—GABE JENNINGS, 2000 U.S. Olympic Trial 1,500- meter winnerBY 5 A.M., Mamá Tita had pancakes and papayas and hot pinole on the table. For their preracemeal, Arnulfo and Silvino had requested pozole—a rich beef broth with tomatoes and fat cornkernels—and Tita, chirpy as a bird despite only getting three hours of sleep, whipped it right up.
Silvino had changed into a special race outfit, a gorgeous turquoise blouse and a white zapete skirtembroidered with flowers along the hem.
“Guapo,” Caballo said admiringly; looking good. Silvino ducked his head bashfully. Caballo pacedthe garden, sipping coffee and fretting. He’d heard that some farmers were planning a cattle driveon one of the trails, so he’d tossed awake all night, planning last-minute detours. When he got upand trudged down for breakfast, he discovered that Luis Escobar’s dad had already ridden to therescue with old Bob, Caballo’s fellow wandering gringo from Batopilas. They’d come across thevaqueros the evening before while shooting photos in the backcountry and warned them off thecourse. Now without a stampede to sweat over, Caballo was searching for something else. Hedidn’t have to look far.
“Where are the Kids?” he asked.
Shrugs.
“I better go get them,” he said. “I don’t want them killing themselves without breakfast again.”
When Caballo and I stepped outside, I was stunned to find the entire town there to greet us. Whilewe’d been inside having breakfast, garlands of fresh flowers and paper streamers had been strungacross the street, and a mariachi band in dress sombreros and torero suits had begun strumming afew warm-up tunes. Women and children were already dancing in the street, while the mayor wasaiming a shotgun at the sky, practicing how he could fire it without shredding the streamers.
I checked my watch, and suddenly found it hard to breathe: thirty minutes till the start. The thirty-five-mile hike to Urique had, as Caballo predicted, “chewed me up and crapped me out,” and inhalf an hour, I had to do it all over again and go fifteen miles farther. Caballo had laid out adiabolical course; we’d be climbing and descending sixty-five hundred feet in fifty miles, exactlythe altitude gain of the first half of the Leadville Trail 100. Caballo was no fan of the Leadvillerace directors, but when it came to choosing terrain, he was just as pitiless.
Caballo and I climbed the hill to the little hotel. Jenn and Billy were still in their room, arguingover whether Billy needed to carry the extra water bottle which, it turned out, he couldn’t findanyway. I had a spare I was using to store espresso, so I hustled to my room, dumped the coffee,and tossed it to Billy.
“Now eat something! And hustle up!” Caballo scolded. “The mayor is gonna blast that thing atseven sharp.”
Caballo and I grabbed our gear—a hydration backpack loaded with gels and PowerBars for me, awater bottle and tiny bag of pinole for Caballo—and we headed back down the hill. Fifteenminutes to go. We rounded the corner toward Tita’s restaurant, and found the street party hadgrown into a mini-Mardi Gras. Luis and Ted were twirling old women and fending off Luis’s dad,who kept cutting in. Scott and Bob Francis were clapping and singing along as best they couldwith the mariachis. The Urique Tarahumara had set up their own percussion brigade, beating timeon the sidewalk with their palia sticks.
Caballo was delighted. He pushed into the throng and began a Muhammad Ali shuffle, bobbingand weaving and punching his fists in the air. The crowd roared. Mamá Tita blew him kisses.
“.ándale! We’re going to dance all day!” Caballo shouted through his cupped hands. “But only ifnobody dies. Take care out there!” He turned to the mariachis and dragged a finger across histhroat. Kill the music. Showtime.
Caballo and the mayor began corraling dancers off the street and waving runners to the startingline. We crowded together, forming into a crazy human quilt of mismatched faces, bodies, andcostumes. The Urique Tarahumara were in their shorts and running shoes, still carrying theirpalias. Scott stripped off his shirt. Arnulfo and Silvino, dressed in the bright blouses they’dbrought especially for the race, squeezed in beside Scott; the Deer hunters weren’t letting the Deerout of their sight for a second. By unspoken agreement, we all picked an invisible line in thecracked asphalt and toed it.
My chest felt tight. Eric worked his way over beside me. “Look, I got some bad news,” he said.
“You’re not going to win. No matter what you do, you’re going to be out there all day. So youmight as well just relax, take your time, and enjoy it. Keep this in mind—if it feels like work,you’re working too hard.”
