It’s been nearly three weeks since Ragnar, and I’m still struggling to put it in to words.

On one hand, the camaraderie was as strong as ever, and I think this was my favorite van, yet. We worked well together, and took care of each other to an extent that I wasn’t expecting.

On the other, Ragnar broke me in a way that I hadn’t expected. I knew it was going to be a grind, I knew I would have to walk some of the race, that my body wasn’t quite up to 16 miles on asphalt. If it had been any other year, I most likely would have been fine. Not this year.

September is very often the perfect month in the Adirondacks. March or April bring the mud, then May brings the black fly. June, July, and August are dominated by humidity and mosquitoes. October starts flirting with the cold, and by then there’s little or nothing left on the trees to block the wind. November is the start of the Adirondack winter, but it can snow as early as the last weekend of camping season, in early October.

September is, therefore, the brilliant month when the Adirondacks are at their perfection.

Except for this year. The heat was oppressive, and we were swimming in the humidity. It was so hot that 2 hours north of us, the Montréal Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon was cancelled. Ragnar carried on, though, and so did we.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Our Ragnar started out like my previous two, with the exception that my friend Matt and I were now in van 2. Four of us met up at our captain’s house, and then headed up to Gavin Park, in Wilton. Our other two runners would join us later in the day. We watched the safety video, new for this year, but not improved. We met up with the crew from van 1, and our team’s volunteers, who were all doing their shift at Gavin Park.

Then it was time to go. We made our way over to starting line, waiting for our runner to come through the arch. While we were standing there, we noticed a runner coming from the wrong direction, shirtless and moving fast. He came up to the arch and started dry heaving. I tried to get a look at his bib. When I finally did, it was clear that he was our runner, Paul, with another runner not far behind. He tagged off to Lauren, our first runner, and she headed out. Paul commented on the fact that the person at the entrance was looking at their phone instead of directing runners. We scratched our heads, wondering if there had been a course change, or if he had just missed the sign telling runners to go to the other entrance.

The next stop was a dairy farm, and Lauren handed off to Andy. Then we found a convenient spot along a River Road, with 30 of our closest van friends, and waited for my turn to run. While we were parking, I noticed a van with government plates, with a bunch of decals on it, including one that said, “We eat vegans for breakfast.”

I shouldn’t have let it get to me.

I’m not a vegan. At best, you could call me a flexitarian, or a reducetarian. I don’t want to eat, wear, or otherwise exploit animals and their bodily functions, and I’m working to get to the point where I’m not reliant upon them, but it’s going to be a long road. I jumped in to veganism head first 2 years ago and I’m still picking up the pieces.

I digress.

I let it get to me. It made me so mad that I tore away once Andy passed off to me. I pushed hard. Too hard. It felt good. Maybe this won’t be as bad as I thought? I’m flying, or at least it feels like I’m flying, compared to the slow pace I had been running previously, to keep myself aerobic. I checked my watch, and I was around 160. Perfect for racing. The first mile went by in 10:30; the fastest I’ve run in at least a year. The second mile went by in 12:30, and I had to take a walking break. I started alternating between walking and running. Slow running hurt my legs, but fast running felt OK, so I alternated fast running and walking. (“Fast” being relative to me; I know this isn’t “fast.”)

I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but somewhere around 3.5-4 miles in to my run my lungs went nuclear.

Over the summer, a combination of stresses caused my eldest child, and then me, to develop walking pneumonia. Our house had been taken over by mold, and a type of fungus called Peziza domiciliana, and it took us forever to get it fixed. We were at the mercy of whatever bank owns the abandoned house attached to ours, and they were slow to respond, through the intermediary responsible for managing the house. To say it was stressful is an understatement, and it ended up taking much longer than expected. (It’s fixed now, and I’m grateful for everyone who helped us get our lives back.)

Antibiotics got the pneumonia under control quickly, and after a few weeks I was able to do some light aerobic training without coughing up a lung. I had already said “no” when our captain, Randy, asked I wanted to run this year, because I was still recovering from pneumonia, and I didn’t have a strong aerobic base prior to getting sick. Then Randy broke his foot on one of the local 5K trail races, and he had to drop out. The next day, three more team members dropped out, due to a variety of personal reasons, as I understand it. I knew it would be tough to fill in 4 slots, so when Randy’s brother, Matt M., asked if anyone was interested, I stepped up. I knew it would be rough, but I had endured worse in a race, or at least so I thought.

Prior to Ragnar, my lungs felt fine. I was able to run without discomfort, and the only time I really noticed that my lungs were still healing was when I laughed. My first leg, and my stupid sense of pride made me remember that, yes, I was still healing.

My lungs burned. I stopped running immediately, and acknowledged what had just happened. I cursed myself for not taking my doctor up on his offer for an inhaler. I gave myself a little while, then tried running again. I didn’t get far. My lungs ached. My legs started hurting. I wonder now if I was actually starting to get hypoxic, and my muscles were feeling that, or if it was just a reaction to the pain. I had left my pulse oximeter in my other pair of shorts, so I didn’t know.

I texted my team, let them know I was falling off of the pace, and that I was having a flare up from the pneumonia. When I finally pulled in, I handed off to Matt S., and I was guided to the car, where I got to meet our other two team members, and got the requisite, “I didn’t know you had pneumonia?” I quickly grabbed some Nuun and sat down so we could get moving.

My lungs felt better on the ride up to Lake George, and by the time we stopped for dinner, I was feeling mostly human again. Shaken, certainly, but human.

This was originally posted on my Wordpress blog.