The Finish Line

(Chapter 6 of The Race Before Me)

The end is where you start from. -T.S. Eliot

We waited in the parking lot, the two of us, as my mom went inside to get some groceries. My dad was in the back seat of my truck, and I was in the driver’s seat. He had been waiting to talk to me alone all weekend. “We need to talk about some important things,” he had mentioned a few days earlier. He spoke in a serious tone, like the tone he used to use during family meetings when I was a kid, serious meetings like when money was tight or when my mom was tired and needed us all to step it up on the household chores. My dad took this opportunity in the parking lot to remind me that my mom would probably outlive him, and that she would need one or two of us kids to pay special attention to her as she would have to move on in life without him.

I listened. I accepted the responsibility. And I proceeded to move through the next few days and weeks and perhaps months with an emotional undercoat of melancholy. I found myself, perhaps selfishly, not being able to imagine a world where my dad wouldn’t know all my own children, the children I hope and pray to have someday. I have always had a fantastic dream of one day seeing my own children watch their grandfather, Bennie Frank Ne lms, rock in his rocking chair and read them glassy-eyed into the worlds of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia and Tolkein’s Middle Earth.

My dad was thinking a lot about death around that time. I guess I can understand why. For starters, he was going to retire soon and was grappling with the pangs of letting go of a very fruitful and professional life as an educator. Then, not long after this talk, my dad lost a good friend and father-figure, his childhood 4-H advisor. And most importantly during this time, he would start losing his other childhood father figure, his older brother Ward, whose body was slowly yielding to a long bout with cancer. And I know, whether he would admit it or not, that he was starting to become very introspective regarding the death of his own father 34 years earlier.

The Race Before Us

Thankfully, my dad is fully alive and God willing he will stay that way for a good long time to come. However, since that first conversation, I have felt the living metaphor of triathlon racing take a different turn in my life. In the world of triathlons, races can be exciting and empowering, or painful and discouraging, or sometimes a little of both. But all races come to an end. All of them have a finish line. And as we near each finish line, the emotions may swell, but so does a sort of all-consuming self-examination. We feel the duty-list of memories as a sudden rush in our blood. This last mile often defines how the final moment of breaking the tape feels. I wonder if life itself resembles this metaphor.

One of my favorite race memories so far in my life took place at a Half-Ironman race in Hiawassee, Georgia in the summer of 2001. This race was a real misfit race, run by a pleasant but a totally disorganized race director. I mean, the organization of this race was a raging mess. It was laughable, really, but when you drive about 700 miles to a race and expect a finely-tuned event and instead get a barrel full of blind monkeys, you sometimes don’t laugh. Thankfully, I was able to laugh on this day.

The race was to start in a pristine lake near the North Carolina-Georgia state line, in the middle of some of the steep ripples of the Great Smokey Mountains. This lake was one of a network of lakes formed by the old Tennessee Valley Authority, way back in Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” days. The water was gorgeous, a lmost drinkable really. There was a small island about one-half mile away from a sandy beach and along a rocky shoreline. The 1.2 mile swim course was about as simple to navigate as you can imagine – just swim out clockwise around the island and then back again.

Well, come race time, the island was nowhere to be seen thanks to some dense fog over the water. All of us racers, suited up in thick rubber wetsuits, waited near the beach. Some of the athletes warmed up along the shore. I, on the other hand, felt comfortable lolly-gagging, because despite the race director’s numerous announcements of “Maybe five more minutes until we start…”, it was obvious that the fog was still sound asleep over the water. It was already a hot, hot morning on what was to be a hot, hot June day in Georgia.

As the sun rose higher, it quickly burned off the fog. We were about an hour behind schedule when the horn sounded and the wave of racers broke from the shore. Boy, the water felt great! The race only had about 200 entrants, a really small race in comparison to other events, and there was plenty of open water to glide through. The pack stretched itself out and headed for the left side of the island. Interestingly, the small island turned out to be no so small after all. As I started to circum-navigate the island’s shore, it seemed to go on forever and ever. Hmmm, it seemed to be taking an awful long time, I remember thinking. When I finally plopped up on the finishing shore and started to sprint up the steep embankment to the bike transition, I glanced at my watch and did a serious double-take. Now granted, I’m not a great swimmer, but my time today was way, way longer than usual for that distance. Other racers seemed to be just as quizzical. At the end of the day, we would eventually learn that the “state-of-the-art” satellite global positioning system used to measure the race course was only used to measure the distance to the island, and they didn’t think to add in the circumference of the not-so-small island itself. So whoever might argue that geometry is not a practical science ought to take a swim around an island to change their mind.

The 56 mile bike course was awesome. Nary a flat portion to be found, it was a roller-coaster ride through the thick green baby mountains. The day grew blazingly hot, but there was a lmost unending shade on the course. What a difference that makes. During the bike leg, I caught everyone who had exited the water ahead of me, pulling even with the final guy right before the bike-to-run transition. It’s a cool feeling starting the run as the race leader.

