Ultra (3 page)

But that’s nothing compared to what happens at night. My brain gets really noisy then. I’ll be lying in bed, thinking I want a glass of water. But then my brain will tell me that if I open my bedroom door, my mom will disappear and I won’t see her again. I know it’s crazy, since I can hear my mom watching TV. Still, for some reason, I can’t open my bedroom door.

But when I run, my brain quiets down. The longer I run, the quieter it gets.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
It’s like taking a vacation from yourself?

QUINN:
Yeah, it can be pretty exhausting, being me.

Anyway, the race. I was still running behind those phlegmy old guys. After a while they started talking about interest rates and mortgages, so I thought, Screw this, I’m outta here!

I put on some speed and left them in the dust. By the time I hit the Mile 2 signpost, I was running on my own.

Kneecap’s phone vibrated. I pulled it out of my fanny pack as I ran. Ollie had texted me:
GO QUINN GO!

Suddenly, I heard footsteps. “On your left!” a voice called out. A skinny man with wispy grey hair flew by.

“Nice pace,” he said out of the side of his mouth. It sounded like a sneer.

He was wearing a black T-shirt with the words
Eat My
Dirt!
on the back. And striped neon-green socks pulled up to his knees. The socks looked ridiculous, and I was about to laugh, but then the guy stopped running and turned around.

“Hey, you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Quinn,” I said.

He had hollow cheeks and porridgy legs. He looked as though he’d drunk a mouthful of sour milk.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said. “You’re just a kid.”

I stared at him and said nothing. He stared back. He was serious.

“Your parents must be crazy,” he said. “This race is too dangerous for someone your age.”

I crossed my arms over my chest.

Mr. Eat My Dirt scowled. “Do yourself a favour and drop out at Silver Valley,” he muttered.

Silver Valley, at Mile 22, was the first rest stop. No way was I going to drop out there.

“Take my advice,” he said. “You’re not cut out for this race.” Then he spun around and started running again.

I hate being passed, especially by crusty old men, so I chased Mr. Dirt Eater down the ravine. My heart was hammering, partly from the running, but mostly because I was really mad! What kind of creep would tell me to drop out?

Unfortunately, as hard as I tried to hold the pace, Mr. Dirt Eater was just too fast. For a while I could see him ahead of me, but then his neon socks disappeared around a bend in the trail.

Break time, I thought. I slowed to a walk and pulled out
my bottle. It held 750 millilitres of water, plus I had 3 litres more in my hydration pack. Hopefully, that would last me until Silver Valley.

The sun was really coming up now. The ground was a mess of dead leaves and pine needles, which had dried up and turned the colour of rust.

I stuffed my water bottle back into its holster and started running again. The trail bobbed up and down like a roller coaster, and I figured I was headed north, since the sun was to my right. The sun followed me sideways as I ran, until it disappeared behind Chimney Top Mountain. A little stream ran beside the trail, and I figured it was taking me to Hither Lake. Hither Lake was huge — almost 50 kilometres long — and over the next 24 hours, I was going to run all the way around it.

Hopefully.

Another signpost: Mile 3. Around this time I started to sing. I sang one of the first songs I ever wrote, a song called “Run Baby Run.”

Suddenly I heard a jingling sound. I spun around and saw a woman in a baseball cap. Her skin was walnut brown, and her face was freckled. She was as thin as a cedar sapling.

“Hey there,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” I said.

She ran up beside me and flashed a warm smile. It was the lady who’d been in line outside the portable toilets.

“Hey, you’re just a kid,” she said.

“Actually, I’m a teenager,” I said.

“You’re tearing up the trail, that’s for sure,” she said.

A little bell was tied to one of her shoes.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“It scares the bears away,” she said.

“Bears are scared of bells?” I asked.

“Black bears are scared of
everything
.”

She stopped running and scrambled down to the little stream. “Hang on for just a second, okay?” she said.

She splashed water on her face and tightened her shoelaces. Then she climbed back up to the trail.

“What’s your goal?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess I’d like to break twenty-four hours.”

