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Excerpts from 'Running Through the Millennium' by Lynn David Newton Chapter 10: Getting Close Tuesday, December 28, 1999This spectacularly beautiful morning, after studying and caring for necessary business at home, I walked for two miles, my almost-last exercise until Friday. My seven-day accumulation has dwindled to 16.13 miles, a mere token effort. It's been decades since I've felt as emotionally pumped up by the way I feel physically. As a benchmark I often compare one day in New York City in 1974, one of the best days of my life. It was a superlatively gorgeous spring day. When I headed from home to the subway, on my way to work, an overwhelming urge blanketed me, driving me to keep walking. Although it was ten miles to work, I walked the whole way. As I walked south on Broadway, I jumped and leapt about, punching my fists into the air, probably looking like a madman to passersby. I felt completely in lockstep with the world around me. At that exact moment life had never felt so good. This morning's walk was not that good, but was in the same range. I wanted nothing more than to take off running. I wanted to fly. My head filled with visions of a 100-mile day Friday. This feeling must be repressed---a 100-mile day isn't going to happen. But I have a better feeling regarding my readiness for this race than any other I've ever done. Suzy and Cyra-Lea joined me in Queen Creek this afternoon. On the way out we left our new car at the dealer for some minor tweaking, and picked up a loaner. The borrowed car, now sitting ostentatiously in my driveway, is a year 2000 Cadillac Deville with 900 miles on it. We rode to Arizona Boys Ranch in style, arriving in the parking lot at 2:02 PM, two minutes late. Being late annoyed me, because I'm a meticulously on-time person, and I had promised to be there. Suzy and I immediately sat down at the computers, replacing the weary volunteers who had been there for many, many hours. Meanwhile, Cyra-Lea got the best job in the whole place. She took over the walkie-talkie and began to call the numbers of passing runners. She stuck at it, with only one short bathroom break, not missing a single number, until we left shortly after 8:00 PM. Runners stopped by before we left to say she was the best caller they'd had. They were being nice, but it was probably true. Who wouldn't rather be greeted each lap by a cute, friendly, cheerful teenage girl than by an old grouch like me? As I used to sing to her when she was little (to the tune of the old Sara Lee bakery ad) Everybody doesn't like something, It was frantic in the booth all afternoon. We kept encountering discrepancies in the count. These need to be resolved immediately and corrected, while continuing to record numbers, without ever missing a single one. When there's a problem, it's helpful to have a third person handy who knows what to look for by poring over the hard copy. That wasn't always possible. Paul says that on Friday, when the number of runners will be greatly increased, he will have a third person working behind the computer operators as a backup, recording numbers by hand. Another problem was that the walkie-talkies would lose their charge quickly. On two occasions this happened while Cyra-Lea was trying to call out numbers, and the transmission was breaking up without her knowledge, while we frantically tried to figure out who was passing by. Someone would have to run a freshly recharged radio down to her, while she communicated with a loud voice, shouting the numbers up. She never missed a beat, but we in the booth were falling all over each other at times. On one occasion, due to some unexplained botch-up, there were four lap-count discrepancies that appeared all at once, and then the walkie-talkie went out again. In the midst of this chaos one of the cell phones rang: It was some guy wanting to know if we wanted Canadian bacon on our pizzas, which would cost seven dollars extra. We had no idea pizza had been ordered. ``Forget the bacon! Just deliver the pizzas!'' Suzy barked into the phone, and hung up. A half hour later runners were circling the track with paper plates, wolfing down fresh baconless pizza. Eventually some was sent up to us, too. As I reported Friday, there was an article on the race in the Tribune on Sunday. I still haven't seen this myself, but there is a copy of it on a table down by the track. From the booth Suzy and I saw Paul holding up a newspaper against his chest. Several runners had stopped and were crowded around him looking at it. He was showing them another newspaper article, this one on the front page of the sports section of today's paper, complete with a photograph of Paul, his son James, and 61-year-old runner Don Winkley, who received most of the focus of the article. Don gave up a heavy smoking habit, took up running, and has since run across the country a couple of times. It was an excellent article that gave balanced coverage to the rest of the race, and accurately reported all matters. It's a keeper. I got a photocopy for my files. The best coverage was yet to come. Amid the liveliest, deepest commotion, a roving reporter from Channel 15 News, the local ABC affiliate, showed up with a videocamera. He stayed for over an hour, interviewed numerous people, wandered around freely, and shot footage liberally, including of us working in the booth. He told us the piece would be on at 10:00 PM. Paul assigned me the responsibility of seeing that it got taped. Tonight at home we turned on the TV, started the VCR, and waited for the story. We weren't disappointed. They allotted only two minutes to it, but did an amazing job. The video footage was superbly edited, and the story had good introductory and concluding copy. Cyra-Lea was the subject of the second taped shot. Following a runner passing by, they cut to her calling out the numbers, then to an interview with Paul. That was followed by several little one-sentence quotes from runners. At the end the anchorperson said, ``Forrest Gump would be proud!'' Indeed he would. Miraculous things are taking place in Queen Creek this week. Someone arrived early to take over my position on the lap-counting computer. I moved to Paul's Windows machine and prepared the 3:00 PM report to be sent across the Internet, now nearly five hours late. This was tedious work. The Macs are not connected to the PC, so I had to type all the data in by hand from a hard copy off the printer, using typically braindead PC software. Apparently there are anxious fans in Brazil and Germany waiting on pins and needles for every update. Meanwhile, Paul, who set himself a goal of 100 miles for the six days, but had so far covered only fourteen, decided to do some running. Paul is not merely a good ultrarunner. He's blazingly fast. He ripped into a series of eight or ten laps at a pace between 1:15 and 1:30 per lap (between 5:00 and 6:00 per mile). Nothing like a little speedwork in the middle of a 6-day race, eh? Just before 8:00 PM I went down to keep Cyra-Lea company the last few minutes, but it was so beautiful out that I took off my jacket and treated myself to one lap around the track, a fitting cap to my training, and a small taste of what was to come. Excerpts from 'Running Through the Millennium' by Lynn David Newton |