If you look at the home page for the Gonzales, Texas newspaper, you’ll see a picture of me running in a cheerleading skirt and a jaunty cowboy hat, carrying a flag.  My team surrounds me, dressed in matching white shirts.  All of us smile as we trot, leisurely and carefree, through the streets of Gonzales, where the Texas Revolution began and where the Texas Independence Relay kicks off.

 

Somewhere, there exists a picture of us at the finish, 31 hours and 203 miles later.  We’re standing in formation before the San Jacinto Monument, medals around our necks.  The race photographer has herded us into position.  We gaze ahead, stupid with fatigue.  A hot breeze fails to diminish the odor that surrounds us.  What IS that smell?  It’s like a mixture of sweat, dust, Gatorade, Cheez-Its, Honey Bucket, hand sanitizer, exhaust, Gu, and coconut-scented sunscreen.  We know that as soon as this picture has been taken, we get to eat pizza and drink beer.  We smile on cue.

 

We’ve spent the past day running along the route that Sam Houston’s army followed after they burned Gonzales to the ground to prevent General Santa Anna and his troops from making use of any of the town’s provisions. We passed the oak tree under which they slept, and the river they crossed with makeshift bridges.  Finally, we arrived here at the scene of the last battle, where Houston’s men defeated Santa Anna’s army in a surprise attack during their afternoon siesta.

 

This is the hardest race I have ever run.  We’ve used an eight-man rotation in one van, a major departure from my previous relay experiences on teams of 12 divided into two vehicles.  We have been awake from six a.m. on Saturday until almost six p.m. on Sunday, and we’ve been on the move the entire time.  A few of us have catnapped in the van for an hour here or there, but none of us have gotten any sleep that could be classified as restful.

 

I remember standing around before my first leg, being trash-talked by a lean man with a lot of tattoos.  He had tiny runners circling each ankle, climbing upward in spirals:  one for each marathon he’d run.  He had an Ironman tattoo on his neck.  He looked like a very buff running shop billboard, I thought to myself as I watched him shimmering shirtless in the Texas heat.  He was waiting for his runner, and I was waiting for mine.

 

Noel, my runner, arrived first, slapping the band onto my arm.  I took off.  The race had started.  A wall of wind greeted me; I leaned into it, but it wouldn’t give.  Most of my first leg, a four-miler, climbed relentlessly uphill into the wind.  I pressed hard against it, legs churning.  We were on a rural stretch of road, dotted with houses, and I heard a whistle as I passed a farmhouse.  Stupid redneck, I thought, willing myself not to react.

 

“You missed the turn!”  The person I’d dismissed as a stupid redneck stood on the porch with his wife, gesturing wildly toward the road I hadn’t taken.  I flipped a U-turn, smiled, and gasped out a “thank you” as I righted my course.  The guy with the tattoos whizzed past me, drafted by a big girl with powerful calves.  I was less than a mile into my first leg, and I’d gone the wrong way and gotten road-killed twice.

 

Positive energy, I told myself.  The wind is refreshing, and you love hills.

 

I ran and ran.  I had no watch on, and there were no mile markers.  I had no notion of time or distance.  The wind blew relentlessly, stirring dust.  This is like a treadmill custom-built for the ninth circle of hell, I thought.  I seized the thought and tried to follow it to distract myself from the moment.  I recited the first lines of Dante’s Vita Nuova:

 

In that part of the book of my memory before which little can be read, there is a heading, which says: ‘Incipit vita nova: Here begins the new life’. Under that heading I find written the words that it is my intention to copy into this little book: and if not all, at least their essence.

 

I finally hit a downhill and, knowing I’d been off my goal pace for much of the run, I lengthened my stride to make up time.  In doing so, I swept right past the directional sign, blown over in the wind, and headed a good half-mile beyond the turn before I looked back and saw another runner making the turn.  I reversed course and followed, climbing a final hill to the finish and handing off.  I don’t recall ever running a more painful four miles.  I was far off pace, nearly a minute per mile.  Fortunately, two of our other runners had run faster than anticipated.  My disastrous first leg would come out in the wash.

