the battle in real time

“Not on this course,” Luis said. “Not against these guys.”

Thanks to the genius of Caballo’s planning, we’d all get to witness the battle in real time. Caballohad laid out his course in a Y pattern, with the starting line dead in the middle. That way, thevillagers would see the race several times as it doubled back and forth, and the racers wouldalways know how far they were trailing the leaders. That Y-formation also provided anotherunexpected benefit: at that very moment, it was giving Caballo plenty of reason to be verysuspicious of the Urique Tarahumara.

Caballo was about a quarter mile back, so he had a perfect view of Scott and the Deer hunters asthey closed the gap with the Urique Tarahumara on the hill across the river. When he saw themheading back toward him after the first turnaround, Caballo was astounded: in the space of justfour miles, the Urique crew had opened up a. four-minute lead. They’d not only dropped the twobest Tarahumara racers of their generation, but also the greatest climber in the history of Westernultrarunning.

“No. Way. In. HELL!” growled Caballo, who was running in a pack of his own with Barefoot Ted,Eric, and Manuel Luna. When they got to the five-mile turnaround in the tiny Tarahumarasettlement of Guadalupe Coronado, Caballo and Manuel started asking the Tarahumara spectatorssome questions. It didn’t take them long to find out what was going on: the Urique Tarahumarawere taking side trails and shaving the course. Rather than fury, Caballo felt a pang of pity. TheUrique Tarahumara had lost their old way of running, he realized, and their confidence along withit. They weren’t Running People anymore; they were just guys trying desperately to keep up withthe living shadows of their former selves.

Caballo forgave them as a friend, but not as a race director. He put out the word: the UriqueTarahumara were disqualified.

I got a shock of my own when I hit the river. I’d been concentrating so much on watching myfooting in the dark and reviewing my mental checklist (bend those knees … bird steps … leave notrace) that when I started to wade through the knee-deep water, it suddenly hit me: I’d just run twomiles and it felt like nothing. Better than nothing—I felt light and loose, even more springy andenergized than I had before the start.