Yet Another Dental Visit

The new crown didn't fit no matter how much the dentist examined it, buffed it, drilled it.  "There's a distortion in it," she finally said.  "We'll send it back to be redone and you'll have to return when it comes back."

Then she got to work shaving down the other two crown candidates, after administering copious amounts of Novocaine to the left side of my jaw.  Perhaps you know the experience--mouth wide open, head pushed way back in the chair, eyes focused somewhere on the lights overhead, the drill screaming, a scorched smell in the air, water rushing into your mouth from a tiny jet and being sucked back out again by a small nozzle.

The work was done, the two new molds were created and three temporary caps were emplaced, two on the left side and one on the right side.  "For the next two weeks, try not to use either side of your mouth to chew with," the dentist joked.

Perhaps the end is now in sight.  Besides what I had already paid, the fresh bill was $3,618.

Grand Canyon, Day Eight of eight.

The Grand Canyon trip is over. Eight days in THE natural wonder of the world, with friends from 35 years ago. Incredible experiences. I am a terrible picture-snapper. So I have given you eight posts of photos snapped by my friends, much better picture-takers than me. If you don't take your own trip down the Canyon, shame on you! My freshman college roommate Jimmy (he's the one acting like a sumo wrestler in the photo below) was the glue that held the Sewell Hall Rafters together. He bridged all the differences. He said wisely at the onset, "Everyone is the same, only more so." Brilliant. In the photo below, I can see every person's personality shine forth for the camera--it's uncanny--but maybe you hadda be there and get to know these folks. Trip of a lifetime? Oh yeah. The company is the Arizona River Runners. The American heroes are Travis, Lindsay, Julie and Kelly, in the second picture below.

Photo credit Dennis.

Scotty, beam us up! Photo credit Jimmy.

Barry. Photo credit Jimmy.

Giving Birth. Photo credit Dennis.

Lake Mead. Photo credit John.

Thanks, Travis, Lindsay & Julie. Any one of you could share a foxhole with me. Photo credit Barry.

Grand Canyon, Day Six

Day Six in the Grand Canyon: Running one of North America's most ferocious rapids, Lava Falls, waving goodbye to eight party members, a boat-to-boat running water fight, leaping off a cliff into the Colorado River and...

Vulcan's Anvil, the neck of an ancient volcano thrusting up into the river. Photo credit Barry.









Am I ever going to blog about running again? Photo credit Harrie.

A willow grows out of a crevice in a boulder in the river. Photo credit Barry.

We are not the first. Photo credit Dennis.

Andy, the musical prodigy. He & Barry played 60s river and traveling songs every night. A twenty-something that actually liked hanging with fifty-somethings, he was there with his Dad, CJ, over whom he kept a watchful, loving eye. In the background is Diamond Peak. Photo credit Harrie.






Dennis. Photo credit Dennis.

Evening comes to the Canyon. Photo credit Dennis.

Grand Canyon, Day Four

Grand Canyon, Fourth Day.


Dear Lord, here on this river bank, before we launch today
Words credit Vaughn Short, photo credit Barry.

Trouble. Photo credit Dennis.

Big Horn Sheep. Photo credit Harrie.

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Up... Photo credit Barry.

...in ... Photo credit Barry.

...and out. Photo credit Barry.

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Purple mountain majesty. Photo credit Dennis.

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To Yvonne. Photo credit Barry.

Grand Canyon, Day Two

Grand Canyon, Day Two. Morning coffee call, 5:30 A.M. I thought that the busy water behind me & Joe could be deadly. Speaking on the subject of death in the Canyon, which apparently is omnipresent, it would play a big role in our trip. (Photo credit Harrie.)

A natural amphitheatre we came across. The place was swarming with tourists brought by the Mormons. See those blue blobs in the center? Those are rafts which could hold 16 people or more. That's why John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War hero (and perhaps murderer) said this cavern could hold 50,000 people in it. Lindsay termed him "J Dub" when she read from his excellent writing of his account of his expedition's first trip through the Canyon shortly after the Civil War. (Photo credit Dennis.)

Oh yeah, we saw natural life in the Canyon. Here's a buck at the waterfront that would make a lifetime NRA member with a full magazine of silicon bullets loaded into his (I won't bother with the obligatory "or her") rapid firing assault rifle ecstatic. (Photo credit Dennis.)

