It started Sunday around 3pm.  Tim casually mentioned that his stomach didn’t feel so great.  We figured that he was still just a bit full from breakfast (those were some BIG pancakes!) and he’d be fine in a little while. As the afternoon moved on, it got worse, though.  He felt bad enough to go lay down around 5:30, and not get up for dinner.  Now, if you’ve ever eaten a meal with Tim, you know that he does not turn food away.  He’s actually a card-holding member of the Clean Plate Club.  He’s so high ranking in this club that if you don’t clean your plate he’ll clean it for you!  But I digress.  So Tim skipped dinner.  We should have made the call right then that he shouldn’t come on the hike.  We didn’t.  We figured we’d see how he felt in the morning.

At 3:30 am the alarm went off.  Hike time!  “How ya feeling?” I asked before he had time to open his eyes.

“Ok, I think.”

“You ok to hike?”

“Yeah, I think I’m good.”

So we all (Wheeler, Jesse, Tim, and I) grabbed our packs (mine was just a Camelback with 100 oz of PowerBar Endurance – the guys were each carrying ~30lbs of gear), and headed over to the mountain.  We hit the trail just before 5:30 with the goal of doing the entire Pemi Loop in under 14 hours (book time is 20.5 hrs).  Last year we did it in 14:38.  With our headlamps aglow, we started out at a quick clip, trying to get some time in the bank before we hit the just-under-10,000-feet of elevation gain to come.  The first couple miles are very flat, and allowed Tim to confirm that his stomach was up for the hike.  By the time the sun came up (about an hour in), he felt pretty good.  We all did.  I felt so much better than I did last year.  I was pushing the pace, climbing like a billy goat, and chatting the whole time.  Not like last year!  Last year I was a nervous wreck the second we started walking!  I touched every rock and tree, afraid that I couldn’t balance on just my feet; I eased up and down every ascent and descent, afraid I’d tumble all the way down the mountain with the slightest mis-step.  I basically did nice, slow, eventually exhausting squats for 14.5 hours straight.  Yowza!  This time I cruised along, using my hands very minimally, only lingering on each rock as long as it took to step on.

Tim on the other hand…  Let’s just say he hikes as though he’s got the curiosity of a newborn who just discovered his sense of touch.  Which is fine.  But coupled with his complete exhaustion from the mysterious stomach bug, and you’ve got quite the caboose!  So, while his stomach was fine, his muscles were not.  He hadn’t gotten much down after breakfast the day before, and we’d all raced Timberman Sprint and trained long on Saturday.  We later determined that this combination had fried Tim’s legs and usually-over-the-top durability.

All of this did not come to light until a while later, though.  As we moved along through the first couple of hours, he was right with us.  We made several pit stops to grab fuel out of the packs and take care of business.  Each time, Tim was only seconds back, and seemed to be pushing along.  We hit several peaks, including Bond, Bondcliffe, and Mt. Guyot, before we came to the first (and only) hut of the day.  This was about 6 hours into the hike.  Jesse and I headed in, and started refilling our Camelbacks.  Wheeler followed us in a couple minutes later.  Alone.  Hmmm, ok.  He’ll just be a couple minutes. I poked my head out the door, but didn’t see him coming.  I finished filling my pack, went to the bathroom, and looked out again.  Still no Tim.  Just as I began to get concerned, he busted into the hut, sat down on a bench, and looked us as with an I’m-toast expression usually reserved for post-tough-race.  Not good.  After filling his Camelback, he puts his head down on the table.  He didn’t get much rest, though.  We needed to keep moving.  We were on track to break 14 hours!  As we left the hut, I asked him how he was feeling.  He said his stomach was fine, but that he felt wiped out.  I asked if he’d had any caffeine yet.

“Oh, yeah! I started that about a half hour in.”

“What?!  What did you have?”

“Cliff Bloks.”

“A whole bag??”

“Yeah.”

“What?!  Haha, are you nuts??”

To the average person, 100mg of caffeine may not be much.  It’s a little over what you’d find in a cup of coffee.  But to a guy who doesn’t drink coffee, tea, soda, or anything else containing caffeine, that’s a shot in the ass!  (Excuse the language.)

“Was that the last caffeinated thing that you took?”

“Yeah.”

“For the love!  No wonder you’re dragging!”

From here on, we didn’t let Tim get too far back.  If we lost sight of him, we’d stop and wait, especially once we topped each peak.  Along with this, I began the nagging.  I constantly asked him when he’d last eaten, when he’d caffeinated, if he was drinking, and tried to get him to stop touching everything and just let his body move forward.

Throughout the first 8 hours, we’d put our rain coats on and taken them off several times.  Early on, after the rain initially started, we just assumed it was going to be another LP ‘08, but it subsided, and was pretty nice for the most part.  Until we hit Lafayette.  Jesse and I had been haulin’ along up the ascent, chatting about something (probably trying to guess what Chrissie was up to at that exact moment – she’d done the hike with us last year, but opted out of it this time around – smart girl!).  Just as we cracked the tree-line, the clouds swept in and the sky began to spit.  Not cool!  Jesse continued at the same pace, completely unfazed by what I saw as the Perfect Storm.  Seriously?! The wind picked up a bit, and all of the hikers that had been on the peak were headed back down.  Not us, though.  I followed Jesse for a few hundred more yards, and then I stopped.  I tucked in behind a big rock, and watched the trail from which we’d just come.  Wheeler joined me, and we waited for Tim to break the tree-line.  It took a while, but he came cruising through with a smile on his face.  Funny how he loved my least favorite part the most.  Ying and yang?  So, anyway, the rain picked up, and my mood went down!  I did not like this one bit!  One of us is just going to step right off the side of this thing!  Just like that, and we’ll be goners! “Let’s stop and put on our rain gear,” Jesse suggested.

