The Big Sur Marathon Relay

Hurricane Hill

I have a large photo of the Central California Coast in my office.  The quality of the photo is average, but the coastline itself is dramatic.  It depicts a stretch of Highway 1 climbing up Hurricane Hill between Big Sur and Carmel.  The photo hangs there as a reminder of one of the basic lessons of endurance events, “You can do almost anything if you can just get your head out of the way”.

It was a few years ago and it started innocently enough.  My friend, Tim, called two weeks before the Big Sur Marathon and asked if I would like to be on the Marathon Relay team with he and Tom and Deb and a couple of others.  I was in good shape at the time and I knew that it was a fun crew, so I said “sure”.

The Big Sur Marathon is a one-way race that starts in Big Sur, California and follows Highway 1 north on an incredible stretch of coastline to the town of Carmel.  The marathon relay was divided into 5 segments and I was assigned to the 6.9 mile third section that includes the highest point on the course, Hurricane Point, at about 600 feet.

We had dinner the night before at Tom and Deb’s house and we plotted strategy and carb loaded with beer and pasta.  It was clear from the discussion, and from the enthusiasm for “carbohydrates”, that this team was more focused on having a good time than setting any course records, but we did spend a little time estimating each runners’ expected pace and figuring out the time windows within which the handoffs were likely to occur. 

The next day started ridiculously early.  Because of the one-way race course design, and the fact that many events were being held on the same stretch of road simultaneously (marathon, 20 mile walk, half-marathon, 10K) everyone running relay legs 2 – 5 had to board busses at 5:30 AM and ride to the hand off points.  After a short drive our bus pulled over and we were left to our own devices for the next two hours or so.  Since it was still dark and cold at this point, most people chose to listen to music or doze on the bus where it was warm.

Tim was running the second leg, and from our calculations the night before, I knew that the soonest I could expect him was 7:45.  So, around 7:00 I got out of the bus and started to warm up.  After a bit of walking and stretching, I shed my sweats and decided to do a 2 mile warm-up run up and back on Hurricane Hill.

It was a truly spectacular scene! The sun was up just far enough to illuminate the ocean, while the road and most of the coastline was still in shadow.  I felt rested and ready and there was a spring in my step as I went bounding up the hill. 

Adding to the enjoyment was the fact that the first participants in the “20 mile walk” were starting up the same hill.  As I went running by, someone assumed that, since I was the first marathon participant that they had seen, that I was actually leading that race and they began cheering!  Others walkers in front of me heard the cheers, and they continued them as I successively passed each group of walkers.  Of course, I could have explained that I was in the relay race and I was only warming up, but I decided to wave and acknowledge their encouragement instead.

As I was about halfway up the hill, with the panorama of the Pacific coastline in front of me and cheers ringing in my ears, things got even better.  As I looked off to the small bay to my left, I saw an adult Humpback whale and two little ones slowly swimming north.  Every few seconds they would surface together and their spouts were clearly visible in the early morning sunshine.  It was one of those rare moments when I consciously thought, “I have to remember this because it just doesn’t get much better.” 

Unfortunately, it did get much worse.  I was so entranced by the whales that I wasn’t watching where I was going, my left foot landed on the edge of the asphalt, and I rolled my ankle.  I’ve had a lot of ankle sprains in my life but this one stills makes me wince to remember it.  There was a loud “pop” and I fell immediately to the ground writhing in pain in the dirt on the side of the road.  It took a couple of minutes of groaning and pounding on the ground to regain my wits enough to sit up.  By that time, there was a small crowd of “walk” participants gathered around.  Of course, they were incredibly sympathetic because they thought that I had just ruined my chances of winning the marathon.  Again, I didn’t have the heart to correct them.

When I was able to re-engage my brain, I knew I had a real problem.  If I were in an individual race, I would have simply sat there until something with a motor came by that would give me a ride, but since I was part of a relay team, I didn’t really have that option.  If I wasn’t at the handoff spot, it would leave Tim tired, confused and with no idea of what to do next.  So, completely without a plan but knowing that I needed to get back to the bottom of the hill, I stood up and began hopping toward the bottom.

I mean “hopping” literally.  At first, I couldn’t even bear to let my foot hit the ground, but gradually the hop evolved into a humongous limp.  Since I was almost a mile away from the hand-off spot, time was becoming an issue.  When I began, I had about 25 minutes to cover that mile, but as it got closer and closer to the 7:45 and the beginning of the hand-off window, I kept trying to limp faster. I was so focused on getting back by the time that Tim arrived, that I didn’t spend any time thinking about what I’d do when I got there.  I knew he wasn’t going to be psyched about his 4.8 mile leg turning into an 11.7 mile leg, but other than a DNF, there didn’t seem to by any other options.

I arrived at the bottom of the hill at 7:43, only to see Tim coming 100 yards away.  He was nearly 2 minutes faster than our best case scenario, and he was clearly giving it all he had.  He saw me; ran up; thrust the baton into my hand, and bent over gasping for breath.  I don’t know what I was thinking, but I turned around and started limping down the course. 

I still didn’t have a plan and my current course of action seemed doomed to failure.  I could barely put my foot on the ground and my pace was roughly equivalent to a slow walk.  I couldn’t bear to put any weight on the toes of my left foot, so my stride included my left foot turned out at approximately 90 degrees.  As I hobbled up the mile long hill, I got a lot of strange looks but very few comments.  They probably assumed that I had some sort of genetic deformity, since it would be really stupid to be running with an injury that caused that sort of gait.  I kept thinking, “This hill is awful, but if I can just get to the top it will be easier going down.”  I couldn’t have been more mistaken.  It took nearly 15 minutes for me to cover the first mile and as I started down the hill, I realized that descending is much worse.  Every step was painful, but at this point I was committed.  The downhill mile took 12 minutes.

Gradually, the unexpected began to happen.  As I kept going, my ankle began to loosen up. My third mile was around 10 minutes, and it continued to get better.  Although still painful, I was able to adapt a fairly normal stride and managed sub 7 minute miles for the last two miles.

It literally felt like a miracle. An hour earlier, running normally seemed impossible.  In fact, it seemed so impossible that I never would have attempted it if I’d had the time to think rationally about it.  Only the fact that I was so addled from the pain to begin with, and the fact that Tim had arrived earlier than expected, caused me to attempt something that I never would have, if I’d had more time to consider.  Circumstances dictated that I try to run, and there wasn’t enough time for my head to convince my body that I couldn’t do it.  For the second time that day I thought, “I have to remember this.”

As soon as I stopped running, of course, things rapidly deteriorated.  I went to the medical table and asked for 4 Advil and an ice pack.  When they balked at giving me that many Advil, I showed them my softball sized ankle and they handed them over.  An hour later, the ankle was the size of a cantaloupe and I couldn’t put any weight on it again.

When we re-grouped at the finish line, the rest of the team was appropriately sympathetic (which means that they tried to hide their disappointment at the fact that my slower-than-expected relay leg had left us 4 minutes shy of setting a new team PR), but I failed miserably in my attempt to explain the epiphany that I’d had on the course.  Understandably, their general thought seemed to be “If you were able to run 7 miles on it, the ankle couldn’t be hurt that badly.”

Despite my inability to explain it to my teammates, I was powerfully affected by my experience that day, and unlike many “epiphanies”, this one hasn’t lost its power over time.  The photo hangs in my office as a reminder that when there is a problem, and the path to a solution seems impossibly difficult, you don’t have to solve the whole thing right now.  You just have to take the next step.