The trail's the limit!

The 100K trail route in the recently concluded TNF 100 in Baguio.

It takes a special kind of spunk to finish as a placer, but it takes a whole lot of heart to just simply finish.

Good things come to those who run. Humanity has an amazing capacity for misery. Take the matter of love, for example, which Steven Tyler so aptly summed up in those seminal lines from Aerosmith’s Cryin’: “Your love is swee-ee-eet misery (Oh!).” 

Because somehow, even with hearts everywhere breaking in two a million times over, we just keep coming back for more.

Emphasis on the “we,” since misery, as you all know, loves company.

And that’s exactly what I witnessed for those two days in Baguio. Last April 21-22 saw hundreds of runners gather together in Camp John Hay for the prestigious TNF 100 (The North Face 100), an international distance trail-running series in the Asia Pacific region, already in its fifth successful year.

Now this wasn’t just some measly romp in your city’s backyard. According to one of the organizers, this year’s leg was one of the toughest trails they’d come up with so far, complete with steep, steep climbs and even steeper descents, drawn out for everyone’s maximum pleasure and enjoyment. Race categories were the 11K, 22K, 50K, and 100K (heaven forbid). How anybody could cajole themselves into running a distance equivalent of that from Manila to Tarlac — on rocky, mountainous terrain, no less — was, at that time, really quite beyond me.

So when my fellow marshals and I found out that close to 200 people had signed up for the 50K and 100K, we unanimously shook our heads in awe. That many were willing to put themselves through self-inflicted pain and misery? What crazy, gutsy, badass human beings.

It was around 4:45 a.m. when the first of the 50K runners passed our station, a downhill clearing at the end of the forest along Loakan Road, famous haunt of the White Lady and other aswang denizens. Our area head had sent us a text saying that we could relax for a bit — 50K runners weren’t expected to pass our station until around 6 to 6:30 a.m. With that piece of information (since we’d been up ever since the 100K gunshot at 3 a.m.), my co-marshal and I hurried to go back to sleep.

Lo! Barely a minute had passed since I’d settled into my sleeping bag, when the pitter-patter of nimble footsteps could be heard making its way from above. Dwende? I was frozen in place. But then a flashlight beam swept past our tent and the footsteps came to a halt. We had just enough time to poke out our heads to answer the query of “Which way?” asked by a runner in a lime green singlet. After which, he was off like a gunshot, leaving us in awe to await the rest of the runners on his heels.

They came as a trickle first, the next few ones competitively asking how many had already gone before them, whisking off just as abruptly when they heard they were in the top 10. Then the rest came in a torrent, some cruising easily down the slope with long, confident strides; others picking their way down with walking sticks and tentative baby steps. No matter the pace, however, it was a hotbed of activity, of bouncing orbs of light, determined breathing, and the sounds of lively footfall.

Five hours later, and Mr. Lime Green Singlet was already bounding back up the hill, still in the lead and still running. That was around 10 in the morning. Despite the lack of any real sleep, we cheered like maniacs, asked for a picture, then excitedly waited for everyone else. Now, in my mind, the rest of the runners would be returning in relatively quick succession, the 50K-ers coming back full circle, and the 100K-ers passing our area to get to the finish line. They’d be coming back in droves, either high on accomplishment, or wondering what the hell they’d just gotten themselves into. Bottom line was, they’d all be coming back.

In reality though, after the super-freak 100K speedster (a Spaniard aptly named “Karrera”) passed by our station a little bit after lunch (he finished the whole thing in a measly 12 hours), everyone else had become a scarcity. It would take hours before the next runner would show up, a trend that would last for the remainder of the day until the wee hours of the morning.

By that time, I was starting to view them less as gritty running-machines and more as survivors of a shipwreck. To give you an idea of just how long a run like this can last, the cut-off time for 50K is after 18 hours, while the 100K is cut at 30 hours. Meaning, if you aren’t at this specific area by cut-off time, you’re pulled out of the race.

At first, when runners started coming back while it was still daylight, I thought, hey, maybe this wasn’t so hard after all. Nothing a little endurance training couldn’t fix, right? These guys may have signed up for a world of hurt; but they looked so cool, so inspiringly superhuman doing it, that I couldn’t help but catch a bit of their infectious determination. I entertained the thought for, oh, about as long as it took the sun to go down. But once we finished dinner with the realization that not even close to half of the 50K runners had made it back to our station yet, the full reality of just how strong you had to be suddenly dawned on me.

It takes a special kind of spunk to finish as a placer, but it takes a whole lot of heart to just simply finish. Plenty of the runners were in their mid-30s, and quite a few were already senior citizens. Watching them fight cramps, trudge their way up that seemingly endless hill from our site, soldier on despite it being two in the morning of the next day — now that was really something.

And if there was any sense to their misery, I chalk that up to love. The things we love make us the most miserable, after all. Pushing our bodies to the limits of endurance? Checking one off that bucket list or even just joining for the sheer pleasure of it? As Dean Karnazes, another crazy ultra-marathon man once said, there’s magic in misery.

I’d like to think, however, that what I witnessed that day was pure magic. Awe-inspiring, infinitely humbling magic.