My dad always dreamed of breaking 24 hours in this race, but he’d never come anywhere close.

The tanned lady checked her watch and nodded. “You’re right on pace.”

We started running again.

“Are you in the forces?” I asked. I’d recognized the tattoo on her calf.

“No, I’m a cop.”

“Oh,” I said. “Cool.”

Stupidest word in the English language,
cool
. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I’m Kara,” the woman said.

“I’m Quinn.”

We fist-bumped.

“Is this your first ultra?” she asked.

I told her yes.

“You’re gonna love it,” she said. “The mountains, the lakes. This whole course is awesome possum.”

Her face was the shape of a bicycle seat. Round at the top, with a pointy chin. She looked like a character from my favourite video game, except that she didn’t have the animal ears.

“Have you run this race before?” I asked.

“Yeah, I won it last year,” she said.

“Seriously?”

“It took me twenty-one hours,” Kara said. “But I got lost along the way. I ran four extra miles by mistake.”

She smiled to think of it and then she glanced at her watch. “Come on,” she said, “let’s make some time.”

With that, she blasted down the path — light years faster than I’d been running before. Thank God for all those training runs with my dad because this lady liked to run
fast
!

The trail narrowed and the forest closed in around us. Suddenly it felt like we were running through a tunnel. Dead trees had fallen across the path, and sharp branches stuck out in all directions. Kara held back the branches so they wouldn’t slap my face. I thought that was pretty cool of her.

One time we came to an old, dead log. I tried to jump over it, but that was a mistake. When I landed, my ankle folded like a soggy piece of pizza.

“Frick!” I yelped. A spear of white-hot pain shot up my leg. It felt like I’d landed on a barbecue skewer.

Twisted ankle for sure, I thought, or a broken shin. Or
maybe I’d snapped my Achilles tendon!

I hopped for a few steps. Belted out a few more swear words.

Kara stopped running and turned around. “Quinn, are you okay?” she said.

My eyes were watering, and I could barely breathe. I coughed a couple of times and leaned against a tree. “I’m good,” I sputtered. “Awesome possum.”

Slowly, I put my injured foot back on the ground. Then a miracle happened. I took a couple of steps. The pain was mostly gone.

“I was sure I’d twisted it,” I said.

Kara knelt down and pressed both sides of my ankle. She carefully bent my foot back and forth.

“It’s your lucky day,” she said. “But watch your step. It’s too early in the race to get an injury.”

We walked for a few minutes, following the creek, which tumbled down a series of rocky waterfalls. I picked my way down the steep hill, dodging tree stumps and boulders, at a cautious speed.

“If you hurt yourself later, that’s not so bad,” said Kara. “But you want to get sixty or seventy miles under your belt. That way, even if you get a DNF, your friends will still be impressed by how far you got.”

I sure wasn’t going to settle for a Did Not Finish in my first ultra. So we started running again.

A few minutes later another runner came into view. I recognized the T-shirt and the neon socks instantly. He wasn’t going nearly as fast as before.

“Looking good!” I shouted as we flew past.

The Dirt Eater said nothing, but I heard him spit into the forest. I had the feeling I’d see him again.

Kara and I ground our way up another hill. We popped out on a narrow ridge and I was blinded by the sun.

“Watch your step here,” Kara said.

Thirty metres below, waves crashed against rocks. Hither Lake spread out before us.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Kara shouted back to me.

Parts of the lake were the colour of strawberry milk, and other parts looked like crinkled tinfoil.

“This is my church,” Kara shouted over the gusts of wind. “I was raised Presbyterian, but now I worship Mother Nature. This is God we’re running on. We’re running across her back.”

I pulled my sunglasses down over my eyes. The lake was frosted with whitecaps, and little boats rolled on top of the waves. The breeze slapped my face and made my eyes water. Kara was running faster than ever, and I had to concentrate to keep from falling off the cliff.

Suddenly Kara’s phone rang. Great, I thought. She’ll slow down and walk. But Kara had no intention of slowing down. She just yakked away while she sprinted down the trail.

