Nicaragua 2014: Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

Simeon came out again with me again on Sunday (I think he skipped church for this), and I had high hopes of collecting data on two groups.  As I walked to his house in the dark, I could hear monkeys howling loudly from every direction.  Typically this means it's going to rain.  Although I didn’t look forward to a rainy day in the forest, rain would be a very good thing for the island because they were going through a pretty severe drought.  The sendero up to the monkeys should have been a river at this time of year, but it was parched.  I’d only seen one of the red/yellow spiders that are usually everywhere from June to October (Simeon told me these spiders are so poisonous that one bite will kill you, then he laughed and said, “Mentira!”).  There weren’t even a lot of mosquitoes.  

It turned out we only got a light shower early in the morning.  During the rain, Simeon found the group we were looking for, and we stayed with them for a few hours until I got enough samples.

Then we went down the volcano a little bit to try to find the North Group, which was (let’s be honest) my favorite study group during the year I did my dissertation research.  Simeon and I reminisced about Wrinkle Belly (who hasn’t been seen since 2007), and we found the group right along the camino just as we knew we would.  They were having an intergroup encounter with some other group (who I suspect swept in from a distant grove of mango trees), and they were pooping like crazy.  Score.  The forest began to make sense to me again, and we got our samples.  By 10am (after 5 hours of work), we had collected data on two groups.  Because it was a Sunday and we were exhausted and finally making some good progress, I decided we should call it a day.

When I got back to the hacienda, they told me that Rob and Will had just left for Ojo de Agua with some of our friends.  

It would probably be late in the day when they returned by bus.  For a split second, I thought, great: I will eat lunch, wash some clothes, and sleep.  But then I had a better idea: I will run over to Ojo de Agua (it was what… 12, 15 km away?) and meet them there.  This might be my only chance to run while in Nicaragua.

I put about 50 ounces of water and some Clif Bars in my pack and took off, in the heat of the day.  It didn’t bother me much, because the views were amazing.

 View of Concepción

 Playa Santo Domingo

When I finally arrived at Ojo de Agua, Rob said, “Oh my god, what happened to your legs?”  I looked down and saw I had dozens and dozens of bug bites covering my calves from knee to ankle.  I realized this must have happened while I was washing clothes on Saturday.  I often get one or two of these bites (chiggers maybe?) while doing laundry, but I’d never had anything like this before.  All of a sudden I didn’t feel so great.  I jumped into pool and the water helped a lot.

I’d put myself into the red zone quite a bit during the last few kilometers to Ojo de Agua, and although I’d drank about 100 ounces of water throughout the day, I’d only eaten less than 200 calories.  We went over to the restaurant and ordered the only meatless thing on the menu:  french fries.  Rob also found me some real, actual coconut water, which was both weird and great.

The 4:00pm bus came at 3:42, but luckily we caught it.

I was so hungry I was about to cry, but dinner options were limited.  

My legs got really inflamed during the night, and they itched so bad I felt like I was going to lose my mind.  I honestly wasn’t sure if I could make it to the forest in the morning, but I’d already arranged it with Simeon, and I needed the data.

We went to the Beach Forest—a little patch along the road where we’d heard monkeys the day before.  It is pretty dense in there, and we had trouble finding the monkeys, but eventually Simeon did.  

As we watched the monkeys and waited for them to do their business, Simeon’s phone rang.  He got the news that his cousin had fallen from a tree and was gravely injured.  The family needed money to get him to a hospital, fast.  Simeon didn’t want to leave me alone in the forest and seemed torn about what to do.  But seriously.  He was the only family member with money, and he needed to go. I handed him the rest of what I owed him and assured him I would be fine on my own.  He said he would come back as soon as they got a car for his cousin.

After Simeon left, I passed the time by counting the chigger bites on my legs and torso.  I lost count at 100 and didn’t really feel like starting over again.

At last the monkeys pooped, and I managed to get the samples I needed.

I took one last parting glance at the monkeys, packed up my stuff, and began to tunnel out of the forest.  I hadn’t really expected Simeon to return but he did.  We met just as the forest gave way to road.

