Finding Leadville Chapter 19: Seeing Things (All the Way Through)

The author running with her pacer, Trapper, at Turquoise Lake, less than 12 miles to the Leadville 100 finish

“Look up!” Trapper crowed. 

It was pitch-black and the only light was the swipe of brightness from our combined headlamps. 

I covered my light as I turned my eyes upward. The night was alit with sparkling stars smattering across the chalkboard sky, little-yet-mighty chalkdust lessons left behind many millions or billions of years ago. I immediately felt the same – little-yet-mighty. I was a star, too, comprised of their carbons, their dust, their power. Could they also see me? Will I also keep shining well after my time, moving something mighty in someone else to move forward?

I've never known a world without stars. As a child, I’d lay out on the bed of my dad’s truck, wrapped up in a blanket I pulled off some bunk bed inside the farmhouse, and kept watch for shooting stars.  Many a summer night, I’d trek out through the back field to a campsite where I’d curl up for warmth with a sister and tilt my face up to the night sky, away from the crackle of the campfire. I’d count as many blazing orbs as I could through the trees, searching for familiar favorites like the Big Dipper and Orion. 

Later years, in college, I took an astronomy class at Bentley, the business school in Waltham, Massachusetts. We’d pile up in vehicles and take off far away from the city smog to peer into telescopes and seek out the not-so-familiar constellations. I’ve forgotten all the names and numbers and data from that college course, but I’ll forever remember the feeling of starlit greatness in my bones. My classmates would look through that telescope and seek out the right constellations. I’d look through and lose myself to the swirling delight of brightness conquering even the darkest swallow of space. 

“Let’s run,” my lips moved to speak right as my legs obediently quickened. My mind was its own dark swallow of space. My feet throbbed and I hadn’t been able to eat anything substantial for hours. I managed to get some grapes into my belly and a much-too-sugary-for-my-taste sports gel, but it wasn’t enough to keep me properly fueled. My body was heavy and tired; my mind was following suit.

And there, step for step, stride for stride with me, was Trapper. The most positive, optimistic, encouraging soul I could ever encounter, let alone have the privilege of his time and energy for my race. In many ultras, runners are given the opportunity to have one or a few pacers. These are runners who can join the racer for stretches of time to keep them going. In Leadville, you are allowed a pacer around mile 62 at Twin Lakes aid station. This pacer can join you for the full 38 miles – which is what Trapper did– or the runner can swap out pacers at each aid station returning home. 

Pacers can change everything. They can tell you to look up and look out, changing your perspective on the moment. They can talk to you about nothing and everything, swaying your attention away from the pain in your feet or legs. They can monitor your nutrition, ensuring that you eat when you can and drink before you need to. When in the depths of our own minds, it can mean everything to have another human pull you up and out. 

Every time I started running after power walking, he cheered me on.

Never was I swallowed up into mental dark spaces because I had his company. I drew inward a few times, and he encouraged me back out. 

We do not heal alone. We do not run ultras alone. Stars do not glimmer alone. We are one of many. A star in a constellation, a constellation in a universe. In it together.

Poles in hand, headlamp forward, breath heaving as steady as I could keep it – I moved ahead with Trapper by my side. 

–

Something moved in the bushes without making a sound. Trapper was telling a story with fog-breathed words and, half-listening, I snapped my head toward the movement. Shadows swirled then danced away, skittish from my headlamp. 

When I was twelve, I got my own bedroom for a few months after construction of an addition was completed on the farmhouse. This was a special privilege. Usually, it wasn’t until freshman year of high school when older siblings moved up and out of the home to college that a room became available. Until then, I slept with four sisters, two bunk beds, and a crib. For the first time at twelve, I was sleeping alone. 

That night terrified me. Without the warmth of my siblings near me, breathing, talking in their sleep, and occasional sleepwalking, I was exposed and vulnerable. A part of me wanted to be a fierce and independent girl, able to sleep in her own room all by herself. I had begged for that room. But once I was there, I was scared to be alone in it. 

Once the lights were off, I laid wide-eyed with the blankets curled at my chin. Black shapes would soon ooze across the walls, sliding toward the corners of the room and underneath the shelves on the wall opposite my bed. Grotesque outlines suggested winged creatures with long, muscular legs and horns. 

I tried to be brave. I pulled the blankets over my face, I turned over to face the other way, I hummed soft songs, and I prayed to St. Michael the archangel: defend me in battle, be my protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil, I quivered. 

Not able to withstand it, I finally began to cry out: Mama! Ma!

Mom padded into the room with a hush, her bare feet tiptoeing everywhere she went. Her hands found my forehead, cool, calm, and certain, and began to brush my hair away with gentle strokes. 

“There are demons on the wall, mama,” I sniffled. 

