Hope Pass

Crewing the Leadville 100

Dan at Elvis’ birthplace last year. Note the Leadville belt buckle.

Writer’s Note: This piece first appeared in Mountain Gazette 87 that came out in the summer of 2002. It’s been rewritten a bit and the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

The idea is to get this turkey friend of mine over Hope Pass and down to Twin Lakes where some other fool can crew for him.

It’s the Leadville 100 and I’m loitering here in this ghost town called Winfield, getting last minute instructions from his wife, Saint Jane.

“You know Dan,” she says. “He’s awesome on the uphills, he can keep running when everyone else is down on their knees and spitting up pieces of lung. But he is a downhill dawdler.”

“A what?”

“A downhill dawdler. After 50 or so miles his mind wanders and he forgets to run downhill. He just sort of walks until the next uphill.”

“So you want me to stay in front of him on the downhill side of Hope Pass?”

“Please, he needs someone in front of him, maybe saying encouraging things, maybe just yelling at him to pick up the pace.”

“Can I be mean, maybe piss him off?”

“Anything that works.”

Winfield looks like a small field hospital, complete with army tents and medics with stethoscopes draped around their necks. And while there are runners on stretchers who look dead, there are no body bags in sight.

Saint Jane pins a crew number on me that reminds me of getting a sports letter in high school with MGR in the middle of it. I never bought a letter sweater—the MGR that stood for manager, would have guaranteed that I’d never get laid. (I wasn’t getting laid in high school anyhow, and it probably wasn’t because I never bought a letter sweater.)

With the exception of the crew bib, I look pretty much like most of the other runners. Beat-up shoes with more miles on them than I remember, running shorts, a polypro T-shirt, and a baseball cap with sweat stains on both sides and leaking onto the bill. I’m six feet tall with long runner’s legs. But I’m 20 pounds overweight with my excesses comfortably resting on waistband. I’m not 35 anymore or anywhere close to it.

I’m also carrying a small fanny pack with light gloves, a couple of energy bars, a light windbreaker, space blanket, a small water bottle and a pocket knife. The extra weight is no problem, as I’ve only got 13 miles to go. Most of the gear is for Dan, on the unlikely chance that he hits the wall.

Dan arrives in Winfield in the middle of a pack of other slobber-covered runners. He weighs in, answers a couple questions from the doc, who then takes his blood pressure, then listens to his chest, and nods to Dan that he can continue running.

Dan grabs some food and a bag from Saint Jane that contains fresh shoes and socks. He babbles as he eats, changes socks and shoes, and then we are off on the last half of the run.

It’s a nice, slow, trail-running pace. Anyone who is relatively fit can do this pace for hours at a time. Admittedly, 24 hour or more of this sort of running, above 10,000 feet, is a little on the far side of common sense. But I don’t care, I keep the food and water coming, and this pace is like walking fast.

The route is on a road for a while, so I’m doing the Saturday morning Mesa Trail group run pace that is maybe 12 minute miles. It’s a little faster than Dan wants to go. The altitude isn’t too much a problem, but going from 10,000 feet to 12,500 will seem like an order of magnitude more difficult. As we get toward the top of Hope Pass it will seem like we are breathing out of every orifice in our bodies, but right now it’s 110 beats per minute and cruise control.

After a while we turn off on a trail and the running gets tougher going uphill and skirting rocks. Dan is doing fine. He looks strong, determined, and in his own little world of ultra running.

“Buddy,” he says, probably because he is so tired he can’t remember my name. However, even though we have known each other forever, he’s piss poor at remembering names.

“My toe hurts.”

“Which one?”

“The big one.”

“Keep moving, we’ll check it out at the top.”

The route up Hope Pass is a typical mountain trail with rocks and switchbacks and decent views of more trail with rocks and switchbacks.

As we move up toward the pass, there are still runners headed down to the turnaround, a physical, and food at Winfield. Many have that glazed look of “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Dan is 5’ 8” with no body fat. He is very good at trail running. Even after 50 some miles, he’s strong and maintains a steady uphill pace. I’m working hard to stay with him. In fact, if we don’t make the pass in a couple minutes, I’m going to be in trouble. Dan is leading uphill; on the steep stuff he slows to a speed-hiking pace with long strides. On the moderate terrain, he runs. I’m just hanging on.

He has an odd running style that compensates for his right foot that flies out in an arc on every stride. I’ll admit that he has a small right side limp going, but then he is, among a number of other things, a hypochondriac.

“Buddy, my toe hurts.”

One summer run several years ago, we ran out of water on a trail run and both of us started cramping up. He claimed that he had calf cancer. I was in worse shape. I was tunneling out. I was about to faint, my head was about to explode, and I was feeling seriously pukey. He got on a long babble about calf cancer and kept pushing us onward. He’s my friend and trail-running partner. I’ve learned to ignore him.

A half hour later and we are just below the pass. His limp has gotten worse. I yell at him to stop. He’s not looking as good as he should. He has a sort of puzzled look on his face as he sits down.

“Take your shoe off.”

He just sits there looking quizzical.

I kneel down, untie his shoe, and take it off. I’m not sure I want to describe what I’m looking at here. I pull off his sock and he has a big toe the size of a large grape and about that color.

