Page 11 of Runner 13
Adrienne
A strong breeze rattles the tent posts, adding to my nerves.
I’d managed to avoid answering too many questions on camera to that journalist – my bland responses not making for great content.
Jason is nowhere to be found – not in his tent or near the dining area.
Watching everyone tuck into their food makes my stomach rumble, but I don’t want to eat something I haven’t prepared myself.
Gastric issues can spell the end for any runner’s race; it’s just not worth the risk.
I head back to my tent, where Mariam is sitting on her foam mattress, headphones in, frowning.
She spots me and her eyes open wide. ‘Have you heard this?’ she asks.
‘Heard what?’
She doesn’t reply. She just takes her headphones out, puts them in my ears and presses ‘play’. It’s the latest Ultra Bros Podcast .
‘What are you going to do?’ she asks, when I’ve finished.
‘I have to find him.’
‘Why? He is no friend to you. He has made sure everyone knows who you are.’
She’s right. Now I won’t be safe, even amongst the fun runners.
‘He says he wants to tell me something about …’ I can’t say Ethan. Mariam doesn’t know that side of the story, or about my suspicions that someone had tried to hurt him deliberately. ‘Something important he found out about that time.’
She scoffs. ‘He is probably making it up to get you to talk to him.’
‘Maybe. But you heard him on the podcast – he was obsessed with the case. He had a whole notebook full of his research and there’s a chance he can answer a question I have.’
Mariam shrugs. I’m not surprised she’s a sceptic. I have no reason to trust Jason, and it’s far more likely he wants to somehow manipulate me into an interview. I am the missing factor from his vast ‘Glenn Affair’ equation.
My phone beeps. I glance down to see a message from Pete wondering if I’ve heard the podcast and telling me it’s not too late to leave the race. I swipe it away.
I still can’t believe he failed his drug test. Pete is meticulous about his health and what he puts in his body – he eats a vegan diet, scrutinizes his supplements, tracks every macronutrient.
No matter how bad he wants it, he wouldn’t resort to performance-enhancing substances.
Would he? Maybe he felt the pressure to perform in light of who his future father-in-law might be.
I entertain the thought for about a microsecond before dismissing it outright. It must be a mistake. Mixed up blood vials – I don’t know. I do know how gutted he must be feeling to be out of the race, though. He’d been training for this for months. Made it his entire life.
He’s not alone on that. Earlier, I’d listened to my two other tentmates – a Canadian guy named Alex and a Japanese runner called Hiroko – discussing their plan for the run.
Biding their time over the first stage, trying not to go out too quick.
Keeping an eye on the Moroccan runners, not letting them get too far ahead.
Working together to keep a good position until the very last leg.
In a stage race strategy is important. The time is cumulative, and you can’t fall too far behind or else there will be too much of a gap to close.
I wonder if I should be planning too. There’s been nothing conventional about the way I’ve prepared for this race.
In the years since my last race, I’ve become a more intuitive runner, choosing not to adhere to a strict training schedule but instead just listening to my body and going with the flow.
And of course I don’t have the time I used to, pre-Ethan, to be that regimented.
The time, oh, the time! How I wish I could send a message back to pre-parenthood-Adrienne, to tell her to luxuriate in all the free hours she had.
Hours that had been hers and hers alone, to do with what she wished.
The number of times I’d hop in the car and drive to some remote trail, carrying a bivvy on my back and running until my legs gave out.
Or at the last-minute I’d sign up for a run along the Jurassic coast and spend the night kipping in the back seat of our car.
Even casual mid-afternoon sessions on a track were out, unless they were carefully negotiated around after-school clubs and play dates.
Motherhood altered every aspect of my life – but especially my running.
I had to learn how to move in my new body, one that had grown another human, stretching and changing almost beyond recognition.
I had to knit together muscles in my stomach that had been ripped apart, gaps in my abdominals so large I could almost put my fist through.
I figured out how to pump at the side of the trail, bottles of breast milk sloshing in my backpack until I could get home to Ethan.
Training squeezed into times I could find childcare.
Pete’s life changed too, sure, but not in such a visceral, primal way.
Becoming a mother both ruined and remade me.
And I wouldn’t change it for a second.
The urge to talk to my son is suddenly all-consuming. I don’t know what the signal will be like deeper into the race. So I call him.
‘Mum!’ he says. ‘What’s it like? Have you seen the camel yet?’
I laugh. ‘Not yet, but then I don’t want to catch his attention!
’ It was one of Ethan’s favourite Hot already some of the tents on the outer edge of the semicircle are coming apart in the strong winds.
I hear shouts as people rush to keep their tent posts upright.
There’s debris flying everywhere and I spot a running shoe rolling away like tumbleweed in the wind.
Someone’s going to find it difficult to run without that.
‘It’s not safe to be out here!’ Mariam shouts over the wind.
I nod, unable to speak without getting a mouthful of sand. I pull my neck buff over my nose and mouth.
We rush back inside and lower the centre pole, so there’s less fabric for the wind to take hold of, and we close the front flaps to stop sand and rocks from getting inside. It quickly goes dark.
I lie back on the carpet, my hands gripping the straps of my backpack and hugging them tight. Mariam huddles next to me. The wind buffets the tent, howling around us.
All we can do is wait for the storm to pass.