Failing to Quit
Tales and tribulations from the trails. And life-or-death lessons.
“I failed to execute the plan. I failed to keep food down. I failed to reach my intended time. I failed to enjoy myself the way I had hoped to. I failed to climb the way I usually can. And most importantly of all, I failed to quit.”
I typed those words into my phone’s Notes app on June 23rd of this year, two-and-a-half days after I had crossed the finish line of the 53-miles Manitou’s Revenge ultramarathon. I was en route to the airport at the time and I know from experience that when an opening sentence flow to you through the ether, you need to get it down before it flitters away.
Looking back on those words now, I’m glad I did so. They sum up my core experience on the brutal course as well as anything I could have carved out sitting at my desk: that feeling of failure at every hurdle, every level, except the ultimate failure - to quit.
What does it say about any of us when we don’t give up? And what does it say about some of us – me, in particular for the purposes of what immediately follows, but substitute yourself in whatever capacity you deem relevant - that we take on ludicrously hard challenges in the first place?
For that, for me, we have to go back to last November, and Nepal.
As I explained on the Zero To Travel podcast that was published this week, that trip to Nepal was itself a test. I’m known for having wanderlust, which matches my inability to dedicate myself to any one subject or occupation for any lasting period of time. But I’m not a loner, let alone a rugged individualist. Before my month in Nepal, I am not sure I’d gone anywhere in the world on my own – without planned company at the other end – for more than a week. As far as walking out of my hotel room in Kathmandu, pointing my way towards the national park at the city’s north-eastern end, and climbing into the Himalaya from there for a two-week trek with only an overladen backpack for company, this was virgin territory verging on the ridiculous.
I left with no small degree of trepidation, concerned about everything from staying on the course to staying on my feet to dealing with ascents at high elevation where Altitude Mountain Sickness would be a very real possibility. I was additionally concerned about my ability to look after myself with no assistance, no one to remind me I had left this or dropped that. All these concerns proved well-founded.
The one thing I did not have to be concerned about was my overall fitness. I had trained for Nepal. In the short term, I had trained as much as was feasible. (There are no 15,000ft high frozen passes in the Catskills, however; the best we can offer are 4,000ft rounded bumps.) In the long term, it felt like I had been training for life. All my love of mountains, my yearning for travel, my inclination to occasional solitude, the intellectual curiosity, the passion for people and the thirst for experience, everything about my personality that had accumulated over the course of my adult hood served to point me into the Langtang Valley last November. There, truly, I had the time of my life.
It was tough going, and to be clear, it was not achieved entirely unsupported: I succumbed to hiring a porter for the day that it took me to get over the Laurabrini Pass, genuinely fearful that the combination of high altitude and heavy backpack might prevent me doing so solo. As a result, I achieved my goal(s). I saw a world of beauty, I met a myriad of people from all across the planet who reinforced my innate belief in the human race, and by switching off from the outside world entirely, I found peace. Perfect peace.
By the end of the trek, I’d hiked 112 miles across the 14 days, climbed almost 33,000 ft vertical in doing so, and taken what my phone recorded as over 320,000 steps (and was no doubt many more), the vast majority of it at altitude. At the eastern end of the Langtang Valley, at over 14,000ft above sea level, finally acclimatized, I even went jogging extensively one day, the only person I saw doing so the entire two weeks!
Somewhere in the midst all of this I figured on a game plan for 2026. Every amateur, part time, and even novice weekend athlete knows of what I’m talking. For some, it might be a through-hike, for others, a canoe trip, a climbing adventure, a first road marathon or half marathon. Among my own crowd, it’s a regular point of genuine interest asked on the longer weekend runs that are wisely conducted at conversational pace: “What are you training for right now?” “What’s your next goal?”
In my possibly AMS-enhanced state of infinite wisdom in the Langtang Valley, I decided that in 2026, my goal would be two-fold. For winter, influenced no doubt by the snow-filled slopes around me, I would return to skiing after barely a couple of days over the last three years. I kept to my word, and thanks to the specific pass that I bought, ski’d eight different mountains across four different States, having the best ski season of my life.
The constant working of my quads on the slopes set me up perfectly for the second goal for which, again influenced no doubt by the mountains around me, above me and under me in the Himalaya, I determined I would return to Manitou’s Revenge. The 53-mile course is renowned for “running” more like a hundred-miler, with at least 15,000 ft of elevation gain (and descent), But that only tells part of the story: the real adventure comes from the “technical” nature of those ascents and descents, which include some of the most gnarly, slippery and angular footings you’ll find anywhere on the planet that is considered a hikeable “trail.”
