Pine Valley Phoenix

Dani stepped off the bus, and the early morning chill cut through her warmups like a knife through tissue paper. Goosebumps prickled across her skin, and her breath swirled in the glow of the floodlights that illuminated the empty race corrals. The sun still slept behind the Pine Valley mountains that lined the narrow canyon, hours away from rising, but thousands of runners had already gathered in the adjacent field, pacing, stretching, waiting. Their Mylar blankets glinted in the night, reflecting the dancing light of the fire pits they encircled, and though only slivers of their faces showed under visors, hoods, and beanies, Dani could see that their eyes danced with equal excitement. Fighting a shiver, she pulled her hood over her head and yanked the drawstring tight, watching.

Five years ago, that had been her, huddled around one of those fire pits, wrapped in a shiny blanket, waiting for the start of her first marathon. That day, her heart pounded, and her eyes twitched from the 4am wake-up call, but she grinned ear-to-ear. Her dad, a veteran marathoner and two-time winner of the Pine Valley Marathon, crouched next to her, recounting the tale of his own first marathon. Eyes reflecting the light of the fire, darting from runner to runner who had gathered round to listen, he narrated every embarrassing detail, from mistaking kilometers for miles to eating Vaseline he thought was an energy gel. When he got to the part about puking cherry licorice all over his new white singlet, effectively masking the stains from his chaffed, bleeding nipples, Dani doubled over in side-splitting laughter. 

That morning had gone by in a flash, and when the gun went off for the start of the race, she ran with her dad at her side and a smile on her face.

It had been such a different day, five years ago. No expectations—just a formative experience, waiting to happen. Today, the list of people she could disappoint stretched longer than the 26.2 miles before her.

Dani shivered and tore her eyes from the field, marching instead towards a white tent by the starting line. A volunteer at the door of the elite tent stopped her at the entrance.

“Good morning! Can I see your bib number, please?”

She pulled up her jacket and yanked down her singlet to show the number pinned to it.

The volunteer looked at his clipboard. “Three-oh-four,” he murmured then flipped to the next page. “Here you are. Danielle Talbot.” He checked a space next to her name and waved her inside. “Good luck today!”

Dani thanked him and stepped into the tent. She was met by a sea of yoga mats, a rush of warm air, and a table spread with enough oranges, bananas, muffins and granola bars to feed everyone in the tent three times over. The elite athletes inside had segregated themselves—a trio of Ethiopians in the back corner, a dozen white guys from a local running club by the heater, and a mix of everyone else in between them. Some of the runners talked amongst themselves in hushed voices, but most sat quietly, their narrowed eyes squinting off into the distance. A handful of athletes appeared to have settled in for a pre-race nap.

Most of the runners, Dani didn’t recognize, but the one familiar face she found among the Ethiopians turned her stomach to knots. Hoping she didn’t see her, Dani crept toward a vacant mat in the opposite corner and took a seat. 

It was warm inside. Almost too warm. After just a few minutes, Dani had to shed her jacket, revealing her new white racing singlet. It was a dainty piece of fabric but easily the heaviest weight she’d ever had to carry through a race. For now, the new clothing was just a “gift” from her running club’s new sponsor, but the STRYDER representative made it clear that if all went well today, she could be looking at an official contract. She pulled the fabric tight to check that the company’s logo, a stick-figure runner with the word “STRYDER” under it, was not covered by any part of the bib number pinned below it, then forced herself to take a deep, slow breath. 

“Hey, Danielle,” a voice said above her in a thick Amharic accent, and she looked up to see the one familiar face in the tent. Adrenaline coursed through her, and she cursed the loss of energy spent spiking her heart rate. 

“Oh…Hey, Syeda.” Dani tried to keep her voice even though their last encounter flashed fresh in her mind—Syeda sprinting past her with only a quarter mile to go at the Culver City Marathon, her long black braids swooshing behind her as she broke the tape at the finish line. It was a memory that had haunted Dani for the last six months, but not because she hadn’t won. Dani was content to be the girl who had lost soundly to a far-superior athlete, but in the running world’s mind, she became the amateur who almost beat Syeda Kidane, an amateur who was somehow now the “favorite” to win her hometown race. STRYDER, the local running community, and especially her dad, loved the idea of Dani winning this year’s Pine Valley Marathon, but she knew the real favorite stood in front of her.  

Syeda smiled and sat next to her. “Are you feeling ready for today?”

She buried the “no” that immediately came to mind. “I guess we’ll find out. How about you?”

