On what it's like having your period in the middle of the wilderness, and other things
As I crossed the starting line, Cameron matched my stride and turned to me, striking up a conversation about snowboarding. This annoyed me because:
We were running a race, and if either one of us had enough energy to talk, we should probably just be running faster instead
I felt like I wanted to cry, and I much prefer crying alone
I wanted to do deep sobs, but I opted for light tears because of all the people around. However, all the people made it easy to lose Cameron in the sea of runners, leaving me to cry in peace behind my sunglasses.
I wasn’t sure why I was crying, but it was preferable to talking about snowboarding.
If you traced it back, you could say that I was running El Cruce, the race, because of my Argentinian therapist with overgrown bangs.
Or you could say it was because of my friend Carrie, who recommended the therapist. Carrie does not have bangs.
Or it could be attributed to my ex, who was the reason I was looking for a therapist in the first place.
Except that the problem with origin stories is that you can continue tracing along all the way back until everything, both good and bad, becomes the responsibility of the dinosaurs, and the egg that wasn’t stepped on.
Until the dinosaurs learn to blame it on the asteroid that may or may not have struck Earth and began creation. Or Adam. Same difference, really.
But, for simplicity's sake, we’re going to go back to the therapist with bangs.
“Why don’t you just join another running group?” she asked.
The thought had never occurred to me.
It made me wonder what else was so obviously simple that I hadn’t thought of.
I’d split up with my ex, who was captain of the running group I was in, and I was telling the therapist how I couldn’t be bothered pretending that everything was ok, and putting on a happy face at training, and reassuring everyone that I was doing fine, just fine, thanks for asking.
So I took her suggestion and joined another group.
However the thing with this new running group, was that they actually ran. The other group had been mostly an excuse for discounts at the pub after practice.
In this group, the coach would list off a series of distances and times at training, and everyone would set off running in different directions. I would pretend to know what he meant and pick someone to run behind, following whatever they did.
I checked my watch religiously – because that’s what everyone else was doing. It was of little importance that I had no idea what I was checking for, or that my watch did nothing more than tell the time.
It was in this new running group that I first heard about El Cruce.
I’d struck up a conversation with the girl stretching next to me, for the sole purpose of Spanish practice. She told me that she and her sister were training for a race – 100km over three days of camping in the Patagonia.
“I’d love to do that one day,” I thought.
Then I caught myself. Why was my automatic response to put it off until “one day”? I was still fresh off the breakup, and on a soapboxing strong-independent-woman kick.
I signed up for the race in an act of indignation. There were nine months between when I decided to run the race, and when I ran the race, and by the time I started training it was hard to remember why I even felt like I needed to prove something in the first place.
But because the universe and irony, I actually ended up seeing my ex a few weeks before El Cruce. We were both out for runs, which gave me the most fantastic excuse of being able to exchange cheery hellos, and quite literally run away.
I felt like it was supposed to mean something, the full-circleness. But I didn’t really know what, or care enough to spend time figuring it out. Which might be the real meaning.
By the time I ran the race, its origin story felt like ancient history.
Regardless of what got me there, deciding to do it was the easiest part of the whole thing.
Two weeks before El Cruce, my upper left thigh began to hurt. When the physical therapist said the muscle was overworked, I went to another physical therapist, hoping this one would tell me I was fine. She put me on a table, poked around a bit, and said the same thing as the first one.
The morning of El Cruce my hobble came in handy, making it easy to lose Cameron in the crowd of runners, as he was going so much faster than me. Everybody was going so much faster than me.
The race began on an uphill, which hurt less than the downhill. While runner after runner sprinted past, I slowed to a limp. Pain throbbed in my left thigh.
A couple hours later, I finally reached the first oasis – refueling stations filled with snacks and Gatorade. I asked the man behind the tray of orange slices if there was a bathroom nearby. He raised an eyebrow and told me, “Princess, there’s no bathroom for 30km.”
I felt like telling him that this princess was on her heavy flow, and she’d like to see him run 100km in the wilderness on his heavy flow days.
But seeing as I’m a lady, I simply thanked him, and headed off to find a nice bush to change my tampon.
There was an off-season ski-lift nearby that was ideal for a quick change. According to a sign hanging above the ski-lift, it was called “Princesa 2.” Because the universe clearly thinks it’s hilarious.
Apparently, the universe also thought the heavy flow wasn’t enough, so it sent the dodgy stomach fairy to pay me a visit as well.
This probably had something to do with using tap water to boil pasta the night before. You’re not supposed to drink the water, but all of my Argentinian teammates had insisted it was fine for cooking. My dainty colonial stomach thought otherwise.
Seeing as soap wasn’t allowed in the outback, and there were no showers at the camps, I forged a deep alliance with baby wipes.
On the bright side, in my frequent treks off-trail to take refuge, I discovered the truly untrodden Argentina (and left it a little less untrodden than before).
Day one came with it the blissful advantage of not knowing just how slowly I was going. Though my thigh eventually eased up and stopped hurting, I was caught behind lines of runners and trails too narrow for passing.
I knew I wasn’t winning the race, but it wasn’t until I crossed the finish line seven hours later that I learned how far behind I’d fallen.
My coach ran up to me, concerned, and said that he’d checked at the medical booth to see if they had news. Everyone else on my team had finished hours earlier.