She reassured me that Jesus would send them away, that he’d make sure I was safe, that everything was okay. Her hands moved from my forehead to my back, rubbing up and down as she began to sing me a church song: “Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come, follow me. And I will give you rest.” 

The words of this song fluttered through me in Colorado as I watched the shadows shape shift into a rock. The beginning lines of the song struck me suddenly, a crescendo of memory lighting up neuron pathways long-still: You shall cross the barren desert,/but you shall not die of thirst. / You shall wander far in safety/ though you do not know the way.

I stumbled on a rock and Trapper shot his arm to catch me. 

I almost burst into a sob, instead making a sound like a choked back bit of surprise from the fall. I checked in with myself: there was a canyon carved into my chest and the grief I’d held onto through the years wailed like wind through it. My mother was not able to hold my hand, walk with me to confront my fears, like she did so long ago with the bees.

But, her cooling touch could surface in the middle of the night on a rocky trail, rubbing my back, reassuring me I was brave. Be not afraid.

I was in a state of great fatigue. Fatigue plays awful games to the mind. I wasn’t eating anywhere near enough for calories on the trail. I was twenty hours into nonstop motion (sans the aid station sit downs). My mind, undernourished and flickering like an old TV set, caught sight of new shapes in the woods. Hallucinations. Like the images on the wall as a child.

But this time, the Lorax sat on a rock and Dr Suess trees draped this way and that. Every now and then, a lobster scuttled across the trail. These were far from demons. These were far from reckless men. These were far from my father’s anger and the Church’s rules and the sting of the patriarchy. There was not a thing to be frightened of on that trail. There were only runners, nature, dirt, wind, and stars. Creatures may be lurking but I could not find any part of me that was scared of them. 

I was safe here. 

I had my body. My marvelous body and the triumphant mind that came along with it. I had my pack and my running shoes and warm clothes and Trapper and I had Chris and Cindi and Hallie and Don waiting for me at the finishline.

I was safe here, in my body, on this trail. My mother's cooling touch faded.

Trapper pressed power on the speaker attached to his pack and within moments music fed me forward; the Lorax and Dr Suess trees and the lobsters and memories of demons all faded into the trees behind us. 

Turquoise Lake at sunrise

There will forever be something special about watching the sun rise. Then fall. Then rise again. Because: We rise. We fall. We rise again — don’t we?

I made it back to Torquoise Lake. In my mind, well ahead of this race, I believed that once I got through the final aid station, it would be mere moments until I arrived at the finishline. That I could pull my way through the final 12 miles and get the damn thing done. 

Nothing in my life to date has felt longer than those final miles of Leadville. 

I shuffled. I would run for about a minute, then pull back into a walk. The grapes were long gone. The gels had disappeared into my belly and my teeth hurt from the day of ingesting simple sugars. I might have had more in my pockets, but I can’t remember if I checked or not. There was one and only one quest – to move my body, to not stop, to get to the finish before the 30-hour cut off mark. 

These last miles were a blur of delirium. Nothing looked familiar, even though I had been on those very trails 24 hours before, as well as a handful of times in my training. The night stretched onward into a pit of forever. I’m sure Trapper and I talked in those miles. I’m sure he motivated me, supported me, praised me for running again after a 3-minute walking spell. My brain did not and could not hold onto the information so that it could remain a retrievable memory. 

What I do remember, what my brain held onto, was the slice of purple light rising over the lake that morning. And every spirit that light brought with it. 

Beginnings are everywhere. Even in the dark depths of a stretching forever, like this race. Even in the slog of one foot in front of the other. A beginning can, and does, emerge. It all depends on what we choose to see.

My eyes were leaking. I was flooded with flashing images, one after the other, like an old timey picture show: Ben, running ahead of me, his smile perceptible even from the back side. Keep going, he was saying, checking his heart rate and smiling big. This is the path, this is the way. 

My father, standing on the edge of the trail, a softness on his face, my mother’s hand in his. For a moment I imagined him whispering to me: I love you, Barbara. I’m sorry.

Did I hear that right? Was that the wind?

I stumbled over a gathering of rocks on the trail and managed to stay upright. Trapper coaxed me forward. 

More emerged. 

Nieces and nephews crawling atop each other, a pandemonium of toddlers, my siblings gathered as they grasped and held and chased their babies, glancing my way, cheering me on. Proud.

My high school coach with a stopwatch in hand, urging: Let's go B Powell! My college coach with his Bentley College cap firmly pulled over his forehead, nodding with his arms folded across his chest. Champ, keep working.

The women who knew – who held the secrets of their religions and fathers and lovers and abusers – fists in the air, running in a united pack. I lifted my trekking poles, amazed at the fortitude swirling around me. 