Does this look like a castle on a hill in Medieval Europe? We lay on the boats and imagined so. Do you know, BTW, that a third of the population of Europe died in the first visitation of the Black Plague around 1350? No wonder they were paranoid. Where was the TSA when you really needed them? (Photo credit Dennis.)

So the water on the Colorado could get calm too and make you think that all was right with the world. (Photo credit Barry.)



I think this was the view from the beach we slept on the second night. If not, I know it was a view from the Grand Canyon. And if not for the Sierra Club stopping all those plans to dam up the entire Canyon back in the 60s, well, you wouldn't be seeing these spectacular photographs shot by my friends. (Photo credit Harrie.)

Grand Canyon, Day One of eight.

Summer 2008 Grand Canyon Trip, Day 1. At Lee's Ferry, MP 0. Two boats, four boatmen, 28 greenhorns. We were all so nervous. Were we worthy? (Photo credit Dennis.)

The Highway Bridge a few miles downriver. The Canyon goes more than 240 miles to the west before you can cross it again by car. Of course with gas at $4.00 a gallon, suddenly we don't think like that anymore. Thanks, W, for war AND high prices! (Photo credit Dennis.)

Here's some perspective for ya. See the little figures to the right near the bottom? We're going to hike in Ryder Canyon. (Photo credit Barry.)

The hike on day one seemed a little challenging to me. Travis gave it a 5 on a scale of ten. (Photo credit Dennis.)

Rapids, day one. I thought sure, you could drown in those rough waters. The rapids got a lot worse. (Photo credit Barry.)

Last hours

She had never seemed well. Always quiet, she was pale and subdued. She was the very last of the group of twenty-eight that I got around to meeting. It turns out that I never got to meet her.

She was 65, the mother of three children. She had come on the eight-day Grand Canyon rafting trip with her husband of 48 years. They apparently were inseparable at home. Sweethearts since age 15, married at age 17, on the trip they were always curled up together at the back of the boat.

(We encountered beauty...) On the fourth day she was more languorous than ever. At the lunch break, we put ashore at a little side stream that emanated from a small waterfall 200 yards up the shallow, rock-strewn stream bed. Everyone waded up to it to stand under the warm plunging water.

I was last off the boat. I could see that she was having trouble getting up the stream bed. It was only ankle-deep to the left, but the bed sloped off very gradually to the right into chest-high still water. She seemed caught up in that gradual slope and couldn't get out of it. Further and further to the right she went as I came along, into deeper and deeper water. It was odd. Absolute safety in water only inches, not feet, deep lay a few centimeters to her left.

Suddenly she was in water up to her chest and she seemed flustered. I reached out a hand for her and brought her back to the shallow side. Her husband was twenty feet ahead, waiting for her. Neither one spoke a word to me.

Then she was having trouble manipulating the shallow part of the stream bed so I extended my hand again and guided her a few steps to her waiting husband. I went on ahead to partake in the cascading shower of the waterfall and when I returned, she was seated in six inches of water, resting, while her husband stood guard over her.

She died four hours later.

(...and danger on our journey.) Later I heard that reportedly, she had a bad heart. But she had undergone a battery of tests in preparation for the trip, a stress test, an MRI and others, and passed every one of them.

The Colorado River where it passes through the Grand Canyon, with its boiling rapids and broiling heat, is a harsh taskmaster.

Getting over her

I hope no one on the packed jetliner saw me cry today. I was crying for her even though I barely knew her.

It was on Friday that she passed. She lay down nearby and never rose again. Summoned immediately, our response was swift. We worked on her for almost an hour, a tight circle of people kneeling clustered about her, working in tandem and issuing curt commands to each other which were instantly obeyed. But she didn't come back.

The trip member who had raised the alarm came up to me later that evening and rubbed my back briefly as I stood there glumly, and said we had done all we could in the circumstances. It felt so good to have a momentary physical connection with a living person. I inanely told her that coincidentally, I had taken a CPR course just six weeks ago. I earnestly told her how well everyone in the little group had performed.

On the plane ride back home five days later, as I was writing notes about that day, I became overwhelmed with the grief and disappointment of losing a fellow being. Of having someone die even as my hands were on her for almost an hour, beseeching her to hold on. When it was over, the living just got up and walked away and continued on with their lives.

I put down my pen, closed my notebook and my eyes, and leaned my head far back into my seat. I kept brushing those pesky tears off my cheeks as soon as they trickled down.