This other guy, a cheetah-thin seasoned racer from the Atlanta area, came out of the run chute with me. Interestingly enough, he turned right, and I turned left. Hmmm. Now, I was quite sure that I had reviewed the race maps pretty well during that extra hour of thumb-twiddling before the race. This guy had turned the wrong direction. To make matters worse, the race volunteers had actually waved him that direction. Furthermore, they started yelling at me that I was running in the wrong direction! Oh boy. They were clueless. I actually stopped for about 20 seconds to explain to the volunteers how the course was supposed to run according to the race map, and that seemed to jog their memory. Now, as for me, I didn’t want to win this way, letting this guy go ahead as he was waved, the wrong direction into never-never land. So as I started running in the right direction, I suggested to the very confused volunteer that she go pick this guy up in her car and bring him back up to me. Technically, that is very illegal, but today was not a day to try to apply logic and order in the Smokey Mountains. She went after him, and I started the boiling hot run.

Well, time went by. I was already about a mile and a half into the 13.1 mile run when our volunteer pulled up next to me with the guy, then proceeded to pull way ahead of me, in the car, until they were completely out of sight. Now, I was blown away by this. Mister wrong-way was hitching a ride way up the road!

I proceeded with what was now a very strange race. But I ran hard in the heat. I ran until my feet bled and my skinsuit was full of the salt of my dried sweat. I ran until my knees began to shuffle over the never-ending ups and downs of the hills. I plugged over these hills, so far ahead of everyone else in the race that it seemed like I was alone in the world. In a strange way, it was really beautiful. And I didn’t give a thought to the disorganization or the long swim or the guy hitching a ride or the tremors of leg cramps. I just ran forward over the prescribed route and smiled away.

The Last Mile

The last mile of this race was pretty joyous, but for non-conventional reasons. First, I would get to unravel the mysteries of the quirks of the day. I would learn the mystery of the island circumference. I would learn how the confusion of the run course happened. I would befriend the cheating racer and learn that he was not so much cheating as he was just plain overwhe lmed with confusion. Besides understanding the mysteries, there was also the refreshment. I would drink cold water and a fruit smoothy and rinse the salt of my effort off in the pristine lake water. And I would enjoy, about an hour later, what became a dark, raging, and completely triumphant summer thunderstorm. The earth seemed to shake with the thunder cracks and I raised my arms and let raindrops just massage my tired eyes.

But the real beauty, the secret beauty, of this race was yet to come. You see, I had planned to go to this specific race because of it was near Boone, North Carolina, where I was about to start a week’s vacation of training on my bike and exploring hiking trails in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And that, folks, is what made all the difference in the race itself. Despite the melee, I knew that one way or another, I would be driving up to Boone that same day to stay alone with my bike and some good books in a great cabin just east of the quiet Appalachian town. I knew that I would have long days of riding over Grandfather Mountain, Beech Mountain, Meat Camp Road, and the Blue Ride Parkway. I knew I would be hiking over high trails and seeing the hazy blue profiles every afternoon. And I knew I would have quiet nights in the hot tub on the deck of the cabin, staring at the moon and the stars. I knew I would be filling my belly before bed and making hot coffee in the morning. I knew I would be happy. I knew I would be at peace. I knew I would be with God, the inventor of it all.

I am not sure if the most exhilarating race finishes really need the professional announcers, the TV crews, and the thousands of fans lining the road. It is most definitely awesome to win, or even finish, with such a crowd as attends and cheers at the Hawaii Ironman or other big races. But I tell you truly, even a quiet finish in the middle-of-nowhere, Georgia was an awesome feeling because of what I knew was to come. This race could have thrown anything, any challenge, my way, but the promise of Boone was ever-present.

The Brotherhood of the Finishers

I suppose we all have our own dreams of how a finish line should feel. John Elldredge and Brent Curtis, in the book The Sacred Romance, propose that heaven might feel like the magical dreams and memories we have as young children. I like that thought. Even more, I like the fact that there is nothing really stopping us from feeling those dreams all through our adult lives as well.

As I wrote this, my dad called me to tell me that his brother, my uncle Ward, had just passed away hours ago. I want to think that Ward has run down his finish line with a smile. Knowing Ward, this might mean he now feels as if he is now training beautiful horses in brand new stables overlooking a countryside that makes Marshall County, Tennessee pale in comparison. My dad’s finish line someday might feel like a long walk, an inspired poem, a good book, or rocking in his chair reading to five young children. My own finish line might feel like a winding mountain climb on a titanium bike or a cool breeze and a steep mountain trail with a full moon at the top. And even better, we’ll all finish in a place together, all as brothers now. We will laugh together and share our joys in a way that allow us to finally love each other all over again.

bn (2003)