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Excerpt from "Running across the Millenium"

I Saw Her Standing There

Earlier I asked Aaron to begin packing things up and taking down the tent by 8:00 AM, so that by the time the race was over, everything would be all set to go. Suzy and Cyra-Lea were due back then, but were late in arriving. I was happy to see that Dean, too, showed up again for the ending, and stayed through the awards ceremony.

I had just completed a lap when I saw Suzy walking on the track, headed toward me. ``Did you stay out there all night?'' ``Yes!'' ``All right!!'' What she didn't realize was that I didn't have time to stop and chit-chat, to tell her how I'd done, what the night had been like, and that I was at that moment in a great deal of pain and in a bit of a rush. It wasn't the nicest good morning a wife ever got.

Cyra-Lea immediately caught on that I was in dire need of company, and jumped right in. She stayed with me to the end. As we ran that lap, I explained my blisters, my predicament, and the goal I was shooting for.
I Will

Somehow we succeeded in running every other lap those last few. My counter read 323 laps with just over seven minutes left. So I said to Cyra-Lea, ``Let's do one more!'' and off we went.

By this time most people had done their last lap, so there was a great cheering squad at the end, consisting of everybody present who was not a runner still on the track.

We circled the track one last time, walking it. Then, finally, for me it was over, amidst great jubilation and hullabaloo. My lap counter said 324. There was still time to do one more, if I ran it, but I didn't. I did not yet know that once again my count was short, or for sure whether I made eighty miles. But I now wish I had kept running and done that one last lap, even though it would not have affected my place in the standings.

Volunteers held up a yellow finishing tape for each runner, but I didn't see it. I came in on the inside lane, and because there was still time for me to run one more lap, they evidently assumed that I was headed off for another. Consequently, I was probably the only runner who didn't get to break the tape.

For months before the race I wondered exactly how they end a race such as this. I didn't realize until Monday before the race that your total is the number of full laps that you run. I had imagined that a big horn went off and everyone stopped dead in his tracks and some official with a measuring wheel ran around the track telling each runner how much more to add to the last lap in feet. Duhhh. Silly me.[31]

[31] It turns out this notion is not as naïve as I thought. After posting the original version of this section to the Ultra List, one reader who has officiated at many fixed-time events assured me that this is exactly how some races are brought to a close. The exact technique used varies from race to race.

The race was not quite over yet. A few more people finished final laps after me. Most impressive of them all was Paul Bonnett-Castillo, who is both an extraordinary ultrarunner and a speedster with a running style that is beautiful to watch.

With less than five minutes to go, Paul decided to do first one, and then another. With 1:12 left on the clock he came tearing across the line, leaving a trail of smoke and flames behind, and headed off for one more at sprint speed. Watching him scream down the backstretch was like seeing Achilles in action. He veered around the last turn and headed for the tape in a white heat. Our noble race director finished his last lap of a 6-day race in 1:10, at 8:59:58 AM, the last official finisher, amidst a roar of excited cheering. In addition to being on the track and handling almost every major task in connection with the race single-handedly, he had accumulated 94.95 miles of running---not a bad training week for a busy guy.

With that finish, Across the Years for 1999--2000 was officially over.

Excerpts from 'Running Through the  Millennium' by Lynn David Newton