Susan Donnelly

 

 

Rob and I returned to this great little 50k (Rattlesnake 50k) this weekend.  It’s a perfect summer race with a low-key, have fun, get-out-the-lawn-chair-and-watch-everyone-finish atmosphere.  The course itself takes you over a respectable amount of steep, long climbs and descents that are just perfect for our Mont Blanc training.

 

A nice relaxing 50k where we could run, chat leisurely with friends, and still get home in one easy day.  Little did we know that today we’d encounter one of trail running’s worst nightmares.

 

Before

The race ran smoothly for the first 21 miles.  The weather was blessedly un-sunny but it was humid as a steam bath and I was soaked in no time.  Everything was working okay but my legs were far from zippy after running up Mt. Sterling the week before, then long-ish trail runs at Haw Ridge and on the North Ridge Trail in town during the week.  I’d also taken some meds that were dragging me down temporarily, so about 10 miles or so into it, I reluctantly surrendered Bill Keane’s fine trail companionship to wait for Rob (who was recovering from a stomach virus but as always, happy to be out running).

We ran the next several miles together wishing Wesley Fenton was there, working the up- and down-hills for Mont Blanc, and generally enjoying the scenery and the company of other runners.  Rob kept marvelling at the green-ness.  It was not a drought year and the plants were happy, though Dennis the RD and crew had done a remarkable job in weed-whacking and chainsawing to make smooth sailing for us.  Trail conditions aside, lots of runners still looked ragged, early on.

 

We reached the 21-mile aid station and as usual, headed immediately up another steep hill – me climbing hard ahead and Rob climbing behind as hard as his achilles tendons would allow.  Rob was behind me less than .1 mile when I rounded a switchback, sweat dripping from my face, and saw an older runner sitting on a rock up the incline ahead.

We had the usual conversation as I neared him, “How’s it going?”  ”Fine, just a little tired.”  ”You need anything?  Peppermints?  I have some peppermints.”  ”No, I’m okay, just need to rest for a minute.” “Okay, well, have a good run.”  I climbed on up the hill to the top, set my water bottle on a post and the camera on some dry leaves while I tried to catch my breath and wipe the sweat out of my eyes.

 

During

A minute later, I heard Rob yelling something.  For a split second, I froze.  Had he found something unusual I had to see?  More insistent yelling, my name. I yelled back and grabbed camera and water bottle, all at one time, and bolted back down the hill. He kept yelling and I kept answering.  Something was very wrong.

On the switchback above him, I saw, and time slid into slow motion.  It was like a movie scene.  He was yelling at the guy I’d just passed, shaking him, trying to bring him back to consciousness.  There was no answer.

A few steps and I was around the corner.  The guy’s eyes were closed.  He was pale and unresponsive, limp as a rag doll.  Rob had a hand on each of the guy’s shoulders and was yelling at him “HEY, wake up, wake up, come on!”  

I slowed long enough to toss the camera and water bottle nearby and tell Rob I was going down to the aid station to get help.  On the switchback below, I yelled to “think about CPR” while wanting more than anything else to swallow the words back.  

The downhill floated by.  What had happened in between the time I saw the guy and the time Rob had?  Heart attack?  Maybe.  Stroke?  Maybe.  Bee sting reaction?  Too fast.  Heat exhaustion?  Too fast and no indication when I passed.  I yelled ahead to clear four runners out of my path, reached the road, jumped over the bank and ran yelling up to the aid station volunteer that we had an unresponsive runner down.  I described the situation as calmly with as much detail as possible and told him the guy was close to the top of the climb where I had waited on Rob, which I remembered as dirt road. 

The aid station volunteer took off in his vehicle to get help and a cell phone reception, leaving me in charge of the aid station.  I sat there not moving.  It had been precious minutes.  Deep breath…the guy had probably died by now.  Rob was alone with him.  Everything around me was slow and quiet except for the extended family camping next to the aid station.  They were loudly passing the word around that a runner was down, like it was reality TV only better.