By this point, Simeon and I had collected data on 7 groups (5 had been our target), and I had close to the maximum amount of samples I could ship back to the US under the current permit situation.  As far as I was concerned, this project was over.  I probably could have done a better job with it, but I was in desperate need of food and sleep and in searing discomfort from the 100+ chigger bites covering my legs.  This was it.

 There would be thunder and lightening, but only a few drops of rain.

 

 And then, sunset.

I went back to the hacienda and slept.  And slept and slept.  Waking up only to scratch my legs into burning, blistered, and horrifically swollen little infernos.

The next morning, I did not go out to the forest.  I ate breakfast (gallo pinto and fruit) and took Will to kindergarden.

 

Then I went back to sleep.  I think Rob woke me up to eat something for lunch.  And then I went back to sleep again.

Before I knew it, the sun was setting, and I was still lying in the hammock.

After a non-nutritive dinner of over-boiled white pasta drenched in oil, I decided I was done with Mérida.  I think my collaborators would have liked it if I went back out to get more data, but I just couldn’t face it.  My legs felt terrible, I was jagged-skinny from lack of eating, and above all, I was exhausted.  I decided that we were going to go back to Moyogalpa the next morning on the 8:30am bus (the only reliable bus of the day).  The eating situation was unlikely to improve there (I’ve never had much luck with food in Moyogalpa), but if I was too messed up to go back out to the forest, I just felt like I’d rather be in the “city” than on this side of the island.

We packed up our stuff and got ready to leave the next morning.  There was some confusion as to where and when the 8:30 bus would be coming (it arrived closer to 9), so this was a welcome sight when it finally appeared down the road.

At last, Moyogalpa.  

We got a room at Hotelito Aly, a place where I’ve had many uncomfortable nights (the power often goes out in Moyogalpa, so you’re in a 90 degree room without a fan), but is somehow still my favorite place to stay.  Then we did the gringo thing and got a hummus sandwich at the gringo place, Cornerhouse.  It came with a salad that included some dark leafy greens.  That was nice.

Rob tried to work for the rest of the afternoon, while Will and I went to a museum (it was kind of in somebody’s backyard; seriously, we had to walk past a bunch of women doing laundry at a wash basin).  The museum mainly had a lot of pre-Columbian funerary urns and things like that. Then I bought Will a clay bird (that is also a little flute) at a shop in town.

 View of Moyogalpa from Hotelito Aly, Volcan Concepción obscured by clouds

I had a Victoria at dinner that night, but I didn’t feel too victorious.  Also: how did I used to like this stuff?  I guess once you’ve had Rocky Mountain IPA, nothing else can quite compare.

We took the ferry back to the mainland the next morning and then a taxi to Managua.  I still had to do two big things for the project, which were: 1) ship the samples back to the US -and- 2) fill out some paperwork at the ministry of the environment.  I was really nervous about both of these things, so I made Rob and Will come with me.  It ended up fine, I think.

Running errands in Managua.  This is the Pan-American highway.

There was a Subway restaurant at the airport across from the hotel (my how times have changed since I first started going to Nicaragua), and even though I hate Subway, it was the closest thing we could get to fresh vegetables.  We ate it for 4 meals in a row out of desperation. 

Running across the Pan-American highway with Subway sandwiches for dinner.

I also got a text from Eduardo, who told me he was sorry that he hadn’t come back to go to the Cascada with me.  He was sick.  I didn’t know what that meant— like a cold?  Or like something really serious?  I hoped the former.  I was glad I got to see him for a little while, though sad that was all it ended up being.

The next day, I managed to connect with Leda, who lives in Managua with her husband now.  It took them 2 hours and numerous bus changes all within the city, but they came for a visit.

 

After Leda and her husband left (it would be another 2 hour bus ride for them to get back to where they lived), Will and Rob and I went to the hotel pool.

 Nica Libre = rum + coke + lime

 More french fries.  And by this point, I could totally see how ketchup qualifies as a “vegetable."

 

We woke up before 5am the next morning to catch our plane.  On the second leg of our journey (Houston to Denver), there was some bad weather.  The Denver airport ended up closing down due to severe thunderstorms, and we were diverted to Colorado Springs, where we sat on the tarmac for over 2 hours and then had to refuel.  We finally arrived in Denver about 4.5 hours late, then had to take a shuttle bus to our car, and then drive about an hour home.  It was after 11pm when we arrived.  What a day.

