The biggest climb in the race was straight up a 1,200-foot cliff on fixed ropes. Every 100 feet, she would have to stop on the cliff face and transfer to a new rope. If she made a single mistake, she would free-fall into the river below. When Schneider’s team reached the climb, she stood at the base of the cliff, paralyzed. In her memoir, Dirty Inspirations, she recalls considering her options: quit; climb the cliff while feeling like a hostage to her fright; or accept the fear, and take the 1,200-foot climb one arm reach at time. Schneider chose the last option. As she climbed, the fear ascended with her. To stay calm, Schneider focused on two sensations: her hand touching the rock and the sound of the rope sliding through the ascender attached to her harness. It took her four hours to reach the top of the cliff. Standing at the edge, she looked down to savor the magnificent view. “What it taught me wasn’t that you overcome fear or make fear go away,” Schneider told me. “What changed for me is I can have a relationship with fear where I’m holding the cards. I can control how I experience fear. I learned I can analyze my fear, look at it, create a relationship with it, have it be information rather than a showstopper. I can be the decider.”
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I know firsthand the terror Schneider experienced while climbing, although on a much smaller scale. Years ago, I tried indoor rock-climbing with my husband. Agreeing to this was, for me, a big stretch. Just standing near a window in a tall building triggers vertigo and the sensation that I am already falling. At the climbing gym, making my way up the artificial rock formation, I was strapped into a harness. My safety rope was controlled by my husband, who would break my fall if I slipped. And yet I found that despite these safety mechanisms, I could not climb higher than a very specific elevation. Around twenty feet up, my body froze, and my brain said, Get me down NOW. It didn’t matter what wall I was climbing, or what configuration the hand- and footholds were in. The neurons in my motor cortex could not or would not command my arm to reach for the next handhold; the fear circuit deep in my midbrain held them captive.
At the time, I assumed that my twenty-foot psychological ceiling was unbreakable, some biological safety mechanism inherited from risk-averse ancestors. I never found out what would happen if I tried to climb above that mental barrier. Months after talking with Schneider, I found myself thinking about her on the cliff face, scaling 1,200 feet one hand-reach at a time. Her accomplishment seemed so far outside what I could imagine myself doing. Yet the way she described fear was so familiar. I told my husband we were going back to Planet Granite, the climbing gym where I had hit my fear ceiling fifteen years earlier.
After a one-hour safety class, I was once again strapped into a harness attached to a rope that hung fifty feet from the top of the wall. My husband held the rope, ready to pull the slack as I climbed and prepared to catch me if I fell. Next to me, two parents were coaching a young boy—maybe ten years old—up the wall, and I found myself climbing parallel to him. The desire to stop kicked in soon, after I had made only a few moves. I wasn’t anywhere near my previous best of twenty feet off the floor. But the boy climbing next to me was clearly having so much fun, and I felt myself pulled up somehow by his enthusiasm. As I got higher on the wall, the instinct to stop got stronger. I thought about Terri Schneider and how she must have felt at the 600-foot mark of her big climb. I said to myself, Just make the next move, just keep climbing. It helped that I could physically sense the support of my husband through the tension he maintained in my rope, his way of letting me know, “I’ve got you.” More than once, I felt an encouraging tug on the rope, as if he was trying to lift me up.
I made it up the wall on my first try, something I hadn’t planned for. I had expected to fail, so strong was my belief in my own fear. When I got to the top, I clanged the cowbell that was anchored to the wall so climbers could signal their success. As my hand touched the metal, I realized that I had never once imagined this part of the outing. I had pictured arriving, strapping myself in the harness, and even making it off the ground. But no part of me had bothered to mentally preview something I hadn’t thought was possible. Once I was back on the ground, I felt the shock of what I had done. My husband said, “You did it!” I was too stunned to say much in return. After my first successful climb, I immediately scaled two more routes to the top of the wall, to make sure it hadn’t been a fluke. My fear never fully disappeared, but something else—a sense of determination, even fun—joined it on the ride up.
I’d been carrying a story in my head for fifteen years that my brain wouldn’t let me climb higher than twenty feet. What had changed? As far as I could tell, what made the most difference was talking to Schneider. At first I was just inspired, thinking, Wow, that could never be me. But then somehow her story opened the possibility that the same bravery was available to me. While I was climbing, being able to literally sense my husband’s support kept me going when fear threatened to paralyze me. The ten-year-old boy climbing next to me, with his unbridled excitement, deserves credit, too. His joy was contagious.
When I headed to Planet Granite, I knew that I wanted to make room for fear, courage, and joy to coexist on the climb. It wasn’t until I was on the wall, climbing, that I realized other people can hold the courage and joy for you until you can find your own. I didn’t have to generate every ounce of what I needed by myself. I could expand my idea of what the container of my experience was—make it big enough to include those who had gone before me and those who were sharing it with me, even on the periphery.