The last time I had taken it on, in 2021, the humidity had been unbearable, turning the Devil’s Path section into a rocky ice-rink by late afternoon, and I wobbled my way through the last fifteen miles or so, vowing that if there was a next time I would bring poles. Unsurprisingly, I finished an hour and a half slower that day – or night – that my first time out, four years beforehand, when a solid mid-pack debut was largely the result of hiring a Catskill-based coach/running guru for that very purpose.
Why go back to something so ineffably hard, especially now I’m in my 60s? My reasoning was not only that I might never find myself as fit again, but I might never be available again. I’ve lived in the Catskills for over two decades now, but while the Mountains will be here for millennia to come, I will not be. And as the sudden death of my close friend Lee this summer reinforced, we never truly know what lies around the corner.
Decisions made, goals proclaimed, then almost immediately upon returning from Nepal, I decided on a shift in my training. Unlike the years when I competed in the local runners’ club’s Grand Prix – a series of shorter races from 1 mile to the half-marathon – I would focus on longer, slower, steadier and hopefully smarter runs, with plenty of uphill hikes in-between. I would not abandon the Wednesday night speed workouts at the local track, but I would consciously go slower than my age group buddies. Similarly, I’d stay away from many of the competitive weekend 5ks; perhaps as well Park Run has not taken off in the States.
(It was somewhere during this stage that I sold Sari Boiton, a Hudson Valley resident and the editor of Oldster magazine, who’d declared herself open to suggestion, the story idea that finally emerged this week: Older, Slower, But Smarter and Stronger.)
I’d also double down at the gym. As champion ultrarunner Damian Hall explains in his new book entitled Run Forever, our bone density and muscle mass alike decrease with age, and running alone can not repair, let alone reverse, the decline. Strength training, however, can help stem the tide at minimum and has a number of additional benefits, from improving running economy to decreasing injury risk, from improving our metabolism and immune system, to benefiting our brains. For women, it can also alleviate menopausal symptoms. (Hall cites the various studies.)
For some, strength training means lifting free weights. For me, never a willing gym rat, it means the Nautilus machines with their fixed weights, but a weekly devotion to them, plus yoga, not just for strength, but for core work – keeping that core strong is as important as anything as you age – plus balance and agility, all of which decline with age but are greatly needed on the mountains. I’m fortunate to live in a town whose YMCA offers all of this – and a swimming pool - for a highly affordable $45 a month. But even in the UK, I can now get free senior swimming at the Better Leisure Centres (that’s their name, not my description) for all of a $10 equivalent annual fee.
The variety of workouts would mean easing back on the running somewhat, but I’ve never been more than a four-days-a-week person anyway. Crosstraining – swimming once a week for 30 minutes, cycling when the urge hits, the rowing machine occsaionally – offers much of the same benefits as running, but without the impact. Run Forever cites one study in which cyclist-runners performed just as well on short races as running-only runners, while another stat - that 88% of runners over 60 engage in cross-training – suggests the vast majority of us seniors are instinctively doing what is needed to protect our bodies and enhance our long-term health.
I mention all the above because I am nobody special, just an ageing amateur enthusiast trying to slow down the process of slowing down. But I do know that if I want to achieve the things I set out to achieve, I need to put in the advance work in. I’m also here to remind us all it’s the (training) journey that is often the most enjoyable part of the experience, not the race (destination) itself.
For my Manitou’s training journey, for example, I knew I’d need a warm-up race or two, and something substantial at that. I opted for one I’d never done before though I’d long been aware of it: the annual Breakneck Point trail runs just south of the town of Beacon, taking place an ideal seven weeks before Manitou’s, with a full marathon alongside the majority-preferred half-marathon.
The hills are lower in this neck of the Hudson Valley woods, but there are also more of them, meaning that while no ascent or descent would be as long as I’d encounter in Manitou’s (or had done in Nepal), they’d offer similar per-mile elevation gain and descent. I was also attracted by the website’s cited claim to being the “toughest marathon in northeast.”