I’ve been out of the jungle for about a week now, and the jagged-skinny has gone away (yay, food!), but the exhaustion has not.  My legs are getting better too; the swelling has gone down and the itching is much more bearable.  At this point, I’m pretty sure I’ll survive.  This trip took a lot out of me, but I am so, so glad that I had the chance to do it, and I am so thankful that Rob and Will could come along.  I am also grateful to Simeon for coming out to the forest with me everyday; none of the data collection would have been possible without him.

I’d like to go back to Nicaragua again soon, whenever we have the chance.  But maybe next time we could go to one of those fancy resorts on the beach in Santo Domingo.  I hear they’ve got a vegetarian restaurant there.

Thanks for reading.

Nicaragua 2014: I may be too old, too vegan for fieldwork

Of all the trips I have taken to Nicaragua in my lifetime, this one definitely ranks in the top 5 most stressful.  After several years away from doing field research, I wondered if I still had it in me.  The only way I could deal with it was to approach this project as though it were an ultra marathon.  Packing involved a mix of eppendorf tubes, pipettes, Clif Bars, Gu, and Tailwind.  I made sure to put everything essential in my carry-on.  You never know when your checked luggage just won’t make it to Managua.

I wore the hat I planned on giving to Eduardo.

TSA confiscated my jar of peanut butter—the thing I’d been planning on to sustain me for ~7 days in the jungle—but they failed to notice my Peanut Butter Gu, peanut-containing Clif Bars, and an actual peanut butter sandwich we had packed in Will’s carry-on for him to eat for lunch.  

We had a shitty 2 plane rides, an uncomfortable night in Managua, a frenetic taxi ride to Rivas the next morning, and a gut-wreching ferry ride with a bunch of loud, chain smoking French tourists.  Still green around the gills from the boat (it was a very windy day and the lake was rough), I climbed into another hot taxi for a ~2.5 hour drive to Mérida.  On the way, I saw Simeon in the back of a plantain truck and we waved at each other.  Good to know he was still in town.

We arrived in Merida about 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and pretty much immediately, I got my field gear ready and went out to the jungle.  My predecessor on this project had done most of the work on her own (and all of it without local help); I wanted to see how feasible it would be for me to work solo as well.

Start with the low-hanging fruit.  I went to the forest I knew well, the one where I had done my dissertation research and logged over 1300 hours with the monkeys.  It was weird and everything looked different.  The gringos who began building an eco-lodge in 2007 (recall: their endeavors inadvertently killed Scooby and his mom) have expanded.  My trails were of course all gone.  The forest has had 7 more years to regenerate.  Nothing seemed the same.  But.  I found the monkeys, and even though Uno has most likely left this world, I was as sure as anything that it was the South Group.

I watched the monkeys and waited.  The objective of this project is to investigate howler health and nutrition by looking at the composition of gut microflora in their fecal samples.  Yes, feces.  My job was to collect monkey poop.  In all honestly, I had thought that finding the monkeys in each of the 5 forest locations I was supposed to sample would be the hard part, and that collecting the poop would be easy.  Howlers poop, it’s what they do.  And typically the way they do it is that the entire group poops at the same time, and then they get up and move.  I had been confident that if I could only find the monkeys, the poop would come easily.

Not so.  The monkeys were incredibly spread out (like 1 or 2 monkeys every 20-50 meters), and that made collecting the necessary 6 poop samples per group difficult.  I could only watch a couple of monkeys at a time, and even if I managed to see them poop, I had no idea where the poop of the other group members went.

Plus, it was the rainy season.  The vegetation is dense.  The forest is full of vines.  I quickly observed that in the case of arboreal primates, their poop sometimes doesn’t even hit the ground but rather lands on mats of leaves several meters above my head.

I had a panic attack.  There was no way I was going to be able to do this.

I left the forest just before it got dark and scary, and I went to Simeon’s house.  I surprised myself with how well I could speak Spanish when I needed to.  I explained the project and that I needed his help and somehow arranged for him to come out with me at 5am the next morning.

