She scrambled up the bank on the other side a lot quicker than I did, and by the time I was clear of the mud and the undergrowth, Gobi had shaken herself off and was staring at me, obviously ready to get back to the race.
The dirt road ahead soon led us to another man-made culvert, though this one was altogether bigger than the previous one Gobi had jumped across. I didn’t stop at all this time, just picked her up and lifted her over.
There was a moment when I had her in front of me, her face level with mine, that I swore she gave me a look of genuine love and gratitude.
“You’re ready, aren’t you, girl?” I said, unable to stop smiling as I put her back down and watched her start to jump about. “Let’s go, then.”
It was only when I looked up that I saw an old guy on a donkey. He was watching us both, his face completely expressionless.
What must I look like? I wondered.
7
Race organizers like to tease runners, and the final stretch of the day went on for miles. My GPS watch told me that we were close to finishing, but I couldn’t catch a glimpse of the camp anywhere. All I could see was the path disappearing off into the distance, rising and falling over a series of ridges.
I was a couple of miles out, and by my calculations, I’d lost so much time when my pace had dropped earlier and then when I helped Gobi across the river, that Tommy and possibly even Julian would have finished. So I was surprised when I crested one of the ridges and saw both of them a mile up ahead. Neither of them appeared to be going at a decent pace. Instead, it looked to me like they were walking. I wondered whether, maybe, Tommy was holding back deliberately to allow others to catch up and make amends for what had happened earlier. Or maybe he was just struggling in the heat and was unable to go any faster.
Either way, I thought I might just have a shot at narrowing the gap between us, but I wanted to do it without letting them know. I didn’t want them to realize I was chasing them down and pick up their own pace. I had only so much more energy to give for the day. As the road went down into another dip, hiding me from view, I sprinted as fast as I possibly could. When I reached the top and could be seen again, I slowed right down. Gobi thought it was all great fun and pushed me hard on the sprints.
I didn’t see Tommy or Julian for the first couple of ridges, but when I crested the third, the gap between us had been halved. They were definitely walking, and I ran the next two dips even faster.
I knew I was getting closer with each sprint, and when I came up for the fifth time, my lungs burning, I was barely two hundred feet behind them. They were just about to disappear from view for the final dip down, and I could see that the finish line was just ahead.
I had time for one last sprint before I switched tactics and started to run with a bit of stealth. The last thing I wanted to do was alert them to the fact that I was chasing them, so I went from running as fast as I could to running as quietly as possible.
By keeping up on my toes, and taking care to avoid any loose stones, two hundred feet soon turned into one hundred. Then eighty. Then sixty. I was amazed that neither of them heard me or looked back.
When the gap between us was thirty feet, and the line was another hundred feet beyond them, I decided I was close enough and kicked into the fastest sprint I could manage. I got a few paces closer before Julian turned and saw me, but even though Tommy started running, I had gained too much ground for either of them to make up.
I crossed the line first, with Gobi close on my heels in second. The sound of the finishing drum couldn’t drown out the shouts and cheers from the small crowd of organizers and volunteers.
I knew that the few seconds I’d put on Tommy would make no difference at all when it came to the end of the seven-day race, but it felt like a good way to respond to what had happened. I wanted him to know that even though I respected him and all he’d achieved as a runner, I wasn’t going to sit back and let him have everything his own way. If he was going to win, he’d have to do battle with me out on the course fair and square.
“That was amazing,” said one of the race organizers. “You’re having a super race.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said. But I didn’t want to have my ego stroked. I wanted to see how she was going to deal with the Tommy situation. “Can I come and have a chat with you later today about Tommy Chen cutting the course before checkpoint one? I’m not in the right frame of mind now, but you need to know what happened earlier.”
A lot of the anger had gone, but I knew I still had to be careful about what I said. After all, Tommy was the star of the show.
I ended up giving my version of events and waiting in the tent with Gobi curled up at my side while the investigation continued. The woman asking the questions also spoke with the other runners, the checkpoint staff, and Tommy. I’d said that I thought a fifteen-minute adjustment was fair, but in the end Tommy had just five minutes added onto his day’s time.
I was a bit disappointed and maybe a bit worried about how Tommy would take it. I went in search of him and found him in his tent. He was in tears.
“Do you have a minute to talk, Tommy?”
“I didn’t see the markers,” he said as soon as we got outside. I thought that was unlikely. Those little pink squares were hard to miss, and any seasoned runner who spends time at the front of the pack quickly learns how important it is to continually scan the route ahead and keep on course. Besides, he was behind me at the time, and my bright yellow shirt was hard to miss.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t want any hard feelings about today. It’s all done with now. Let’s not hold any grudges, shall we?”
He looked at me, his face set firm and his tears long gone. “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t spot the markers.”
I left it at that. There was nothing else to say.
Back in my tent I got a bit of encouragement from Richard and Mike for finishing first, but it was the incident with Tommy that they wanted to talk about. I wasn’t so interested in discussing it and wanted to put the whole thing behind me.
“I take my hat off to you, Dion,” said Richard. “You did something nice there.”
“How come?”
“Us runners farther back really appreciate your taking a stand on this. We’ve all got to stick to the same rules. Plus, you’ve done the right thing talking to Tommy and burying the hatchet.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see what Tommy’s capable of tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe I’ve just stirred up a whole hornets’ nest of trouble for myself.”