The event was meticulously organized, and included a training “fun” run covering the first half of the course some three weeks in advance of the real thing. There I discovered that while Breakneck Point had the potential to earn its name, the eponymous rock scramble in the open air was invigorating, intoxicating even. I went back ten days later to do the second half of the course on my own, on what turned out to be a soggy day, getting thoroughly confused by the choice of trails in the process, and ultimately coming down the same way I had come up: via a second open rockface, that of Mount Beacon itself. A nasty slip left an index finger stiff and pained, but it could have been worse (it can always be worse) and besides, it encouraged me not to skimp on safety and invest in a new pair of Inov-8 trail shoes with fresh lugs (and a fanciful claim to “50% more grip”).
Race day itself was a blast. My objective was to treat it as nothing more than my main training run for Manitou’s, with the advantage of ready-made aid stations and other people for company. Among that company was a retired New York professor who makes a habit of doing some form of ultra almost every weekend as a routine way to keep fit and have fun. No watch, no goals, no complaining, no over-racing.
He and I bonded, talking about music, and were having such a good time together that as we climbed a sloping rock face, the type I typically focus on when alone, I casually paused while on one leg to continue talking as I decided where to put down the other: gravity won instead, and I fell hard on my side. Very hard. When we got to base for the half-way break, I decided to take several minutes out back at the car, cleaning myself up and stretching out the soreness.
The pain wore off on the second half, and I ran the final few miles back down the trail with a zing in my step, breaking the eight-hour mark I’d set as an outside goal for myself with a solid five minutes to spare. There was no one older than me ahead of me, and that, when you’re in your sixties, feels as good as winning the damn thing.
We moved house at the end of that month, on the exact weekend that would normally provide a window for a last long run. Naturally it involved some late night strength training of a different kind, carrying U-Haul boxes around, but we completed the move without injury and I decided, that first Monday morning in the new place, it was now or never to tackle something I’d long intended but had never set out to actually do: run-hike, unaccompanied, the Devil’s Path in its 22.5 mile entirety. The Path, frequently cited itself as the hardest on the east coast, includes six 3500-ft peaks, and over 8000ft of climbing; the first half of it, I know from experience, contains the most challenging miles of the entire Manitous Revenge course.
Late Sunday evening, I asked my partner Paula if she wouldn’t mind picking me up on Monday afternoon from somewhere, and on Monday morning, disappeared early, without announcing my exact intent, left my car at the eastern, Platte Clove end, and set off with a runner’s pack laden with water and a fair few home-made treats, but barely a care in the world. That lack of pressure, especially of time pressure, and a perfect weather day such as at Breakneck Point, combined to create something close to a perfect experience.
It was also a solitary one. Unlike weekends, when the Catskills trails are so busy most of the car parks overflow, I encountered all of five hikers in my entire nine-hours-plus. Inevitably I knew one of them, Lorraine, who remarked how strong I was looking, and sensing already what I was intending.,encouraged me to get going again. The last of the climbs (West Kill) was painfully long, but I’d forgotten all about that pain by the time I made it to the trail head beyond where, by the wonders of cell phone signals on the mountaintops if not on the trails themselves, I’d kept Paula abreast of my hopeful finishing times, and had but a fifteen minute wait for the hour-long ride back to my own car.
These four events – the Breakneck Point race and its training runs, plus the Devil’s Path – formed the key plot points of my journey. Manitou’s Revenge was my intended destination. The journey was beautiful. The destination sucked.
I showed up at the start line on June 20th for my 5:35 am departure in good form and a good mood, and more rested (thanks to further door-to-door service) than most of the other 100-and-change masochists, most of whom were repeat offenders, a handful of friendly familiar faces among them. I thought I was ready for the challenge. But I failed.
Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith posts twice a week, minimum, usually on Thursdays and Sundays. To receive all posts in your Inbox, please subscribe. To keep the page going, please consider a paid subscription at just $6 a month, $60 for the year (less than £5/£50 at current exchange rates.) You get access to all the archives all the time, exclusive interview transcripts, and the monthly Crossed Channels podcast I host with @DanEpstein.
1: I failed to execute the plan. I had been placed in the penultimate wave, and when I set off at the back of it, barely jogging the mile and a half of road before turning into the trails leading up to Escarpment, that put me almost at the very pack of the entire field. I was determined to be cautious, to take my time, to remember how hard this thing gets to be in the second half, to remind myself that it would hurt and I’d be out much of the night. But I love the Escarpment Trail, partly because I know it so well from the 30k race that predates Manitou’s by several decades (and which follows in the calendar just five weeks later). I love it well enough that as we climbed Blackhead Mountain, 1100ft of vert in under a mile, I found myself passing a number of competitors who, on the surface of it, looked younger and stronger than me. Foolishly, I was actually proud of doing so.