Then I went back to the hacienda, and while we were eating dinner, I got a surprise visit from Eduardo.  He had ridden the bus from Altagracia (he lives there with his grandparents now and is finishing high school), and he came back to Mérida just to see us.  He had to catch a bus at 4am the next morning to make it back in time for his classes.

I couldn’t stop hugging him.

I gave him the hat.  We made plans for him to come back again on Friday evening, and then on Saturday he and I would get up early and go to the Cascada to find the monkeys up there.  I was so happy to see him.

 All of us were together, even if just for a little while.  Love you forever, Eduardo.

The next morning came early, and I walked to Simeon’s in the dark.  We went up the camino and found the monkeys near where I’d left them the evening before (I do love the way howlers are so predictable).  We got 2 poop samples by 6am.  I felt a little better about the feasibility of the project, but we still needed 4 more samples from this group.  All we could do was wait and wait and wait for the monkeys to eat and poop again.  

The group was so spread out, and visibility was poor.  We managed to get our 6 samples by about 3 in the afternoon (note, this is 10 hours out in the forest), but damn it was hard.  I realized that if it was this hard to get samples in the forest that I knew, it would be impossible for me to get samples, by myself, in the forests that I didn’t.  I couldn’t do this without Simeon.  I told him I’d pay him whatever his usual salary was (he’s a volcano guide) if he came out with me for the week.  He agreed.

I went back to the hacienda, exhausted and so hungry I couldn’t even feel it anymore (I’d only eaten a Mojo Bar and 200 calories of Tailwind all day), and then spent a precarious night worrying about whether or not we’d be successful at the Cascada the next morning.

 

Eduardo did not return to Mérida, and this concerned me.  That kid’s word is as good as gold.  I hoped it was just a misunderstanding about the date/time of our trip up to the waterfall and we’d get it all sorted out later.

I was at Simeon’s house by 4:30 in the morning, and we walked for an hour in the dark towards San Ramon (~5km away).  He was fascinated by my Petzl headlamp.  Just as the sun rose we began trekking up a little sendero towards the cascada.  We moved very quickly, and it was tough.  It felt like Towers.  I was acutely aware that I had eaten next to nothing for the last 3 days.

We found a small group of monkeys fairly early along the sendero.  They were eating jocote jobo (Spondias mombin) fruit, and they had just gone to the bathroom.  I was ecstatic.  I collected some samples; even though this was not the group we had been looking for, at least it was something, and now I knew we would not be going back empty handed from this forest location.

 Jocote jobo fruit.

We kept climbing and exactly at our target GPS point along the waterfall trail, we found 2 more monkeys.  Miraculously, I got a sample from each of them.  Then they leapt through the tree crowns and crossed over an impassible ravine.  There was no way we could go after them, and even if we had have tried, we didn’t know if there was an entire group over there or just the original two.

We wandered around the cascada forest for a while, and Simeon found this petroglyph.

Then I made an executive decision.  There was no point in waiting around this location and staring in the direction where the monkeys had just vanished.  It was only 8 in the morning, so we had plenty of daylight left.  I decided we would go down to a different forest in San Ramon, where I was also supposed to get samples.  If we found the monkeys there and got poop, great.  Maybe we wouldn’t have to have another 3:45am wake up call to come back to this area.  If not, oh well.  Better luck tomorrow.

It took us a while, but we did find some monkeys.  Super spread out.  Simeon left me with the 3 monkeys we found and he circled the area looking for the rest of the group.  They were scattered through the forest in little clusters of 2 or 3, maybe 50 meters away from each other.

Simeon conducted some kind of real estate deal (don’t know how he managed to get cell signal here) and then made a broom while we were waiting for the monkeys to poop.  Eventually they did, and we got some samples.  It was less than what we needed, but it was better than nothing.  We’d been out in the forest for around 10 hours at this point, and it was time to call it a day.

It was about an hour and a half or two hour walk back home.  Simeon stopped off at Chico’s and bought a can of Toña—and he doesn’t even drink.  As we walked, he asked me, “Meli, estas mas tranquila ahora?” — was I calmer now that we had samples from the groups that were the farthest away from Mérida, the groups I had been the most nervous about getting samples from.  

