The Doctor Who Disappeared
·2 mins
Kaveri Trail Marathon, 2013. Srirangapatna. Mile 24, and I had nothing left.
I didn’t slow — I stopped making sense. There’s a place past exhaustion where the body starts negotiating with you, and I was deep in it. That’s where he found me.
The Doc was running alongside when I hit the wall. What followed was 30 minutes of the sharpest pain I’ve ever been in — and then, on the other side of it, a rush of endorphins unlike anything before or since. I crossed the finish line at 5hr 40min, just minutes shy of the cutoff. What had been agony was now a memory. Dragons slain.