I also found myself falling on the Escarpment. Not once, not twice, but at least three times, the last of them quite close to North-South Lake where the Escarpment Trail Run finishes, and Manitou’s is barely getting going. By this point I had caught up with people who looked way younger and fitter than me, which was foolish in the extreme. My friend Chris later observed of my falls that I had likely failed to afford the Escarpment the kind of respect we do grant it on that Escarpment Trail Run when the intensity is greater (i.e. we go faster). He was right. I was too cocky and casual by far.
The last of my falls bloodied my knee quite badly, in a way that previous falls on this course – it’s hard to get through a big trail race or training run without at least one good tumble - had not. At the Palenville aid station, I stopped to get it cleaned up. The on-hand volunteer who attended to it assured me that it was clotting well, which eased any long-term concerns.
“I seem to bleed more the older I get,” I commented,
“You bleed more easily the older you get,” she corrected. It’s another harsh fact of that ageing process – thinner skin, thinner capillaries. Deal.
2: I failed to keep food down. We will return to this subject. But for now: I had eaten a solid amount before the event, and I decided to heed advice given me by my coach Dick Vincent a decade back, that for endurance you might not need 200 calories of high-carb food an hour, but for performance, you most definitely do. I snacked on my home-made energy bars and balls, saving the gels and Clif Bars for later on. Aid stations would supply the rest, including Tail Wind. I didn’t foresee any great problems. But as early as North-South Lake, I found I was struggling to enjoy the food; my stomach just did not seem to want it.
3: I failed to reach my intended time. As one of the oldest competitors, one who last did the whole the course five years ago and who hadn’t done anything like a similar 24-hour distance in most of those five years, I knew I would be slow. I was genuinely worried about making the 4:30am cutoff. But I still hoped for anywhere between 20 and 21 hours. For the first three hours on Manitou’s, when I wasn’t falling over, I was far ahead of that goal. I paid for it in the long walk.
4: I failed to enjoy myself the way I had hoped to. Something, somewhere, was off. It may well have been the weather, some barometric pressure of some kind. After all, it wasn’t especially humid, it wasn’t especially hot, but I wasn’t the only person to suffer, to feel less than themselves, and especially to experience GI (gastro intestinal) issues more so than usual. I’m not using to running on trails as early as 6am, and clearly I misjudged myself. Falling suggested my balance was off, despite all the yoga, or that I wasn’t thinking properly, which was a concern of its own. I come out on these things to test myself, but also to enjoy myself. And here, on my longest event in four-and-a-half years, I was not doing so.
5: I failed to climb the way I usually can. This year I did bring poles with me, the same inexpensive, somewhat clunky ones that had served me very well in Nepal. But for the first half of the event, I did not use them. This came on advice from champion masters runner Sheryl Wheeler back when she appeared on my One Step Beyond podcast after Manitou’s 2021, and reinforced by her at the staging center: use them only on the second half, she said, Devil’s Path onwards, when you most need their support. My friend Chris confirmed the same game plan when I caught up with him around North-South Lake.
In the meantime, however, my poles were bouncing around in my minimalist runner pack, contributing to my uneven balance, while I had noticed others – again ostensibly younger and fitter than me - using them on the very first ascent. I wondered what it would take me to just stop for a minute, take my pack off, take the poles out and follow suit. (Answer: It would take all of a minute.) Had I done so, instead of waiting until I was 30 miles in and exhausted already, not only would they have preserved my quads, but they’d have slowed me down during that first section where I needed the restraint. Lesson learned.
6: And most importantly of all, I failed to quit. Believe me, I wanted to. During the stage that I most dislike, a relentless and relentlessly tedious climb out from Palenville and up towards Kaateskill High Peak, there was nothing I wanted more. Last year, at a September road marathon, I had posted my first ever DNF, quitting at mile 20. It was an act of common-sense self-preservation due to a risk of substantial injury if I continued and as such, also a sign of maturity. But the reason I’d consciously never quit on any race before that was for what now manifested in my mind on Manitou’s: what would it matter if I DNF‘d again? I no longer had a streak to keep. The world would still turn.