I was hesitant to reply.  In one sense, yes.  We had technically gotten samples from 3 groups that day, but we had not gotten enough samples from any of them.  It was better than nothing, but maybe only marginally so.  And more than that, I could feel myself fading fast.  I wasn’t sleeping at night (loud tourists), I was subsisting largely on Clif Mojo Bars and Tailwind.  Simeon and I had walked around 25 kilometers that day.  I desperately needed a good night’s sleep and a decent meal (or several).  I wondered how on earth I had done this kind of thing for an entire year.  I hoped I could power through to finish off the remainder of the project, but I was beginning to feel too old, too vegan for fieldwork.

 Wait for it...

… and there it is.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

You're Vegan, What Do You Eat? (My Dissertation Advisor's Wife's Salad Dressing)

About 9 or 10 years ago, SL (my dissertation advisor) told me about this place his family had in Colorado.  He and his wife and kids would go out there every summer; the cabin was in the mountains and had lots of amazing wildlife and hiking.  He said that Rob and I should come out with them sometime.  It was beautiful, and we would love it.  Then he limped up the stairway of the Anthropology building (he had a bad knee during those days), and I didn’t think much of it.  I certainly didn’t think I would ever go to that cabin.

SL and I haven’t talked for about 4 years, and both of us have moved to different places since I finished my PhD.  But he got wind that I was living in Colorado now and dropped me a line.  An invitation to the cabin again.  We’d have a cookout with some other Illinois folks who had somehow made it out this way (all roads lead to Colorado?) and do some hiking around the property.

So we went.  It was last weekend, and surprisingly, it was really not even all that awkward to see my dissertation advisor again after such a long time, and particularly, after my life had fallen apart.

SL was right, the cabin and the mountains were beautiful.  So beautiful, in fact, that I couldn’t even stop looking at them long enough to take any pictures.  

This is pretty much what it looked like:

 

We went on a hike and saw elk and hummingbirds; we identified deer and coyote scat.  We didn’t see any bears, but SL and his wife assured us they were there and frequent (uninvited) guests at the cabin (as evidenced by claw marks on the walls of the house).  

This was real Colorado.

We went back to the house for a cookout and some of the Fort Collins beer I had brought with us.  I had also brought plenty of vegan food to share, but it turned out we really didn’t even need it.  There was lots of stuff for us to eat.  SL’s wife had made this fantastic arugula salad, which is—at long last—the point of this post.  The salad had a really delicious, tangy dressing, and I asked her how she made it.  It went something like this:

Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, chopped garlic, and salt.

I came home and recreated it the next day.  

Perfect on a hot day, when you just want something fresh and satisfying and don’t want to heat up the kitchen by making something hot.  In my own version, I used a salad mix of spinach and baby kale because I didn’t have any arugula.  The kale is noteworthy here because recently, I’ve swung back to the “hate” side of my love/hate relationship with kale.  Recall, I was unable to eat kale for about 5 years as a result of my hyperemetic aversion to it.  I thought I had finally conquered that whole thing earlier this spring, when at long last I found myself able to eat marinated kale salad again and loving it. But alas.  Kale salad was the last thing I ate before my 5 Day Migrane, during which there was All The Vomit.  I’ve been off kale ever since.  

This salad was my first brave attempt to eat raw kale again, and it went okay.  SL’s wife’s salad dressing definitely helped make it more palatable, but I’m going to remain pretty cautious around kale for, oh, say, another half a decade or so.  The salad dressing is amazing though.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll have it again, this time just on spinach.

Thanks for reading.

Howl

Well, I ran my first ultra this past weekend (August 11th).

After my last marathon, I felt pretty jaded about running and the world in general, and I decided that the way to make it better was to run an ultra.

On a whim that may have been fueled by a couple of beers, I signed up for Howl at the Moon-- an 8-hour ultra at the Kennekuk Cove County Park, conveniently located near where Rob's parents live.  We'd have a place to stay the night before the race, childcare on race day, and the event itself would be like a family reunion with all our friends from Second Wind Running Club.

Training went pretty well for me, despite the record heat and drought in July this year (I think St. Louis has had 20 days over 100 degrees so far in 2012).  I did at least 4 long runs (21-22 miles) in 105 degree heat, and aside from a few blisters, I felt pretty good. 

