She retied her shoelaces. She always did as she waited for the start. Nadia wanted to make sure. Tightened them, just a little, not too much. Retied the double knot. She never forgot about the double knot. Never had understood those who had to stop mid-race for laces that had rebelled and come undone. There was no time to come undone. Even in the long ones. Like today. She was one of only a few runners at the start line. It was dark. Her Polar watch read 3:54am. She had long ago stopped using its heart rate monitor. She didn’t need it.
She knew her body. She could feel when her heart was delivering just enough oxygen-rich blood to the cells, those smallest structural units capable of independent functioning, more accurately than any strap around her chest. She didn’t need numbers on a dial to tell her in which of the four zones she was. No number could show her if she would find the courage to dig deep enough.
Six minutes to go. She was quiet. Smiled if a competitor’s eyes met hers. She had already wished many of them well for today's challenge. She didn't feel the need to compete—this was her first 100-kilometre ultra after all. A couple of runners were chatting. Nadia had nothing to say, she was ready to let her body do the talking. The atmosphere at the start of an ultrarun was different to that of the shorter races, including the 42.195-kilometre marathon. While calling it relaxed would be an exaggeration, there seemed to be less overt tension and adrenaline, certainly for Nadia.
Before a marathon, Nadia's favourite distance, she often had nightmares, particularly in the final week before the race, about arriving late and missing the start. In one she had been delayed so much on race day that she never saw any other competitor on the course which already began opening to traffic. She slowly but surely had lost her way as the course marshals had already left their spots. Waking in a panic, she had been relieved to realize it was only a dream, but hadn’t been able to fall back asleep.
Nadia had never missed a race start, even though—and perhaps because—she always dreamt about it. However, her good friend from Adelaide, Australia, Lisa, had lived that nightmare. Lisa, a 2:52 marathoner who had also completed several 100-milers, had been set to race the Wellington marathon in New Zealand. She had a very good chance of winning. The event was on Sunday, as marathons nearly always were, with the exception of Boston of course, which was held on a Monday in mid-April. Lisa had had a very busy few months and, to save time, had booked a flight that left on Saturday morning, arriving on Saturday afternoon just in time to pick up her race package. It wasn’t a direct flight—she had to change planes, in Brisbane.
It would have been fine, if the first flight hadn’t been delayed, and delayed again, then cancelled. By the time Lisa was offered a seat on a later flight, and another connecting flight, she wouldn’t have arrived in Wellington until midnight. After a stressful day of waiting at an airport, the prospect of less than five hours sleep ahead of the race felt as unappealing as a good performance seemed out of the question at that point and Lisa had decided to stay home. Nadia knew how well her friend had prepared for that marathon. It was one of her two A-races that season. Instead, Lisa had ended up going for a Sunday run on her home trails, alone. Lisa had told Nadia she blamed herself for her decision to travel to the race so late, something she would never do again.
Nadia knew people, even had friends, who seemed completely carefree about race starts, almost making a sport out of showing up as late as possible. Her good friend Stu, a 37-minute 10km runner, would be fumbling with his laces as the gun went off; while everyone around him pressed start buttons on their watches and moved forward, he was either crouched over his shoes or inside a portaloo.
Nadia just couldn’t do that. Even today, with only a couple of dozen competitors, she had arrived 45 minutes early in Haney, where they would start at the corner of Brown Ave and 223 St, to make sure she got everything done with time to spare. Not that she expected line-ups of course. And there was not much left to do other than pick up her timing chip. She already had her race number which she had pinned on her shorts. For some reason the race organizers wanted you to pick up the timing chip just before setting off, instead of days beforehand as was common. Perhaps it was the easiest way to keep track of those athletes who hadn't changed their mind about running 100km because of injury or losing heart. Nadia had been fortunate so far that life had never interfered with her plans to race; she got rid of the things that had threatened to get in the way of her running, her quest to go faster or farther, or, ideally, both.
It was quiet. No pumping music as there was at larger events. No crowds. Other than the runners' crews, perhaps 30 people in total, and a few race volunteers, there was no one here who cared about her and the other 20-odd runners getting ready to tackle 100km on foot. Haney was asleep as one would be at 4am on a Saturday morning in November.
“Ready? Go!”
Nadia had to smile as she pressed her watch and began running north on 223 St. It was such a low-key way to begin the longest race of her life. She almost missed it, even being right there. This was the moment she had been waiting for—time to start running. It was always such a relief to take those first steps in a race, to begin using the pent-up energy from the taper, the final period before a race when the volume of training dropped dramatically, and to start working towards the goal. From now on, all she had to do was to keep moving. No matter what, she had to keep running, walking—crawling, if she had to—chipping away at covering that 100km distance one step at a time. Finishing was never a certainty, there were no guarantees, and especially not today when she was tackling a distance beyond anything she had done before. But she knew she would do anything to finish.
She always did and had never given up. She had been nearly last in a triathlon when hypothermia almost got the better of her. But she had never failed to achieve the ultimate goal, the purpose one could so easily forget about amid a flurry of things like PBs and negative splits—to finish what one started. She never had nightmares about not finishing—they were always about missing the chance to start.
The stubborn mindset that came in handy for distance runners seemed to be a natural one for her. She possessed a pigheadedness that often appeared to surprise people. A petite and pretty woman with soft flowing red hair, Nadia's easygoing and quiet demeanour meant that she was often mistaken for a pushover. Despite appearances, nothing could be further from the truth, certainly when she had a pair of running shoes on her size-seven feet. Perhaps it was genetics, as being headstrong was a trait that ran in the family. In fact, if a contest were held among her parents, sister and grandmother, Nadia wasn’t so sure she would win. Her grandmother, or Oma as Nadia called her, probably would claim victory. At 94, Oma certainly had been determined enough to live, far outliving all of her 10 siblings.
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