The Other Side of the Wall

By Mario Reynoso

“THE FINAL PART OF A ONE-HUNDRED MILE RACE CAN BE A VERY LONELY PLACE.”  Steve Cairns

“WHEN THE FATIGUE IS SO GREAT THAT YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN’T GO ANY FARTHER, SEARCH, LOOK WITHIN YOURSELF AND I PROMISE YOU THAT YOU WILL FIND MORE.” Ken Chlouber, Race director, Leadville 100

Have you ever heard the phrase “The great ones are not the ones who have never failed, but the ones who have never failed to give up?” Mario Reynoso is one who has never given up. In this book not only does he tell you how he became an ultramarathoner; he delivers his soul to you, his passion for overcoming pain, fatigue, and mistakes. His story is one that shows that happiness is found on the road, not at the finish line.

A book that teaches you that the mind is the most powerful muscle for every runner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781547568901

Book preview

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL

An ultramarathoner's story

Mario Reynoso

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Everything in this book is true. It is the truth as I remember it, or as the people who were part of this story tell it. I have changed some names and omitted some people and details as they do not impact the story, and I have modified the order of some events for ease of understanding.

Thank you for everything you have taught me. I am happy doing the only thing I know how to do.

Look Mom!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

I was at a point where I could not accept reality, and it was getting worse every moment; I had been going for more than twenty hours without stopping. Today I had run one hundred and forty-five kilometers, and now I was walking, furious. I was so tired I couldn’t think of anything else. It was as if I had not slept at all, and I was sitting in the front row in the most boring university class with the professor looking straight at me. But now, instead of sitting in my seat during class, I was outside in the open air, in the dark.

The temperature had dropped quickly from twenty degrees to zero degrees Celsius. It was sleeting, and the moisture made me feel the cold not only on my skin but throughout my whole body. I didn’t have enough clothing to handle this weather; I wasn’t wearing a jacket – I had only put on a long-sleeved shirt. At least my ears and the rest of my head were covered with a woolen hat; but it felt like my nose was going to fall off because it was just as frozen as my fingers, and the blisters on my toes and the soles of my feet were bothering me. Fifteen kilometers earlier I had gone by the post where the race doctor was, and I stopped so she could help me with the blisters, so she drained them and bandaged my feet. Before that the pain had been unbearable, like walking on razor blades. 

My legs hurt every time I lifted a foot to take a step. It was what I’d felt like the day after every marathon I’d ever run, with the lactic acid trapped in my muscles; it was a pain like when you take a hit and you can’t move your leg, and it feels like it’s asleep. I was furious and fighting against the path; I tripped on tree roots because I couldn’t see well. After having been exposed to sunlight all day, my eyes were not accustomed to the night, and the headlamp was only helping so much. I complained about the uphills when the pain was more intense, and I also fought against myself. I had decided to do this race, but... why? What was I doing there? What did I need to prove? I complained to myself non-stop.

I no longer trusted my understanding of what was happening; I wasn’t sure of what I felt or what I saw; I didn't know if I was cold because I was tired, or if the temperature had really dropped so much. Ale, my wife, had been running with me for three hours now. Alita, are you cold? I asked her. Yes, very, she answered. I thought about Ale. Why did she have to suffer here too? It was in that moment that I changed my attitude. I realized there really were no problems, I was just walking in the forest, and that complaining was going to get me nowhere. The finish line was so close: I had fifteen kilometers to go to finish the race. If I wanted to reach my goal, I had to move, but I no longer felt pressured and I didn’t feel the urge to finish it. And so now, everything was fine. I accepted it completely, I stopped fighting and I gave in. I decided not to walk anymore and I started to run again. But how did I get to that point?

A few days before this race I had gone with one of my daughters to the forest in Desierto de los Leones (Desert of the Lions) in Mexico City; it was Sunday morning, the sun was coming up, and as I was getting out of the car she went running up a hill. It took me less than one minute to hide the keys, tie up my laces and go after her.

Pía was wearing the tennis shoes she uses to go everywhere, and the clothing she had put on that day was nothing special for running. She wasn't measuring her pulse or training for a race, she was simply there, in the forest. She was five years old, and when I caught up to her, without asking her anything she said to me smiling, in her little sweet girl voice: Papá, how great that we came to run because I wanted to feel free! She runs to feel free, and maybe to be with me for a while. It’s that simple. She enjoys the present moment, and her life in general. She doesn't make an effort to live in the present; when she gets tired she looks for a place that she likes, she sits down, says she's a princess, and that this place is her throne. She isn’t pressured by time, and when she sees a tree that gets her attention she stops, she tells me about it, she keeps looking at the tree until there is nothing more to see, and then she moves on. When she’s playing, if she finds a branch on the ground she picks it up and says it is her staff, and she walks putting her weight on it. Then she turns it into a sword and chases me with it. She laughs almost all the time, and when she gets bored she tells me she's ready to go.

At what point did I stop running and living like Pía? And why did I stop? What is it I started searching for? It’s difficult to know what we want when we stop running like Pía does and we start running because there is some need within us. It is a search that ends quickly for some, perhaps in a marathon; for many a marathon isn't even necessary. For me, the search has led me to do races in which it seems I am trying to reach the limit of my physical and mental capacity, and the search has led others farther, to participate in competitions for which I have not yet had the need, and that tire me out just thinking about them. It might seem strange that anyone could enjoy running hour after hour, their feet covered with blisters or in extreme weather conditions without sleeping, but we do it. These distances might not make us feel good physically, but they satisfy other needs.

There are very few who do these long competitions to win. As in any sport there are the notable athletes who vie for the top spots in every race; but most of us who participate in these races are regular people who for some reason have to run farther. Nothing more than that. In my case, I started testing myself. I wanted to see if I could do it, and every time I did I realized that we can do incredible things that we would never have imagined until we tried. Later I did it to feed my ego; according to me, to differentiate myself from other people and to get recognition from others.

