Sixteen miles.

Not fifty. Not a hundred kilometers. Not even a marathon distance of 26.2 miles. Sixteen miles and change, which is just barely past a half-marathon, which is the kind of thing a serious ultrarunner is supposed to shrug at.

I didn’t shrug.

I signed up for twenty four hours. I managed a little over five.

The Howard Aslinger Memorial Endurance Run. Named for a man who spent most of his life in a wheelchair and refused to call it a handicap. Everyone here carries something. Everyone here shows up anyway.

Influenza A hit just before Christmas. Then an upper respiratory infection. Then temperatures colder than anyone wanted to admit, which kept me inside longer than I wanted. By the time the weather broke, it was a week before the race.

I just waited. Scared to overdo it. Petrified. Stupefied that I had signed up for this in the first place. Every few days Alissa was there, continuing to encourage me. Reminding me that if I made it one lap, it was farther than I had traveled before.

Is it worth it to show up?

Alissa kept telling me it was. Keep going. Don’t quit. She said it enough times that eventually I believed her. Sort of. Showing up is what we do. It’s our thing.

Mentally I was ready. I knew these roads. I knew what my feet would feel like on fire. I knew the particular conversation your body starts having with your mind around mile ten. I’d had it before. I showed up prepared to ignore it. And I did. It wasn’t easy. But nothing had changed. Except physically I was wearing thin. Fast.

Bryan and Kim Kelpe and their commitment to this race and the over 150 athletes. They made sure we had a race to show up to. Kim ran the very first one in 2010. Setting up the aid station, cooking food, showing up for everyone else?

That’s not nothing.

Especially for an ultramarathon.

That’s everything.

Brian Matysik and Laura Bain-Selbo. We all walked together because misery loves company.

We lied.

We just didn’t want to be alone.

We talked, laughed, encouraged and teased those runners passing us. We cheered Pattie Brown when she blew right past us, remembering it’s not how fast you go, but that you showed up. A thousand miles on this course. We were there when she started. That doesn’t happen every day.

Then Laura Wake showed up too. But not as the massage volunteer she usually is, not to work, but just to be there. To see people she loves. Her dad had passed away just days earlier. I met Laura Wake a few months after Jude died. I showed up to a race because I didn’t know what else to do. She was there then. She knew I would sit with her now.

When she saw me, her eyes filled up with tears, grateful to be seen and recognized.

She knew I would sit with her. She knew I would listen. She sobbed almost incoherently, intoxicated, working through something I wasn’t going to ask her to explain. Under the circumstances, it made sense. It made all the sense in the world.

Sixteen miles after months of nothing.

That’s not a handicap. It’s inconvenient.

One I can live with.

Alissa was there at the start. I came home before she could return. She expected to be there at the end.

So did I.