Dying to Run

In my dreams, oftentimes I am racing and it never goes well. I show up for a triathlon only to realize I've forgotten my bike. A marathon race course leads me through a maze-like high-rise apartment building with staircases that dead-end or fold back on themselves like something out of an Escher drawing. Classic anxiety dreams, in other words. A thousand variations on a single theme. In one variation, I have post-acute COVID-19 syndrome, better known as Long COVID, a form of chronic fatigue that transforms healthy exercise into a toxic stressor, and I'm about to start a 62-mile ultramarathon that I signed up for months ago but didn't actually train for. Except it's not a dream. I do have Long COVID. And I did sign up for an ultramarathon. And I haven't trained for it. Not properly. Because I can't. And the race is tomorrow. I'm wide awake and freshly caffeinated, heading south on Interstate 17 from the lush mountain forests of Flagstaff, Arizona to the desert hellscape of Fountain Hills. I know I'm awake because in my dreams I never doubt the reality of the absurd disasters I confront on race day. But here in the captain's seat of the Dream Mobile, a 12-passenger van with DreamRun Camp decals affixed to the side panels, autumn sunlight slanting through a panoramic front windshield and warming my silent ruminations, I consider and reconsider the fantastic unlikeliness of my situation. And I think I must be dreaming, which can only mean I'm not. Come morning, I and several hundred other runners will attempt a distance that I failed at when I was younger, healthier, and fitter. Most will run to finish, a few to win. I alone will run to spite a disease that for 4 long years has threatened everything that makes life precious to me. I shouldn't be doing what I'm about to do, and that's exactly why I'm doing it.