Indeed, my son and his fiancée were in town from Burlington because her band had a gig in my home town Kingston this very afternoon, and not only did I want to see the band (We’re Here! To Kill), but I wanted to see my son also; we no longer get much time together. As I trudged onwards through this endless drudgery, with nobody for company except the demon on my shoulder, I did the calculations as best I could. If I quit at the next aid station, Platte Clove, just before the start of the Devil’s Path, called my partner and begged her to set off from Kingston immediately, there was a chance we could make the gig. Then I could have dinner with my son and his girl and a couple of beers that already felt well-deserved. (It didn’t actually occur to me until afterwards that there’s no cell service at this aid station, though it remains the common place to “drop out,” the last from which one can get a ride somewhere.)
Annoyingly, it was around this point, just as I had made my decision, that the same Lorraine who’d been out hiking the day I did the whole of the Devil’s Path, having made her way up from the Platte Clove trailhead especially to support (and photograph) the competitors, saw me coming and told me I looked great!
I told her I felt shit.
She repeated that I looked great, fit and strong, like I had on the Devil’s Path three weeks earlier, and easily capable of completing the course.
When I got into the aid station, the official drop-bag aid station as close to a half-way mark as you can arrange on a 53-mile course mainly on mountains, the only aid station with seats and tarps and opportunities for competitors to rest up, feed up and change grubby socks and other items as need be, I heard the same from the volunteers. “You look great! You look strong!”
Again, I didn’t believe them. Or perhaps I just didn’t want to, because what I wanted to do was quit. I plopped myself down. Looked around. All the competitors looked like shit. I recognized one of them, a garrulous Irish guy five years my junior, who I would have expected to have been way ahead of me already. I asked how he was doing.
“Terrible,” he said, his voice nothing like its normally enthused self. “I’ve been here half an hour already. I’m throwing up way earlier today than I usually do.”
Throwing up? I’d never thrown up on a race in my life.
Lorraine and her husband came down the trail from greeting competitors and offered to help me unpack some of the food items in the drop bag. Seriously, she said, leaning in, you’re looking strong, especially compared to some of the others. You’ve got this.
I asked her for photographic evidence; she showed me it (above). Damn, she was right. There was nothing in my face or my pose that indicated I was struggling. The battle was internal. I couldn’t quit. Not here, not now. That meant I wasn’t going to make the gig, I wasn’t going to get more than an exhausted couple of hours with my son and his partner the next day (Father’s Day, ironically), and there would be no beers tonight. I spent a solid half an hour at the aid station myself, way longer than I had done either time before and then, with an uncertain smile, set off to tackle the race’s tough section of the Devil’s Path, poles finally in hand.
I don’t remember at what exact point over the next couple of hours that a wave of nausea washed over me, and I realized I was going to vomit. I tried to fend the feeling off – it was hardly like I was eating or drinking anything bad for me – but reverse gravity won over. I pulled to the side of the trail and retched…
…And nothing emerged.
I retched again, full on vomiting mode, and again, nothing emerged.
A third time; this was painful. Still nothing. Nonetheless, another wave washed over me, that calming wave that comes when you’ve emptied your guts out of your mouth and your body is ready to resume regular activities. The difference with me was that I’d gone through this experience without anything to show for it but some spittle. Evidently, I was running on empty. Literally. There was nothing in my stomach left to come up. And I still had 20 miles and, as it would turn out, the best part of 12 hours to go.
I went through the same nausea and fake vomiting so many more times over the remainder of the course – at least half-a-dozen – that it stopped bothering me. (I was later informed I was going through Ketosis, defined as “a metabolic state that occurs when your body burns fat for energy instead of glucose.” It’s the basis of the Keto diet. I, however had very little fat to burn!) Perversely, now that I knew I was too far in to quit, now that the poles were at least making the terrain more manageable, I found myself enjoying myself. When I reached the penultimate aid station at Silver Hollow, still almost 11 miles from the finish line, I joked with the friends I know who were volunteering there, which was a good sign. I even had some broth. It stayed down. I opted next for a potato with salt – the perfect combo of carbs and sodium – and after one mouthful quickly stepped up and off the trail. And threw up for real.
“Don’t worry,” said Alannah who, disappointingly, was not dressed as a Yeti this year. “The last three people who came through here did exactly the same, and in the same spot.”