We left St. Louis on Friday and made a brief stop in Urbana, at Will's birthplace (so to speak)-- Davenport Hall.  It was where I spent 10 billion hours of my graduate career.  Most of the people I knew in the department have gone (including SL, who recently took a job elsewhere), but I did get to catch up with some of the office staff and become overwhelmed by the weirdness of merely visiting a place where I'd lived so much of my life.

 

We headed on to Kennekuk to pick up our race packets, and upon arrival we ran into at least 50 people we knew  (slight exaggeration), including Cousin Don.  

The protocol appeared to be that everybody had a canopy tent pitched along the start/finish area (where we would be looping around every 3.29 miles).  There, you were to store the various items you would need for the day, such as a cooler of drinks and snacks, extra shoes/socks, chairs for lounging in (or collapsing in).  I was glad Rob knew this is what you were supposed to do (and had brought a canopy tent), other wise I would have been out of luck.

With our race numbers in hand and our tent pitched, we headed to Rob's parents, where Will opened a few more birthday presents:

"Oh boy, a dinosaur!"

 

And scared his grandfather:

 

We ate some pasta and tried to go to bed.  Unsuccessfully.  Will had skipped his usual nap for the day (refusing to sleep in the car) and was beside himself with exhaustion.  By the fifth time I had gotten up to soothe him, he begged, "Sleep with me, Mommy," so I brought him back to the bed where Rob and I were trying to sleep.  He proceeded to unfurl himself so that he took up the space of 3 adult humans, and neither Rob nor I had any room left.  He thrashed about for the rest of the night and snored and kicked me in the face.  I saw the clock go from midnight to 2am to 3am.  In fact, at 4:59am, I turned off my alarm and just got up because I was already awake.

Not a great way to spend the night before an 8-hour ultra.

It was freezing in the morning.  After several months of scorching drought, an unseasonable cool settled over the region.  Temperatures were in the 50s--almost 50 degrees cooler than what I was used to training in.  I shivered so hard my teeth shook as I waited in our canopy tent.

I was nervous about running my first ultra, especially on so little sleep, but the atmosphere around the whole thing was completely different than any marathon I've ever run.  Everybody seemed pretty laid back, and for me at least, this event was more about catching up with old friends than sticking to a certain pace per mile.  I had no idea what was ahead of me because I had never run for 8 hours before ("That's an entire workday," Rob's brother astutely pointed out when we told him what we were doing), so all I could do was go along for the ride.

I was just standing there chatting with a friend ES when all of a sudden I realized, oh we're starting, and off we went.  

The miles slid by.  It was fantastic to have ES running with me.  He is a very accomplished ultra runner and he probably could have been going a lot faster than I was, but we stuck together--talking about everything from writing to photography to beer-making to Western States.  He became like my own personal ultra marathon doula.  I am eternally grateful.  I couldn't even feel my feet hitting the ground.

The course was a 3.29 mile loop on grass and gravel, with an aid station about halfway through.  Every time you circled around and got back to the start/finish area, you had to make sure that your "scorer" saw you and marked down that you'd gone another lap.  Each age/sex division (ex: open males, masters males, open females, masters females, etc.) had their own scorer.  I'm not sure how many people each scorer was responsible for, but every time I went through, my scorer looked at my bib number and called out something encouraging like, "Melissa!  Heading out on lap number 4!"

I tried to do the best I could with eating and drinking.  I managed to eat a whole package of Clif Shot blocks in the first 4 laps or so (200 calories), and then I grabbed handfuls of pretzels from our snack stash in the tent every time I ran past.  I carried my own water bottle and topped it off at the start/finish area each time we went through.  Probably by about the second lap, I started taking one S!Cap every time we reached The Big Hill, which 1) wasn't really that big -and- 2) was actually pretty easy, because you just stop and walk up it to conserve your energy.

By around mile 16, ES was having some knee pain and needed to walk for a while.  I was faced with a Major Dilemma.  I wasn't at this race to be a hero or to break a new world record, I was just here to have fun.  So…should I keep going on my own, or stay with ES and walk?  In the end I decided that I felt way too good--freakishly good-- and I wanted to keep running.  I was afraid that I might fall over and collapse a few miles later, but I just wanted to see how long I could keep it up.