“Then I’ll catch ’em napping,” I croaked, “and make my move.”
“No moves!” Eric warned, not even wanting the thought to creep into my skull as a joke. “It couldhit one hundred degrees out there. Your job is to make it home on your own two feet.”
Mamá Tita walked from runner to runner, her eyes puddling as she pressed our hands. “Te ncuidado, cari.o” she urged. Be careful, dearie.
“.Diez!… .Nueve!…”
The mayor was leading the crowd in the countdown.
“.Ocho!… .Siete!…”
“Where are the Kids?” Caballo yelled.
I looked around. Jenn and Billy were nowhere in sight.
“Get him to hold off!” I shouted back.
Caballo shook his head. He turned away and got into race-ready position. He’d waited years andrisked his life for this moment. He wasn’t postponing it for anyone.
“.BRUJITA!” The soldiers were pointing behind us.
Jenn and Billy came sprinting down the hill as the crowd hit “Cuatro.” Billy wore surf baggies andno shirt, while Jenn had on black compression shorts and a black jog bra, her hair knotted in twotight Pippi braids. Distracted by her military fan club, Jenn whipped the drop bag with her foodand spare socks to the wrong side of the street, startling spectators, who hopped over it as it flewbetween their legs and disappeared. I raced over, snagged it, and got it to the aid table just as themayor jerked the trigger.
BOOM!
Scott leaped and screamed, Jenn howled, Caballo hooted. The Tarahumara just ran. The Uriqueteam shot off in a pack, disappearing down the dirt road into the predawn shadows. Caballo hadwarned us that the Tarahumara would go out hard, but whoa! This was just ferocious. Scott fell inbehind them, with Arnulfo and Silvino tucked in on his heels. I jogged slowly, letting the packflow past until I was in last place. It would be great to have some companionship, but at this point,I felt safer alone. The worst mistake I could make would be getting lulled into someone else’s race.
The first two miles were a flat ramble out of town and along the dirt road to the river. The UriqueTarahumara hit the water first, but instead of charging straight into the shallow fifty-yard crossing,they suddenly stopped and began rooting around the shore, flipping over rocks.
What the hell…? wondered Bob Francis, who’d gone ahead with Luis’s dad to take photos fromthe far side of the river. He watched as the Urique Tarahumara pulled out plastic shopping bagsthey’d stashed under rocks the night before. Tucking their palias under their arms, they slippedtheir feet into the bags, pulled them tight by the handles, and began sloshing across the river,demonstrating what happens when new technology replaces something that has worked fine for tenthousand years: afraid of getting their precious Salvation Army running shoes wet, the UriqueTarahumara were hobbling along in homemade waders.
“Jesus,” Bob murmured. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The Urique Tarahumara were still stumbling over slippery rocks when Scott hit the riverbank. Hesplashed straight into the water, Arnulfo and Silvino hard behind. The Urique Tarahumara reachedshore, kicked the bags off their feet, and stuffed them into their shorts to use again later. Theybegan scrambling up the steep sand dune with Scott closing fast, sand spraying from his churningfeet. By the time the Urique Tarahumara hit the dirt trail leading up the mountain, Scott and thetwo Quimares had made contact.
Jenn, meanwhile, was already having a problem. She, Billy, and Luis had crossed the river side byside with a pack of Tarahumara, but as Jenn tore up the sand dune, her right hand was bugging her.
Ultra-runners rely on “handhelds,” water bottles with straps that wrap around your hand for easycarrying. Jenn had given Billy one of her two handhelds, then rigged a second for herself withathletic tape and a springwater bottle. As she fought her way up the dune, her homemade handheldfelt sticky and awkward. It was a tiny hassle, but it was a hassle she’d have to deal with everyminute of the next eight hours. So should she keep it? Or should she once again risk running intothe canyons with only a dozen swallows in her hand?
Jenn began gnawing through the tape. Her only hope of competing with the Tarahumara, sheknew, was to go for broke. If she gambled and crashed, fine. But if she lost the race of a lifetimebecause she’d played it safe, she’d always regret it. Jenn tossed the bottle and immediately feltbetter. Bolder, even—and that led to her next risky decision. They were at the bottom of the firstmeat grinder, a steep three-mile hill with little shade. Once the sun came up, she had little hope ofsticking with the heat-eating Tarahumara.
