#and they are incredibly quiet- many go their whole lives without vocalising once
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A request for mod MBD... more of the Casualty AU please! I just *need* to know what happens next! Love... you know who ;)
PART 1.
With his shoulder dislocated - again - Jamie had been on bed rest. Claire had busied herself with her usual routine, coming to visit as often as she could. Even though Joe had pressed her to do it, neither her or Jamie had made mention of Brianna.
Things at home had changed dramatically. Bree had always been a fairly easy going child, but now she seemed to have sensed that something had awoken within her mother and subsequently had become quite insular. Always watching, the intuitive seven year old had taken to silently watching Claire as often as she could.
“Can I leave soon?” Jamie perked up, cradling his mending arm against his chest much as he’d done on his first meeting with Claire all those *centuries* ago. Claire shook off the thought of their daughter in favour of attending to Jamie’s remaining wounds.
“I should think so, Joe says he’s pleased with the progress you’ve been making. I’ll get him to O.K you first though, alright? So that means no lifting!” Side-eyeing him, she saw him sink a little into the thin mattress, his eyes looking immediately guilty. Claire knew he’d been helping the night staff move heavy equipment but so far they’d all been relatively silent on the matter. “I know you, James Fraser. Bed rest means *no* heavy lifting. Stubborn man.”
The atmosphere in the room changed in that moment and Claire knew what was coming the second quiet rose up around them. He’d be waiting to ask since the moment he’d accepted that he was alive. But he’d been scared too, petrified of what she might tell him. Since she was here alone, no Frank in tow, he’d been afraid something terrible had happened after he’d sent her back through the stones.
“Ye havena told me, Claire,” he began, his voice soft and slow as if approaching a wild animal face on.
She didn’t even bother to feign ignorance. Instead Claire folded the final towel and turned to face Jamie, her eyes shining with tears, Bree’s face coming to mind the minute he’d started talking.
“Our bairn, Claire. Does he -- she -- live?”
His voice was alight with such tenuous hope that Claire couldn’t bear to keep him in the dark any longer.
As if summoned, and before Claire could even open her mouth, the door to Jamie’s room slammed open and Brianna herself darted in with her wild red curls flying around her face, her tiny school bag bobbing madly against her back.
“Mam! Uncle Joe said…” sliding to a stop, Bree turned to face Jamie, excitement thrumming through her veins as she threw the rucksack from her shoulders. Paying no more attention to her mother, Bree slid on the balls of her feet across the slippy lino of the private hospital suite. “You came,” she whispered, holding her small hand up towards Jamie as he, in turn, shifted his weight so that the pair were almost nose to nose.
Claire gasped, the lump in her throat growing until she felt as if she might suffocate on the spot.
Jamie couldn’t speak. It was as if Brianna’s arrival had stolen the words from him. She was his, he kent it in an instant without Claire having to introduce them.
Bree tipped her head to the side, appraising Jamie with a careful but open gaze. Laying her hand against his cheek, she slowly slid her palm against the plains of his face. “You were lonely, like mam is.” It was a statement borne of fact, not a question. Seeing straight through his fast recovery, the lines of his time apart from Claire still stood stark beneath his eyes and Bree had picked up on it without hesitation.
Jame smiled and nodded. No need for words, he was captivated by the arrival of Brianna -- and he hadn’t even been told her name yet.
“J-Jamie,” Claire stuttered, realising the information he was missing, “this is Brianna. Bree, this is Jamie.”
“I know,” she said with conviction, her large blue eyes flitting between Jamie and Claire as she watched them both, continuing with zero caution. “He was lost, mam, like you. He needs us.”
“How do you--” Claire’s mind was buzzing with questions, how on earth could Bree know Jamie? She hadn’t mentioned her parentage for fear of how to describe Jamie or his absence. She had often just thought to say he was dead, being young, Bree would have accepted that as fact. She knew about the war, surely she would have just guessed that was the reason. Claire needn’t have said anymore but she’d been reticent to do such a thing. Now with Jamie miraculously restored to them, she had to explain what he was to her. Yet it seemed Brianna had her own ideas.
