Pancakes at Midnight – Acts of Kindness and Alien Encounters at the 24-Hours of Rapelje

I SIT ACROSS from Tyler, and between us is a short, half-eaten stack of pancakes. “Sit” is a loose term for how I am slumped in my chair over what have become, during the last half-hour, drying lumps of rock. His plate has been emptied and refilled several times. It is dark outside. The longer I sit here, the harder it is to get the fork to my mouth.

“You need to do one more lap before you take a nap,” says Tyler, my best friend and support crew for the race. Former best friend. I have serious doubts I can stuff the rest of this pancake in my mouth and crawl back to the tent—riding another thirteen mile lap seems out of the question. The only thing still clear through the fog of my mind is the suffering I’d just endured completing lap seven. As I sit, pain shoots through my knee, up my back and across my ass. My fingers don’t grip things like they did just twelve hours before, making pancake eating more of a challenge. The fork comes up, laden with pancakes. It teeters at apogee as if the pancakes are making one final stand against their demise. The buttery-sweet scent hits my nose, and my stomach gurgles its discontent. The pancakes nearly win their freedom. 

Between bites, I glare at Tyler. It’s all the violence I can muster.  I’m not upset at him because he’s pushing me. His job is to lounge around all day drinking beer, getting rid of unsightly tan lines, and, from a position of empathetic disassociation, tell me that I have to ride another lap. Resting is allowed in a twenty-four hour mountain bike race. In fact, it’s almost inevitable. It’s also inevitable that my body won’t go five more laps after sleeping (if I wake up at all). I’m not upset that Tyler is doing his job of pushing me to my goal of twelve laps. I’m pissed because he’s right and because no matter how terrible I feel, in a few minutes I’ll be back out on my bike in the middle of another lap.