“Ah, fuck it,” Jenn thought. “I’m just gonna go now while it’s cool.” Within five strides, she waspulling away from the pack. “Later, dudes,” she called over her shoulder.
The Tarahumara immediately gave chase. The two canny old vets, Sebastiano and Herbolisto,boxed Jenn in from the front while the three other Tarahumara surrounded her on the sides. Jennlooked for a gap, then burst loose and pulled away. Instantly, the Tarahumara swarmed and bottledher back up. The Tarahumara may be peace-loving people at home, but when it came to racing, itwas bare knuckles all the way.
“I hate to say it, but Jenn is going to blow up,” Luis told Billy as they watched Jenn dart ahead forthe third time. They were only three miles into a 50-mile race, and she was already going toe-totoewith a five-man Tarahumara chase pack. “You don’t run like that if you want to finish.”
“Somehow she always pulls it off,” Billy said.
“Not on this course,” Luis said. “Not against these guys.”
Thanks to the genius of Caballo’s planning, we’d all get to witness the battle in real time. Caballohad laid out his course in a Y pattern, with the starting line dead in the middle. That way, thevillagers would see the race several times as it doubled back and forth, and the racers wouldalways know how far they were trailing the leaders. That Y-formation also provided anotherunexpected benefit: at that very moment, it was giving Caballo plenty of reason to be verysuspicious of the Urique Tarahumara.
Caballo was about a quarter mile back, so he had a perfect view of Scott and the Deer hunters asthey closed the gap with the Urique Tarahumara on the hill across the river. When he saw themheading back toward him after the first turnaround, Caballo was astounded: in the space of justfour miles, the Urique crew had opened up a. four-minute lead. They’d not only dropped the twobest Tarahumara racers of their generation, but also the greatest climber in the history of Westernultrarunning.
“No. Way. In. HELL!” growled Caballo, who was running in a pack of his own with Barefoot Ted,Eric, and Manuel Luna. When they got to the five-mile turnaround in the tiny Tarahumarasettlement of Guadalupe Coronado, Caballo and Manuel started asking the Tarahumara spectatorssome questions. It didn’t take them long to find out what was going on: the Urique Tarahumarawere taking side trails and shaving the course. Rather than fury, Caballo felt a pang of pity. TheUrique Tarahumara had lost their old way of running, he realized, and their confidence along withit. They weren’t Running People anymore; they were just guys trying desperately to keep up withthe living shadows of their former selves.
Caballo forgave them as a friend, but not as a race director. He put out the word: the UriqueTarahumara were disqualified.
I got a shock of my own when I hit the river. I’d been concentrating so much on watching myfooting in the dark and reviewing my mental checklist (bend those knees … bird steps … leave notrace) that when I started to wade through the knee-deep water, it suddenly hit me: I’d just run twomiles and it felt like nothing. Better than nothing—I felt light and loose, even more springy andenergized than I had before the start.
“Way to go, Oso!” Bob Francis was calling from the opposite bank. “Little bitty hill ahead.
Nothing to worry about.”
I scrambled out of the water and up the sand dune, growing more hopeful with every step. Sure, Istill had forty-eight more miles, but the way it was going, I might be able to steal the first dozen orso before I had to make any real effort. I started climbing the dirt trail just as the sun was slantingover the top of the canyon. Instantly, everything lit up: the glittering river, the shimmering greenforest, the coral snake coiled at my feet….
I yelped and leaped off the trail, sliding down the steep slope and grabbing at scrub brush to stopmy fall. I could see the snake above me, silent and curled, ready to strike. If I climbed back up, Irisked a fatal bite; if I climbed down toward the river, I could plunge off the side of the cliff. Theonly way out was to maneuver sideways, working my way from one scrub-brush handhold to thenext.
The first clump held, then the next. When I’d made it ten feet away, I cautiously hauled myselfback onto the trail. The snake was still blocking the trail, and for good reason—it was dead.
Someone had already snapped its back with a stick I wiped the dirt out of my eyes and checked thedamage: rock rash down both shins, thorns in my hands, heart pounding through my chest. I pulledthe thorns with my teeth, then cleaned my gashes, more or less, with a squirt from my water bottle.
Time to get going. I didn’t want anyone to come across me bleeding and panicky over a rottingsnake.