Clever lass.
“Dinna tell me that,” Jamie joked, ignoring doctors orders as he hauled Bree onto the bed with his good arm, “yer mam has never been lost. She’s the most incredible survivor, aye?”
Bree waggled her feet off the bed, her focus solely on Jamie now as Claire silently paced forwards, her heart beating madly in her chest.
“Aye,” she returned, picking up on his deep Scottish brogue and unconsciously mimicking it, replacing her own soft Scots with Jamie’s highland lilt. “She is, but you both have pieces missing.”
“Bree…” Claire’s hand reached forward, cupping the back of her daughter's head as she placed a delicate kiss on her forehead, “I-” attempting to pull together some semblance of normalcy, Claire tried to dismiss the notion that Brianna might *know* that Jamie was her father. Understanding her desolation was one thing, Claire wasn’t that good at hiding her emotions and even though she’d improved on leaving Frank, she still wasn’t -- nor ever would be -- as good as Jamie at masking her feelings.
“Did you really live in a cave?” Brianna piped in, too highly charged to wait for her mother to finish her sentence.
Claire’s eyes flashed to Jamie immediately, her breath catching in her throat as the room fell into a shocked silence.
His mouth dry, Jamie tried desperately to answer Bree’s question. “Yes,” he choked out finally, his words barely a whisper in the quiet room as he licked his lips and nodded.
“Woah,” Bree mouthed, her lips lifting into a smile as she bounced over Jamie’s knees.
“Where did you learn that?” Claire asked, glancing over at Bree and then back to Jamie with awe dancing across her face. A cave? How could she know such a thing, when even Claire didn’t know that.
Feeling guilty, Claire leant her weight against the windowpane. She’d been too enraptured in Jamie’s company to ask too many questions about their painful separation. In attempting to avoid mentioning their time apart she was oblivious to the half-life Jamie had been living in her absence.
“I read it!” Bree announced proudly, “in a school book wi’ some history bits and bobs in it. Then I dreamed about you,” she said, addressing Jamie once more, “and I asked you to come...and here you are.”
“Jesus H…” Claire pushed herself off the thin glass, pulled the bedside chair closer to the cot and sat with one hand on Jamie and the other against Bree’s knee. “How did you ask, Bree?”
Without even contemplating such an action ludicrous, Bree patted Claire’s hand lightly, her small warm hand soothing Claire’s shaky ones as she pursed her lips and squinted her eyes - distinctly Fraser eyes - cat like and sharp, exactly like Jamie’s. “I just -- asked. I saw him, he saw me and I told him ye needed him. Do you remember it?”
She seemed so hopeful, her whole body vibrating with delight at her actions as she shimmied herself sideways, slipping into Claire’s lap as she snuggled closer to her mother.
Struggling to sit, Jamie pulled himself upwards, letting his legs fall over the side of the bed. Closing his eyes and tilting his head back he tried to pull forth the memories of the cave. Pain shot through him but he pushed it aside. Knowing that Claire was close eased the dark echoes of the past. His dreams had been sporadic and wisp-like. Unable to grasp most of them, the only ones he’d recalled were the ones of Claire herself. Did he remember seeing his wee lassie? He couldn’t be certain.
Half starved, cold and alone, he’d often envisioned Claire and the child though he’d never guessed as to the gender of the wean. She was only a tiny dot in his mindseye back then. A small bairn with nothing to denote the precious child he saw before him now.
“Doesna matter!” Bree interjected, pulling both Jamie and Claire from their internal thoughts yet again. “You’re here now, you came.”
“Brianna,” Jamie sighed, leaning further forward and laying his large hand against her buoyant curls - his colour with Claire’s volume - distinctly rolling the r’s in her name as he spoke. “Do ye ken who I am...truly?”
