Hey I I learned about myself: I am not currently a fast runner. So I slowed down. Jogged when I could, hiked when I needed to, stopped more than once just to point my feet downhill, stretch my calves, and take in the view while my body recovered. My first mile took seventeen minutes. The second — the killer, with nearly a thousand feet of climb — took forty.
But along they way…. something happened I hadn't anticipated. Within minutes of starting, people began passing me. Lots of them. Happy people, sweating just as hard as I was, calling out "You've got this! Keep going! You're doing great!" — possibly all lies, since I was not doing great, but encouraging lies from happy strangers all the same. What a tribe. Everyone was suffering, everyone had another mountain ahead of them, and everybody was cheering for everybody else anyway. I started cheering back.
Something occurred to me up there on that long, painful climb. I love the rave community, and one of its beautiful ideas is PLUR — Peace, Love, Unity, Respect. But on that mountain I met another version of the same thing, this one with dirt under its fingernails. Nobody could posture very effectively up there. The mountain doesn't care who you think you are, what your hair looks like, or how your outfit reads in a selfie. The Ragna community has PLURFG. Peace. Love. Unity. Respect. And Fucking Grit. No entitlement allowed. No victims allowed.
Eventually I reached the section that had beaten me a month earlier. And I kept climbing past it, until I was above the exact place where I'd once quit. That alone gave me a boost. The view opened beneath me — Soldier Hollow, Heber Valley, mountains in every direction… and then the pillar of rocks at the very top. I had arrived… and it was all (almost) downhill from there. And the last question in my mind was answered. 3 weeks before I had bushwacked down this mountain… but Ragnar had delivered. A freshly cut, very easy to find, trail down for 3 miles was waiting for me. Yes! And down I went, making some friends along the way (thank you lady from Sacramento for whom this was her 5th Trail Ragnar) — and five miles after leaving my tribe, I came down the final hill and heard them waiting, screaming, cheering. I crossed the line. Red was done. It took me about two hours. Fast? Absolutely not. But I had done it.
And somewhere in those two hours, Ragnar showed me something I haven't stopped turning over since. Before every loop, our whole team went to the transition tent together. We sent every runner out, and every time someone came back, we were there to welcome them home. But there's a moment right after your people send you off, when you round the corner and they disappear, and now it's just you. Nobody can climb for you. Nobody can breathe for you or move your legs or make you keep going. Your tribe sends you out, your tribe welcomes you home — but in between, it's you and the mountain.
I love that. Maybe because that's life. We need each other, deeply — I don't buy the mythology of the fully self-sufficient human — but ultimately nobody can walk our particular trail for us.
I finished Red hurting. My glute was strained, my calves were wrecked. I got some bodywork done, stumbled back to camp, and collapsed onto a cot. I had another loop coming in about eight hours: Yellow. I closed my eyes and genuinely wondered — was Red all I had? A few hours later I stood up. Everything hurt. And I started getting ready again.
View from near the top of Red Loop!