The got stronger the higher I climbed, but after the early-morning chill, it more exhilarati(sun) ngthanexhausting.IkeptthinkingaboutEric’sadvice—“Ifitfeelslikework,(was) you’reworking too hard”—so I decided to get outside my head and stop obsessing about my stride. Ibegan drinking in the view of canyon around me, watching the sun turn the top of the foothillacross the river to gold. Pretty soon, I realized, I’d be nearly as high as that peak.
Moments later, Scott burst around a bend in the trail. He flashed me a grin and a thumbs-up, thenvanished. Arnulfo and Silvino were right behind him, their blouses rippling like sails as they flewpast. I must be close to the five-mile turnaround, I realized. I climbed around the next curve, andthere it was: Guadalupe Coronado. It was little more than a whitewashed schoolhouse, a few smallhomes, and a tiny shop selling warm sodas and dusty packs of cookies, but even from a mile away,I could already hear cheers and drumbeats.
A pack of runners was just pulling out of Guadalupe and setting off in pursuit of Scott and theQuimares. Leading them, all by herself, was the Brujita.
The second Jenn saw her chance, she pounced. On the hike over from Batopilas, she’d noticed thatthe Tarahumara run downhill the same way they run up, with a controlled, steady flow. Jenn, onthe other hand, loves to pound the descents. “It’s the only strength I’ve got,” she says, “so I milk itfor all I’m worth.” So instead of exhausting herself by dueling with Herbolisto, she decided to lethim set the pace for the climb. As soon as they reached the turnaround and started the longdownhill, she broke out of the chase pack and began speeding off.
This time, the Tarahumara let her go. She pulled so far ahead that by the time she hit the nextuphill—a rocky single track climbing to the second branch of the Y at mile 15—Herbolisto and thepack couldn’t get close enough to swarm her. Jenn was feeling so confident that when she reachedthe turnaround, she stopped to take a breather and refill her bottle. Her luck with water so far hadbeen fabulous; Caballo had asked Urique villagers to fan out through the canyons with jugs ofpurified water, and it seemed that every time Jenn took her last swallow, she came across anothervolunteer.
She was still gurgling her full bottle when Herbolisto, Sebastiano, and the rest of the chase packfinally caught her. They spun around without stopping, and Jenn let them go. Once she wasrewatered, she began pounding down the hill. Within two miles, she’d once again reeled them inand left them behind. She began mentally scanning the course ahead to calculate how long shecould keep pulling away. Let’s see … upcoming was two miles of descent, then four flat milesback into the village, then—Wham! Jenn landed facedown on the rocks, bouncing and sliding on her chest before coming to astunned stop. She lay there, blinded with pain. Her kneecap felt broken and an arm was smearedwith blood. Before she could gather herself to try getting to her feet, Herbolisto and the chase packcame storming down the trail. One by one, they hurdled Jenn and disappeared, never looking back.
They’re thinking, That’s what you get for not knowing how to run on the rocks, Jenn thought.
Well, they’ve got a point. Gingerly, she pulled herself to her feet to assess the damage. Her shinslooked like pizza, but her kneecap was only bruised and the blood she thought was pouring fromher hand turned out to be chocolaty goo from an exploded PowerGel packet she’d stashed in herhandheld. Jenn walked a few cautious steps, then jogged, and felt better than she expected. She feltso good, in fact, that by the time she reached the bottom of the hill, she’d caught and passed everyone of the Tarahumara who’d jumped over her.
“.BRUJITA!” The crowd in Urique went crazy when Jenn came racing back through the village,bloody but smiling as she hit the twenty-mile mark. She paused at the aid station to dig a fresh gooout of her drop bag, while a deliriously happy Mamá Tita dabbed at Jenn’s gory shins with herapron and kept shouting “.Cuarto! .Estás en cuarto lugar!”
“I’m a what? A room?” Jenn was halfway out of town again before her rickety Spanish let herfigure out what Mama Tita was talking about: she was in fourth place. Only Scott, Arnulfo, andSilvino were still ahead of her, and she was nibbling steadily at their lead. Caballo had picked herspirit name perfectly: twelve years after Leadville, the Bruja was back with a vengeance.
