Promised Land
When Sean told my dad in the fall of 2019 that he wanted to run an ultramarathon the following spring in the Blue Ridge Mountains, my dad said, “You’ll cook your insides.”
As Sean and I drove out to the start of the Promised Land race on April 23, 2021, we remembered how that was daddy’s response to the idea of Sean running ultras, and we laughed.
We both agreed that he had probably read an Outside Magazine article about some crazy ultra-marathoner running through the desert and something about that stuck with him. Wherever dad originally read something along those lines, the concept stuck with him: long-distance running equaled cooking your insides, and therefore was not an advisable form of exercise for long-term health. I kind of remember the photo from that issue of Outside. There was a woman—lanky, leathery, tan—sitting in a sauna. She looked cooked, for sure.
Don’t we all have those little unfounded beliefs, those weird tidbits we absorb and internalize and can’t let go?
Sean wanted my mom and dad to see him run the Promised Land race in 2020. But then daddy got sick and died. And then the rest of the world experienced a kind of death when the pandemic hit, everything got cancelled, and we got stuck at home.
But Sean didn’t give up on his dream to run an ultra marathon—which honestly, I’m not sure where that came from. I just know one day he started talking about it. And he didn’t let our dad’s silly warning keep him from it. He joined a running class for the SP ’21 semester. His teacher was the famous ultra runner David Horton. Sean started running the trails, and now has two ultras on his CV.
First, he ran Holiday Lake in February. I was supposed to go out and see him run, but an ice storm hit the Mid-Atlantic region. Sean and his friends drove out to the race anyways. They almost couldn’t get there because of icy roads and cars sliding backwards (ask him for the full story). But they made it, starting the race a few hours late. Sean’s feet got so wet that he asked the ladies at an aide station to duct tape them. He finished the last of about 33 miles around 5 hours and 30 minutes, and collapsed on the ground. Two nurses dragged him into a warm cabin, put a thermal blanket on him, and brought him back to life.
This experience at Holiday Lake did not discourage Sean from running another ultra. I actually think he’ll be an ultra runner for life.
So I drove down to be his “race crew” for Promised Land. I wanted to be there since mom and dad couldn’t.
And there we were, driving through the gorgeous green hills of Bedford County, Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance, remembering dad’s silly quirks and unable to believe on the most idyllic April day that he isn’t still here with us. You would never know, on a day like that, that something isn’t right in our world.
I told Sean, “Mom says this all the time, and a lot of times it annoys me, but maybe daddy will be able to see you finish tomorrow morning.”
Sean said, “Maybe he already knows I will finish. Maybe that’s how it works.”
I have to brag on Sean. He absolutely killed it. Over the course of his training, he proved to Dr. Horton that he could be in the first wave of runners. Horton seeded him at 34, and Sean finished 15th. He beat his own goal time by 15 minutes, coming in at 5 hours 27 minutes.
A couple of Sean’s friends and I camped out, and froze, at an overlook he passed through twice. The first time, Sean was at mile 11 and ran down the mountain. The second time, Sean had to run up the mountain, up a hill nicknamed “Dark Side”, with only 6 miles left in the 34 mile race. We gave him goos, pickle juice, and a cinnamon bun. The second time through, his face was caked with what looked like sea salt—it was sweat caked on his face. He was cramping and shouldn’t have stopped, but he wanted to eat a piece of cinnamon bun and say hi to us one more time. He said that knowing he would see us both times at the aide station helped him keep going.
“You’re so close!” We told him. “We’ll see you at the finish line!”
We drove on a dirt road through the mountains to get to the finish line. I ran like a crazy person from my car, hoping I didn’t miss him cross. But Sean beat us there. I saw him at the edge of the pavilion, animatedly telling someone a story, smiling and waving his hands around like the Italian he is.
Horton, who gave Sean a lot of tough love throughout the semester, a lot of “you’re crazy, you can’t do it” kind of tough love, shook Sean’s hand, hugged him and said he was really proud of Sean. He told Sean, “You have a great career ahead of you.”
We waited at the finish line for hours. We got there around 11:00am. We watched Sean’s classmates finish, and we all huddled under the pavilion when it started raining at 2:00pm. We didn’t leave until Sean’s last classmate crossed the finish, 9 hours into the race.
Sean and I drove home in the chilly April rain. We imagined how excited daddy would have been to be a part of it all that morning—the nerves, the thrill, the community. He would have stood at that aide station at Sunset Fields making new friends but also checking every moment to see if his boy was coming through. When Sean ran by, he would have whooped his classic “Woohooohooo!” He would have bragged about “the young man” to anyone who would have listened until the cows came home.
He would have been happy to know that he was wrong about cooking your insides by running long distances. He might have even started dreaming about running Promised Land himself (and he wouldn’t be the only 60 year old to do so! You’d be amazed!).
Daddy feels close. People like to say your loved one is “in your heart.” They say, “You carry him with you. He’s always with you in your heart.”
I don’t know how to explain what it means to “have someone in your heart.” But I also know it’s true because I can picture every detail of my dad and how he would laugh and smile and fret and cheer over his buddy that morning at the Promised Land* Ultramarathon.
*It should be noted that Bruce Springsteen has a song called "Promised Land" and our dad loved Bruce. Loved him. Saw him multiple times in concert. Sean also has a great playlist he made in 2020 for the Promised Land race that got cancelled. You can listen on Spotify.