“I think it will be a good day.” Her eyes dropped to look at Dani’s singlet. “Oh, do you have a sponsor now?”

Dani folded her arms across the logo. “Yeah, sort of.” She didn’t mention its precarious home on her chest.

“Well, you deserve it,” Syeda said with a smile.

Dani forced a “thank you” as her stomach turned to knots then made up some excuse about needing to take a jog outside. She wished her competitor good luck then slipped her jacket back over her shoulders, scrambled to her feet, and hurried outside.

The cool night air brought with it a chill that sent her shoulders into shivers once again, but it also chased away the nausea that had been threatening to evict the oatmeal and bananas she’d eaten for breakfast. A volunteer in a yellow jacket handed her a Mylar blanket as she approached the field of runners, and she happily tore it from the wrapping and draped it around her shoulders.

Maybe it was because she had spent the last four years in L.A., but she didn’t remember Octobers being so chilly in southern Utah, even at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level in a canyon flanked by lofty peaks. Her teeth chattered noisily, and her blanket shook like the leaves of a quaking aspen on a windy day. Even her feet felt the sting of the frozen ground.

It was a bit early to warm-up, but it was also too cold to just stand around, so she started jogging, or rather, shuffling, across the frozen ground. She followed the ropes that marked the edge of the starting corrals, past the pack of runners and port-a-potties that stretched nearly half-a-mile long, and then turned around, clutching the edges of the blanket in front of her. In the morning twilight, rocks, holes, and uneven dirt hid in dark shadows, so she moved slowly, staring at the ground just beyond her feet. It was a welcome distraction, and after her second loop past the starting line, she had almost forgotten the STRYDER singlet and the weight it carried. 

Soon, warm blood circulated through her limbs, and she ditched the blanket in a trash bin and lengthened her stride. At this altitude, her breaths came more quickly than they did with the salty warm air of the Santa Monica beaches where she had done much of her training, but she preferred the familiar sting of the mountain air. It reminded her of home and of how running felt before she was expected to be good at it—raw and almost primal. 

She jogged until the burn in her lungs tricked her body into feeling warm then stopped by a fire pit to stretch her legs, happy to stay away from the elite tent. It had felt like only minutes since she’d stepped outside, but already the dark sky had begun to lighten. Anxiety surged as she realized the race would be starting soon.

She had just started stretching when a girl stood from the other side of the firepit and jogged over to her. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” Dani said, reaching down to touch her toes. “My name’s Dani.”

“Kaylee.”

Dani reached over to shake her hand. “Have you run this before?”

Kaylee shook her head and reached for her own toes. “Nope. First marathon. My roommate coaxed me into signing up, then she pulled out halfway through training with a knee injury. Now I’m left wondering what kind of craziness I’ve gotten myself into.”

“The best kind,” Dani said, surprising herself with how honest the answer felt. “Finishing that first marathon—there is nothing else like it.”

“So your first went okay? I swear, all I’ve heard are horror stories.”

Dani shrugged, then crossed one leg over the other. “They all have their ups and downs. But the downs make better stories.”

Kaylee crossed her leg as well. “Do I dare ask about your downs?”

Dani chuckled. “For my first? Well, I got dehydrated at mile 21 and spent the last five miles fighting terrible leg cramps. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was doing it covered head-to-toe in a layer of dried mud.”

“Oh no. How did that happen?”

Dani smiled at the memory then stretched a leg behind her and pressed her heel into the ground, feeling a gentle pull in her calf muscles. Kaylee did the same. “Well, it was much warmer that year, and because it had rained the night before, this field was a muddy mess. They gave us a ten-minute warning, and in my haste to get to the starting line, I got tangled in a space blanket that someone had left lying around. Next thing I knew, I was lying pancake flat in a bed of mud. My face, my bib number, my jersey—everything was completely covered, and the gun was about to go off.”

Kaylee gasped. “Oh, wow. And so you raced like that?”

“What other choice did I have? My dad was racing with me, so he used his shirt to wipe off what he could, but the pair of us were quite a sight. We looked like a couple of bandits hijacking the race.” 

Kaylee laughed. “That’s quite the story.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. You should hear about my dad’s first marathon.” Dani laughed, picturing again her dad’s first marathon photo, and his red-streaked jersey. After she had finished her first marathon, her dad had convinced her to put her picture up next to his. The two finish photos made quite the pair on her dad’s picture shelf; blood, vomit, and filth enshrined in one place.

“Last call for bag drop!” a voice called over a loudspeaker. “Last call for bag drop!”

