18 minute read
Feature
Escape From St. Louis
In March, 21 people walked out of their homes and set out on an adventure to remember
Advertisement
BY DOYLE MURPHY
As adventures go, this one begins inconspicuously.
Most of the residents of a quiet street in Dogtown are tucked away in neatly kept bungalows, their cars parked in their driveways on what has become a pleasant Friday afternoon. The sidewalk is all but empty.
“This is stupid,” Mark Fingerhut says.
A 40-year-old product manager for a software company, Fingerhut is dressed in a red t. Louis ag T-shirt, baseball cap, shorts and a pair of thick-soled Hoka running shoes. A half-filled backpack fastened over his shoulders and chest is the only sign this will be more than a jog around the neighborhood as he starts running up the hill from his house.
If all goes right — and he is not convinced it will — he will be gone all night and most of the next day. He will keep running or walking as St. Louis falls away behind him and the temperature drops from a sunny 51 degrees into moonlit 30s. The plan is to cross state lines and cut south through one county and then another, and then who knows? He has it mapped out in his head, but he has never done this before. Anything could happen.
The surprises are what he’s after, and not just for himself. He has somehow persuaded twenty others to leave their perfectly good homes at some point during a three-and-a-half-day window and see how far they can go in any direction on their own two feet in 24 hours. A few will start the next day. Others are already out there, plodding along city sidewalks, rain-soaked trails and the shoulders of highways, going and going and going as GPS locators on their phones chart a starburst of pathways
Continued on pg 14
Continued from pg 13
emanating from origins scattered across the metro and beyond.
As the architect of all this, ingerhut has been planning and coordinating for a few weeks. But now his “stupid idea” is no longer a concept but thousands of literal steps to pound out in what amounts to a series of marathons — all for questionable reward. It begins, fittingly, with a steep uphill. ingerhut chugs up the sidewalk, turns and ogs out of sight.
If necessity is the mother of invention, boredom is the reckless stepdad of adventure. And we have been plenty bored during the pandemic — not to mention stressed and an ious. The sudden evaporation of diversions in arch made it clear that few of us were prepared to be home so, so much. No movie theater escapes. No head-clearing trips to the grocery store. No daylong shifts at the office, and for too many of us, no more obs at all. At the e act moment when we could use even a temporary e it from the chaos invading our lives, nearly all of our usual off ramps were closed. ingerhut was maybe more restless than most. In the past, he has paddled the issouri iver from ontana to the ateway Arch and competed in multiple long-distance kayak races across the state. e passed the early days of the pandemic on a mission to bike every road in ogtown, a pro ect that he says took him about hours to complete and covered more than miles. As t. Louis headed into a second spring of C I - restrictions, ingerhut began dreaming up a new pro ect. The ours from ome Challenge was designed to be part socially distant sufferfest and part strategic challenge, combined with elements of camaraderie and shittalking. e oated the idea to friends in the local chapter of the ash ouse arriers — an irreverent bunch whose initiates like to oke that they are a “drinking club with a running problem” — and was surprised to find it actually appealed to a number of the members. “I ust looked at it and thought this is another cra y idea,” says
Beth c wen, ingerhut’s friend and fellow asher. “ e’s had a few.” But the more she thought about it, the more she was intrigued. c wen is among tens of millions of Americans who lost their obs during the pandemic, and she is among the millions more who started to rely on getting outside to relieve the stress of C I - fallout. er usual calendar of and races was canceled, so she began walking.
“ onestly, during C I times, really the only thing that has helped me stay sane is that I started walking every day,” c wen, , says. And not ust a lap or two around the neighborhood. he gives the e ample of walking from her home on the ill to meet a friend in oulard for lunch and, on a separate trip, circling the Anheuser-Busch brewery while wandering with her husband before returning home.
Among those who sign up for ingerhut’s challenge, c wen’s ambitions for the event are considered moderate. he decides that instead of going the full hours, she will walk to a friend’s house in ildwood from the ill, a one-way trip along anchester of more than twenty miles.