Bree cocked her head. In that moment it was clear to both Jamie and Claire that the rather adult notions she’d been relaying to them before had dissipated. She’d vocalised the notions she was certain of but now she was the same precocious seven year old she usually was.
“You’re Jamie...you and mamma, you’re meant for each other.”
The innocence in her voice brought fresh tears to Claire’s eyes as she wrapped her arms more fully around Bree, bringing them that much closer to Jamie as she brushed the stray curls from her daughter’s brow.
“Brianna, there’s something we should tell you, alright?”
Unable to second guess what it could possibly be, Brianna settled herself. Bright-eyed, she glanced excitedly between Jamie and Claire and nodded.
“Jamie and I, well,” reaching out, Claire took Jamie’s hand gingerly, his silver ring glinting in the glow of the bedside lamp, catching all of their eyes as she took a large breath and continued, “Jamie is your father, Bree. Your biological father.”
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The 24 -hour race: ‘It is a battle with your mind’
Ultra-running is one of the worlds fastest growing sports, generally taking place in remote, scenic landscapes. Not an athletics way in London. Will opponents contact nirvana?
I hallucinated, of course. I ever do, Pat Seabrook says. She is 76 and has expended the past 24 hours flowing round a 400 m athletics track in Tooting, south London. She sits in the front seat of her car, peeling plasters off her toes. At some degree I began to think the white routes on the trail were lassoes, rising up around me, and I was pushing them away. She chortles: Frequently I run with my friend and we take turns to hallucinate.
Along with 44 other athletes, Seabrook has just vied in the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 24 -hour Track Race. Ultra-running, in which opponents take part in hastens longer than a marathon and often 100 miles or more, is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, with brand-new races propelling all the time; the most difficult ones have been forced to introduce lottery to systematically cope with the numbers who want to enter. But part of the appeal of these races is that they usually take place amid some of the worlds most remote and scenic landscapes, such as the Sahara or the Rockies. Not around a line in Tooting.
Paul Corderoy: You can get into that infinite; a few laps go by and you dont realise it. Photograph: Marietta d’Erlanger for the Guardian
The winner, James Stewart, moves a mind-boggling 160 miles over the course of the day. Its hard to comprehend, watching him plug away, lap after lap: 160 miles, without going anywhere. He could have moved all the way to Cardiff, but hes still here, on the trail in Tooting.
Seabrook is the oldest opponent here and considers 83 miles during the course of its race. Its not that great, she says, gathering off another plaster. Last year I operated 87. As well as innumerable 24 -hour races, she has also move 456 marathons. She didnt even start loping until her late 40 s, when all her children had grown up and left home. I required something to prevent me busy, Seabrook says. What else am I going to do on a Saturday?
Yet in spite of her low-key attitude, something else is going on here. The race was started virtually 30 years ago by adherents of the late Indian spiritual coach Sri Chinmoy, who believed that ranging was integral to a spiritual life.
In 1977, Chinmoy started a marathon team, which started putting on races in New York and is now one of the most important organisers of perseverance happens around the world. While most of the voluntaries and organisers in Tooting are adherents of his teaches, only one of the smugglers, Mahasatya Janczak from Poland, is part of the Sri Chinmoy unit. He has done the race twice before. Does he find self-transcendence through it? At minutes, certainly, he responds, a shimmer in his eyes. Its truly something. You can only understand it if you try it.
Pat Seabrook, aged 76, is the oldest challenger. I necessary something to deter me busy. Image: Marietta d’Erlanger for the Guardian
Diana Celeiro has come the whole way from Argentina for the hasten. Its her second experience here. Her husband, Gustavo, acts as her reinforce gang. Most of the smugglers have someone who accepts diligently by the track watching, offering encouragement, devising snacks or helping with any issues that arise, from sores to emotional failures. Some of the approval crews have brought tents; one family even has a motorhome parked up on the edge of the track. A few of the smugglers have no gang and have just set up a table on the grass or, in one athletes speciman, an ironing board laden with their supplies.