“Hi, honey!” she said. “Did you get your breakfast? Don’t forget to have some fruit, okay? There are oranges in the fridge.”

Seagulls flew above us, screeching loudly. It sounded like they were yelling, “T-shirt! T-shirt!”

There was a pause. Then Kara said, “You called to ask me
that
? You know what my answer is. Give the controller to your sister.”

Kara was running too fast for me. I was gasping for breath, and I was on the verge of launching lunch.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
Wait a second, Quinn. I’m not following. You said that you had superpowers. How could Kara leave you in her dust?

QUINN:
My superpowers make it easy for me to run for a
long
time. But I’m no good at running fast. I’m what they call
slow and steady
. Kara really was getting a long way ahead — even while she was talking to her kids.

But eventually Kara ended her call. “Sorry,” she shouted back. “That was my son. He and his sister aren’t exactly getting along.”

“Can … we … slow … down … a … bit?” I gasped.

“What’s that?” said Kara.

I could barely breathe, let alone speak.

“Can … we … slow … down?” I repeated.

“Sure, why didn’t you say so?”

She dialed it right back. A good thing too. I was about to blow biscuits all over the trail.

I bent over and swallowed air. Kara stared at her watch.

“Don’t wait for me,” I said.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “We’re still ahead of pace. No point in going out too fast.”

She walked along the trail ahead of me. The clouds slid across the sky like they were being pulled by strings. I stared at the lake. It was as big as an ocean. You could barely see the other side.

“We’re running all the way around
that
?” I said.

“If we’re lucky,” said Kara. “Hey, did you bring any drop bags?”

I nodded to Kara. I’d packed two of them, each waterproof and stuffed with food and extra gear. Mom was delivering them to the rest stops farther on.

“How about extra clothes?” she asked.

“I packed a windbreaker, tights and gloves.”

Kara gave me a thumbs-up. “You’re in good shape then. It can get cold out here at night, but if you’ve got gloves, you’ll be fine.”

Soon, we came to a wooden staircase. It led us down to a pebble beach. I needed a break, so I picked up a flat stone and flung it into the lake. I tried to make it skip, but it landed in the water with a disappointing
plop
.

Kara threw a stone and it skipped ten times.

“How old are your kids?” I asked her.

“Grace is seven. Jackson’s nine.”

“Are they coming out to cheer you on?”

“Nah,” said Kara. “They came to my races when they were younger, but now they prefer to stay home and beat each other up.”

The sun came out from behind a cloud. It spread its warm, liquid rays across the beach. I leaned over to stretch out my back, opened a banana-flavoured gel and squeezed the sugary goo into my mouth.

“Have you got a pacer?” Kara asked.

I knew I should have. When it’s dark and cold and you’ve already run 70 miles, it’s nice to have someone running with you those last 30. But no, I didn’t have a pacer.

“I don’t have one either,” said Kara. “Who knows, maybe you and I can pace each other. If we’re still running together later tonight, that is.”

“Won’t happen,” I said, squirting water into my mouth and swishing it around with the sweet syrup. “I’m nowhere near as fast as you.”

“Not right now, you’re not,” Kara agreed. “But anything can happen. A hundred miles is a long way.”

She bent over and whipped another stone at the lake. It skipped fifteen times. The lady was good!

“In the hundred-mile race, we don’t compete against other people,” I said. “We only compete against ourselves.”

Kara grinned like a sunlamp. “Who fed you that pile of baloney?” she asked.

“My dad,” I said.

She shook her head, still laughing. “You can cling to that if you want,” she said. “It might help you feel better when I kick your butt!”

With that, we started running again, following the trail up the bluff and back into the woods. Kara threaded a course between dead stumps and fallen logs, and I followed behind, watching her ponytail bounce back and forth. My stomach felt better, and for a while I didn’t notice that the gap between the two of us was growing. But soon I couldn’t read the letters on Kara’s shirt, and the jingling of her bell became very faint. Then she was just a splash of colour far down the trail. Finally she rounded a bend and disappeared.