At the other end of the spectrum is osemary La occa, a -year-old veteran of multiple ultramarathons, including the ark Twain ile ndurance un. n a acebook page set up for the event, one asher okes that La occa “might do hours because she needs to finish listening to the hish song that started at hours.” hile c wen goes west and ingerhut goes south, La occa plans to run across the c inley Bridge from her home in the haw neighborhood and cruise north through Alton, Illinois. It’s not an e act route and she e pects to improvise a bit as she goes.
In a typical ultramarathon — any race longer than . miles — she could e pect to find aid stations every five or ten miles, but in this one, she will be running alone. er partner Andy c onald plans to track her through the night and carry supplies, but there is an element of the unknown. La occa says she plans to run with mace for the first time in her racing career and will take her normal safety precautions, such as running with only one earbud in so she can hear what’s happening around her.
“As a woman, I think it’s a different e perience than it is for a man,” she says. till, she is eager to see what she can do. he’s never run so far on pavement, and the idea of picking her own start time and route is appealing, she says in a phone call the night before she sets out.
“I’m interested to see what kind A s luck would have it, the opening day of the challenge is miserable. A cold rain that started the night before blows through the day on winds of miles per hour. Luckily, the e ible format of the ours from ome Challenge means competitors can simply push off their start time. As long as they complete continuous hours, they can begin anytime between noon on Thursday, arch , and midnight on p.m. on unday, arch . ingerhut decides to hold off until riday when the storm is supposed to break, and that seems to be the consensus among the runners. But then comes word that a lone runner has set out. ith rain pouring down across issouri, Aaron uenke takes off from New aven and heads for the aty Trail. “ ere I go ” he posts on acebook. nlike most of the runners, uenke is not a asher, but a friend of ingerhut’s through kayaking, adding to the intrigue of a wildman who would race in this kind of weather. In the following hours, he pops up on the acebook page with gnomic updates a photo of ood waters ne t to a “ ” mile marker at p.m. Another pic four hours later of a shot of whiskey at a bar in ermann. “The aty is so o peaceful,” he posts minutes before p.m. At a.m., he writes “The issouri iver is reclaiming this trail.” And then “If you could only see what I ust went through.” inally, after si teen hours slogging through the rain, uenke calls it quits “I went down with the moon. can’t go any further.” It’s a surprising start to the
Previous page: Mark Fingerhut (le , with his cousin, Andy Mayer) persuaded twenty friends to join him on a weekend adventure. Above: Fingerhut jogging out of Dogtown. | DOYLE MURPHY
From Le : Angela O’Hanlon, Glenn Hooker, Beth McEwen and Don Hovey go west. | DOYLE MURPHY
Rosemary LaRocca has run multiple ultramarathons, including a hundred-miler, but the 24-hour challenge was unlike all the others. | DOYLE MURPHY
competition. Before sunrise on the first full day of the challenge, uenke has set the bar at miles.
“ k eekend arriors,” he writes. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got. This is the best that this little old hippie could do this time.”
La occa and c wen both start shortly after a.m. on riday, arch , heading in opposite directions. c wen is oined by a friend from ansas City, on ovey, and they soon meet up with husbandand-wife team lenn ooker and
Angela ’ anlon. Their trip is to be a leisurely stroll — if twentyplus miles of walking on hard cement can be described as “leisurely.” They catch outhwest Avenue leaving the ill and follow it west into aplewood. oon, they’re approaching anchester oad.
“ e’re at the big turn ” c wen okes. nlike others’ routes that twist and turn, the foursome has chosen a nearly straight shot west. And they have brought no gear another benefit of choosing a commercial district for their ourney is that they can grab a snack — or a beer — any time they wish.
La occa, on the other hand, gives off the vibe of a happy warrior as she e its her house. he takes a moment to queue up a hish album before giving her partner a kiss and ogging east. In about an hour, she has passed the Arch. In less than two, she’s at the c inley Bridge, and she has crossed into Illinois before a.m. he turns onto state oute and begins a relentless march north as tractor trailers grind past on their way to and from riverfront shipping terminals. The night before she had described all this as “Type fun — it’s fun later. It’s not fun while you’re doing it.”