But only if she could handle the heat. The temperature was nearing 100 degrees just as Jenn wasentering the furnace—the jagged up-and-down climb to the Los Alisos settlement. The trailhugged a sheer rock wall that plunged and soared and plunged again, gaining and losing somethree thousand feet. Any of the hills in the Los Alisos stretch would rank among the hardest Jennhad ever seen, and there were at least half a dozen of them, strung one behind the other. The heatshimmering off the rocks felt as if it was blistering her skin, but she had to stick tight to the canyonwall to avoid slipping off the edge and into the gorge below.
Jenn had just reached the top of one of the hills when she suddenly had to leap against the wall:
Arnulfo and Silvino were blazing toward her, running shoulder to shoulder. The Deer hunters hadtaken everyone by surprise; we’d expected the Tarahumara to haunt Scott’s heels all day and thentry to blast past him at the finish, but instead, the Deer hunters had pulled a fast one and jumpedout first.
Jenn pressed her back against the hot rock to let them pass. Before she had time to wonder whereScott was, she was leaping back against the wall again. “Scott is running up this goddamn thingwith the most intensity I’ve ever seen in a human being,” Jenn said later. “He’s booking, going,‘Huh-Huh-Huh-Huh.’ I’m wondering if he’s even going to acknowledge me, he’s so in the zone.
Then he looks up and starts screaming, ‘Yaaaah, Brujita, whooooo!’”
Scott stopped to brief Jenn on the trail ahead and let her know where to expect water drops. Thenhe quizzed her about Arnulfo and Silvino: How far ahead were they? How did they look? Jennfigured they were maybe three minutes out and pushing hard.
“Good,” Scott nodded. He swatted her on the back and shot off.
Jenn watched him go, and noticed he was running on the very edge of the trail and sticking tight tothe turns. That was an old Marshall Ulrich trick: it made it harder for the guy in the lead to glanceback and see you sneak up from behind. Scott hadn’t been surprised by Arnulfo’s big move afterall. The Deer was hunting the hunters.
“Just beat the course,” I told myself. “No one else. Just the course.”
Before I tackled the climb to Los Alisos, I stopped to get myself under control. I ducked my headin the river and held it there, hoping the water would cool me off and the oxygen debt would snapme back to reality. I’d just hit the halfway point, and it had only taken me about four hours. Fourhours, for a hard trail marathon in desert heat! I was so far ahead of schedule, I’d started gettingcompetitive: How hard can it be to pick off Barefoot Ted? He’s got to be hurting on those stones.
And Porfilio looked like he was struggling….
Luckily, the head-dunking worked. The reason I was feeling so much stronger today than I had onthe long haul over from Batopilas, I realized, was because I was running like the KalahariBushmen. I wasn’t trying to overtake the antelope; I was just keeping it in sight. What had killedme during the Batopilas hike was keeping pace with Caballo & Co. So far today, I’d onlycompeted against the racecourse, not the racers.
Before I got too ambitious, it was time to try another Bushman tactic and give myself a systemscheck. When I did, I noticed I was in rougher shape than I’d thought. I was thirsty, hungry, anddown to just half a bottle of water. I hadn’t taken a leak in over an hour, which wasn’t a good signconsidering all the water I’d been drinking. If I didn’t rehydrate soon and get some calories downmy neck, I’d be in serious trouble in the roller coaster of hills ahead. As I started sloshing the fiftyyards across the river, I filled the bladder of my empty hydration pack with river water anddropped in a few iodine pills. I’d give that a half hour to purify, while I washed down a ProBar—achewy raw-food blend of rolled oats, raisins, dates, and brown rice syrup—with the last of myclean water.
Good thing I did. “Brace yourself,” Eric called as we passed each other on the far side of the river.
“It’s a lot rougher up there than you remember.” The hills were so tough, Eric admitted, that he’dbeen on the verge of dropping out himself. A bad-news burst like that could come across as apunch in the gut, but Eric believes the worst thing you can give a runner midrace is false hope.
What causes you to tense up is the unexpected; but as long as you know what you’re in for, youcan relax and chip away at the job.
Eric hadn’t exaggerated. For over an hour, I climbed up and down the foothills, convinced I waslost and on the way to disappearing into the wilderness. There was only one trail and I was on it—but where the hell was the little grapefruit orchard at Los Alisos? It was only supposed to be fourmiles from the river, but I’d felt as if I’d covered ten and I still couldn’t see it. Finally, when mythighs were burning and twitching so badly I thought I was going to collapse, I spotted a cluster ofgrapefruit trees on a hill ahead. I made it to the top, and dropped down next to a group of theUrique Tarahumara. They’d heard they were disqualified and decided to cool off in the shadebefore walking back to the village.