When I spoke with Schneider, she told me that after a big stretch, “you walk away from the experience, look back over your shoulder, and think, Oh, wow, look at what I did. Knowing that you did it never leaves you. No matter what comes later in life, that thing will always be with you, something you did.” After my climb, I felt this self-confidence. I must have said, “I did it!” at least a half-dozen times at the gym and on the car ride home. But later, as I reflected on the experience, what I felt even more was appreciation. Maybe one of the gifts of a big stretch is that you can choose the lesson you take from it. You get to polish the memory that stays with you. Schneider had told me how thrilling it was for her to do solo adventures, to disappear into the wild and discover that she could survive on her own. For me, the lesson that I most wanted to carry forward, the memory I had already started to look back on with wonder, was the opposite. That when I faced a wall I was afraid to climb, I found the support I needed. After that big stretch, it became easier to imagine something I had never really let myself believe. Not just that I could ring a cowbell fifty feet off the ground, but something even more reassuring. That when I found myself in a situation I didn’t know how to get through on my own, an assemblage of family, friends, and even strangers might rally around me.
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•••
One of the most celebrated moments of Olympic history took place at the 1992 games in Barcelona, when British runner and world-record holder Derek Redmond finished the 400-meter semifinals dead last. An injury had kept him from competing in the 1988 games in Seoul, and Barcelona was widely considered his opportunity to medal. If you watch a video of the event, here’s what you’ll see: Redmond starts strong, but fifteen seconds into the race, he clutches his right leg and slows to a hop. Two seconds later, he collapses onto the track. His first thought, he later explained, was that he had been shot in the back of his thigh. In reality, the violent pain was his hamstring muscle snapping off the bone.
By the time Redmond is able to stand back up, every one of his competitors has crossed the finish line. The race is over. Yet Redmond refuses to quit. He begins to hop awkwardly on one leg, grimacing as he breaks away from the television cameras and medics that have swarmed to the spot where he collapsed. Meanwhile, a middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap has sprung from his seat in the stadium and is rushing the track. Officials try to block the man, but he pushes past them. The man reaches Redmond and places a hand on the back o
f his shoulder. Redmond starts to shake it off, thinking it is another race official trying to stop him. Then he hears, “Derek, it’s me.” Redmond turns to see that it is his father.
Redmond’s father grabs his hand and wraps an arm around Redmond’s waist. He jogs alongside his son until Redmond begins to wail and slows to a walk. As they take halting steps, Redmond buries his face in his father’s chest. “You can stop now,” his father tells him. “You haven’t got nothing to prove.” Redmond insists, “Get me back into lane five. I want to finish.” The two continue to walk. A white-shirted Olympic official tries to stop them, but Redmond’s father brushes him off and shouts, “I’m his father, leave him alone!” Cameramen surround them. When Redmond covers his face in shame, his father grabs his wrist and pulls his hand down. The crowd begins to cheer, and Redmond and his father finish the last hundred meters together.
After the event, a Canadian competitor sent Redmond a note, calling Redmond’s finish “the purest, most courageous example of grit and determination I have seen.” Redmond’s desire to keep going and his ability to persevere through his pain are indeed remarkable. Yet I don’t think it’s his persistence that people are most moved by. It’s his father, the person who didn’t belong on the track, who wasn’t an athlete, but whose body sprang into action to help his son. It’s also the sight of someone so strong, a national sports hero, accepting that support. This Olympic moment touches us—people weep watching the video—not just because Redmond persisted, but because it demonstrates how much we depend on one another to keep going.
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When you listen to the stories of ultra-endurance athletes, one of the first things you realize is that no one is doing it all by themselves. While an athlete’s initial motivation is often competitive—a desire to prove themselves, or to do something that “ordinary” people can’t—they experience a more complex reality during the events. Surviving an ultra-endurance race highlights not only their individual strength but also their reliance on others. Many athletes take heart simply knowing that there are others struggling through the same event. One runner told me that when he finds himself alone on the course, with no one else in sight, he likes to think of the other participants who are also out there somewhere, facing their own demons. As another ultrarunner explains, “Things seem easier when they’re shared among more people.” Most athletes have support teams—friends, family, coaches—who help them prepare for and get through big events. Volunteers staff aid stations along the route, helping race participants refuel, lance blisters, or summon the will to continue. The athletes also help one another, sharing personal supplies or sacrificing their best time to make sure that a fellow competitor can keep going. When software engineer Joy Ebertz was felled by gastrointestinal problems in the middle of a fifty-mile race, she found herself dehydrated and five long miles from the next aid station. Another runner passing her stopped to assist. “He gave me his water and walked with me to the next aid station, completely ruining the time he would have gotten in that race.” During one ultrarunner’s first overnight 62-mile trail race, he became stranded and alone in the dark when the battery of his headlamp ran out. The next runner who arrived ran with him, illuminating the path for both of them until dawn broke. As one runner explains, “If you have socks in your pocket and someone needs socks, you’ve just lost a pair of socks . . . and that’s okay, these things all work out in the end. It really does mean that you’re part of the community, you’re part of the family.”