“No!  I just want to get over this thing, and get back into tree cover!”

“We’re going to be up here for a few hours.  It’ll only take a couple minutes.”

He was so calm.  They all seemed so calm.  I was not!  I waited with Wheeler while he changed, and Jesse went on to find Tim (who had charged right past us) and get him to put on his rain gear.  It took a few minutes, in which time my imagination went wild, and I got chilly.  Once we could see Jesse and Tim again, I swore Jesse was wrapping Tim in a plastic bag to keep him warm because he’d broken his leg and someone was going to have to run down the mountain and get help while someone else waited with Tim and made sure he didn’t pass out.  They’d probably have to send a helicopter!  … Or maybe Jesse was just helping Tim get his pants pulled over his boots (sounds stranger than it was).  Phew! Anyone ever read And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street as a kid?  Anyway!  I gave in and put my rain gear on, too.  Tim dumped the puddle out of one of his boots (literally – poured it out like he was honoring a lost homie!), and then we continued on.  At this point, I was too sketched out to worry about breaking 14 hours.  I just wanted to get down off the mountain, hug Tim, call my mom and sister, and eat some pizza!

Needless to say, we made it through the “Perfect Storm” unscathed.  A bit damp, but completely fine.  As we descended back across the tree-line, the sun came out, and the weather was beautiful for the rest of the hike.  Of course, my mood swung right back up, and I got back into my nagging routine.  ”Tim, when did you eat last?  Why don’t you have some caffeine?  How’s your stomach?  Are you drinking enough?  Try not to touch everything.”  Oh, wow!  I would have kicked my ass!  Once we got over the final peak, Mt. Flume, I got even more annoying.  At this point, I’d been caffeinating for well over 5 hours, had regained my desire to break 14 hours, and was feeling good!  I got right behind Tim, and tried to push him along from behind.  ”Good job.  There you go.  Don’t touch the trees.  Just keep moving your feet.  There you go.”  We got to some relatively flat areas, and Wheeler, Jesse, and I wanted to try to run a bit to gain back some time.  ”This is as fast I’m going,” Tim insisted.  ”Can you just bend your elbows?” I asked, hoping a more aggressive body position might encourage him along.  ”No.”  That was his response.  He flat out refused to even bend his elbows.  Alrighty! I just walked right behind him.  So close I stepped on his heels several times.  I stopped nagging, he kept his elbows straight, and Jesse and Wheeler dropped us like hot potatoes.

Then it happened.  He started running!  Out of nowhere, Tim just bent his elbows and began jogging.  At first it was with a soft “J”, then it was real jogging.  I didn’t say a word; just started running behind him.  I was afraid if I said anything he’d stop.  The jogging turned into running.  We came up to Jesse and Wheeler, who’d stopped to wait for us.  Tim plowed right through them, shouting “Out of my way!” as he did.  I hung on, and Jesse and Wheeler jumped on my heels.  We were all running.  Tim kept getting faster.  We were running as hard as we could to keep up.  ”Two minutes ago he couldn’t even walk!”  Jesse shouted from behind.  ”This is sub-10k pace!” Wheeler added.  I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.  I had to pee, I was hungry (missed a fueling when we first started running), and I was running as hard as I could in hiking boots and rain pants with a Camelback on.  I could kill him!  He wouldn’t even bend his elbows!  We could be jogging at a reasonable pace right now! The mad fisherman (Tim still had all of his rain gear on, including one of those hats with the brim that goes all the way around – picture Gordon’s Fisherman) started to pull away.  I tried so hard to hang on, but it was starting to get dark and my legs were feeling the roughly 30 miles of hiking we’d already completed.  ”I can’t do this!” I exclaimed as I stopped short, Jesse and Wheeler nearly running right over me.  ”It’s too dark!  And I’m starving!  And I have to pee!”  I took care of business, while Jesse and Wheeler got out the headlamps, and then we started running again.  Tim was long gone at this point, and it was physically impossible for us to break 14 hours, so we adjusted our goal to breaking last year’s time.  ”We’ve got 10 minutes,” Wheeler notified us.  Just over a mile in 10 minutes – no problem, right?  We ran as hard as we could, Wheeler pointing out rocks and holes (God love ‘im!) and giving time updates the whole time.  We hadn’t seen Tim in a while, and my imagination started to kick up again.  What if he’s not even ahead of us anymore? What if he tripped and bumped his head and fell to the side of the trail and we ran right past him?!  We’ll have to send a search party in to get him! “Two minutes!  Hole!  Rock!  Hole!”  He better be back at that parking lot so I can kill him!  What if he really is hurt? “30 seconds!  Track!  Hole!”  I’m going to kill him! As we rounded the corner to cross a short bridge before entering the parking lot, there he was.  Leaning against the railing, looking down at the river.  ”You better move it, or I’m going to give you a good look at that water!” I shouted, half laughing.  Really, I was relieved that he was ok.

We didn’t break last year’s time, but we certainly had quite an adventure.  Just another day with the “snowman”!  Love you, Tim!

Thank you, Jesse and Wheeler, for putting up with the spectrum of emotions that I threw at you guys!