It’s a great privilege to choose your suffering in this life.

36,000’ of elevation change.

100 miles. 100 degrees.

6 hours of mild heat stroke.

20 miles of trotting on a rolled ankle.

Heat rash and saddle sores.

24 hours of pushing.

And no reward. Well, not in the usual ‘win a trophy, prize money, cover of a magazine’ kind of way.

The real reward comes in the form of what I learned about myself and my body in this 24 hour meditation on suffering.

There’s an intense choosiness my body has when it’s working this hard.

Simultaneously it wants very little, and very much.

It wants specificity.

It wants exactly what it wants when it wants it.

A handful of M&Ms is too many. But 1 is the perfect amount.

I’m thirsty and my throat is dry from eating dust and smoke. But big gulps are too much. I learned to slosh a mouthful of water around and slowly swallow. Chasing it with 1 sip of highly concentrated electrolyte water.

The slow dissolving of an ice cube in my mouth.

The intense shock of cold American River water on my face and the back of my neck.

The messages are so clear and simple. Loud and straightforward. It makes me wonder if my body is sending such strong signals to me all the time and I’m not listening.

I’m not sure. Perhaps there’s a way that a single point of focus and so much pain drives clarity to the top of the food chain.

After running several miles down the first canyon in 98+ degree heat, I spent the next 6 hours on the verge of throwing up.

Slow breaths, I said. Deep breaths.

My stomach churned.

What grounding can you drink in from this vast nature surrounding you? What help can you get from Mother Earth?

I felt the pounding redness of blood pumping in my face and throat.

What soothing can you get from this peppermint oil in your pommel pack?

I felt faint and slightly dizzy.

Can you keep down 1 sip of water? How about 2?

My lower belly gargled.

10 hours in, I contemplated dropping out I felt so run down and depleted. I still had 14 hours to go.

And then came the inner dialogue. “Remember, all you have to do is stay on this horse. He’s doing the hard work for you. He’s the one climbing 7 miles up this canyon. You’re going to feel sick whether you’re on a horse or not. All you have to do is stay on.”

And so I dug in deep, knowing I’d be hurting no matter what. My priority became being the best teammate for Rader I could possibly be. I stood up in those stirrups, held onto his mane, and breathed as deep as I could. His tenacious athleticism charged us forward, climbing up those 37 switchbacks until we got to Michigan Bluff.

Fast forward to 9:02pm.

Off we went, leaving Foresthill into the night section of our ride.

Seeing nothing but the silhouettes of the 2 riders in front of me, we began a 6 mile descent of Peachstone and Cal 2, a narrow singletrack, sloping, unforgiving, tunneled by trees and branches, sheer drop offs to your left, occasionally taking a branch smack right in the face.

My left stirrup had been giving me trouble all day and it was starting to catch up with me, forcing my ankle into a sickled position. I kept trying to bargain with it, trying to catch a flat foothold, but nothing I did worked. My muscles were so fatigued from trying for the last 16 hours that I had nothing left. I resigned myself to posting on a rolled ankle for the next 8 hours.

As I felt it give way more and more throughout the ride, the deep-set feeling of pain coursed right into the joint. There was nothing mechanical I could do about it, so I started calling on everything I could to relieve myself.

The reiki Naia promised she’d send me.

What I learned from my dad about energy work.

Telling my body that everything it was doing was exactly what it needed to heal more quickly.

Visualizing running a cheesecloth through my ankle and scraping out the pain.

Nothing was working. I wasn't used to my mind tricks failing me.

I noticed how much I resisted the pain so I went with it. Wondering if fully relaxing and riding on my rolled ankle would magically lighten things up for me.

Nope as well.

So began the next 6 hours of knowing there was nothing I could do except just get it done.

And as we trotted through the pitch black night, tree cover obscuring the light from the full moon, I ground down on my teeth, grimaced through every downhill trot, pulled up on the saddle to try and lessen the weight, and repeated, “Just get through this. You’ve come 86 miles. Just get through this.”

As I was trotting along, following Flash the 11 hand, barefoot wonder pony, I thought “we really should be hitting the fig tree near the Lower Quarry vet stop by now.”

No vet stop.

Minutes later, “we really should be hitting the vet stop by now.”

No vet stop.

Minutes later, “we really should be hitting the vet stop by now.”

No vet stop.

As I repeated my agonizing wishful thinking loop, I realized that I couldn’t live on the hope of something better being just around the corner.

I couldn’t keep tormenting myself with “it will be better when…”

I couldn’t keep living for a future moment that I’d assume would make things better.

No, the only thing that exists is right now. Even though it’s agonizing and even though I want to be anywhere other than right now. But the needing of some Future Something was making the current Right Now all the more unbearable.

It’s just Breath and Now and Agony and there’s nothing I can do to change this except to remind myself that a value of mine is to take on great challenges and see them through to completion.

The hours ticked by with no relief, but the finish line did draw nearer.

And at 4:33am, after 1,389 minutes of charging down that unforgiving Tevis trail, Rader and I crossed the finish line and became part of the 44% of riders who finished this year’s race.

It wasn’t an elegant ride, or a beautiful one, or an easy one.

It wasn’t one of those life changing rides that Tevis victors yell from the rooftops about being magical and incredible.

Hell, it’s not even one I’m sure I’d want to do again.

But sometimes it’s just enough to remind myself that it’s a great privilege to be able to choose your suffering in this life.