Chasing Forrest…. by Nadia

Part 1: Chasing Forrest INTO Wakely

So I finally experienced one of the conundrums of ultrarunning: that you can run 25 miles in the same place, at the same pace, with somebody without ever seeing them!

But first, the back story. I’ve been curious about the mysterious, unsupported  Wakely Dam Ultra for several years, kind of like I was curious about the mysterious, unsupported Spring Loop.  I’ve followed Forrest, Ultra, and Chase’s efforts in recent years with great curiosity, my fascination warring with a lively dose of anxiety at the thought of being alone in the wilderness without any aid stations or emergency back up.  What if I totally lost the trail? couldn’t find the water?  sprained my ankle badly? got some sort of dire snake bite?  I had visions of being stranded alone overnight….shivering, dehydrated, and terrified of sounds that could realistically be bears. When I read a report that a previous winner of Wakely, who never carries anything, carried an emergency foil blanket, my fears seemed to be legitimized.

 

Yet…I found myself selling the idea to Anne last year.  What felt overwhelming as a solo adventure seemed more like an exciting challenge when tackled with a friend.  She had her own doubts, but had spent some good times in the Adirondacks and was game to give it a try as team, so we got on the waitlist, reassuring each other that we might not get in anyway, and could always chicken out if we wanted to. We ended up getting in a week before the race, but by that point had already made alternative plans to run the Bear Brook Marathon.

 

When the narrow registration window came around this year, I knew Anne’s injuries wouldn’t allow her to participate, but I didn’t want to miss another chance. I decided to bite the bullet and hope that the requisite confidence would somehow materialize. After the Boston marathon, it quickly became apparent that my winter training on roads was not transferring to trail running. I felt weak, sluggish, uncoordinated, and slow. Seven sisters nearly annihilated me.  Under such circumstances, I guess denial seemed like a good strategy, so I “forgot” about Wakely for a month or two, despite Forrest emailing me with lodging information.

 

The denial wore off around June, to be replaced by an obsessive effort to calm my fears with retail therapy. I got an adorable super-bright miniature flashlight (advertised as good for 100’s!), so I would at least be able to see the bears. I got both water purification tablets and a steripen.  I got a space blanket, wash-in insect repellent, and a miniature  first aid kit. Then I realized I would need a new backpack to accommodate all these essential items and that time was running out to test-drive it.

 

Part 2: Chasing Forrest BEFORE Wakely

 

Once I finished shopping, I remembered that I needed to do some training. Luckily, I was able to meet up with Forrest (and a changing cast of other Bimblers) to do some great summer training runs, including an encouragingly comfortable Woodbridge loop.  It occurred to me that it would be both fun and motivating if Forrest and I could join forces to run Wakely together. I hesitated to ask him, because I didn’t want to interfere with his race plan or slow him down, but late in the game I realized there was no harm in seeing what he thought. I got brave and popped the question at Downhill’s pool party and–to my delight–he said he was up for the idea. It all seemed too good to be true!  After finally making my peace with running solo, it appeared that I would instead be able to enjoy the team experience that I had initially envisioned for my first Wakely attempt.

 

While it was reassuring to anticipate running with a Wakely veteran, the aura of mystery surrounding the race remained intact. When I reviewed my last minute packing deliberations with Ultra and Forrest at the pre-race dinner (featuring the RD’s tasty homemade marinara), they both struggled to find words to describe the course. As we parted ways to our separate hotels, they left me to contemplate what sounded like a cryptic zen koan: “It has a little bit of everything; a lot of nothing.”

 

Part 3: Chasing Forrest DURING Wakely

 