At that moment on the plane, I wanted someone I loved and who loved me that I could hold onto as I replayed it in my mind. I wanted to cry out my hurt and pain over the loss of another on a loved one's shoulder. But although I was soon to be home and my three adult sons live in town, they don't care for me nor speak to me. These self-absorbed young men are not persons I would ever look to for help. The rest of my family lives elsewhere.

I wish that lady had lived. I can still see her husband of 48 years, shock etched on his face, kneeling in the sand off to the side, holding her hand as we worked. Damn it all, we worked so long and hard and got such wonderful assistance from everybody there and we had no damn success.

Bye, Lake Tahoe

The shock was unbelievable. The instant I hit the surface, I thought I was going to die.

I was still sinking into the frigid water. I kicked my legs and waved my arms and arrested my progress towards the bottom of Lake Tahoe. I started to come up. The water was incredibly blue, and incredibly cold. "Only one degree above freezing," Brian had said just before he jumped in, twice. "A day ago it was probably snow in the high country." (Above: The perfect tonic for a long run. Photo credit Brian.)

I had never experienced total immersion in water this cold before. My head popped above the surface. Brian and the rest of the Band of Outsiders were laughing and waving at me from the pier I had jumped from.

No time for chit-chat. The ladder to the dock was 12 feet away. Like a triathlete crawling over everybody impeding his progress in the water, I flailed my way to it. I couldn't climb up it fast enough. (Right: Do I look cold? Photo credit Brian.)

"Aren't you going to go in again?" Brian asked. "I jumped in twice."

I looked at this young man, figuring that since he was about half my age, he was far better suited to repeated shocks to the system than me. "No," I said, standing there dripping on the dock, the 60 degree air feeling positively tropical after being submerged in the freezing water. (Below: Mission Accomplished. L-R, the 2008 BOO and the legs we ran in the Relay, B (7), Bex (3), E (5), Brian (1) and yours truly (6). Missing, Tami (2) and J (4).)

But it had been fun. Fun like going up the last hill on Leg 6 of the Lake Tahoe Relay had been fun. Sort of like, a highlight of my trip to Lake Tahoe, you know?

The Denouement

As I hit the final hill on Leg 6 of the 2008 DeCelle Lake Tahoe Relay, I had a Net-Plus Two going, having passed three runners and been passed once. The last hill is a mile and a half straight up, ‘nuff said.

To run this hill in a race after nine miles is to go see the elephant, to engage in running combat. On this last raw hill, one and a half miles of nakedness as you continue up to the top without respite, you either pass, maintain your position or get passed. There is no other alternative, besides quitting. You can see who is ahead, and who is approaching.

Round and round the S curves I went, knees hurting, muscles aching, breath whistling sharply in and out. I heard some huffing and chuffing behind me and a runner smoothly went by doing sub-eights. He had come from a long way off and there was no keeping up with him. I returned to grinding up the hill. There was a runner ahead that I was approaching, however, and I went by her halfway up. I was back to Net-Plus Two. (Left: Early in my Leg 6 run.)

Then, to calm my racing heart and gasping, labored breath, I walked 50 yards when I saw my support team, imbibing some needed fluids. I broke back into a painful trot again. A runner had been gaining on me and he ran past. Revived by my walking spell, I passed him back immediately. I elevated my pace slightly and up the hillside the two of us silently toiled, sweat dripping off our noses and chins. Up ahead was a woman, whom we both passed. The warrior behind me clung desperately to me, six feet back. At one point he dropped to twelve feet back but then by a force of will, he closed the range again.

My leg muscles were screaming from the unaccustomed task of a solid mile and a half climb. I had trained for this race by running up hills, but nowhere in DC could I find a steep hill of such length that started out at a mile high already. Life became elemental, listlessly watching the roadway eight feet ahead of me, listening through pounding ears to the breathing and footfalls of the runner behind me.

We were approaching another runner. We got to within 30 yards of her when I saw the Bliss State Park sign heralding the top of the pass just ahead. A quarter mile to go! Close quarter combat was about to commence on top of the mountain between the three of us.

The runner behind me was steady as he matched my pace and trod on my heels. The woman ahead had attained the summit but she had not increased her speed despite having only 200 meters of flat terrain to go. I reached the level ground and saw my teammates at the exchange point, cheering me on. (Right: To get this beautiful medal, you're just gonna have to run the Lake Tahoe Relay yourself. If you want to have quiet satisfaction forever, run Leg 6 for your team.)

