Run or Die by Kilian Jornet Page B

lowering my head and holding my hands close to the sides of my body to give myself more aerodynamic lines. I manage a few hundred yards like that, but lack of air forces me to look up and take in deeper breaths. When I do that, I realize that the path is imperturbably following its familiar pattern. Blasted paths , I think. Couldn’t they have made more direct tracks rather than ones going twenty times round the mountain to get to the top?
    The sun is starting to shine gently on the mountains to the west, and so far there hasn’t been a single ascent that has forced me to walk. I want to find a steep ascent I have to walk up or climb. I want to encounter a tricky descent, a slope that makes me watch where I put my feet so that I don’t fall, when running becomes a dance over rocky hurdles and not a simple succession of skimming steps that take me forward. As I think these thoughts, I see Olivier’s silhouette at the top of this ascent. It doesn’t seem too far off and I need a stop, not to eat but to break out of the dragging rhythm I have gotten into. I look down and accelerate to reach the stop quickly. I count to 100 and, panting, look up again, hoping to see Olivier in front of me. However, he is still a long way off; I would even say he is farther away. I don’t seem to be making any progress, and every step seems to defy my expectations. Finally, however, we reach the hill where Olivier is waiting and I sit on the ground. I take a gel and briefly gaze at the two lakes we have left behind. Losing no time at all, I start running again. I have to reachKingsbury South before nightfall, and the sun is rapidly beginning to go down behind the mountains on the other side of the lake.
    My steps echo monotonously along the track. I finally reach the mountain ski station of Kingsbury along with the last embers of daylight, and I stop for 40 minutes to eat, rest—physically and mentally—and gather strength for the second part of the course. I have run some 75 miles, but have yet to reach halfway. The dry, earthy terrain has covered my body in dust, and I have dirt in my shoes and socks, which has given me huge blisters that have begun to hurt now that I have stopped. As I eat a large plateful of gnocchi, Lotta washes my feet in cold water and Sònia prepares a syringe of Betadine to clear the liquid from the blisters.
    “It will just sting slightly,” she says when she sees the fear in my eyes as she brings the syringe close to my feet.
    “All right,” I reply halfheartedly. I know it’s the only solution if I am to continue for another 90 miles without being forced to wear bigger shoes.
    She sticks a needle into the blister and takes the liquid out before injecting Betadine.
    “Ahhh!” I moan. It feels like my foot has just been stuck inside a pan of boiling water. I quickly take my foot away from Sònia and blow hard on the blister.
    “I told you it would only hurt a little bit, because I didn’t want to frighten you. Come on, that’s one less,” Sònia says persuasively. She gradually burns the skin off the blisters until my feet don’t hurt anymore; whether it is because the blisters have been eliminated or because the burning process has left me totally numb to pain, I do not know.
    The cold returns with a vengeance as soon as the sun disappears, and I wrap up for the night: long-sleeve T-shirt, windbreaker, gloves, and hat. Ross, a strong runner who lives and runs here,will accompany me on the first part of the night, as the paths are not clear and apparently it is very easy to take a wrong turn. It is a weight off my mind to run next to someone who knows the area so well. We are ready to go: clothes on, last gnocchi eaten. I make sure my headlamp has batteries, do stretches to loosen up legs that have started to feel the miles, and once again we run off in the dark to shouts of encouragement from the team, though this time at quite a different pace. We gradually climb the track that zigzags across the