 

My second leg started at dusk, and I was the first runner in our van to put on night gear.  The sun dropped quickly as I left one small town, bound for the next.  The wind had died down, and the air had cooled.  I settled into a pace I knew was the right one.  This leg had no turns.  All I had to do was run.

 

Aside from planting my foot smack-dab into a dead something (cat or raccoon, I think) on the side of the road, my second leg was uneventful.  Unfortunately, that was the only road kill I managed to collect during that leg, but I ran hard and was pleased with the effort.  I reached the exchange sweaty and exhilarated, twenty seconds under my goal time.

 

I tried to sleep, but I was too keyed up to really settle into anything beyond a shallow tangle of running-related dreams.  Soon it was midnight, and time to run once again.  I set off into thick darkness, lit by an almost-full moon blurred under clouds.  One foot in front of the other.  Keep going.  I had a weird feeling that I was moving in slow motion, the way I’d felt on the few occasions I’d attempted pool running.  I focused on form, especially on the downhills.  Lengthen the stride, increase the cadence.  I played with footstrike.  Toe.  Forefoot.  Heel.  There had to be something I could do to make myself run faster!  I thought about the creatures that might be lurking in the darkness.  Coyotes.  Wild dogs,  Javelinas.  Wolves. 

 

Early in the run, two headlamps swept past me, far too fast to even contemplate catching.  Up ahead, a red flasher bobbed.  I watched the two fast guys who had passed me reel in their next victim, and I thought I could probably catch him, too.  At one point, just after the two fast runners had overtaken the slower one, the three of them passed a red flashing light that had been posted on a course marker.  For a moment, all the flashing lights merged into a red blur.  Maybe they got stopped by traffic, I thought, picking up my pace.  Maybe I can catch them before they start again.  But it had been a trick of the light, and the runners were still moving.

 

I caught the slower runner about a mile before the end of my leg, and one more runner after him.  I’d been killed twice, and I’d gotten two kills.  Net zero.  Hey, at least I hadn’t stepped in any road kill.

 

At the next exchange, a local service club was grilling burgers and selling T-shirts with the town’s name spelled in glitter.  I bought a cheeseburger and devoured it.  Then I crawled into the back seat of the van and slept hard for a couple of hours.

 

When I awoke, thick darkness surrounded me, and we were driving down a bumpy road.  All the other runners in the van appeared to be sleeping.  I didn’t know who was running next.  The heat in the van was stifling, even with the windows open.  The air smelled of sweat and sleep.

 

At the next exchange, a desolate parking lot in front of a church, I stepped out for some fresh air.  Our team captain and another runner departed for the Honey Buckets, and then paused at the exchange to talk to the race volunteers.  As they walked toward me, I could hear them talking softly and occasionally giving a rueful laugh.

 

“Did you notice that there aren’t very many vans here?” our captain asked me.

 

I hadn’t, but now that I looked around, I saw that only a handful of vans dotted the empty lot. 

 

“There are four vans behind us,” he continued.  “Four.  If we don’t pick it up, we’re gonna be DFL.”

 

I was stunned.  I didn’t know what to say.  I felt that it was important to say the right thing, though.  Our captain was from Houston, and he’d chosen this race.  He was one of our fastest runners.  He was helping to prop up those of us—myself included—who had been overly optimistic in our projected paces.  I could not say anything that would bring him down.  I wanted us to be united, positive, on message before we returned to the van.  I didn’t want to rest of the team to feel as hopeless and tired and defeated as I felt in that particular moment.

 

“Whoa,” I finally said.  I couldn’t come up with anything else.

 

We never really did figure out what to do with the information we’d been given.  We plodded back to the van and grimly set off for the next exchange.