The top gained, I was now at Net-Plus Three and I hoped to pick off the runner ahead and hold off any charge from the runner behind. There wasn’t much space to operate in anymore. I pushed off on the level ground to begin a two football-field sprint to the exchange point.

My left hamstring muscle immediately clenched into a painful balled fist and brought me up short instantly. I hopped to a stop and started murmuring "OMG! OMG! OMG!" as I grabbed the back of my leg and tried to massage the fiery ball away. It was rock solid and incredibly painful. I was down, and out of the battle. The runner ahead went off towards the finish. She never increased her pace. The warrior behind, who had doggedly hung with me on the hillside while I was trying to drop him, swept by me. I didn't begrudge him benefiting from my sudden injury.

(Left: Late in my Leg 6 run. E has water for me.) I couldn’t even walk until I got my hamstring to relax a little. I stretched my leg and kneaded it for perhaps a minute. The grains of sand run out fast when you’re under pressure. Having just lost a place in the last 200 yards, and failed to gain another place, I started to worry about who was coming up the hillside next. I trotted down to the exchange chute as best I could and slapped B, the anchor leg.

We were in 77/113 place after my 10.5 mile leg. My 1:37:44 (9:18) run had gained two places. It wasn’t perfect, nor did its modest outcome seem very compelling, but I had just finished the hardest competitive run of my life and I hadn't let anybody down that day, including myself.

The 44th Lake Tahoe Relay

Update: I am back from my trip west to run on Bex's team in the Lake Tahoe Relay. I consider my handling of its most difficult leg a success, although I am slightly injured from it. It was the hardest competitive run of my life, a truly transforming experience. My team did great, shaving over a minute off last year's time with an 11:30:43 (9:36), finishing in 83/113 place (73%).

The Setting: The 2008 DeCelle Memorial Lake Tahoe Relay. 113 teams of seven runners each race counterclockwise the 72 miles around the lake, with each team member taking a leg ranging from 8.2 to 12.3 miles.

The Battlegrounds: Leg 1: In the coolness of the early morning, a 9.6 mile run from South Lake Tahoe, California, to Zephyr Cove in Nevada, passing through the shadows of the tall casinos at Stateline enroute. Three substantial hills at the end make this second easiest leg a challenging run. Leg 2: Starting at Zephyr Cove at lake level at 6200 feet, this 8.2 mile leg tops out past Castlerock at the course's highest point of over 7,000 feet. The last half of this next to hardest leg is just an unbroken uphill slog. Leg 3: A 10.3 mile return to lake level down a seven mile shelf road followed by 5K of flats at the end. The "easiest" leg. Leg 4: The longest run in the heat of the day, a 12.3 mile run from Incline Village up a significant hill, past the old casinos where the rat pack would sometimes croon and clown, and back into California. Of moderate difficulty. Leg 5: 10.6 miles of flat running after climbing a 250 foot hill in the very first mile, from Tahoe City to Homewood. Of moderate difficulty. Leg 6: This hardest leg is comprised of 10.5 miles of difficult terrain, ending in a hill climb that seems to go straight up after a nine mile warmup of long and steep rollers. Leg 7: Downhill past Emerald Bay then uphill on a killer shelf road, past a series of switchbacks with steep dropoffs on both sides, then miles of running through pine forests to the start/stop line in South Lake Tahoe 10.5 miles after the handoff. The hardest leg after Legs 6 and 2. (Right: Last year K tackled tough Leg 2, where we tumbled from 43rd to 77th place, in 1:32:22 (11:16). Here K emerges from the tunnel running through Castlerock.)

The Team: The Band of Outsiders (BOO), flatlanders all, sea level dwellers, assembled by Bex before she abandoned the east coast a year ago to return to her roots in the Golden West. Last year we finished in 11:32:00 (9:37) in 76/97 place (78%).

My Mission: To tackle tough Leg 6 where we lost 13 places last year, and either minimize the damage on this impossible ten and a half mile stretch or actually pick up places. The time to improve upon was the 1:53:45 (10:50) turned in by Brian, a non-runner who had a a transforming experience during his leg, running the whole way and arriving at the end exhilarated, having encountered both what running takes from you and what it gives to you. He had seen the elephant on his leg like none of the rest of the Band had. He became a warrior. (Left: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Brian going to see the elephant last year.)

