It is three in the morning and it is happening again. I am waking up from a dead sleep and gasping for breath, but this time it is combined with a nightmare that I am suffocating and it makes it all the more frightening. It’s the 3rd night in a row now and I am scared to fall asleep, and even more scared that this whole thing is going to come to an end before it starts. After 30 minutes, I try again but then panic – my mouth wide open grasping for air.
HIMALAYAS OF NORTHERN INDIA
Where am I and what am I doing here? I am in the Himalayas of Northern India at 12,000 feet and I am following a rare group of ultra running trailblazers at the 2nd running of the highest altitude ultra in the world, and have been acclimatizing to the altitude now for three days.
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| HIMALAYAS OF NORTHERN INDIA |
It wasn’t apparent to me at the time I was hearing this, but the idea of running at these altitudes seems insane. The first time at 18,300 feet, the body doesn’t respond all that great and the pulse-ox meter that one runner is testing tells us so. The heart rate is at 112 beats of the normal 60 and the body’s O2 is down to 76% of its norm of 98%. But the body does change. Red blood cell building and O2 adapting, slowly the lungs make better use of the oxygen and as the days pass, we are all starting to see our heart rates drop and blood O2 levels go up, and this is a good thing. It means I am not going to get on that plane and fly home. It means I am going to see the starting line after all.
After Rohtang La, Rajat returned home to his family and found himself struggling to think of anything other than this map of the Himalayas. His mind started to crunch the numbers and his fingers started to punch up the details and in 9-months time he had constructed a race crossing 137-miles (222km) covering the passes of Khardung La (18,300ft) and Tanglang La (17,583ft) before finishing in the Morey Plains at 15,000 feet. Now all that was left was finding runners to run it.
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| 2011 START OF THE HIGH |
Sifting through the ultra running pool, he found 30-runners to say yes, but as time would have it that number trickled down to one – Molly Sheridan – and now that one was standing in front of me at the second running of what became the documentary film Ultra High: Running at 18,000 Feet (released in 2010 at 1 hour 10 minutes and distributed internationally, later becoming available on streaming platforms).
Next to her, pacing like race horses were Ray Sanchez (USA), Lisa Tamati (NZ), Samantha Gash (AU), Jason Rita (AU), and Sharon Gayter (UK). And so while I sat backwards filming on my motorcycle, they were waiting to take on this challenge before it took them.
The run to Khardung La isn’t all that bad. Once your body has acclimatized to the altitude it is pretty good at taking on the first 26 miles. By the time the runners get to the peak each of them are still moving at a pretty good pace and looking at a long 26-mile downhill into Leh before planing off for a 45-mile stretch through the high desert of the Leh Valley. But the comforts of this flat land can turn dark. The continuous hours of low level O2 can sneak up on you leaving you with exhaustion, dehydration, cramps, and worse. It is something to be aware of and it was this element that crept up on the runners in that first year’s event and almost ended the entire race before it began.
Rajat’s thirty runners had turned to one and that one runner, Molly, helped turn it into three. By race day of 2010, Rajat was poised at the starting line doing the countdown and with a click of a second those faithful three were off and carrying with them the unknown question of if this race could even be done.
Molly at Khardung La (18,300ft), 2010
Months before this moment Rajat had worked to do his math. He was a doctor after all and it wouldn’t look good for a doctor to have dead runners on his hands. So he visited the Special Forces branch of the Indian Military to gather information on how to prepare the body for the high altitude. Standing square in the office of some of the highest officials in the land there was dead silence as the officers listened to his race idea before looking him in the eye and stating, “Are you mad! No one can do this…it is impossible”.
Words to live by one might think, but not Rajat. Not the man who grew up in a home where the word “NO” to his running interest was all too common a theme. A theme that left him seeking the very outlet of this race today. And so he set off to make this race bulletproof and prove to the military, his country, and the ultra world that this run could and would be done. But now 24-hours into his own race, two of his runners were in the ICU with one getting evacuated for further emergency care.