I did, however, pause long enough to take a picture of myself and attempt to Tweet it (which failed, because my phone had no signal) and to do some math to figure out how many laps I would need to run in order to make my goal of 35 miles.  (Why it hadn't occurred to me to figure this out before the race, I don't know).  It worked out to something like 10.6 laps.  I decided to try to shoot for 11 laps and make it an even 36.19.

Un-Tweetable:  Melissa at Mile 16.3

I felt stronger and stronger as the miles piled up.  My laps were pretty even around 33-35 minutes, which was a decent pace to keep.  8 laps in was marathon distance, and from then on out every step I took was uncharted territory.  I fully expected to fall apart, but I didn't.  I ran a great lap and everybody at the start/finish area called out "Buffalo!" (the battle cry of the Second Wind trail runners) when I got back to start my 9th lap.  I was officially an Ultra Runner now.  I felt like a million bucks.

Except that I hadn't eaten in a while--not really since the Clif Blocks and pretzels early on in the race.  I figured that by this point I had run over 29 miles, so I might as well bust into the stash of junk food we'd brought.  BBQ Fritos are vegan and sounded amazingly good right about then.  I dug into our rubbermaid tub and found, much to my disappointment, that I had mistakenly bought and packed Original Fritos instead of the BBQ ones.  I had a moment of extreme disappointment, because BBQ Fritos are much saltier and sounded a lot better to me.  I tried to make the best of it-- I shoved some boring, original flavor Fritos into my pockets and worked on eating them until made it back to the start/finish area again.

Surprisingly, I didn't slow down, at least not too much.  And I felt peculiarly great.  I kept sucking on Fritos (wishing they were BBQ) and I even ate some slices of cold, boiled potatoes dipped in salt.  The volunteers were fantastic, offering huge amounts of support and encouragement as I ran through aid stations and refilled my water bottle.  They even started handing out ice at the top of the hill, and that was like heaven.

At some point I realized that I had 35 miles in the bag.  I could walk it and make it.  I could lie down on the side of the trail and take a nap and still make it.  I was completely and utterly bewildered by this.  I had thought it would be so much more of a struggle.  I began to have illusions of grandeur and wonder if I could make 40.  I spent several laps doing the math and realizing that it was within my reach.

A brief bout of feeling bad hit right about mile 35, when I was at the aid station at the bottom of the hill.  They'd been handing out soda there all day long, and all of a sudden a couple sips of Coke sounded good to me.  After all, it had brought me back to life after a 2-week stint of Vortex in Nicaragua.  I raced into the aid station feeling much anticipation and when I got there, they were all out of soda!  Such the luck.  Like the BBQ Fritos.  I popped an S!Cap and told myself to keep the crazies at bay.

When I got back to the start/finish after my 11th lap, I had surpassed my goal and it was only 6 hours and 30 minutes into the race.  I stopped to talk to my scorer and asked, "What do I have to do to get to 40 miles?"  I had lost all ability to compute.  She told me to run one more lap of 3.29 miles, and that would put me at 39.48.  Then all I'd have to do is a one-mile out and back, and I'd be there.  Perfect.  I still felt good, and I had an hour and half left to do it.

So I took off for my last big loop.  Right about the time I hit the aid station, Rob passed me for the second time since the race began.  "You're an animal!" he called out.  He looked strong, and I calculated that he was on pace for 50.  Now who's the animal?

I knew I had this wrapped up.  There was no need for speed at this point, I could afford to take it easy.  My quads hurt and my feet hurt from crunching down on gravel in 4mm drop shoes with no rock plate, so I walked a lot that last loop after Rob passed me.

I reached the start/finish area at around 7 hours 15 minutes and had put in 12 laps, totaling 39.48 miles.  I told the scorer that I didn't want to try to run another 3.29, I just wanted to do an out-and-back so I got up to 40.  She said that the out-and-backs didn't start until 7 and half hours, so I just had to wait 15 minutes until that began.

I drank some weak orange gatorade and bided my time.

