From THE PURSUIT OF ENDURANCE: Harnessing the Record-Breaking Power of Strength and Resilience by Jennifer Pharr Davis, published on April 10, 2018 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Pharr Davis.

Excerpt from Chapter Seven: Wife, Mother, Record Setter In the beginning, I felt at home and at ease, even as my body adjusted to the back-to-back-to-back forty and fifty-mile days. But I knew enough about the AT and FKTs to wonder not so much if something would go wrong, but when. It took five days. Five days before my lower legs felt as if someone were scraping muscle away from bone with a knife. I had never had shin splints before and I haven’t had them since, but they left me with a fear of pain that I didn’t have before that summer. I never want to feel hurt that consuming again. To stub my toe was to send daggers into my shins and shock waves through my body. Going uphill was excruciating, but going downhill was unbearable. There were times when I would plant my foot and my leg would involuntarily buckle from the pain. It was as if my lower half were saying, “Nope. We’re not going along with this.” I howled and yelped aloud as I hiked down the trail. I also wept. My hiking poles became crutches and ibuprofen was like a customary breath mint after every meal. In the darkness of my tent, as exhausted as I was, I spent precious minutes, even hours, elevating and icing my legs at night and wrapping them the next morning, forced into choosing first aid over sleep. The primary treatment for shin splints is rest, but I knew that David had exited the Smokies with shin splints and run through the pain until it finally subsided. His example gave me hope, and I convinced myself that my legs would feel better in Vermont. (The upside of life-sucking mud is that it is a pillow for your feet; the soft tread would allow my legs to heal.) I rationalized that if I could make it through New Hampshire, if I could just get past the toughest mountains and the rockiest terrain, then when I crossed into the Green Mountains everything would be okay. First, however, I had to survive the exposed ridges and extreme weather of the White Mountains. As I left the parking lot at Pinkham Notch and paralleled the base of the Presidential Range, I could see the skies darkening and feel the temperature drop. My mind went to Andrew beating against the winter weather and being forced to bail on his second attempt at Mount Washington. My chest grew tight and my stomach felt queasy. When I reached the tree line, the wind forced me to look down. Even if I had been able to keep my head

up, the route was obscured by billowing cloud cover that only occasionally offered a glimpse of the next cairn, as if it were a lighthouse guiding the way. The limited visibility caused me to take a wrong turn, and I lost six grueling miles to the mountain and the weather. When I finally reached Crawford Notch on the far side of the Presidential Range, the rain was pouring down. I was cold, wet, and trying to do anything I could—including singing out loud—to keep my morale from completely washing away. I told myself that the weather would change. It always does. This was the end of June; the bleak weather could not last forever. I sloshed through puddles to reach Zealand Falls. Then, though my hands felt like frozen lamb shanks, I used them to scramble up the boulders that lined the ascent to Garfield Ridge. On the crest the treadway was composed of butterlike clay and slick rocks. I couldn’t maintain my footing or find much traction. I fell again and again. My legs were stiff, swollen pillars covered in red scrapes and blue and black splotches. I came out of the forest to traverse Franconia Ridge. And it was there that the weather finally changed. On June 24, I was in the midst of a whipping sleet storm. There was no one else on the ridge and I wasn’t thinking about the record. All I could do was focus on getting down the mountain to Brew. My body was rigid, my teeth were clenched, and my fingers didn’t exist. My waterproof layer was sealing the cold, wet fleece and long johns to my skin like plastic wrap. I was starving but I doubted I could open my pack or unwrap an energy bar with my numb, sock- covered hands. I also didn’t want to risk stopping to grab a snack from my pack for fear that I might not start moving again. When I finally stumbled to the base of the mountain, I was no better off. Brew assumed there had been bad weather, and he hiked in as far as he could and found a flat spot to set up the tent. When I saw it I fell inside. He helped me undress and then put me inside two sleeping bags. I kept shivering in my cocoon for a full thirty minutes until I finally had the dexterity to hold food in my hands and lift it to my lips. In the next twenty minutes, I consumed over three thousand calories. When I couldn’t eat any more, I knew I needed to get going. It was now or never. If I didn’t want the record attempt to be over, I needed to get upright again and try to start hiking. I changed into the warm, dry clothes that Brew had packed in, but I couldn’t find a dry pair of pants. I looked at Brew and pointed at his lower half. Brew looked down at his pants and then looked back up at me. “Say please,” he said. A few minutes later, I crawled out of the tent and slowly kept moving in my husband’s rain pants. Brew packed up our shelter and gear and then walked a half mile back to the

road wearing boxers with the Grinch who stole Christmas on them (a strange choice for our summer hiking trip). I kept going after the sleet storm but never fully recovered. Two days later I didn’t think I could take another step. I felt overwhelmed with fatigue and fever, my body was swollen from water retention, and I couldn’t sweat or pee. My systems were no longer selfregulating and my body was shutting down. Then my stomach started to churn. For a while I was covering more ground laterally by dodging off trail into the bushes than I was progressing forward. I ran out of toilet paper and plucked striped maple leaves from the forest as voraciously as a late summer hiker gathers blueberries. Finally, I came dragging out of the forest in a wobbling, tearful haze and told Brew, “We’re done. I’m done. Let’s go home.” I told him how sick I was and how much I hurt. My husband is kind and sympathetic. He also, as I’ve mentioned, does not enjoy spending his summer days running my errands and spending nights in a tent by a trailhead. I knew he would comfort me then take me home. But that’s not what he did. “If you really want to quit,” he said, “that’s fine.” And I was nodding. Then he continued, “But . . . you can’t quit right now.” I looked up at him, stupefied. I was so exhausted that I wasn’t sure what he meant. “Right now you feel too bad to make a good decision,” he said. “Right now you need to eat, drink, and take medicine, then keep going a little farther, at least until tomorrow night. Then, if you still want to quit, I’ll take you home.” Brew traded out my gear, loaded me down with Pepto-Bismol, then drove off. It’s really hard to quit when you don’t have a ride. By the end of the day, I started to feel a little better. Even with that improvement I still felt worse than I had in my entire life. I knew that I couldn’t set the record, but I realized that if I wanted to I could at least keep going. After a day and a half, my husband didn’t ask if I wanted to quit and I didn’t mention anything more about stopping. We just went about our camp chores as usual, and after five hours of sleep I got dressed, wrapped my legs, downed an energy bar, and kept hiking. I didn’t think I could set the record and it didn’t matter. I wasn’t out here to be the best; I was out here to find my best.