So the Fire Burns

A decade ago next month, on a steeply pitched road high above Oregon’s Crater Lake, I started my quest to run a race in all 50 states. And in the year that followed, I collected medals in seven more states.

While my speed hasn’t suffered as I’ve aged, the pace at which I’m knocking out states has slowed considerably. Between childbirth, the pandemic and ankle reconstruction surgery, I’m scratching out an existence in this Time-Consuming and Extremely Expensive Mission to Run All Over the U.S.A. Still, after last weekend’s Mount Rainier Half Marathon in Washington, I’ve completed the West Coast and nearly all of the western United States in my late sister’s honor.

Vacation Races, the company that owns the Mount Rainier Half Marathon and other races in or near national parks, is an amazing host. But the event organizers undersold the difficulty of the terrain in tiny Ashford, Washington — and if they’d shared the full picture, I probably wouldn’t have registered.

The half marathon course gains 900 feet in elevation, but even at altitude, leg-burning and heart-pumping climbs don’t scare me. Rather, it’s the kind of uneven, technical terrain that could undo my ankle surgery in an instant. And while not a true trail race, the Mount Rainier Half Marathon had long stretches of it over 13.1 miles. 

Cautious Optimism

While I’m an avid hiker, I no longer run on trails. But when the half marathon course dipped into the forest after about a mile, I was committed. I’ve never notched a Did Not Finish (DNF), and in state 28 of 50, I intended to keep it that way.

So I stayed in the race but walked or jogged through the meadows and three river crossings — a strategy that earned me my slowest time since I was five months pregnant with Jack but saw me to the finish line with no new injuries. I didn’t see the mighty mountain during the race, but the still beautiful scenery and memories of my sister propelled me from one mile marker to the next.

That Mount Rainier isn’t actually visible from any part of the course is one chief complaint of participants who pay a relatively large sum of money to run a loop for a medal at the end. But the mountain never left my thoughts while I navigated the dangerous trail portions, river crossings and steep hills. 

The Mountain Doesn’t Care

The most glaciated peak in the contiguous United States, Rainier is an active volcano that hasn’t erupted in more than 500 years. Some might say it’s overdue. And if the sleeping giant awakens … all traces of human life could be instantly buried under roiling waves of lava and ash. A major eruption would wipe out the bustling park visitor centers and the cabin in the trees where my family and I rested our weary legs and the historic restaurant where we filled our bellies with burgers and blackberry pie.

Rainier doesn’t care that we’re here. And the universe doesn’t care how many races I run, where I run them or when I get to the finish line. 

But still, I keep doing it, on ankles and tendons that are better suited to low-impact sports, as a sort of twisted but heartfelt ode to my late sister. As I admitted all the way back in August 2014, writing from a cabin in an old growth forest of lodgepole pines at Oregon’s Crater Lake, running or even winning a race wouldn’t save Taylor. And, as I also wrote that day, sometimes “we have to let go and realize we don’t have control over everything. We have to have faith. When we believe, and when we’re willing to work for what we believe in, good things can happen.” 

Progress Check

When Taylor died in 2018, I was 21 states into my quest for 50. Since then, I’ve hung another 16 race medals on my gym wall, but more importantly, a child has been treated with the gene therapy Taylor’s life inspired and our charity fueled. 

One life isn’t the Mission Accomplished we envisioned when we founded Taylor’s Tale in a Charlotte living room almost 20 years ago. But considering the difficulty of the mission, one child’s life is a hell of a start. Twenty-eight states is one hell of a number. And as the fire builds deep inside the icy volcano in Washington state, so the fire for Taylor burns in my heart and my soles. 

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