And then Chris, his soft eyes and balanced spirit, materialized at my side. He gently pressed his hand to my back, a feather-light kiss on my cheek: C’mon, honey. You got this.

I was safe on this trail. I was powerful on this trail. I was broken down and tired as all hell, but I was moving forward. I had too many people at my side to quit now.

My walk quickened to a slow jog and Trapper whooped in support. Perhaps he thought the press of purple morning light was seeping into my legs and giving me my mojo back. I held it all in, holding my pictures with reverence. My people are here.

I am becoming brand new, a beginning, all over again. 

Taking the next step forward. 

That's all I needed to do to make it across the finishline in 28 hours, 15 minutes, and 46 seconds.

-

“You’re about to be a 100 mile finisher!” 

Bleary eyed, I made a point to look up ahead of my aching body. There, in the short-yet-wild distance was the finish line on 5th and Harrison. The place where it all began yesterday. My feet throbbed. My legs were heavy and stiff – but I was still moving.

My vision became tunneled. I was aware of people cheering for me from the sidewalks but I couldn’t make them out. The only shapes I had eyes for were the looming finish line arches and the people by my side. 

Trapper was at my left. I had no idea how he was feeling or what was going on inside of him. Over the night, he never let on. He did the job he came out to do and showered me with positive support the entire way. 

Cindi was behind me, phone in hand, telling me I was about to be a finisher. Her tenacity and intense focus on the race, on my success, was evident at every aid station I saw her at. She was the one to get me warm, get me fed when I was able to eat, and make sure I was set up for the next bout of miles before I would see her and the crew again. 

The author and her Chris, running into the Leadville finish line area

And then, there was Chris. Sweet, incredible Chris. He believed in me. Gave me the space I needed this summer. We had our rocky moments. And even throughout uncertainty, he showed up for me. He was at my side when it counted, when it mattered most. Tears sprung to my eyes as I realized that he had always been like that. He didn't just say he was cheering me on. He showed up and did it.

“Let’s run!” Trapper’s encouragement, right to the very end, lifted my legs off the ground. Together, the four of us began to run our way toward the storied finish line. I heard my name from the crowd, seeing the familiar faces from the Life Time Foundation. I couldn’t help but look over at Chris and watch him run at 10,000 feet altitude. He was gasping for breath, eyes focused on the ground, doing what he needed to do to encourage me to complete this unforgettable race. His own way in that moment of delivering a feathery kiss to my cheek, encouraging me on.

And then –  I was done.

The race was over. 

Ken and Merilee, the race founders, were congratulating me and placing a medal around my head. Don was hugging me. Cameras snapped to the tune of a crowded roadside of people. My legs pulsed. My heart slowed. My eyes blurred. 

It was over. 

100 miles. 28 hours. Hundreds of smiles and thousands of eclectic moments. Hours of aching feet. One sunrise to sunset to another sunrise. The weekends of double long runs and living at altitude and the mountain life I had created all for this moment. 

It was over.  

I hobbled over to the grass and somehow melted onto it. Someone handed me a beer. Another person handed me a donut. After consuming a couple hundred calories over the last 10 hours, one would think that I would want to devour those treats. But, instead, I nibbled. I sipped. I looked up at the sky and the new day's sun nourished me. I closed my eyes. I listened to all the humans and their varying energies move and speak and be around me. 

With a half-eaten donut in hand, I pressed my body against Chris and wobbled down the street toward our motel. It was barely noon. I had been awake for about 33 hours and my brain felt drunk. My eyesight streaked with light blues and pinks, creating my very own sunset filter on the late morning sky. I wanted more than anything to lay down, to stop the motion, and to sleep. 

The author with Chris (left) and Trapper (right) and Cindi (photographer) nearing the finishline

The next day I knew I had to move my body. After such an enormous effort, one of the last things you want to do is stay stationary. “Motion is lotion,” I heard the wisdom rumble in my ears. We walked a couple blocks to Coffee on the Hill, a local favorite in Leadville. Coffee and pastries in hand, we sat outside and watched the town come to life. Already the finishline was broken down, barely a remnant of yesterday’s affair remaining. A warm tear fell down my cheek. 

One of my sisters called just then, “Barbara! I signed up for my first trail half marathon!”

“Hell yeah,” I cheered, “That’s what’s up!”

She had tracked me all day with her family, checking in on me from their cozy home in Cape Cod.

“It was wild,” she told me, “We had a whole day of life and activities and then went to sleep and when we woke up – you were STILL running!”

A race like Leadville has a way of manipulating time, transporting runners to the past, projecting them into a desired future, and slowing them into the reality of the present.

“It was wild,” I coughed out a laugh. “I think I’m a different now.”

The author celebrating her finish with Cindi (left) and Chris (right)