All riday, runners start trekking across the t. Louis metro. ingerhut’s wife, ara, is acting as race coordinator, tracking the competitors on a centrali ed map and updating a acebook event page. As the hours tick by, the cluster of points begins to separate into distinct strands heading out in all directions. ltimately, their distances will be measured as the crow ies for purposes of the challenge. Choose an inefficient route and those miles deviating from a straight line are wasted.
After leaving ogtown, ingerhut runs south and makes a big left to cross the ississippi iver on the efferson Barracks Bridge. e’ll have to eat some miles on the dogleg in the final tally, but the payoff lies ust beyond the river’s edge on the Illinois side the levee. A singlelane road atop the at top of the berm offers a virtually traffic-free, relatively straight shot south for as far as a human could ever wish to run in a day’s time. As a bonus, it is by design resistant to the kind of ooding uenke saw on the aty Trail early that morning. ingerhut leaves the bridgerattling tractor trailers behind, climbs through a wire fence and scrambles to the top of the levee. The river laps off to his right, and the rumble of the highway soon drifts away.
About p.m., he records a video of himself walking along as the sun sets. The field of competitors swelled to ten during the day, but it quickly thins as evening comes. c wen and her crew reach their ildwood destination after about ten hours and end their adventure. Three more daytrippers are wrapped up by p.m. By then, it’s dark and cooling off fast. nly La occa, ingerhut and another afternoon starter, a strong runner named Adam Arce, are left.
In his sunset video, ingerhut had already pulled on a windbreaker.
Continued on pg 16
Mark Fingerhut continues through the night during the challenge. | DOYLE MURPHY Rosemary LaRocca runs along Illinois Route 3 a er crossing the McKinley Bridge. | DOYLE MURPHY
A measuring stick tracks the flood waters along a Mississippi River levee in Illinois. Wildlife far outnumbered cars as Fingerhut journeyed south through the night. | DOYLE MURPHY
ESCAPE
Continued from pg 15
“Feeling alright,” he says. “Enjoying the sunset. Starting to get a little chilly and looking forward to a fun night.”
Shortly after 9:30 p.m., there is a surprising development: LaRocca has dropped out.
In eleven and a half hours of running, she has covered a total of 50 miles, roughly 42 as the crow ies. But the shoulder of Illinois Route 267 in the dark is not the safest place to be, and it’s time to move on to the second phase of Type 2 fun.
That leaves only Fingerhut on the levee and Arce on the Katy Trail to run through the night.
The temperature has dropped into the 30s, but Fingerhut seems to be in good spirits.
“As long as I’m not feeling injured, I’m going to keep going,” he says.
His buddy Kelly tracks him down after 10 p.m. for a supply drop. The stars are out, and a crescent moon illuminates the gravel of the levee road with stunning clarity. To the left are low farm fields and the occasional house. To the right, high water pools midway up the trunks of trees like a swamp. There are more raccoons than cars out here at night.
Fingerhut has changed into long pants and has swapped his meshback baseball cap for a blue stocking cap. He wears an orange buff around his neck, black gloves and an electric headlamp. He has to pump his legs as he stands to keep the muscles from stiffening.
It’s now as much of a mental challenge as a physical one.
“Some of the folks started early this morning, and when you’re walking all day and then you have to face walking all night, I think that’s really tough,” he says.
He intentionally started in the afternoon so the night would come relatively early in his journey. It seems to have been a good strategy. Still, it’s not going to be easy to continue on through the cold and dark. By the time elly departs shortly before 11 p.m., Fingerhut has been on the road for more than nine hours, meaning he’s barely more than a third of the way through the 24-hour challenge. Sunrise is a long way away. If he runs into trouble, his plan is to call his wife and hunker down with a foil emergency blanket stashed in his backpack until help arrives.
Not that it is all grueling. Walking along under the stars, often without a house, much less a human, in sight is an experience of its own.
“It’s very peaceful,” Fingerhut says. “You don’t get a chance to be out here like this, especially living in the city.”
The glow of St. Louis is far behind him on the northern horizon. A cousin will meet him in the morning, and he hopes to end his adventure tomorrow afternoon with a beer at a riverfront brewery in Chester, Illinois, some 70plus miles from where he started. But for now, he’s taking it all in.