When researcher Jenna Quicke asked ultrarunners to choose a photo of something that represented ultrarunning to them, they didn’t submit photos of sneakers or bloodied feet. Nor did they send snapshots of race medals or scenes of the outdoor environments they raced in. Most chose pictures of themselves with other runners. “Community was what was visible in these images,” Quicke writes. Part of what bonds these athletes is the pain they endure. Sharing a physically painful experience—even something as simple as holding your hand in ice water, eating a hot chili pepper, or doing squats to exhaustion—increases trust and closeness among strangers. The bonds forged are much stronger when the pain is part of an event that holds personal meaning and is celebrated by others. Anthropologists Harvey Whitehouse and Jonathan A. Lanman write that collective rituals that include pain bond us to others by “hijacking our kinship psychology” and “fusing us to fellow ritual participants.” In other words, when you go through an intense and difficult experience with others, you become family. As one participant in the famous fire-walking ritual of San Pedro Manrique told a researcher, “When you go up there, everyone is your brother.” Another said, “The next day, you see another fire-walker in the street, and you know you’ve been through this together, you’ve bonded, you have a different relationship to this person.”
In ultra-endurance events, the sense of kinship also derives from the physical intimacy of caring for others and being cared for. As I read accounts and watched footage of support crews, volunteers, and fellow competitors tending to bloody and blistered feet, offering a shoulder to lean or cry on, helping athletes stay hydrated after vomiting and diarrhea, I remembered something Niki Flemmer, a nurse practitioner who works with cancer patients, had told me. “When faced with an illness, so much of the bullshit is stripped away,” she said. “When we are vulnerable, our capacity for connection, although perhaps harder to lean into, is deepened.” No doubt this is part of what binds ultra-endurance athletes together, as the realities of the human body dispel any illusions of invincibility. According to a survey of hospice care nurses, one of the most common concerns at the end of life is not wanting to be a burden on others. Observing the rituals of care that take place during ultra-endurance events—the accepted, even welcomed physical intimacy of the tasks—I thought again of how deeply these events rehearse the practices of human interdependence.
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THE RECOGNITION OF OUR interdependence is a commonly treasured takeaway from pushing the limits of what a human can endure. The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, Japan, are often described as spiritual athletes. They rise at midnight to run 18.8 miles through the forested mountain. The monks run in all seasons and all weather, including snow, with nothing but flimsy straw sandals to protect their feet. In heavy rain, they bring extra sandals for when their first pair disintegrates. The monks rest only once during the 18.8 miles, sitting to recite a two-minute prayer. Their daily runs are considered a spiritual practice much like studying ancient texts or sitting in silent meditation. The tradition dates to the period between 1310 and 1571, and since 1885, forty-six monks have fulfilled a vow to complete 1,000 runs in seven years. As they progress through their vows, the monks’ nightly runs grow longer. By the end of their final year, they run 52.2 miles, the equivalent of two marathons, without rest.
Endo Mitsunaga is one of the few living Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei who has completed the full seven-year commitment. In 2010, he spoke with National Public Radio about the greatest spiritual lessons gained in his journey. He pointed to a nine-day sleepless fast that takes place after a monk has completed the first seven hundred runs. The ceremony left Mitsunaga so weak, he survived only by being cared for by fellow monks. The most lasting and meaningful insight from his epic seven-year cultivation of physical and mental endurance was this: “Everybody thinks they’re living on their own without help from others. This is not possible.”
The willingness to rely on others—for morale or physical support—can be a valuable lesson that extends beyond the race course. During Shawn Bearden’s first 100-mile event, a distance that takes the average participant twenty-eight hours to finish, his running coach kept him company during the overnight part of the run. “I had this idea that I wanted to do it all myself, but under these conditions, I needed the support,” he says. During the second half of the race, it would have been easy for Bearden to slip into not taking care of himself. His coach checked in, asking, “Are y
ou drinking? Are you eating?” Accepting these nudges toward self-care can be a revolutionary act for someone who usually suffers in silence. It’s a way to practice not pushing others away when they ask, “Are you okay?” or “What can I do?”
Bearden recognizes that his long-standing “go it alone, do it yourself” approach to life has been one of the triggers for his depression. He describes the mindset as “the sense of being alone, being responsible for living up to one hundred percent of my potential in every aspect, being the best I can be, and I have to do it all myself.” Having his coach run alongside him—and not feeling like this was a crutch—was a revelation. “I was coming to appreciate that I was still doing it myself, but I had a friend there that I was sharing it with, and that didn’t mean I was incapable,” he told me. “Before, if something took any help, it would mean I was weak.”
On a recent blog post, Bearden shared with his ultrarunning community that for most of his life, he was unable to imagine a future version of himself who was older than forty-five. He had always believed he would take his own life before he reached that age. In the post, Bearden reflects on how running has become both a form of therapy for him and a source of joy. He expresses gratitude to his wife for supporting him through his darkest moments and describes how accepting her help was one of the most difficult and important things he had ever done. He encourages anyone who is contemplating suicide or struggling with depression to know that they aren’t alone, and not to be afraid to ask for help. The occasion of the blog post was his forty-sixth birthday. As he wrote, “There’s no age I can’t see beyond now.”
The Joy of Movement Page 19