“No hay problema,” one of them said. It’s not a problem. “I was too tired to keep going anyway.”
He handed me an old tin cup. I scooped into the communal pinole pot, giardia be damned. It wascool and deliciously grainy, like a popcorn Slushee. I gulped down a cupful, then another, as Ilooked back at the trail I’d just covered. Far below, the river was faint as fading sidewalk chalk. Icouldn’t believe I’d run here from there. Or that I was about to do it again.
————“It’s unbelievable!” Caballo gasped.
He was slick with sweat and bug-eyed with excitement. As he struggled to catch his breath, hesluiced sweat off his dripping chest and flung it past me, the shower of droplets sparkling in theblazing Mexican sun. “We’ve got a world-class event going on!” Caballo panted. “Out here in themiddle of nowhere!”
By the forty-two-mile mark, Silvino and Arnulfo were still ahead of Scott, while Jenn wascreeping up behind all three. On her second pass through Urique, Jenn had dropped into a chair todrink a Coke, but Mamá Tita grabbed her under the arms and hauled her to her feet.
“.Puedes, cari.o, puedes!” Tita cried. You can do it, sweetie!
“I’m not dropping out,” Jenn tried to protest. “I just need a drink.”
But Tita’s hands were in Jenn’s back, pushing her back into the street. Just in time, too; Herbolistoand Sebastiano had taken advantage of the flat road into town to move back within a quarter mileof Jenn, while Billy Bonehead had broken free of Luis to move within a quarter mile of them.
“This is anybody’s day!” Caballo said. He was trailing the leaders by about a half hour, and it wasdriving him batty. Not because he was losing; because he was in danger of missing the finish. Thesuspense was so unbearable, Caballo finally decided to drop out of his own race and cut back toUrique to see if he could get there in time for the final showdown.
I watched him run off, desperate to follow. I was so tired, I couldn’t find my way to the skinnycable bridge over the river and somehow ended up under it, forcing me to splash through the riverfor the fourth time. My soaked feet felt too heavy to lift as I shuffled through the sand on the farside. I’d been out here all day, and now I was at the bottom of that same endless Alpine climb I’dalmost fallen off this morning when I’d gotten spooked by the dead snake. There was no way I’dget down before sunset, so this time, I’d be stumbling back in the dark.
I dropped my head and started trudging. When I looked up again, Tarahumara kids were all aroundme. I closed my eyes, then opened them again. The kids were still there. I was so glad they weren’ta hallucination, I was almost weepy. Where they’d come from and why they’d chosen to tag alongwith me, I had no idea. Together, we made our way higher and higher up the hill.
After we’d gone about half a mile, they darted up a nearly invisible side trail and waved for me tofollow.
“I can’t,” I told them regretfully.
They shrugged, and ran off into the brush. “.Gracias!” I rasped, missing them already. I keptpushing up the hill, shambling along at a trot that couldn’t have been faster than a walk. When I hita short plateau, the kids were sitting there, waiting. So that’s how the Urique Tarahumara wereable to break open such big leads. The kids hopped up and ran alongside me until, once again, theyvanished into the brush. A half mile later, they popped out again. This turning into anightmare:Ikeptrunningandrunning,butnothingchanged.Thehillstretched(was) on forever, andeverywhere I looked, Children of the Corn appeared.
What would Caballo do? I wondered. He was always getting himself into hopeless predicamentsout here in the canyons, and he always found a way to run his way out. He’d start with easy, I toldmyself. Because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then he’d work on light. He’d make iteffortless, like he didn’t care how high the hill is or how far he had got to go—“OSO!” Heading toward me was Barefoot Ted, and he looked frantic.
“Some boys gave me some water and it felt so cold, I figured I’d use it to cool down,” BarefootTed said. “So I’m squirting myself all over, spraying it around …”
I had trouble following Barefoot Ted’s story, because his voice was fading in and out like a badlytuned radio. My blood sugars were so low, I realized, I was on the verge of bonking.