Like I said, there was something in the air.
There was a repeat performance at the final aid station at Willow, near the crest of Mount Tremper. Knowing I was going on empty, I asked broth, and within two seconds was throwing it up by the side of the trail – loudly, apparently. My friend Amy, who does not dress as a yeti but has been to crack extremely lewd jokes on the trails, suggested I get moving, that the sooner I did so the sooner I would finish. She could see I was half-asleep on my feet. She also told me, the next day via message, that “50% of the people who came through af ter 11pm were pukers.” I offer no additional comment.
On the way down Mount Tremper my waistlight, having been on for around eight hours solid, gave up the ghost and did not respond to the portable charger I’d brought with me for this very eventuality. I waited for the next “runner.” It was Leigh Anne, a 44-year-old woman who fortuitously happened to have a spare.
Leigh Anne and I were trail buddies by now. Earlier in the night (or was it the evening? Or the afternoon?), at a different point when we’d found ourselves together and talking shop for company and encouragement, she told me this was her 38th ultra. That list included at least one 100-miler and a few 36-hour trail festivals whereby she’d clocked 75 or so miles of presumably continuous running.
I asked what was the hardest of them all, and Leigh Anne paused - long enough, so I suspected, to ensure that her answer was not merely reflexive, of the moment.
“This one,” she said. “Definitely.” And she explained how, twice previously, she had taken on this race. The first time, she had failed to make a crucial cut-off. A second time, she reached the Silver Hollow cut-off with only five minutes to spare, and couldn’t see a way to continue, at the back of the pack, alone at night in the forest for the next few hours, without losing more time, and possibly her mind in the process, and being forced to post a DNF at the finish line anyway.
Half an hour after loaning me the spare headlamp, Leigh Anne crossed that finish line a few meters ahead of me, having found an impressive “kick” once we finally hit tarmac. If I was somewhat deflated by my ugly performance, she was understandably elated with hers. She had finally cracked the course. The cliché would be to say “third time lucky.” But luck had little to do with it. She may have failed on her previous attempts. But like me, she had also failed to quit.
It had taken me nearly 22 hours to complete Manitou’s this time. I wasn’t the slowest person out there – another eight of the 92 finishers followed in the hour behind me before the 23-hr cut-off – but for the first time in a very long time, I found myself among them.
If that aspect was a humbling experience, I took solace in the fact than a solid 20% of starters never even made it to the finish line. The attrition rate here is high. I was also the third oldest person to complete the course this year; the only others, both just a year older, are each annual offenders, proven experts at this distance. (Sheryl Wheeler, a true force of nature, is one of them.)
Interestingly, my recovery was quicker than expected. (I had a comfortable day out on the Escarpment Trail Run, the only event for which I am myself an annual offender, at the end of July.) Maybe there was something to be said for going slower than intended. Something else to be said for the use of poles on those last 20 miles. Maybe my fitness had benefits that took a while to manifest. And though I didn’t look back on my destination with any great fondness, I was able to look back on the journey with constant satisfaction. I am 99% certain that this last time was my last time tackling Manitou’s Revenge, and if I failed at so much of it, at least I failed to quit.
And now for the caveats.
On February 17, 2026, an avalanche near Lake Tahoe killed nine of 15 backcountry skiers, most of them experienced and accompanied by guides, who had left the sanctity of the Frog Lake Huts that morning despite an epic snowstorm and the known risk of avalanches. Ironically, an investigation launched by the guide company itself was published just hours before this Substack article was to be posted. It apportioned no blame.
On July 30, 2026, an avalanche on Broad Peak Mountain in Western Pakistan, the twelfth highest in the world, killed all ten mountaineers in its path from across four different tour groups: the toll included an American woman, an Omani woman, a top Pakistani climber, and several Nepali guides and sherpas, as well as Nirmal Purja, considered Nepal’s top mountaineer with a list of achievements worthy of men twice his 43 years. The groups had set off to ascend the mountain despite heavy recent snow, the very real risk of avalanches, and in the knowledge that other climbing groups had quit and decided to head down, instead.
Sometimes, failing to quit is a virtue.
But sometimes, it is not.
Enjoyable read as always. I’m curious about the volunteers who encouraged you when you were feeling bad. Is that something they are encouraged to do, regardless of how a competitor really looks? Would a volunteer be permitted to tell a runner, “I think you’ve had it, pal,”?