Next: My skirmishes on the "flats" leading to the battle for position on the hillside and close quarter combat on top of the hill.

Lake Tahoe Relay

The Race: The 43rd Annual DeCelle Memorial Lake Tahoe Relay was held on June 9, 2007, a 72.3 mile race around the lake by 97 teams of seven runners each. Each team provided its own support. No traffic was stopped on the mostly two-lane mountainous road with narrow or non-existent shoulders. Running this unique, incredibly challenging race was an intensely emotional experience for all runners involved.

The Route: The race had seven legs of greatly varying difficulty. Legs one and three were the easiest, legs two and six were very difficult, and leg seven was the hardest of the remaining legs.

Leg One: 9.6 miles long starting at 6,250 feet in South Lake Tahoe, California at 7 o'clock in the morning. Flat for the first 5 miles, just inside Nevada at Stateline it encountered two significant hills, each one rising one hundred feet before its downhill finish at Zephyr Cove. Running past strip malls and tall casinos, it had few glimpses of the lake and was the least interesting leg by far. (Above: My first glimpse of the lake didn't come until the third mile on the first leg. My next view wouldn't be until the sixth mile.)

Leg Two: The shortest leg at 8.2 miles, it was essentially five miles of rolling hills followed by an unrelenting three-mile climb rising 700 feet which topped out at 7,000 feet. The stunning backdrop scenery that lasted most of the rest of the race started here.

Leg Three: 10.3 miles long beginning with seven miles of straight downhill, followed by three miles of flatlands. Picturesque panoramas. (Above: Typical scenery during much of the downhill third leg.)

Leg Four: The longest leg, 12.3 miles of mostly level running through villages back into California. It contained a nasty 220 foot tall hill in the third mile that afforded a towering view of the lake.

Leg Five: 10.6 miles of mostly flat running, it started out with an immediate mile-long uphill climb of 250 feet. The lake was often close at hand just to the left.

Leg Six: A nearly impossible 10.5 miles. Nine miles of sharply rolling hills which led to a monster hill rearing up 520 feet in the last mile and a half. Some hair-raising views.

Leg Seven: Drop-dead gorgeous, but dangerous too. 10.5 miles long, it ran downhill for two miles, then climbed 225 feet in the third mile to a narrow shelf road at 6,800 feet with no guard rails and a sheer drop off on both sides. A series of downhill switchbacks then led to a three mile flat run into town to the start and finish line.

The Runners: All from sea level, six hailed from DC and one was from LA. It was a team built upon loyalty, not speed. In the order of their legs:(1) Me, the team's "fast" guy, a mid-pack runner in my mid-fifties. (2) K, the team's indomitable will, a thirty-something runner who trained for the longest leg but was handed the shorter, brutally hilly second leg upon her arrival. She never complained. (3) H, the team's steady performer, a thirty-something runner ready to face the challenge of a seven-mile long steep downhill section. She got no respect because of the perception that her leg was the "easiest." (4) E, the team's athlete, a former major college varsity player now in his early forties who was doing the longest section of over twelve miles even though he had never run any distance greater than ten miles before. His longest training runs for the race were a couple of seven-milers. (5) A, the team's free spirit, a thirty-something photo journalist who kept the team loose and who neatly solved the logistical conundrum by suggesting using two chase cars instead of one. (6) B, the team's soul, a twenty-something California surfer dude who had prepared for the most grueling leg of the race by "visualizing" himself running with perfect form once a day. (7) Bex, the team's captain and organizer, its heart, a bustling dynamo in her mid-thirties who never backed down from any challenge and who impatiently waited all day to be let loose so she could start running down the runners who had gotten ahead of us.

The Running: I turned in a workman-like performance on the first leg, running a 1:19:37 (8:18). My early 7:40 pace gave way to something far slower on the late hills and I lost three places here, but then I was able to sprint the last half mile downhill to hold onto 43rd place for the team.

K ran the rolling hills in the first half of her leg but had to walk up part of the gargantuan, never-ending final hill. She kept exchanging places with another runner on the last hill who kept bragging to her that he had trained for his leg by running three miles, once. Every time he would utter this inanity, K would smile sweetly while telling him under her breath to go to perdition. She finished in 1:32:22 (11:16) with the team in 77th place. (Above: K is glad her leg is done while Bex has to wait all day for hers.)