I couldn’t stop thinking Rob was alone with the guy as he died.  I wanted to help but the four other runners were there by now and one more person wouldn’t help.  Plus, someone needed to be here to direct emergency help.  Then it hit me – that wasn’t a dirt road at the top.  It was trail.  What was I thinking?!? How could I have made a mistake like that???  It may well have cost the guy his life.  I couldn’t breathe.

I’d left Rob alone in that situation.  I went there with him in my mind, the runner dead in his hands.  It was the hardest thing to ever have to do in a race.  He shouldn’t be alone.  This was all so wrong.

Manning the aid station was logically the right thing to do but I wanted so badly to get back and help.  I paced.  I’m hard-wired to help people, not stay out of it.  The rednecks next door were now speculating about which runner it was.  I desperately wanted the runner to be okay and everyone to go home happy at the end of the day.  These were good people and this was a good race.  ”Please, oh please, oh please…”

Eventually, a runner walked up the road to the aid station.  I recorded her number and time like it was the most normal thing to do, then took a deep breath and briefed her on the situation ahead.  She went on. Shortly after, to my relief, the aid station volunteer returned with the cavalry – an ambulance and the Dennis, the RD.

Dennis and I took off up the hill but the EMTs were not dressed for hiking and were carrying gear and lagged well behind us.  I wanted to drag them up the hill but it probably didn’t matter now.  As Dennis said, it was a race director’s worst nightmare.  I felt for us all.

We neared Rob and the other runners and could hear he hadn’t died.  A tidal wave of relief washed over me.  Still, it didn’t look good.  They had coaxed the runner momentarily back into thin consciousness only to have his eyes roll back into his head and lapse back. We yelled and quizzed him and tried to keep him there until the EMTs arrived but he kept fading out.  

The EMTs diagnosed the immediate problem as very low blood pressure, coupled with high potassium and four electrolyte caps at the last aid station.  They leveled him out as best they could and tried with minimal success to get some Gatorade in him.  Dennis and I made a few trips back down to the ambulance for supplies and back up.  The EMTs were finally able to get him awake enough that he was groggily asking his running friends to go on.  Trail area was crowded with Rob and I, the runner, Dennis and four other runners perched around a steeply narrow switchback, so with no further value to Dennis or the runner or the EMTs, we made the runner promise to get better and agreed to do on.

 

After

It was a good thing we had ten more miles left in the race.  Rob and I needed it to decompress.  The “before” seemed like yesterday.  The incident, over in a moment.  We talked over what we did wrong, what to do different next time, we needed to learn and mostly, how lucky it had been the two of us who encountered him as we did.  We intuitively split the tasks – Rob stayed, I went.  Rob had been around some of this before and knew enough from his exercise physiology degree to help him reason through what to do/not do.  I’d been through so many training classes at work that stressed getting help was a higher priority than staying that the training kicked in like instinct.  And as dead as my legs felt before, I had plenty of running left in the tank for running up and down the hill to guide and to bring supplies.

In the end, the friend that drove the runner to the race was able to drive him home, instead of to an ER.  All’s well that ends well.  For all the running up and down the hill to help the runner, Dennis awarded me the beautiful Rosemary Platt Award he gives each year to a runner who goes “above and beyond” in honor of his good friend who lost her battle with breast cancer.  It was a true honor.

But I think Rob and I were lucky as well.  I’d never wish that on anyone and hope never to endure it again but an experience like that puts work stress and other self-created stress firmly in it’s place.  It’s an unexpected gallon of ice water in your face to remind you what’s important.

Most of what I stress about in any given day, I won’t remember next year.  It’s temporary and really unimportant in the grand scheme of life.  What’s important and what I will remember next year is that a runner who might not have gone home, did.

 

Posted: Tuesday, July 14, 2009, 12:26 am | Tags: Blog | Respond | Trackback