“… and then I’m going, ‘Crap, oh crap, I’m out of water—’”
From what I could make out from Barefoot Ted’s yammering, it was maybe a mile to theturnaround. I listened impatiently, desperate to push on to the aid station so I could chow down anenergy bar and take a break before tackling the final five miles.
“… So I tell myself if I’ve got to pee, I’d better pee into one of these bottles in case I’m down tothe last, you know, the last of the last. So I pee into this bottle and it’s like, orange. It’s not lookinggood. And it’s hot. I think people were watching me pee in my bottle and thinking, ‘Wow, thesegringos are really tough.’”
“Wait,” I said, starting to understand. “You’re not drinking piss?”
“It was the worst! The worst-tasting urine I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. You could bottle thisstuff and sell it to bring people back from the dead. I know you can drink urine, but not if it’s beenheated and shaken in your kidneys for forty miles. It was a failed experiment. I wouldn’t drink thaturine if it was the last liquid on planet Earth.”
“Here,” I said, offering the last of my water. I had no idea why he hadn’t just gone back to the aidstation and refilled if he was so worried, but I was too exhausted to ask any more questions.
Barefoot Ted dumped his whiz, refilled his bottle, and padded off. Odd as he was, there was nodenying his resourcefulness and determination; he was less than five miles from finishing a 50milerace in his rubber toe slippers, and he’d been willing to drink bodily waste to get there.
Only after I arrived at the Guadalupe turnaround did it finally penetrate my woozy mind whyBarefoot was dry in the first place: all the water was gone. All the people, too. Everyone in thevillage had trooped into Urique for the postrace party, closing up the little shop and leaving no onebehind to point out the wells. I slumped down on a rock. My head was reeling, and my mouth wastoo cottony to let me chew food. Even if I managed to choke down a few bites, I was way toodehydrated to make the hour-long run to the finish. The only way to get back to Urique was onfoot, but I was too wasted to walk.
“So much for compassion,” I muttered to myself. “I give something away, and what do I get?
Screwed.”
As I sat, defeated, my heavy breathing from the hard climb slowed enough for me to becomeaware of another sound—a weird, warbling whistle that seemed to be getting closer. I pulledmyself up for a look, and there, heading up this lost hill, was old Bob Francis.
“Hey, amigo,” Bob called, fishing two cans of mango juice out of his shoulder bag and shakingthem over his head. “Thought you could use a drink.”
I was stunned. Old Bob had hiked five miles of hard trails in 95-degree heat to bring me juice? Butthen I remembered: a few days before, Bob had admired the knife I’d lent Barefoot Ted to makehis sandals. It was a memento from expeditions in Africa, but Bob had been so kind to all of usthat I had to give it to him. Maybe Bob’s miracle delivery was just a lucky coincidence, but as Igulped the juice and got ready to run to the finish, I couldn’t help feeling that the last piece of theTarahumara puzzle had just snapped into place.
Caballo and Tita were jammed into the crowd at the finish line, craning their necks for the firstglimpse of the leaders. Caballo pulled an old, broken-strapped Timex out of his pocket andchecked the time. Six hours. That was probably way too fast, but there was a chance that—“.Vienen!” someone shouted. They’re coming!
Caballo’s head jerked up. He squinted down the straight road, peering through the bobbing headsof dancers. False alarm. Just a cloud of dust and—no, there it was. Bouncing dark hair and acrimson blouse. Arnulfo still had the lead.
Silvino was in second, but Scott was closing fast. With a mile to go, Scott ran Silvino down. Butinstead of blowing past, Scott slapped him on the back. “C’mon!” Scott shouted, waving forSilvino to come with him. Startled, Silvino reached deep and managed to match Scott stride forstride. Together, they bore down on Arnulfo.
Screams and cheers drowned out the mariachi band as the three runners made their last pushtoward the finish. Silvino faltered, surged again, but couldn’t hold Scott’s pace. Scott drove on.
He’d been in this spot before, and he’d always found something left. Arnulfo glanced back andsaw the man who’d beaten the best in the world coming after him with everything he had. Arnulfoblazed through the heart of Urique, the screams building as he got closer and closer to the tape.
When he snapped it, Tita was in tears.
The crowd had already swallowed Arnulfo by the time Scott crossed the line in second. Caballorushed over to congratulate him, but Scott pushed past him without a word. Scott wasn’t used tolosing, especially not to some no-name guy in a pickup race in the middle of nowhere. This hadnever happened to him before—but he knew what to do about it.