Some allies disappear dwelling or to a hotel on the night for some sleep. Gustavo, though, puts vigilant throughout, always smiling. This is different from flowing 100 miles in the mountains, he says. When “youre running” 100 miles all around a way, it is a battle with your mind.
I expect how his wife is, after completing a race like this. Very quiet, he says. Almost dead.
In Japan, monks on Mount Hiei run 1,000 marathons in 1,000 daylights in a effort to reach enlightenment. One of the monks once told him that the idea behind the constant shift is to spend the memory, the body, everything, until nothing is left and you are almost dead. When you are nothing, then something pop! comes up to crowded the cavity, he said, miming a bubble popping. That something, he told me, is the immense consciousness that lies below the surface of our lives a feeling of oneness with the universe.
Diana Celeiro has travelled from Argentina for the race. Photograph: Marietta d’Erlanger for the Guardian
None of the athletes here in Beeping vocalises it quite so lucidly, but there are peeks of something deeper than PBs and course accounts. Sometimes, you can get into that opening; a few laps go by and you dont realise it, Paul Corderoy says.
Theres a nowness to it, thats for sure, says Jamie Holmes, a management consultant who lives less than a mile from the racetrack. He has recently completed the famous Spartathalon ultra-marathon in Greece, which is 153 miles. When I ask why he remains doing such long races, he says he cant certainly made a statement in explanation, but thinks hes trying to break himself. I suppose Im trying to find my restriction, he says. Perhaps when I find it, Ill stop.
Shankara Smith, the race director, says that the biggest challenge is yourself. Sri Chinmoy used to say its not mind over thing, but middle over attention. If you cant stillnes that brain, then you cant do it, because your brain will tell you you cant. Here, you cant tell yourself its you versus that mountain, because there is no mountain. Its merely you versus you.
Smith has watched the hasten each year since it started in 1989, when her father was the hasten director. I desire it, she says. If youre here at 3am, the city is quiet , nothing is going on, but on the line, the atmosphere is zinging. But too peaceful.
I spend a few hours watching the smugglers lap the racetrack. Everyone seems in good spirits; its a chilly, overcast afternoon, which is fine for the runners, and while a few have gone off rapidly at the front, most are running well within themselves, chitchatting to one another and joking with the officials. I decide to get some food and rest.
Driving back to the line at 3am, I find it hard to imagine they are all still moving but, for sure, out on the floodlit line 15 hours after they started, the smugglers are still going around and around. About 10( principally those who started at the figurehead in the first few hours) have discontinued out.
Many challengers are strolling, often with difficulty, by the time darkness descends. Photo: Adharanand Finn for the Guardian
Some of those left look as if theyre in pain, their trot modes twisted and contorted. Many are amble, but even that gazes difficult. One boy with a shaven chief is walking gradually with his fists clenched; he examines as if he wants to punch person. They have nine hours left to go.
Some parties stand out, mollifies and compiled. One of them is 68-year-old Ann Bath. Shes not very fast, shes a little inclination over, but she used merciles. While others rarely stop for a rub, or to eat something, she presses serenely on, never stopping. In the end, she extends an incredible 116 miles, an age-group macrocosm record.
Holmes, the management consultant, smiles when he sees me again. He is now ambling cautiously and his knee is heavily buckled. I envisage Ive felt my restriction, he says. At the end of every lap, the runners elapse a tent full of the persons with big clipboards and rolls of numbers. The lap bars have to wave to their smuggler each time to show theyve registered the lap, and the runners typically curve back to double check their lap has been counted. As the hours change, an intimacy builds up. They get to know one another well, there are still lots of chuckling and joking. The athletes say it devotes them a lift.
Ann Bath lopes 116 miles, an age-group macrocosm record. Image: Marietta dErlanger for the Guardian
Some hastens, you have a chipping counter tied to your shoe, one runner tells me, but what I like about this race is that you have people doing it.
Another runner and his bar “ve tried to” call a new animal each lap. After a while, the runner, his psyche frazzled, stops and reclines on the table line. I cant think up any more, he says. Im done. No, await, flamingo! And, with that, hes off again.