It was Molly who went first to the ICU. She had gone too long without water coming down Khardung La and needed an IV to recover. Bill Andrews came second and shortly after with problems that required an immediate flight out. And so there was only one – Mark Cockbain – and the questions again arose of if this race was even possible.
Why do you do it? That was the question I used to ask. Why do you run these distances? I was only just learning about this sport and the answer for them was simple, “because we can”.
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| MARK COCKBAIN, TANGLANG LA 2010 |
Humans can endure amazing things and in that endurance we can discover something about ourselves that we never knew.
By this time, Rumptse was the town on everyone’s mind. It is the last cutoff point before the finish and the place to rest before the final push up Tanglang La.
Mark Cockbain on his way to Tanglang La 2010
I thought about myself for a moment when I first met Mark in the UK for an interview. Would I have been willing to drive towards that finish line all alone? There was no glory in this. There were no competitors to go up against. There was only the long dirt road ahead and an empty finish line. And the answer is I don’t know. For Mark however, none of that really mattered. All that mattered was that he was only a few steps from crossing over the top of Tanglang La and needed to go down.
Watching Mark cross over the top, Rajat hopped back in his car to finalize plans with Molly and Bill. Arriving at the hospital in Leh, Bill was in bad condition and Molly was by his side. Assessing that more proper medical care was in order, they booked tickets and hopped on a plane home. Leaving the ground it became clear for them both that the race was over, but not finished.
Standing at the finish line one year later, surrounded by cars, ambulance, crews, and a banner, the excitement of the 2nd year’s finish was in the air. Walkie-talkie updates were coming in and it wasn’t certain who would arrive first. In those last 14 hours at around 17,000 feet, Sharon Gayter overtook Ray Sanchez and fought to keep the lead ever since. Watching with excitement you could vocally hear her panting as she turned the final 100-yards towards the finish. Pushing herself to her limits, her lungs were screaming for air as she crossed the finish line and collapsed into the hands of the medics. The crew was in a roar – the first runner had officially made it, but there was more to come and others were still out there.
Sharon Gayter crossing a landslide 2011
Seeing Molly and Bill off on the plane, Rajat now was driving back to find Mark with a million thoughts on his mind. Did they make it? Are they safe? Do we have a race or is this a lost cause? But the answer wasn’t easy. After leaving them at Tanglang La the night before, Mark and his crew made a dangerous mistake. Tired and exhausted from all they had done, and suffocating from a lack of O2, they pulled the car off the road and with Mark inside each fell asleep.
I imagine Mark’s last dream up there was similar to mine during acclimatization. Laying there in the back of that truck suffocating and hypoxic, he snapped out of that slumber and rocked forward with one thought in mind, “We have to get out of here and start moving or we are just going to lay here and die”. First with the right foot and then with the left, Mark kept moving and one step at a time he made his way down to lower ground and the finish.
It was daylight now and Rajat was headed to the rendezvous point of Whiskey Junction. He had checked the finish line first to see it empty without sign of Mark or crew. Now he was searching for them in the last place they could be. Pulling into the rest area he looked around quickly and found them down by the river, bathing their feet. Grabbing his breath and looking more closely, he could see they were smiling. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. With that it became apparent they had finished the race and it was done. The impossible had become possible and it was time to go home and celebrate.
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| SHARON GAYTER CROSSING A LANDSLIDE 2011 |
As seconds turned to minutes and the clock struck down to under one hour, we saw that last runner coming around the final turn and it was her. Out in front of me, holding the finish line banner and waiting for her arrival was Rajat and most likely he was thinking about all that it took to get them here: the dream of doing it, the work to make it, and the moment when Molly said she would stay by his side. Watching her cross the finish I knew it was complete. It was finished for her and for him as well. Standing there in front of my camera was a pair of people – one who dreamt the impossible and one who believed it could be done.
