On the edge of the comfort zone

Last Saturday, I stood among a bunch of runners behind an ancient temple at the start of the 17 kms Taipei Otterbox trail run in the mountains of Maokong circling Taipei city. Barely a couple of hundred athletic and cheerful runners were going through their paces even as alarm bells slowly started going off in my brain after an experienced runner advised me to go very slowly after learning this was my first attempt at running a race of this type. An amateur (at best) runner who has gradually become addicted to the fun of running and have notched up a couple of half marathons (and more importantly another notch on the belt buckle) thought 17 kms in the mountains would be relatively easy. I was going to discover how "easy" it was.

Checkpoint 1

After the initial flurry of the fast runners leaving their slower counterparts behind and two groups diverging to face their own demons via a 9 kms and a 17 kms route (scrawled on a cardboard and pointing in two different directions)  came a gentle incline which i chewed up in gusto followed by a relatively steady trail through the woods for about a few mins. After we burst out into the sun dappled road, came the first signs on why this route was known as one of the most hardest and technical routes in the Asian running calendar. Smiling fiendishly, a lady organiser stood pointing with her right hand pointed heavenwards to a small break in the woods, towards a path that went at an incline 60 degrees or more.. There started the fun. For about 6 kms after that, there wasn’t a 50 meter stretch which did not involve some degree of climbing - often holding on onto ropes for dear life, or gripping onto slippery services or sliding into gulches. Passing a couple of old runners who were clearly enjoying this refreshing exercise, I was asked if this is a first and if so, why didn’t I sign up for the shorter 9 kms version. Silently telling myself that killing old men are a punishable offense by death in these parts, I ignored them and labored on. I passed hikers who were out on a stroll, gambolling picnickers clicking photos with gay abandon and even butterfly catchers who looked perfectly at place within the jungles. All except me! After a few more minutes, my garmin called it quits deciding it was better to shut down in protest rather than be a mute chronicler of this tragicomedy. Only the pink ribbons that were tied to the trees at irregular intervals to mark the trail watched me stumble by.

"200 metres behind you"

Checkpoint 1 marked the end of the 1st 7 kms of the route.  After gobbling down bottles of energy drinks and water from a couple of vans parked there, i was told the next checkpoint was only 6 kms later to which I eagerly cantered away noticing this stretch was a winding road. That would soon disappear as the road metamorphosed into an undulating beast of treacherous roots and cold silence enveloped by a green sinister carapace of leaves. Just as I was mulling whether taking a short nap would be a perfect idea to quell the rousing protests below my knees, out popped a photographer from behind a tree asking me to smile. Pulling together my best Usain Bolt expression, I gave a million dollar smile. I am yet to receive that snap and that photographer was never seen afterwards. That brief glow of publicity soon was extinguished by a darkening cloud of pain. Motivational lines (pain is inevitable, suffering is optional or I will finish with a smile on my face) was proving to be of little help. So were the feeble attempts to remember lines of my favorite songs. I silently cursed myself for not carrying some music along. A little less than the halfway mark, I sat down on a flight of stairs to take a break when i spotted a couple of organizers striding purposefully towards me. Being the good Samaritans that they were, they patiently told me that a short cut for ending this race was 200 metres behind me and I would do well to give up here as the road was long  ahead.  Sound cracking logic! I lurched back a few hundred steps and turned back to see that that the 2 good samaritans had disappeared and i had retraced some good solid gains thanks to them. Kicking myself, I swore to move on ahead and ignore any well meaning folks .

2nd life

About 2 kms away from checkpoint 2, I thought if i drank enough water and took rest at regular intervals, I could reach checkpoint 2 and then maybe think of quitting the race. By this point, I was the only guy traipsing through the forests apart from a few organizers who were standing at trail forks to guide lost runners and slapping blood thirsty mosquitoes away. Each and every one who saw me asked me one question," is there anybody behind me" and their faces lit up in unbridled joy when i replied in the negative or mumbled I haven’t seen anybody since a while. Checkpoint 2 which marked end of km 13 came and went at the end of a slushy field baking away under a hot Taipei sun and a happy bunch of teenagers handed me a banana and couple of bottles and egged me on. Downing them greedily at the edge of a bubbling brook ahead, I felt the blood circulating in my veins again. On the feet front, I didn’t even want to see them.

“We thought you were never coming back”

At this point, I was reliably informed that I had done most of the climbing and I could expect stable terrain till the end of the course. Of course, that “stable” terrain turned out to be the bunds lining fields, some winding steps, squiggly roads and a crusher of a flight of stone steps at the very end. As I mentally began marking down the kilometers at this point, finishing runners and returning organizers on the roads kept pushing me on. Even as I turned on a wrong path at one point, an old lady angrily pointed the right way towards me. I made my way back towards the temple where I had started more than five hours ago, I was greeted by loud cheers and whistles reserved for, what i thought only for winners. I even managed to smile at the pretty girl who garlanded me with a medal and said in a beautiful voice" we thought you were never coming back". Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.