 

My next leg began shortly after dawn, and the race volunteers were taking down their tent as we approached.  They explained to us that they had to move ten miles up the road to the next exchange.  This was Leg 28, though, meaning that we’d soon start reaching exchanges that would remain in place for the duration of the race.  They reassured us that the course markers wouldn’t be removed, and that we’d make the cutoff time.  I waited at the deserted exchange and took the slap band just as the heat began to thicken around me.

 

We were in the Houston suburbs by now; I ran past gated streets full of matching brick houses, obviously new construction.  I passed weekend joggers and wondered if they counted as road kill.  (No, I decided.)  I knew I was off pace.  It didn’t really matter now.  My legs weren’t going to move any faster.  Wishing wouldn’t help.

 

A sort of dark humor settled over the team.  We began to spend more time at the exchanges, getting to know the other stragglers still on the course.  It was as though the main race had nothing to do with us.  We were in our own race, and the goal was to not be last.

 

After Leg 32, each runner in our rotation was on his or her last leg.  We all tried gamely to make up time, but we were exhausted and heavy-legged.  In the van, painkillers and ice packs were doled out freely, and a massage stick was passed around.  We began to break out our fast shoes, thinking they might help at this point.

 

My last leg began in downtown Houston, and it was a net downhill.  As I started, I was determined to make the best time I could.  I was willing to trash my quads, leave anything I had left on the course.  For about a mile, I chased the tail ends of green lights, gauging traffic from a block away and going for it whenever possible, heedless of danger.  I felt lightheaded and weirdly immortal, floating in the midday heat.  I carried a water bottle, but didn’t think to drink it.

 

An older gentleman caught up to me at a red light, gasping and waving at me to get my attention.  “I can’t hold your pace,” he told me, “but I am going to stay as close to you as I can.”

 

“Trying to get one more road kill?” I asked, forcing a smile.  He was from a team with whom we’d made friends, and I would have preferred to road-kill him decisively and have it over with.

 

“This is not a nice section of town,” he explained.  “No one else is out on the course, and I don’t think you should run here alone.”

 

I looked ahead, and saw the shabby buildings lining the empty, dusty street ahead of us.  A man, Creepy Guy straight from central casting, leered openly at me as I passed in my sports bra and splits.

 

“Thank you,” I said to my new comrade in survival.  “Let’s get this thing done together.  I’ll slow down and stick with you.  We can walk if you need to.  You sound like you need to catch your breath.”

 

He nodded gratefully.  I saw that he had no water with him, and handed him my bottle.  He took several grateful gulps as we walked.

 

We continued, alternating between walking and running.  He was from Houston and had been recruited recently for this event, he explained.   He’d trained as well as he could, but didn’t know how you could really prepare for a thing like this.

 

“I know what you mean,” I said.

 

We eventually moved off of Polk Street and onto a paved path through a golf course; from there, we crossed the street toward the park, where we’d hit the exchange.  He gave me the nod to run ahead, and I sprinted for the finish.

 

Our team wobbled through the final legs, trying to summon the energy to get out of the van and cheer one another’s finishes.  As our captain completed his final leg at the entrance to the San Jacinto Monument, I ran to meet him and slapped his sweaty back. 

 

“No more running,” he said as we hit the gate.  The team still had to carry the flag all the way to the monument, a third of a mile away, and we made it in a forced march.

 

Afterward, there were medals and pictures and pizza.  There was a long drive back to our captain’s house in Houston; I watched the miles and miles of industrial infrastructure pass against the smoggy backdrop of the sky and marveled that anybody lived here.  At the house, we were handed food and wine, and herded into the shower.  Our captain’s son offered me cookies he’d made for Purim.  They were delicious.  The house was cool and clean and welcoming.  My tired mind struggled for the words to express the depth of my gratitude.

 

We crashed on the living room floor, sprawled anywhere there was space available.  The lights went out.  The last thought I had, as I drifted to sleep, was of Sam Houston’s army defeating Santa Anna at San Jacinto, more than two hundred miles from Gonzales.  How in the world, I wondered, had they summoned the energy to fight that battle after the sheer effort of getting there?