Recently I took part in an event that had a profound impact on me. On Friday and Saturday I participated in the Relay for Life. It is an event that my wife has participated in over the past few years and now that we're married I joined in. The Relay for Life is a fundraising, awareness, and memorial for the fight against cancer and research with the American Cancer Society. It was started by a Dr. Gordy Klatt who loved to run and also wanted to raise funds to help his local American Cancer Society office. You can read all about how it got started here. So except for last year when she was up in Canada (meeting me ;), Brenda has participated in this event for years now decorating a tent with cool designs as she is an artist.
The idea of the Relay for Life is to have someone from your team out on the track, in this case an asphalt round loop at the local fairgrounds in Great Falls, MT, all the time. It is a 12 hour vigil as other events and activities go on in the middle of this track as well throughout the night. From 6:30PM to 6:30AM there are always people out on the track. Through the evening and into the night there were many people out on the track and kids running around. Our canopy was a place where kids could come get balloon hats, swords, scabbards, and dogs. The kids loved the swords and scabbards. As it got later into the night the kids went to sleep and a the number of adults even dramatically reduced. There were events like a 4-man relay(4 events like loading up a shirt with water running over and squeezing that water into a bucket), xumba dance exercising, bobbing for donuts, and other things to help keep people awake who were more determined to last the night. But there were a couple of us that had something a bitter harder in mind.
Going into this relay for life I'd heard rumor of a man who was somewhat of a legend at this particular event. Everyone seemed to know him and he was very distinct in that he always ran a good deal of the time at the event with his father's walking stick. I'd heard several people even claim that he ran all night(12 hours straight is a good feat). I wanted to at least meet him and talk with him a little bit, but originally was thinking I'd just run 90 minutes for my run for the day and intersperse the rest of the night with walking and doing other things.
Stepping back a little bit before moving on, we set up our canopy that morning. The fairgrounds were open to teams at 10AM to set up between 10AM and 4:30PM. As Brenda and I are early birds we got there at around 9:45, waited for the sprinklers to turn off and 3 of us(Darlene, a cancer survivor) set up our tent and put together a cardboard construction of Agrabah from the movie Aladdin. The theme for the year was disney movies, so everyone had different decorations and activities related to disney. We finished a little after 11 and decided to go run some errands in town for a while. When we returned at just after 3PM we found Agrabah destroyed. From the damage we figured a sprinkler had turned back on at some point and ripped our decoration apart. We were a bit downtrodden, but we quickly got back to work in reconstructing it. We were able to put back together what was destroyed and still make it look decent enough. We only finished a little before the festivities began.
After opening ceremonies and prayers there was a survivor lap to honor the participants who have struggled with cancer and are still alive today. Then at 6:30 everyone else joined in and there were many people out on the track as I threw on my Vibrams and hoped my IT band wouldn't bother me going so many laps turning in the same direction. It was about a 400 meter track though it was just a road loop and not a track. I gobbled down some Nachos and I ran around dodging people trying to keep on the inside on the grass especially since I'd been on my feet in the vibrams already pretty much all day. I put in somewhere around 11-12 miles in that 90 minutes taking it easy and enjoying myself. Sometime towards the beginning I had the man with the walking stick pointed out to me and I found myself watching for him pretty much the whole 90 minutes hoping he'd start running and I could sidle up to him and strike up a conversation. No such luck in that 90 minutes. It turns out that he tries to run about half of the time and walk half of the time and people just think he's running all of it because they're not paying close attention. But still, 6 hours of running is quite a bit.
I finished running at 8PM and went walking for a little while with Brenda and got to meet this man I'd heard about. He was still just walking around since the beginning and we talked for a minute. He was going to wait until sundown before he started running, he didn't want to run in the heat. His name was Keith and he was a friendly fellow. I walked a bit more and spent time with Brenda. We hung out, played some cards, helped make balloon swords, and just after 10PM I decided to join Keith as he ran. I threw on some old running shoes no longer wanting to wear vibrams and we moseyed along until midnight talking quite a bit. We talked about so many things from the Vibrams I had worn to Theological discussions finding that we were both Christians. At midnight I went and grabbed myself some pizza as I was pretty darn hungry at this point and spent the next few hours with Brenda doing various things, walking, playing cards, 4-man relays, bobbing for donuts, etc.
The 4-man relay was at about 3:10 AM and Keith hopped off the track and came over to participate as well, so after the relay I decided I'd hop back on the track and join him as he ran. He had hopped back on the track at 2AM. As we ran I found out about the walking stick he carried as he walked and ran. It belonged to his father who had died of cancer. Now he brought it with him each year to the relay for life and made sure someone from his team was out on the track with it the whole time(usually him since he only got off the track for short bathroom breaks, water breaks, and to grab a banana). It was a stick that his father hiked with and had marked all the trails and dates it had been used. Now it was a memorial to the man.
We ran around the track until 4 AM when he originally thought he'd walk for an hour then run from 5-6AM. But I told him if he decided to run the rest of the time I'd tough it out with him and run the rest of the time as well, so we continued on through the 4 'o clock hour. He also didn't know that the relay went until 6:30 AM not 6, so that threw him for a little bit of a loop later, but we still ran most of the time. Towards the end he was really starting to run out of fuel and about half an hour before it ended we took to spurts of a couple minutes of walking then starting running again. My biggest issues were abrasions. There were some in some unmentionable spots and my nipples have some nice scabs on them now. For a while I was running with duct tape over my nipples, but I gave up on that and eventually my nipples simply stopped complaining. I'd found to my surprise that my IT band never bothered me even though I ran 6 hours and it wasn't until the very end that a muscle at the bottom of my shin began to cramp up. So at the relay for life I found myself running 4 times as long as I originally intended, but it was a wonderful experience and has left me with some things to ponder.
Before this event the furthest I'd ever run was a 24 mile torch run a few years ago. But now I guess I've put in at least over 40 miles and closer to double that distance. I didn't count my laps because that would have been ludicrous. I talked with a woman for a few moments while walking with Brenda who had actually been counting my laps for a while during my first 90 minutes of running but said she stopped counting at 30 laps. So ultimately I don't know how far I ran, but it was at least 40 miles, probably closer to 45 miles, and a maximum of about 48 miles. It was a fun first ultra(though I had plenty of breaks in there). The Lord spoke to me in many ways through the day and night and I'm still recovering from it all both physically, mentally, and emotionally, but it was something I would gladly participate in again. If I'm still around here next year this time and not already going to the mission field, maybe I'll try to run the whole thing.
Running Toward God,
Jason
