When I was 29, the universe told me to run. I was lying on a bed with the window open, flipping through a magazine and an article about ultrarunning popped up. Just reading the word “ultrarunning” gripped me. I didn’t know yet that I had a cancer gene mutation. I didn’t know that the bothersome lumps along my hairline and temples were tiny tumors infiltrating the deep layers of my scalp. I didn’t know that my breasts were slowly turning into two ticking time bombs. But I knew I had to run—not fast, but far.
The first few attempts felt silly. I drove to Dick’s after work and bought a pair of enormously cushioned Brooks Gravity running shoes. I didn’t know I had supinating feet. I didn’t know anything about high arches. I chose the shoes that were steeply discounted on sale, as my mother had drilled into me long ago. I set out across Dania Beach, Florida, toward Hollywood, Florida, and made it four miles. The sun beat down and I walked a great deal, but I arrived back home drenched with enough salt and accomplishment that I was certain I was a runner.
That January, five months before my 30th birthday, the universe told me to run an ultramarathon. I had gathered enough confidence to attend a running club on Tuesday nights, and a blonde boy had won a raffle prize entry to the Keys 100. He was desperate to get rid of it like it was a hand grenade. I raised my hand.
I called the race director, Bob Becker, the next day. “Do you think I can run this?” He was tender and kind and we spoke over the phone for 10 minutes. “Why don’t you try the 50-mile race,” he suggested. “You can take as long as you want. We will keep the lights on for you at the finish line.” I registered. By this point I had purchased the correct shoes and I trained over the next five months—poorly but enough to not get hurt.
On race morning, May 17, 2014, I gathered with the other runners. Many of them were outfitted like running was their profession with ice bandanas and compression sleeves and slick, taut muscles. They had the kind of jawlines runners have after pounding miles of road. I was the ugly duckling in Brooks PureFlows, with my handheld water bottle and a race map in my pocket. I wanted to be a swan.
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I did not know that exactly 10 years later, on that very day, I’d be having surgery to remove another tumor from my scalp and a malignant melanoma from my back. I didn’t know that I would be just 18 days away from meeting a geneticist, learning that I have the BRCA2 gene mutation and that I would later have both of my breasts removed and eventually, my ovaries and fallopian tubes removed. As I started the race on the southern tip of Florida and trotted down the stone-oven sidewalks toward the Seven Mile Bridge, I didn’t know what I was carrying. I believed it was just a Camelbak, a GPS ankle tracker, and a sensation that I was part of something epic that day, a pack of wild horses flowing with the energy of one another.
At mile 25, I felt God. I don’t mean to sound cliche, but there is no other way to describe the shudder of light I felt crossing the Niles Channel Bridge. I had the expanding energy of the sun coursing through my veins. I had passed three aid stations, refilled my pack with ice water and drenched myself with sunscreen and iced towels. I clocked mile 25 at 4:37:56—I was halfway there.
I didn’t know, then, that I would spend my 40th year in hospitals and clinics, under anesthesia again and again. Scanning and getting biopsies, solving one problem and starting another. I didn’t know that I would be single, again, and that I would lose everything I had known to be my life for the better part of a decade. I didn’t know I would start to lose my father slowly, but so rapidly, like a run that feels eternal and too abrupt all at once. As I passed Baby’s Coffee and Cudjoe Key and the Boca Chica Marina, the sun began to set. The endless orange sky, that I did not know would become such a part of my existence, spread before me like a glowing call home.
I choked back tears when I made the left turn onto Roosevelt Boulevard, knowing I was four miles from the finish line at Higgs Beach. My mother kept forming in my throat, a giant lump, and I kept swallowing her back down with a swish of hot electrolyte water, until I couldn’t any longer. I threw her up, wiped my mouth and kept shuffling toward the sunset. Ahead, on the distant point, I could see a couple getting married. The blurry white of a beach wedding dress and the procession of flip-flopped attendees. The orange glow behind them. I felt the pang of joy and heartache pulsing with every step—the twins that always travel together.
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I did not know I was learning to push through the last few miles—the deepest, most wrenching steps. I did not know I was briefing for a bar exam I would eventually take, while learning to breathe through welling tears and keep the borrowed breath steady. I did not know in those steps that I would have to endure back-to-back surgeries, vacuum-assisted closures and amputation.
I was conditioning to understand that nothing is permanent. I was gearing up to become motion itself. This borrowed breath was my teacher. These borrowed feet were taking notes.
I was learning that a finish line is a beginning, not an end.
When I passed the Atlantis House, just a half mile from the finish line, I heard soft cheers. I knew I was close to home. The sun had set and the orange was now night. I didn’t know that I was learning to let go—of myself, my body—of this carbon we borrow.
I crossed the line and fell into the arms of people who would become some of my fondest allies. Friends who exist in that ethereal realm and stay connected by the tug of a line, one you can pull at any time for a reminder of where we’ve been. Many of them in recovery, remission, rebirth and resurrection. The universe had called us all to run for one reason or another.
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I finished in 10:32:14 and 13th female. The numbers were important to me then. They are no longer anything more than an anchor to tie the memory. The universe had called me to run, and I had answered. I took the lessons and accepted the beating. I was just slightly stupid enough, by conventional measures, to listen to the pull.
This carbon I have borrowed has taken me to incredible depths. This carbon took me on to run eight more ultramarathons, a dozen marathons and thousands of miles of road and trail, in solitude and in packs, but never alone.
This carbon has taken me into courtrooms and jury verdicts and out of a plane at 14,000 feet. This carbon has taken me to Spain, Germany, Alaska and Brazil. To the tops of mountains and to the ocean floor. I will never curse this borrowed carbon. I have put a million miles on this tactical vehicle I call my body. I know it is not mine to keep, only to care for.
On May 17, 2014, at the Keys 50-miler finish line, in the public bathrooms, I showered off 50 miles of dirt, sweat, salt and blood. I did the same this year—standing in the warm spray and watching the snakeskin shed to the bathtub floor and ribbon blood and sweat and a past version of myself down into the drain.
The carbon we borrow goes back to the earth. We say goodbye, we thank it and we let go.
And we say hello again to the new carbon that unfolds. Nice to meet you. My name is Megan. I am here for the race. These are my proper shoes. This is my electrolyte water. Those are my race bags. This is my heart. These are my dreams. Here is the burning gem of my desires. I trust you with every piece of it. I will see you at the finish line.