“What’s wrong, Buddy?” he asks.

“If you want my carefully thought-out diagnosis, here it is. Your toe is really messed up.”

“Where is the nail?” he asks.

“Good question,” I answer, as I dig through my fanny pack for my Swiss Army knife, and then open the smallest, sharpest blade (the one without dried peanut butter on it.)

“Jeesus Buddy,” he yells, “What are you gonna do with that?”

I make a move for his toe with the knife, and as he reacts, I grab his shoe and start cutting a hole in the toe box to relieve some pressure.

Watching the shoe surgery he yells, “You can’t do that! Those are my favorite shoes.”

Running shoes are a sacred thing, like that first good piss in the morning. “Buddy, don’t cut my shoe,” he babbles.

So here we are doing a toe dance at 12,000 feet about these grody shoes, and time is wasting. I fold up the knife and zip it back into my fanny pack. We are more than 40 miles from the finish line in Leadville. He’s not going to make it with that toe in his shoes.

“How bad does it hurt?” I ask.

“Not much, just when I’m running.”

“Wrong answer. What size shoe do you wear?

“10 and a half,”

“Fine, I wear an 11. You wear my shoe and I’ll wear yours.”

“Only if you promise not to cut it.”

We are running again—the steepest and highest part of entire Leadville 100 route. I have on his 10 1/2 on my right foot and he has on my 11. He has stopped limping. He is back in that uphill trance of his. I drop into my uphill gear and just tag along for the ride.

We make it to the top and he is looking strong. The limp is gone, my right foot is going to be trash in another couple of miles, but let’s just get through this downhill and on to the aid station and see what we can do about his toe.

I’m out in front now, aware that he is slowing down into that dreaded downhill dawdle. As I look up to the switchback above me he is saying, “Real ultra runners can pee and run at the same time.”

I know what is coming, the rocks are too big to throw at him, and he is too far gone to heed my shouting.

“Not on my goddam shoe!” But it’s too late. He has whipped it out and is peeing as he runs.

“Asshole!”

And he just laughs and sort of half walks, half runs downhill.

I look at my shoe, It’s a disaster; a piss and dirt covered disaster. I am torn between wanting to get him to the aid station because that is what I signed up for, and pushing his sorry ass off the next switchback for pissing on my shoe.

I yell at him, “You short, old, ugly, burnt-out hippie, book-publishing, son of a bitch.” Music to his ears; he loves the attention and continues to dawdle down the trail, occasionally making decent time in a trail running downhill trot.

I get behind him and just push, “Faster, you idiot.” And he takes on mule-like characteristics.

At a wide spot in the trail, I literally run a circle around him.

“Clever,” he says and continues his drifting ways into the aid station.

The aid station crew is very good. They know exactly what they are doing. They immediately sit Dan down, put a blanket over his shoulders, and pass him some water. I try to stand off to the side, but they do the same thing to me.

“Hey, I’m just crew having a bad day.”

“Doesn’t matter, you look just as beat-up,” says a mountain rescue or ski-patrol type.

“It’s only because he peed on my shoe.”

“He what?”

“Forget it lady, just check out his right big toe.”

I’m still really pissed at him for what he did to my shoe. But Dan knows they can take him out of the race, so he denies everything.

“Then have him tell you why he is wearing two different shoes.”

“He tried to cut my toe off,” Dan claims as she pulls off his shoe and sock.

One of the other medics starts shaking his head as looks more closely at the toe. And then it hits me that the run could end for both of us right here.

“You know, he was doing fine with the bigger shoe,” I say. “Any chance there is an extra set of 11s around here?”

The medic looks up from the toe and his eyes say he is about to scratch us. “This doesn’t look good. He could be in real trouble if this gets worse. He could lose the toe.”

“Look, he was good enough on the pass to pee while he was running.”

“He what?”

“No shit. He was in pain all the way up the pass and then I traded him my larger shoe and then he wasn’t in any real pain anymore.”

“True fact,” Dan says, “And then I peed on his shoe.”

That did it. The medic is trying to be serious, but then he gets the giggles. And then the other medic starts laughing. The medic has done some trail running himself. As the laughter subsides he makes a decision, digs around in a duffle bag, and pulls out a fairly new pair of shoes.

“Put these 11s on,” he tells Dan. Leave them with the aid station boss at Twin Lakes.”

“Are you crewing all the way to Leadville?” He asks me.

“Nope, just to Twin Lakes where he picks up fresh crew and shoes.”

“We’re going to call ahead and have the doc check him at Twin Lakes. If the doc lets him go on, tell the new crew about the toe and tell him to pull Dan if starts limping again.”

“We’re good to go?”

“You are good to go. Just watch him,” he paused and then says, “No one is going to believe you about him pissing on your shoe unless they see the shoe.”

END

Endnote: In spite of this example of bad behavior and many more, Dan and I remain friends to this day. He continued to run ultras for some years. I couldn’t keep up with him and dropped back to reasonable weekly mileage. And then one New Year’s Eve I disconnected my left quad muscles from my tibia while running downhill on ice. Not one of my better moves. And after healing, I discovered road biking and haven’t run much since.

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