Youre looking great, one of the lap counters wail to Holmes.
Youre examining beautiful, he replies, his startled smile now prepared permanently across his face, perhaps shielding the pain. When I catch him along the back straight-out, he tells me he misses his friends. Commonly I run with sidekicks, he says. Without them here to tell me to stop being an dumb, I cant find the will to try running again. So he treads. But he doesnt stop.
Around the track, many of the corroborate crews are sleeping on chairs or on the flooring. Lauren Howes, whose lover, Cameron Humphries, is doing his first 24 -hour race, is struggling to understand what shes doing up there. I dont get it, she says. Its like a religion. His heroes are not Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but some ultra-runner guy.
Kilian Jornet? I crusade. Hes just about the most famous ultra-runner I can think of; he lopes up and down mountains.
Yes, thats it. Hes went four pairs of his shoes.
Some of the gang are hasten ex-servicemen who cant stay away. One tells me she was a marathon runner when a person at her fraternity informed her he had construed a hasten where people were gobbling sandwiches while they were guiding. I didnt believe it, she says, so I went to watch. I turned up in the morning and there was a group of beings wandering all over the way like zombies. Ive been hooked ever since. If Im not leading, Im crewing.
Although at times it seemed that it would never come, lastly, at just before midday, we get the bell celebrating the last five minutes of the race. For the final few laps, the runners are joined on the track by family and friends. Parents run propping mitts with “their childrens”, pairs flow, or move, arm in arm. One serviceman decides to start sprinting, his support crew struggling to keep up, while another carries his young daughter. One lady, clearly in affliction, is accompanied by her concerned partner and two teenage sons. When the hooter goes to signal the end, she abounds into snaps. Others collapse on the dirt where they are, or hug the nearest party. I find myself close to tears.
One runner, the shaven-headed husband with the clenched fists he didnt unclench them the entire race is ambling back alone across the infield. I ask if hes OK. He looks at me blankly for a moment, as though Ive simply emerged out of the field. I simply need to lie down, he says in the meekest spokesperson Ive ever heard.
And so it intentions. I suspect theyll all go back to their jobs and parties will ask them if theyre mad. Why? parties will request. Why would you do such a thing? And theyll likely be unable to answer. But theyll be getting back next year to do it all over again.
The post The 24 -hour race: ‘It is a battle with your mind’ appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.
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Text
The 24 -hour race: ‘It is a battle with your mind’
Ultra-running is one of the worlds fastest growing sports, generally taking place in remote, scenic landscapes. Not an athletics way in London. Will opponents contact nirvana?
I hallucinated, of course. I ever do, Pat Seabrook says. She is 76 and has expended the past 24 hours flowing round a 400 m athletics track in Tooting, south London. She sits in the front seat of her car, peeling plasters off her toes. At some degree I began to think the white routes on the trail were lassoes, rising up around me, and I was pushing them away. She chortles: Frequently I run with my friend and we take turns to hallucinate.
Along with 44 other athletes, Seabrook has just vied in the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 24 -hour Track Race. Ultra-running, in which opponents take part in hastens longer than a marathon and often 100 miles or more, is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, with brand-new races propelling all the time; the most difficult ones have been forced to introduce lottery to systematically cope with the numbers who want to enter. But part of the appeal of these races is that they usually take place amid some of the worlds most remote and scenic landscapes, such as the Sahara or the Rockies. Not around a line in Tooting.
Paul Corderoy: You can get into that infinite; a few laps go by and you dont realise it. Photograph: Marietta d’Erlanger for the Guardian
The winner, James Stewart, moves a mind-boggling 160 miles over the course of the day. Its hard to comprehend, watching him plug away, lap after lap: 160 miles, without going anywhere. He could have moved all the way to Cardiff, but hes still here, on the trail in Tooting.