The morning of the race was blissfully cool and bug-free. I felt surprisingly awake given the regrettable time of day (or maybe it was just that those riding the bus had gotten up even earlier, so things equalled out).  After the group posed for a few pictures, Forrest and I set out together on an unexpectedly smooth and easy trail parallelling a river.  For the first hour, we were chatting away and cruising effortlessly on soft pine needles. My garmin said our pace was under 9:30. I felt strong and excited about what the day and the trail had to offer. Jay had proposed stopping for an “aid station” every hour, which seemed like a good idea to me, but we agreed to postpone our first one to around the 7 mile mark, where I knew there would be an opportunity for a  water bottle refill. When we approached that point, he needed to adjust his pack and we both needed to find “side trails,” so I told him I’d go ahead, treat my water, and wait for him at the stream. I managed to work the steripen, eat a bar, and take care of business. Then I stepped off the trail to wait for Forrest, as a parade of runners started to pass by.  After five or six minutes, I started asking them if they’d seen a guy wearing a weird tan hat. Eventually Kim, who knows Jay, came by, and said that she hadn’t passed him and that he was ahead of her.  This was puzzling, but good to know. I figured he must have run by while I was off the trail peeing, so I took off like crazy to try to catch up to him. It would have been easy to overlook the stream where I filled the bottle, so I figured we would reconnect at the next stream.  I passed the 8 or 10 people who had passed me while I waited, and, after a mile or so, eventually came to another stream.  Jay wasn’t there.  At this point, I wasn’t sure what to make of the situation, but I decided to wait for a while just to be sure, since I couldn’t imagine he would just take off and disappear.  The same 8 or 10 people ran past me again, and they still hadn’t seen Jay.  At some point, one male runner was sufficiently bored of my repeated passing and questioning to suggest, “You should probably run your own race at this point!”   I knew he was probably right, since I now had no clue which direction to look (neither scenario made any sense of the data points), but I didn’t want to accept that we could have needlessly lost each other so early in the race or to go ahead if there was some possibility that he could be still be behind me (albeit invisible to other runners). I felt agitated and unsettled, but with the pressure of 25 + miles to go, it seemed stupid not to try to maintain some forward motion.  I hoped that, whether ahead or behind,  if I settled back to my natural pace, there was a decent chance things would shake out over time and we would reconnect.  After a couple miles, with no sighting of Forrest, I started to shift from worrying about Forrest having left me to considering the equally disturbing possibility that I might have left Forrest. This seemed unlikely, but it was distressing.  I felt so appreciative of his willingness to team up with me, that the last thing I wanted to do was desert him.  The uncertainty was maddening (what if he had gotten delayed with an injury and needed help? or perhaps I had radically misunderstood our plan to run the whole monty together and he was simply up ahead enjoying his own race?)   My brain wouldn’t stop spinning.

 

On the positive side, this new development seemed to clear my head of all my prior worries about snakes, flies, bears, and ominous nighttime creatures.  My body was feeling good, the heavy pack felt strangely light, and I was loving all the quiet mountain scenery. The trail would make its way through peaceful woods for a while, then suddenly pop out on a dramatic boardwalk over a remote mountain lake or marsh (on one of these occasions, I surprised a frolicking skinny-dipper, who abruptly dove under water at my approach!)  There were gentle-flowing streams, evergreen Forrests, boulder-strewn river beds, and one dramatic, rushing waterfall.  It all begged for more than a moment’s pause, and I fantasized about moving into one of the well-placed lean-to’s for week or two.  Trail blazes were abundant, and I soaked up the beauty, with no more fear of getting lost.

 

The footing got rougher in the long middle section of the race, with lots of rocks and many weathered, slippery logs bridging pits of muck. After losing Jay, I ran solo for the vast majority of the race, but did catch sight of one runner sinking knee-deep into a mud pit.  At mile 24, I was very happy to see Whisperer and my one-year-old dalmatian, Cosmo, who had braved miles of obscure roads to hike in to greet us. My first question: “Have you seen Jay?”  Regrettably, she hadn’t. I considered picking up Cosmo for some company and a motor, but I didn’t trust myself to have the coordination to handle his erratic energy.

 

The trail began to smooth out again by mile 25 or so, but it also became a bit more uniform and less visually exciting. The solitude and lack of any clear indicators of forward progress started to wear on me a little (reminding me of a similarly featureless post-store, pre-magic-meadow section of the Spring Loop).  With no zen mindset to be found, I started to race against the battery of my Garmin, as it was providing my most reassuring evidence of passing miles, and had started to bark threatening “low battery” warnings.  I tried to suppress the greatly diminished, but not totally dead, hope that I would see Forrest’s yellow shirt around the next bend in the trail.

 

Time elongated.

Eventually, I found the turn-off to the small Piseco airport where the race finished. It was a tough final slog on an overgrown ski trail with waist-high weeds, then out onto exhausting spongy grass parallel to the airport’s single runway (in this instance, one of those disheartening moments where you wish you’d taken a walk break BEFORE emerging into the view of distant spectators!)  The cheery race director pedalled out on his bike to greet me and ride me in (what must have been his 30th trip or so), but by then I was too tired to appreciate any human company. He seemed to get the hint, and gave me the space to struggle my way in.

I  had just collapsed onto the grass behind the finish line and started to drink the water bottle I was handed, when I saw a curious sight across the field: a man in a yellow shirt striding out of the wood!  Jay powered his way across the field and through the finish line and plopped down next to me to nurse his water.  We both stayed where we had landed, for a long time, soaking up the sun and the exceptional vibe of the race. Finally, I felt a sense of accomplishment:  I had chased the elusive Wakely, and the elusive Forrest, and both had been found!