Scott walked up to Arnulfo and bowed.
The crowd went crazy. Tita rushed over to hug Caballo and found him wiping his eyes. In themidst of this pandemonium, Silvino struggled across the finish line, followed by Herbolisto andSebastiano.
And Jenn? Her decision to win or die trying had finally caught up with her.
By the time she arrived at Guadalupe, Jenn was ready to faint. She slumped down against a treeand dropped her dizzy head between her knees. A group of Tarahumara clustered around, trying toencourage Jenn back to her feet. She lifted head and mimed drinking.
“.Agua?” she asked. “.Agua purificada?”
Someone shoved a warm Coke into her hand.
“Even better,” she said, and smiled wearily.
She was still sipping the soda when a shout went up. Sebastiano and Herbolisto were running intothe village. Jenn lost sight of them when the crowd thronged around to offer congratulations andpinole. Then Herbolisto was standing over her, stretching out his hand. With the other, he pointedtoward the trail. Was she coming? Jenn shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. Herbolisto started torun, then stopped and walked back. He put out his hand again. Jenn smiled and waved him off.
“Get going, already!” Herbolisto waved good-bye.
Soon after he disappeared down the trail, the shouting began again. Someone relayed Jenn theinformation: the Wolf was coming.
Bonehead! Jenn saved him a long sip of her Coke, and pulled herself to her feet while he downedit. For all the times they’d paced each other and all the sunset runs they’d done on Virginia Beach,they’d never actually finished a race side by side.
“Ready?” Billy said.
“You’re toast, dude.”
Together, they flew down the long hill and thundered across the swaying bridge. They came intoUrique whooping and hollering, redeeming themselves magnificently; despite Jenn’s bloody legsand Billy’s narcoleptic approach to prerace prep, they’d beaten all but four of the Tarahumara aswell as Luis and Eric, two highly experienced ultrarunners.
Manuel Luna had dropped out halfway. Though he’d done his best to come through for Caballo,the ache of his son’s death left him too leaden to compete. But while he couldn’t get his heart intothe racing, he was fully committed to one of the racers. Manuel prowled up and down the road,watching for Barefoot Ted. Soon, he was joined by Arnulfo … and Scott… and Jenn and Billy.
Something odd began to happen: as the runners got slower, the cheers got wilder. Every time aracer struggled across the finish—Luis and Porfilio, Eric and Barefoot Ted—they immediatelyturned around and began calling home the runners still out there.
From high on the hill, I could see the twinkle of the red and green lights strung above the road toUrique. The sun had set, leaving me running through that silvery-gray dusk of the deep canyons, amoonlike glow that lingers, unchanging, until you feel everything is frozen in time except you.
And then, from out of those milky shadows, emerged the lone wanderer of the High Sierras.
“Want some company?” Caballo said.
“Love it.”
Together, we clattered across the swaying bridge, the cool air off the river making me feel oddlyweightless. When we hit the last stretch into town, trumpets began blasting. Side by side, stride forstride, Caballo and I ran into Urique.
I don’t know if I actually crossed a finish line. All I saw was a pig-tailed blur as Jenn came flyingout of the crowd, knocking me staggering. Eric caught me before I hit the ground and pushed acold bottle of water against the back of my neck. Arnulfo and Scott, their eyes already bloodshot,pushed a beer into each of my hands.
“You were amazing,” Scott said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Amazingly slow.” It had taken me over twelve hours, meaning that Scott andArnulfo could have run the course all over again and still beaten me.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Scott insisted. “I’ve been there, man. I’ve been there a lot. It takes moreguts than going fast.”
I limped over toward Caballo, who was sprawled under a tree as the party raged around him. Soon,he’d get to his feet and give a wonderful speech in his wacky Spanish. He’d bring forward BobFrancis, who’d walk back into town just in time to present Scott with a ceremonial Tarahumarabelt and Arnulfo with a pocketknife of his own. Caballo would hand out prize money, and getchoked up when the Party Kids, who could barely pay for the bus back to El Paso, immediatelygave their cash to the Tarahumara runners who’d finished behind them. Caballo would roar withlaughter as Herbolisto and Luis danced the Robot.
But that would all come later. For now, Caballo was content to just sit alone under a tree, smilingand sipping a beer, watching his dream play out before his eyes.
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