“I guess I would equate this to paddling on the big rivers, like you’re on the Missouri River at night,” Fingerhut says. “There’s nothing like it, because there’s no lights, no civilization, just you. The big race we always do is always during a full moon. So it’s super bright and you’re just out there in the middle of this massive river,
Continued from pg 16
and you can see so much just because of the moon. It’s so peaceful you can hear everything.”
Fingerhut makes it through the night but had thought of quitting.
He crossed 50 total miles shortly after 3 a.m. after tracking inland from the levee. He had planned a stop at Fort de Chartres near Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, as a landmark along his trip, and by the time he arrived at the 268-year-old former French military post, he was wearing down.
“There was actually an outhouse,” he says. “And I went in there to use the bathroom, and it was really warm in there, but it smelled absolutely horrible.”
Driven outside by the smell but still in need of a rest, he laid down on a picnic table, covered himself with his foil blanket and fell asleep. When he woke about 30 minutes later, he thought about calling it. He had been on the road for more than fourteen hours, and the back of his right knee was hurting. But he soon found himself back on the road. His cousin Andy Mayer met him at sunrise alongside a two-lane road in Randolph County, Illinois.
Mayer has brought Fingerhut a breakfast sandwich, and together they walk below the majestic bluffs that once sheltered nomadic hunting parties stalked the oodplain , years before them. Buoyed by the company and the rising sun, Fingerhut seems reinvigorated and says he is feeling better about his chances of making it all the way to 1:30 p.m. and a beer at St. Nicholas Brewing Company in Chester.
As they walk, he tells the story of his night. There were wildlife sightings, including a brief meeting with some sort of small beast he couldn’t quite identify. And of course there was the misadventure of the Fort de Chartres crapper, but what stands out was a more celestial encounter.
“All of a sudden, it’s like a street light went on above me,” Fingerhut says. “I was like, ‘What?’ I looked up, and it was a massive meteor that ust ashed super bright. In just like a second it was gone.”
There is a British explorer named Alastair Humphreys, whom Fingerhut admires.
Humphreys spent four years cycling around the world, covering 46,000 miles and five continents. e has also rowed the Atlantic Ocean and has run six marathons in the Sahara. But Fingerhut was drawn in by Humphreys’ concept of the microadventure.
The Brit took a year off his international quests and pioneered a series of small excursions that excitement-starved average Joes could accomplish in a weekend or even a night. He encouraged office workers to throw a sleeping bag on a hill, sleep under the stars and heat their morning coffee on a camp stove before hustling back to work. Humphreys recommends jumping in ponds and lakes, trekking circles around your home and marking blue moons on the calendar for nights outside.
The idea is that a little imagination is all it takes to have an adventure.
“The concept stuck with me,” Fingerhut says. “It was like, ‘Holy shit, that’s brilliant.’”
Fingerhut made it to 1:30 p.m., but came up just a few miles short of Chester and the brewery. Sara Fingerhut picked him up, and drove the exhausted adventurer home to St. Louis. In total, he had traveled miles, as the crow ies.
On Sunday, he and the others met up at Tower Grove Park to swap war stories of their adventures. Arce, the other runner who stayed out all Friday night, had hustled all the way to Hermann (80-plus miles total, as the crow files ust in time to catch the last Amtrak back home. Others reported harrowing encounters — a mountain lion, gun-wielding rednecks, speeding truckers — while on roads and ooded paths. or most, it was the longest distance they’ve ever traveled on foot and something they’ll talk about for years.
“I think what I was thinking all along in planning this thing and inviting friends to do it … what I was hoping for is there would be these kind of stories that actually ended up happening to people, like these crazy experiences that people had that they’d be sitting around and talking about and telling each other,” Fingerhut says on the phone. “That’s exactly what we did on Sunday. We gathered in the park, and it was just everyone talking about how they did, where they went, things they saw — just what they experienced. I just kind of sat and looked around. I was like, ‘That’s awesome. I had a part in that.’”
He’s not sure if they’ll do it again, or if it will be just one of those weird things that happened during the pandemic. He’s open to another round, but he says he’ll be the one back at the house tracking all those little points on the map as they forge out into the world. n