At 7h30m, the announcer called all of us waiting to do out-and-backs and we lined up to go.  It was a free-for-all on very bumpy, rough terrain, and I had wanted to walk the whole way, but I was afraid I would get trampled because everybody seemed to want to go fast.  I tried to jog as best I could.  I really did not like this section of the race and just wanted the whole thing to be over.

At last it was, and I went to report my one-mile out and back to my scorer, while other people kept running to add another mile or two before the 8 hour time limit.

"Great job!" my scorer said.  "You made 37.19 miles."

"Wait a minute!  I was supposed to have 40!"

"No, honey, you never ran that 12th lap."

"Yes, I did!  I ran right over here and you told me I'd gone 39 miles and all I had to do was a 1 mile out and back to get 40!"

The one thing on the instruction sheet for Howl at the Moon was that you must never argue with your scorer, the scorer is always right.

But goddammit!  I was so confused by this point.  Either she had been wrong about how many laps I'd run and she'd misled me, or she had forgotten to write down my last lap.

I stood there feeling a horrendous cloud of doom wash over me.  Here I was, having thought I was so damn tough for running 40 miles at my very first ultra, and this lady was telling me I had only gone 37.19.  There was nothing I could do about it now-- with only about 15 minutes left in the race, I wasn't going to be able to put in another 3 miles.  I was shit out of luck.

Maybe the scorer just wanted to get rid of me, or maybe she wanted to avoid a nasty outburst of tears, so she reconsidered and said.  "Well, okay.  I'll mark you at 40."  She kind of whispered it, and I got the feeling that she still thought she was right but she didn't want me disappointed or make a scene.

I walked away from the scoring table, feeling shitty, and made it back to tent, where I collapsed in a chair and sat there motionless.  Feeling shitty.

I looked at my watch and reaffirmed that I had recorded splits for 12 full laps prior to doing my 1-mile out and back.  Next year I'm taking a freaking GPS.

I just ran 40.48 miles, dammit. 

 

Rob showed up a while later, looking like death warmed over.  He'd made just over 50 miles, which is 20 miles farther than he's ever run in his life.

Within a few minutes, he turned white and his lips got blue and he started shaking.  ES and I ran over to find some EMTs, who came over and put some ice packs on him (not what I had been expecting) and took his temperature and blood pressure.  I guess he got so overheated that he became cold.  He felt a bit nauseous, and they gave him some oxygen.  You want to see something scary?  Your significant other lying in the grass with an oxygen mask on his face.

He made a full recovery and the EMTs went away right about the time that my Post Race Nausea knocked me down and everybody left to go to the awards ceremony.  It reminded me of the time that I lay dying in Nicaragua, all alone, and when I heard a German doctor outside my door, I drug myself out of the room and asked her to give me an injection of some mystery liquid that a pregnant Chilean girl had told me would help me stop vomiting.  Ah, the memories.  

When Rob came back from the award ceremony, he said that I won a Major Award (though I think just about everybody who did this race won a Major Award), and he got me to drink a few sips of V8.  It revived me enough that I was able to make it to the car and get back to Rob's parents' house.

I was really happy to see Will again; we'd been gone for so long that I was afraid he would think I'd abandoned him.  He seemed no worse for the wear and was happily playing with his grandpa.

I felt weird and sick but in a different way than after running a marathon.  Not as intense, maybe.  And more tired than anything else.  Maybe that was because we'd gotten so little sleep the night before.  Rob hobbled to a grocery store and bought some veggie burgers, and I was finally able to eat one of those with no bun but lots of ketchup.  Then I fell into an exhausted sleep and woke up the next morning, realizing it had been a really long time since I'd peed.

Thanks for reading such a long race report.  I definitely want to run another ultra again soon.  Tomorrow, if possible.  Recovery has gone surprisingly well, and I was able to run again on Wednesday morning (after Saturday's 40 miles!) without even feeling so much as a little stiff.

Also, many thanks to Rob's parents for hosting us and watching Will, to the Second Wind volunteers who cheered and shouted Buffalo and made my day, to ES for being an extraordinary pacer and friend, to Cousin Don for, well, being Cousin Don and giving me the sage words of wisdom: Nothing to fear, it's just runnin.'

Buffalo!