair and a beard, the image takes on a mystical, almost religious quality.

I try to breathe deeply, but the canyon air has been baked dry and scorching by the months-long drought gripping California. I get up, I can't just stand there, I move forward very slowly, rationing the water, now warm, in my bottles. Many runners pass me, my race plans and strategies crumble like sand dried out by this sun. My brain refuses to remember the training sessions done on lunch breaks in two wool layers and long pants, or the four years it took to earn a starting bib.

The hardest moment.

Ninety kilometers still remain, and according to my forecasts, this should only be the beginning. Right now it's too much for him, he's not ready, and the race has to end. But to survive I have to get out of that hell. With great effort I reach the aid station and ask if I can sit down. Some doubt should probably have crept in from the fact that the previous station is called Last Chance, pretty much the last resort!

I can't get the face of the retiree who took care of me out of my head, from the moment I sat down on that chair. When I mumble something about the heat, he answers with a smile, "Welcome to California." His kind eyes behind thick glasses, under his inevitable baseball cap, are one of the images that keeps replaying in my head the most. Thanks to him, after more than twenty minutes, I find the strength to get back up and leave my chair. I'd had to spit out my last gel because it was making me nauseous.

I want to avoid my usual stomach problems at all costs, so before setting off again I grab a handful of fruit. I'd never eaten it during a race before, but I have to try something. I decide to move station to station, stopping and sitting down at each one. The strategy seems to work, I start feeling better and running well between stops, clawing back some of the time lost during the breaks. From this stretch I have big gaps in my memory, there seem to be no images at all, and yet I can still taste the dust I breathed through my teeth.

I'm worried about my family and Riccardo, who've been waiting for me for over an hour. I'm a bit tired and haven't eaten anything but fruit in over five hours, I try not to think about it. I'm nearly in tears when I meet them at Foresthill. The sight of Irene and my kids after a hundred long kilometers is beautiful.

I'd been very torn over whether to use a pacer and a support crew, or do things the way I always have, alone. I don't like the idea of others depending on me. Then I followed a great piece of advice from a friend (thanks Davide!) and asked Riccardo to accompany me. Besides being an excellent runner, he speaks great English (or rather American), and I'm sure he'll be a huge help once I'm no longer able to think straight even in Italian, let alone in American.

I always feel bad knowing someone's waiting for me.

Ricky's eager to get going, and I don't want to let him down, so I run. A pacer can only talk to their own runner. It doesn't sound like much, but when your thoughts are jumbled, tangled and confused by exhaustion, having someone to help put them back in order can make all the difference. The fragments of race videos I'd watched blur together with reality, and I realize I hadn't understood much about the course at all.

I tell him what happened, and he reassures me, saying that the stretch we're about to tackle is very runnable, and that a lot of people have had trouble with the heat and are moving slowly. Sometimes all it takes is a little good news to turn things around. I haven't thought about the race, the times, or my position for several hours now, all of that had become secondary, the only thing that mattered was moving forward.

I have a very clear image in my head of the two of us running. The sun is setting, and I'm amazed I can still run this well.

I have a very clear picture in my head of the two of us running. The sun is setting, and I'm amazed I can still run this well.

Sticking to the same strategy, we move quickly, gaining back several positions, up to twenty-fifth.

Riccardo is very optimistic (thanks Ricky!), but I can still set myself a goal: finishing under twenty hours. It's not much, I've already run a hundred miles in under twenty hours before, but in my current state, it feels like a pretty great target.

I realize I'm right at the edge between sustainable pace and caloric intake. When you're able to run these kinds of calculations, it only means one thing, that you're feeling a lot better.

Then there are two postcard images.

The crossing of the American River at Rucky Chucky is straight out of a movie.

Life jacket on, and into the river up to your shoulders. I'd dreamed of this moment for more than fifty kilometers. I'd imagined the soothing effect the cool river water would have on my body. After fifteen hours, being able to fully submerge yourself in water is almost worth the effort it took to get there.

If I focus on the times and the ranking, it comes to mind that, at the 140th kilometer, chatting away amiably, Riccardo and I missed a turn and ended up doing almost five extra kilometers, losing twenty-five minutes. Unfortunately, in those twenty-five minutes, no fewer than ten competitors passed us, who with their pacers make twenty people, basically a busload. Of those, we only manage to catch back two, but it hardly matters, even if the finish line drifted a bit further away for a while, the goal is close, and the night is calm and peaceful.

The other one is the one I'd decided to share with Irene.

At the aid station on Highway 49, Riccardo and Irene swap places as planned, and she and I run the last ten kilometers together, all the way to Auburn.

Along this ten-kilometer stretch, the course crosses the bridge called No Hands Bridge (the aid station names are always wonderfully evocative), which, as tradition has it, is decked out for the occasion with thousands of little lights. The moment is solemn, exactly as I'd pictured it. One of the side effects of long races is that they strip you bare, after so many hours and kilometers your feelings rise to the surface just like sweat.

I'm about to pour out all my romanticism on Irene, when, luckily, behind us I spot the headlamp of another competitor with her pacer, coming up fast. It's a bit like discovering you're not alone when you were sure you were, and the spell breaks.

I look at the light filtering through the shutters with bleary eyes, and I realize I'm not in Auburn anymore, but in Milan. I turn toward the nightstand, open the drawer where I keep my bibs, and see the silver buckle, the journey is over, and finally, I fall asleep.