He asked me what happened, and I didn’t have an answer. Not wanting to go into detail about the heavy flow, dodgy stomach, or pain in my thigh that I probably shouldn’t have been running on in the first place, I just said that I was going slow and left it at that.
Everyone else had already been in the lake, so I jumped in alone.
Everyone else had already eaten, so I ate alone.
Everyone else had already chosen tent partners, so I slept alone. This gave me a place to cry alone too.
I’d originally planned to keep my phone off during the race – anticipating a few peaceful days to reset and connect with nature. But it soon became apparent that I needed a lifeline.
I wanted to cry to my boyfriend. I wanted him to tell me that I could do it. But the relationship was new, and I didn’t know if I was allowed to fall apart in front of him yet. So I text him, and told him that I was doing fine, just fine, thanks for asking.
Instead, I cried to my dad and told him that I wasn't sure if I could do it. I’ve fallen apart plenty of times in front of my dad, and I needed to borrow his belief that I could finish. I needed to know that someone thought I could make it.
As I drifted off to sleep, I felt the air mattress slowly deflate until I hit the ground beneath me.
It would have been comical if I didn’t have 66km left to run.
Race lineup the next day depended on the finishing order of the previous day, and I was one of the last to be called. I waited around with the nagging feeling that I was late for something.
I spent the entire first half of the second day disillusioned. For the last six months, my life had been this race, and it was feeling like none of my preparations had mattered at all.
Leading up to El Cruce, I dropped alcohol and sugar, and had turned down so many invitations that I was starting to get texts asking if I still lived in Buenos Aires.
Friday nights had been reserved for staying in, so I could wake up early on Saturdays for a long run.
The running part was always ok, it was the other stuff that I had to rally for. Like pretending that I didn’t feel so alone at practices. Pretending that I wasn’t making the fact that I didn’t speak better Spanish mean anything about me.
I would give myself pep talks on the bike ride to training and think of conversation topics, practicing the dialogue in advance.
I would try to quiet the part of me that argued that it was too cold, or too hot, or that I was too tired, or too stressed to make conversation.
The part that said not today. Today I just wanted to run in silence.
On nights when I’d drank too much caffeine, it would get existential. I’d wonder why I pushed myself to do hard things, and what I was trying to prove.
I never found an answer, but I did keep running hills until my whole body hurt. And sprinting laps in the rain, waiting under awnings for the lightning to pass.
Trudging along alone in the race, it was starting to feel like everything had been in vain. Like it wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d just slept in for the last six months.
Why had I given up so much if I was just going to finish last anyway?
Halfway through the second day, the thought came – what if this was why I trained?
I’d thought I was training to run fast up mountains, to sprint down hills, to finish strong. But what if I wasn’t actually training for what I thought I was training for?
What if I’d been training so that no matter what happened: an injury, no sleep, heavy flow, dodgy stomach – I could still cross the finish line.
As long as I held on to the race I’d thought I was going to be running, the only thing I could see was all the ways this wasn’t that race.
I had to let go of everyone else’s races too – the races of my teammates finishing hours before me. In my head, that was the race I was supposed to have had, but measuring my race against theirs just made me notice how short I was coming up.
I could either keep my grip on the race I’d thought was going to happen. Or I could accept the one that I was running.
When the voice in my head stopped fixating on everything I was doing wrong, it left gaps for other voices. Ones that said different things.
There was my mom’s voice telling me to put on more sunscreen.
And my dad’s voice saying that Mother Earth knew I was there.
I heard my boyfriend reminding me, “Te entrenaste un montón. You got this.”
And my coach asking what if this was exactly the race I was supposed to be running, and exactly how I was supposed to be running it.
As the terrain got tougher, my head voices got kinder.
And not just the voices of other people, my own voice as well. Because it became apparent that the only way to make it to the end, was to get on my own team.
The thing with three days of running is that there’s a whole lot of head space to fill.
I thought long and hard about a lot of things, but as the last day came to a close, my attention shifted from (1) surviving to the finish line to (2) surviving the finish line photo and the best way to salvage my femininity.
I’d never seen a Pinterest board dedicated to turning “three days of outback” into a look, but I had time on my side.
Unzipping my lightweight sweat-wicking pullover, I reached into my sports bra and made a few adjustments to give the girls some sun. I reapplied chapstick over peeling lips and fluffed my hat hair-flattened braids.
I spent a few kilometers debating whether to leave my sunglasses on. The plus side was that they covered my no-makeup eyes and blocked my dirt-crusted face. The con was that the reflective lenses made me feel like an outdoorsy mom. I wasn’t ready for that yet.
Taking them off, I used my dirty hands to wipe away as much dirt from my face as I could. The tears, I figured, would take care of the rest.
True to form, they came right as I crossed the finish line. They were the bawling sort of tears, and they could have been from any number of things: relief, pain, endorphins, eighteen caffeine packets in a body that can't drink coffee without a panic attack.
I hate crying around people, but I didn’t feel like wiping these ones away.
Not when the photographer made me pretend to bite my race medal under the finishers’ arch. Not as I hugged my teammates after they got offstage from winning fancy awards for running so fast. Not on the bus ride back to the cabins where I got a round of applause for finishing.
The tears eventually came off in the shower and washed down the drain with days-old dirt, and pieces of my skin that had blistered off and were flapping about.
It was the best shower of my entire life.