Seabrook is the oldest opponent here and considers 83 miles during the course of its race. Its not that great, she says, gathering off another plaster. Last year I operated 87. As well as innumerable 24 -hour races, she has also move 456 marathons. She didnt even start loping until her late 40 s, when all her children had grown up and left home. I required something to prevent me busy, Seabrook says. What else am I going to do on a Saturday?
Yet in spite of her low-key attitude, something else is going on here. The race was started virtually 30 years ago by adherents of the late Indian spiritual coach Sri Chinmoy, who believed that ranging was integral to a spiritual life.
In 1977, Chinmoy started a marathon team, which started putting on races in New York and is now one of the most important organisers of perseverance happens around the world. While most of the voluntaries and organisers in Tooting are adherents of his teaches, only one of the smugglers, Mahasatya Janczak from Poland, is part of the Sri Chinmoy unit. He has done the race twice before. Does he find self-transcendence through it? At minutes, certainly, he responds, a shimmer in his eyes. Its truly something. You can only understand it if you try it.
Pat Seabrook, aged 76, is the oldest challenger. I necessary something to deter me busy. Image: Marietta d’Erlanger for the Guardian
Diana Celeiro has come the whole way from Argentina for the hasten. Its her second experience here. Her husband, Gustavo, acts as her reinforce gang. Most of the smugglers have someone who accepts diligently by the track watching, offering encouragement, devising snacks or helping with any issues that arise, from sores to emotional failures. Some of the approval crews have brought tents; one family even has a motorhome parked up on the edge of the track. A few of the smugglers have no gang and have just set up a table on the grass or, in one athletes speciman, an ironing board laden with their supplies.
Some allies disappear dwelling or to a hotel on the night for some sleep. Gustavo, though, puts vigilant throughout, always smiling. This is different from flowing 100 miles in the mountains, he says. When “youre running” 100 miles all around a way, it is a battle with your mind.
I expect how his wife is, after completing a race like this. Very quiet, he says. Almost dead.
In Japan, monks on Mount Hiei run 1,000 marathons in 1,000 daylights in a effort to reach enlightenment. One of the monks once told him that the idea behind the constant shift is to spend the memory, the body, everything, until nothing is left and you are almost dead. When you are nothing, then something pop! comes up to crowded the cavity, he said, miming a bubble popping. That something, he told me, is the immense consciousness that lies below the surface of our lives a feeling of oneness with the universe.
Diana Celeiro has travelled from Argentina for the race. Photograph: Marietta d’Erlanger for the Guardian
None of the athletes here in Beeping vocalises it quite so lucidly, but there are peeks of something deeper than PBs and course accounts. Sometimes, you can get into that opening; a few laps go by and you dont realise it, Paul Corderoy says.
Theres a nowness to it, thats for sure, says Jamie Holmes, a management consultant who lives less than a mile from the racetrack. He has recently completed the famous Spartathalon ultra-marathon in Greece, which is 153 miles. When I ask why he remains doing such long races, he says he cant certainly made a statement in explanation, but thinks hes trying to break himself. I suppose Im trying to find my restriction, he says. Perhaps when I find it, Ill stop.
Shankara Smith, the race director, says that the biggest challenge is yourself. Sri Chinmoy used to say its not mind over thing, but middle over attention. If you cant stillnes that brain, then you cant do it, because your brain will tell you you cant. Here, you cant tell yourself its you versus that mountain, because there is no mountain. Its merely you versus you.
Smith has watched the hasten each year since it started in 1989, when her father was the hasten director. I desire it, she says. If youre here at 3am, the city is quiet , nothing is going on, but on the line, the atmosphere is zinging. But too peaceful.
I spend a few hours watching the smugglers lap the racetrack. Everyone seems in good spirits; its a chilly, overcast afternoon, which is fine for the runners, and while a few have gone off rapidly at the front, most are running well within themselves, chitchatting to one another and joking with the officials. I decide to get some food and rest.