Dani checked her GPS watch, and sure enough, it was almost start time. She glanced at the eastern mountain range and noticed the sky had turned a stunning burnt orange. The fires had died down to lumps of smoking ashes, and runners had begun to fill the corrals.

“Oh my gosh, it’s starting,” Kaylee said then began stripping her outer layer. “Oh crap. Oh crap crap crap.”

“Don’t worry,” I said even though my stomach felt like it had just been dropped between my legs. “Starting line chaos is all part of the fun.”

Kaylee scoffed and started stuffing a hoodie in her drawstring bag. “But I didn’t even get a chance to pee yet!”

“If you can hold off for a few miles, the lines aren’t too bad for port-a-potties along the course,” Dani said. An earbud dropped from Kaylee’s half-stuffed hoodie, and she picked it up. “Here. You dropped this.”

Kaylee gasped. “Oh! Thanks. That was almost a disaster… Oh, who am I kidding? This is still going to be a disaster. What was I thinking?” A seam to her bag popped as she stuffed in the rest of her hoodie. A few strands of hair had come loose from her ponytail and now obscured her panicked face. Apart from the mud-streaked jersey, she didn’t look all that different from Dani five years ago, just before the gun went off—frazzled, anxious, nervous. Back then, her dad had given her a piece of advice that had been enough to bring back that morning’s smile and set the tone for the rest of that day. It seemed appropriate to give that advice to Kaylee now, as well.

 “Hey, Kaylee, look at me.” Her panicked eyes met mine. “It’s going to be fine. Whatever happens—the good, the bad—embrace it. Embrace everything. You don’t know whether you’ll shit your pants or eat asphalt at mile twenty or have the best race of your life. All you can do is embrace what happens and know that it’s all just part of your story.”

Kaylee stopped wringing her hands. “Wait, did you just say, ‘shit my pants’?” As Kaylee’s eyes widened in horror, Dani worried that she might have taken the analogy too far, but then Kaylee started laughing. “‘Embrace everything.’ You know, given everything I’ve read about first marathons, that’s probably not a bad idea.”

“Last call for bag drop,” the voice repeated.

“Well, good luck on your race. Maybe I’ll see you at the finish line,” Kaylee said and turned towards the mass of runners that had congregated around a school bus near the starting line. She joined the crowd that was hurtling their bags at the bus’ open windows, like an army laying siege to a castle. 

Embrace everything, Dani thought, and shook her head, but then she caught a glimpse of the starting line where a volunteer had just finished escorting the other elite runners into the starting corral. Syeda Kidane had already taken her spot at the front, her long braids swooshing around her as she lightly hopped from one foot to the other.

Oh crap, Kaylee’s words echoed in her head. Forgetting the cold, Dani threw back her hood and shrugged the jacket off her shoulders. As she caught a glimpse of the STRYDER logo, her intestines seemed to twist around each other, but she didn’t have time to think about them. The voice called again for bags, and she unzipped the sides of her pants and slipped one foot out, but then the other foot got caught on the hem of her pants. She hopped to keep from falling over, but then her foot landed on an uneven mound of frozen dirt. Again, she thought Oh crap! and then fell forward into a firepit full of soot.

When she pulled back her hands, they were black as night. Even if she had the means to clean them in the cold, empty field, she didn’t have the time. She’d spend the next 26.2 miles leaving black streaks on dixie cups the volunteers handed out, on her forehead where she wiped away sweat, on her singlet.

Her singlet.

She looked at her jersey. Most of it had survived the fall, but the STRYDER logo had a dark smudge across it, blurring it into an unrecognizable blob. For a second, she thought she might cry, her chances to impress her sponsors essentially up in flames, but instead she found herself laughing—sarcastically at first, but then so loudly her belly ached.

Dad is going to love this, she thought. 

Then, without another thought, she rubbed her dirty hands down the sides of her white jersey, across the front of her shorts, and down both her legs. Once her hands were clean and the rest of her looked like she’d just finished sweeping a chimney, she tugged off her stuck pant leg, tossed her warmups into the white tent where she hoped someone would find them (or not), and squeezed her way into the corral.

“Oh no, what happened?” Syeda asked as Dani slipped into place next to her.

Dani chuckled. “Oh, just another clumsy moment.”

“Are you okay?”

The sun peeked over the Pine Valley mountains, and its brilliant red rays fell onto her ash-covered jersey.

“Never better.” Then she placed her lead foot forward, leaned over the line, and smiled as the gun went off.