It was there, with her. At my apartment, at hers. It was on the cold streets of Berlin. It was on the bike. Seeing her fall and being very afraid. Going to bars together. Playing catch-me-if-you-can in the museum. Climbing chimneys, walking alongside broken rail tracks. Waking up next to her. Oh god, waking up next to her. Having breakfast. Meeting her after work. Strolling the streets of Berlin. Taking a train ride with her. All those days of beauty. I miss them, every. single. day. It was a different life. A different era. I will never be that happy again.

None of the 40 runners who attempted to finish the 100-mile Barkley Marathons in the mountains of eastern Tennessee completed the race, the first time since 2007 that the endurance test had no finishers.

“The mountains won,” said Gary Cantrell, who created the event in 1986. “I was pleased with the outcome. It’s a competition between the humans and the mountains.”

In 30 years, 14 out of about 1,100 runners have completed the race, made up of five loops around a mountainous 20-mile course.  The 60-hour time limit passed Monday with no one having completed the race. A search began for the final runner on the course — Jamil Coury of Phoenix. He showed up before dark.

“I got a little confused where I was,” Coury said upon returning to camp, explaining that he took an eight-hour nap on a mountaintop after getting lost. “Thanks for waiting.”

Passed Out

Matt Bixley traveled from Dunedin, New Zealand, to compete. He said his goal was to see what he could find out about himself. Instead, he found himself passed out on the ground after completing more than 48 miles in about 28 hours of running and climbing through the mountains of 24,000-acre Frozen Head State Park.

“I passed out or collapsed,” said Bixley, 42, a quantitative geneticist with New Zealand’s AgResearch. “Something happened. It wasn’t sleepiness. I don’t know. I spent some time thinking about what that might mean and where I was going. It was a boundary I wasn’t prepared to cross, and I quit.”

‘It’s Eerie’

No woman has finished the race. This year a record nine attempted it, including Nicki Rehn, a 40-year-old Australian who is an assistant professor of education at Ambrose University in Calgary. Rehn completed 1.5 laps this year before succumbing.

“You don’t come here to be victorious, you come here to be humiliated,” she said. “It’s lonely out there. It’s eerie. You have to be comfortable being inside your own head. Everyone comes back pretty broken. That’s the goal. To break people […]”

I remember this time, on the couch, talking with her. I remember her telling me she had a dietary problem once. I remember waking up next to her and telling her I love her and she telling me she loved me too. I remember us going to exhibitions, theatres, ballets, exploring, painting, making love next to derelict rails. I remember her love and affection, her never-ending quest for the deeper questions. Her playfulness. Her kindness. Her fight with herself to love me. Her soft way of approaching things. I miss her so much.

Are we just pretending? Are we here to be good? She wrote and it’s dry, cool. In a way I wish she hadn’t written. Last time I saw her write like that I was alone here, and wished for a better future. I don’t know if that future came. I’m afraid I have lost the only person who really made me happy. I’m afraid I lost the person who I look up to the most. I miss her terribly. I want to live a life with her, but that is a lost dream now. I picture her in her new home, going about happily, buying fruits and vegetables and I think maybe, just maybe, she remembers me once in a while and it brings meaning to her. I miss you, A.

With long stretches of emptiness,
over the time and over the space,
I think back to where we were,
I long for your touch,
your kindness and playfulness,
your small feet and your tender kisses,
just putting my hand on your legs,
waiting for you at the airport,
eating a dinner with you,
being in the same space as you.

All these times have went by,
and I took you for granted,
let you think that I don’t care,
missed the times to thank you,
missed the moments to love you,
I was too holed up in myself,
I was afraid and sad,
that you’ll leave me,
that you won’t love me back.

I let you go now,
but I wish I hadn’t,
I wished for the dream,
that we created,
never to end.