H ignored the spectacular scenery of her leg as she steadily picked off nine runners on the long downhill portion, once having to duck under the protruding mirror of an oversize camper as it passed by her. The narrow or non-existent shoulders afforded no room to get away from passing cars. She finished in 1:30:30 (8:47) in 68th place. (Above: B and E form an arch for H to run through.)

E took the baton in Incline Village and ran steadily on his long leg, handling the long hill on his section without stopping. Running back into California near Tahoe City, he energized the team by a wild escapade. Hearing that Bex was in a nearby Subway Shop ordering her lunch, he mischievously deviated off course, burst into the restaurant and shouted out a greeting to her. Startled, she shouted back, "You can't stop for food now! Get back out there!" E made amends for his momentary wildness by picking off three runners in the last quarter mile and finishing in 65th place in 1:56:02 (9:26). (Above: Oh. My. God. What are you doing here!)

A immediately ran into trouble on her section, charging the uphill portion that her leg started out with while she was still full of adrenaline. Halfway up the mile-long hill she was breathing in ragged gasps and had to take short walking breaks. She later said she seriously wondered what, exactly, she had gotten herself into as her heart pounded in her ears. By the top of the hill her equilibrium was back and she ran steadily to her handoff point in 1:44:59 (9:54) in 71st place. (Below: A keeps Big Blue always to her left.)

There B was waiting. The rest of the team was nervous for this non-runner with the worst leg. "It's cool," he said. "I've got it covered. Hey, I'll do Bex's leg too." He ran the sharp hills of the first nine miles of his section at a steady pace, knowing what lay ahead at the end. Halfway up the terrific last hill, at a place where he could look half a mile above him and see even more of the steep roadway winding ever upward, he stopped, out of gas. While his very nervous teammates clustered around him, B coolly sucked down a Gatorade and a Gel. "Piece of cake," he said as he set off running again, to the top.

Bex was waiting at the top. She had nervously gone into the porta-potty for the third time when B came into sight far down the hill and someone yelled, "Here he comes!" A nano-second later the porta-potty door exploded open with a tremendous bang and Bex burst forth, flying across the dirt turnout and hurdling the rope into the starting gate. There she came to rest crouched in a sprinter's stance, hand extended to receive a tag. Puzzled because she was alone in the starter's chute, she looked around in ever wider circles until she finally spotted B still 100 yards off.

B tagged Bex at 1:53:45 (10:50) with the team in 84th place. As he limped across the turnout rubbing his sore hamstrings, he righteously said that he felt he had accomplished something incredible by overcoming the grotesque difficulty of his otherworldly leg. On a runner's high, he declared that it was a life-altering moment for him. The experience was so intense, B said, that he felt like crying. (Above: B tags Bex and off she goes to reel in some runners.)

Bex took off on a dead run and immediately started running people down. She was next seen on the wicked uphill portion of her course, crying dry tears of rage at her enforced slowness caused by the arduous climb while far below her the deep blue waters of Emerald Bay glittered in the late afternoon sun. Upon surmounting the hill, she ran furiously the rest of the way into town to finish in 1:34:45 (8:56). She had picked off eight runners to enable the team to finish 76th out of 97 teams. Afterwards what Bex remembered most about her run was seeing an open palm stuck out the window of a van travelling towards her at 30 MPH. As it went by she impulsively high-fived the extended hand. Oww! Although her own hand stung for the rest of the race, she insisted that it was a good sting.

The Result: The Band of Outsiders, flatlanders all, finished this hilly race at altitude in 11:32:00 (9:34) in 26th place out of 39 teams in the Mixed Open Division. The Lumberjack Warriors came in first with a time of 7:03:18 (5:51). Try keeping up with those guys. Another team was comprised of one man who ran all seven legs.

It was an intense emotional experience for all involved. For twelve hours we traveled around the lake together, ran our portion of the race to the best of our abilities, and helped each other out in a hundred different ways. Everybody gave their all to the effort. The intensity of the experience was best personified by the following post-race exchange between Race Director April Carter and B.

April came by and observed Fox, B's dog, busily licking the sweat off of B's arms as he sat there at the finish line. Indicating the white streaks of dried salty brine on B's face, April said to him, "You ought to have your dog lick your face clean next." (Below: B and Fox. View some more pictures of the Band of Outsiders here and here.)

"No," B said, "those lines are my sweat tears. I earned them in this race. I'm going to leave them there forever."