Driving back to the line at 3am, I find it hard to imagine they are all still moving but, for sure, out on the floodlit line 15 hours after they started, the smugglers are still going around and around. About 10( principally those who started at the figurehead in the first few hours) have discontinued out.
Many challengers are strolling, often with difficulty, by the time darkness descends. Photo: Adharanand Finn for the Guardian
Some of those left look as if theyre in pain, their trot modes twisted and contorted. Many are amble, but even that gazes difficult. One boy with a shaven chief is walking gradually with his fists clenched; he examines as if he wants to punch person. They have nine hours left to go.
Some parties stand out, mollifies and compiled. One of them is 68-year-old Ann Bath. Shes not very fast, shes a little inclination over, but she used merciles. While others rarely stop for a rub, or to eat something, she presses serenely on, never stopping. In the end, she extends an incredible 116 miles, an age-group macrocosm record.
Holmes, the management consultant, smiles when he sees me again. He is now ambling cautiously and his knee is heavily buckled. I envisage Ive felt my restriction, he says. At the end of every lap, the runners elapse a tent full of the persons with big clipboards and rolls of numbers. The lap bars have to wave to their smuggler each time to show theyve registered the lap, and the runners typically curve back to double check their lap has been counted. As the hours change, an intimacy builds up. They get to know one another well, there are still lots of chuckling and joking. The athletes say it devotes them a lift.
Ann Bath lopes 116 miles, an age-group macrocosm record. Image: Marietta dErlanger for the Guardian
Some hastens, you have a chipping counter tied to your shoe, one runner tells me, but what I like about this race is that you have people doing it.
Another runner and his bar “ve tried to” call a new animal each lap. After a while, the runner, his psyche frazzled, stops and reclines on the table line. I cant think up any more, he says. Im done. No, await, flamingo! And, with that, hes off again.
Youre looking great, one of the lap counters wail to Holmes.
Youre examining beautiful, he replies, his startled smile now prepared permanently across his face, perhaps shielding the pain. When I catch him along the back straight-out, he tells me he misses his friends. Commonly I run with sidekicks, he says. Without them here to tell me to stop being an dumb, I cant find the will to try running again. So he treads. But he doesnt stop.
Around the track, many of the corroborate crews are sleeping on chairs or on the flooring. Lauren Howes, whose lover, Cameron Humphries, is doing his first 24 -hour race, is struggling to understand what shes doing up there. I dont get it, she says. Its like a religion. His heroes are not Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but some ultra-runner guy.
Kilian Jornet? I crusade. Hes just about the most famous ultra-runner I can think of; he lopes up and down mountains.
Yes, thats it. Hes went four pairs of his shoes.
Some of the gang are hasten ex-servicemen who cant stay away. One tells me she was a marathon runner when a person at her fraternity informed her he had construed a hasten where people were gobbling sandwiches while they were guiding. I didnt believe it, she says, so I went to watch. I turned up in the morning and there was a group of beings wandering all over the way like zombies. Ive been hooked ever since. If Im not leading, Im crewing.
Although at times it seemed that it would never come, lastly, at just before midday, we get the bell celebrating the last five minutes of the race. For the final few laps, the runners are joined on the track by family and friends. Parents run propping mitts with “their childrens”, pairs flow, or move, arm in arm. One serviceman decides to start sprinting, his support crew struggling to keep up, while another carries his young daughter. One lady, clearly in affliction, is accompanied by her concerned partner and two teenage sons. When the hooter goes to signal the end, she abounds into snaps. Others collapse on the dirt where they are, or hug the nearest party. I find myself close to tears.
One runner, the shaven-headed husband with the clenched fists he didnt unclench them the entire race is ambling back alone across the infield. I ask if hes OK. He looks at me blankly for a moment, as though Ive simply emerged out of the field. I simply need to lie down, he says in the meekest spokesperson Ive ever heard.
And so it intentions. I suspect theyll all go back to their jobs and parties will ask them if theyre mad. Why? parties will request. Why would you do such a thing? And theyll likely be unable to answer. But theyll be getting back next year to do it all over again.
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