Even later I realized that the longer the distance, the less meaning the finish had for me and thus the less importance that recognition was. But I kept doing those races because after many hours I started to discover places I have only found while running. But I’m not only talking about the highest part of a mountain from where you can see the sun rising from behind the volcanoes, or the forest that has so many trees that while you're running in it you can't see the sunlight, or the wooden bridge that crosses the river very close to the city in a place that cars can’t go. I’m also talking about those places that are within us, those places you reach when the fatigue is so great that you can no longer control your thoughts and your mind no longer dominates you; it is here that you can truly see what you are not, discover the limits you have placed on yourself, and the things that are truly important so you can understand life just a little bit better. People have often told me that I run because I’m running away from something, that it is an escape. I have thought about that, but I know that I run not to distance myself, but to find myself.

My name is Mario. I need to run and this is my story that I want to share with you.

CHAPTER 1

WONDERLAND CANYON

I’m in the seat next to the window; I’ve always liked the window seat. I sit as low as I can, scrunched down almost on my back. I’m wearing a hoodie, which is very warm and I have my hands in my pockets. I peek out the window and see the winter landscape of Chihuahua, the sun just coming up, and I’m hungry. Or nervous. I don’t know. Ale is seated next to me reading Born to Run. Among other things, this book talks about why human beings are the mammals most able to run long distances; it talks about the Tarahumara Mountains, and the very private lives of the incredible Tarahumara athletes who have never forgotten that running is part of our essence. In theory this book is the reason we are here. I read it and decided to come do this race – an eighty kilometer ultramarathon in the Tarahumara Mountains. I haven’t yet realized it, but I am really here because of two things that happened in my life that have nothing to do with Born to Run: the first happened nearly twenty years ago when I was studying in my last year of prep school. One Tuesday I decided to go out for a run, I don’t know why, and without knowing it I started a search that has brought me to these mountains today. The other happened much longer ago, and I don’t actually remember it, but I know it happened because I have lived with this almost my entire life: it was the day that I said and understood the word "I" for the first time.

This train leaves Chihuahua every day and crosses a large part of northern Mexico through the Sierra Madre, arriving fifteen hours later in Los Mochis, making several stops along the way. It is a small train, and depending on the day it only has two or three cars. It is very comfortable and the food is quite good. Each car has an armed police officer. The dining room is open if anyone would like to eat, a man dressed in a uniform tells us.

At seven in the morning we are eating breakfast, while the man at the table next to us has a tequila and two beers. The waiter tells us he is also going to the race. His name is Rubén. His son had signed him up and bought a tent so he could camp at the race site. But I don’t know how to set it up. I think today I’ll just cover myself up with it, and tomorrow I’ll figure out how to set it up, he tells us. You are not allowed to invite him to share our room, Ale tells me without Rubén hearing her. We are going to the edge of the world. After nine hours in this train we will arrive in a town called Bahuichivo, and from there a truck will take us down a dirt road to Urique, where the race will be held in four days. We have a reservation in a hotel that I had made two months earlier. The conversation had gone something like this:

Hotel Estrella del Río.

I would like to make a reservation for the race: five nights, two people. My name is Mario.

Okay, done.

Who's speaking?

José Quintana.

Ok.

That was it.

Ale and Rubén left. I stay there drinking coffee and looking out the window. I remember that it was my father who first told me about the Tarahumaras. He told me they were people who had gone to compete in marathons in other countries without success. They did not run fast, or they didn't understand that they were supposed to try to beat everyone else, but at the end of the marathon they would cross the tape and still be fresh, and it almost seemed like they were baffled that it was already over.

There are stories of Tarahumaras who have run hundreds of kilometers without stopping, and in the mountains they say that you have to be careful when asking them for references about anywhere, because when they point to the road and tell you: It’s just up ahead, it might be a hike of six or seven hours.

In the mid-1990s, an American took some of the best Tarahumara runners at the time to the Leadville 100 race (100 miles, or 161 kilometers). Leadville is one of the most famous (or perhaps the least unknown) ultramarathon races in the United States, so some of the best American runners were also there.

During the final stage of ultramarathon races, someone can accompany the racer. This person is called a pacer. In the last kilometers of the race this person is responsible for keeping the athlete on the road. It is often nighttime, or the runner is by that time too tired to find the course —usually marked with ribbons in the trees— and can get lost. The pacer also reminds the runner that they have to eat and drink water, and more than anything the pacer is there to talk to the runner, oftentimes bearing the runner’s complaints and cussing caused by their fatigue and pain.

Born to Run tells the story of that year in Leadville, when during dinner the night before the race, someone nicknamed Shaggy approached the Tarahumaras to offer to be their pacer during the second half of the race.

You think you can run eighty kilometers with the Tarahumaras? the American who had brought them to the race asked.

Well I don’t know. But if not me, then who else? Shaggy responded.

The next day, Juan Herrera, one of the Tarahumara runners, arrived in first place, and not only broke the race record, but they also say that he was the first winner in the history of Leadville to go under the finishing tape instead of breaking it, a detail that exemplifies the humility of these incredible athletes. Shaggy accompanied the runner for the last fifty miles, and after crossing the finish line decided to follow his new friend to the Tarahumara Mountains, where after some time he got the nickname Caballo Blanco, which means White Horse.

Some ten years later, when Christopher McDougall went to the Tarahumara Mountains to learn the secrets of these super athletes, while he was writing his book Born to  Run, he heard of Caballo Blanco, but he was just a few days too late to meet him. He arrived thinking that Caballo Blanco was a myth,