Ultra Read Free Page A

and fat, I can still kick butt when the going gets tough.”
    Our fourth loop sucked. We ran it in 34:20. I could have gone faster, but Dad was losing steam.
    “Again!” I said.
    Dad grimaced. “Aren’t you tired?” he said.
    “Nope!”
    It was weird: the longer we ran, the stronger I felt.
    The fifth loop was our fastest yet: 27 minutes, 40 seconds. When we finished, Dad lay down on the driveway.
    “I am totally done!” he said. “No, Quinn, I am
not
running another loop!”
    Kneecap’s mom gave us kiwi juice and toasted bagels. Dad stood up and stretched his legs. His left hip made a gruesome clicking noise.
    “Ew!” Kneecap cried. “That’s disgusting!”
    Dad stretched it again. “What, this?” he asked.
    Later, when we got home, I told Mom how far I’d run. She didn’t react the way I expected.
    “You can wreck your own knees for all I care!” she told my dad. “But don’t wreck his! He’s just a kid!”
    “But you should see him run,” Dad said. “We ran for three hours and he wasn’t even tired!”
    This was a tactical mistake. “You made him run for three
hours
?” Mom cried.
    A couple of weeks later, Dad took me to a special clinic. They put me on a treadmill and took about a hundred vialsof my blood. Two weeks later the results came back.
    “It’s confirmed,” Dad said. “What colour cape do you want?”

GOING, GOING, GONE
Mile 1
    SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: So let’s get back to the 100-mile race. You’d just started running. You were about to
kick some shins!
    QUINN: Right. There were seventy-seven runners in the race. And the trail was only a metre wide, so it was a traffic jam at first. All I could hear was the sound of seventy-seven pairs of sneakers slapping the dirt, and the sloshing of water in seventy-seven hydration packs, and the farts of seventy-six middle-aged long-distance runners. Luckily the pack spread out pretty quickly. The greyhounds zipped off, and the slowpokes fell behind, and soon we were all stretched out in a long, thin line.
    SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: And how were you feeling?
    QUINN: Pretty good, except I had a knot in my stomach. Plus, I was still mad at Kneecap.
    SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Because of what she said to you?
    QUINN: Yeah.
Fun vampire
. It’s not exactly a compliment.
    Still, I was happy to be out there running. The sky was pink, and the air smelled of damp wood. The forest was full of all these golden stripes of sunlight. Tiny birds were zinging between the trees.
    After about 10 minutes we passed a red signpost. Mile 1, the sign said.
    “Only ninety-nine to go!” someone shouted.
    “This isn’t so hard after all,” said someone else.
    I was running behind a group of grey-haired men. They laughed and horked up gobs of phlegm and bragged about all the races they’d run.
    They also talked a lot about body functions. Like, Hey, Bob, did you have a bowel movement this morning? Yeah, Steve, I had three! Wow, lucky you! I guess today’s gonna be a fertilizer run, huh?
    (Pause)
    QUINN: Oh, wait; you probably don’t want to hear this, do you?
    SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: I’m not sure our national audience wants to hear about bowel movements, no.
    (Audience laughs)
    Quinn, I’m still trying to understand how anyone can run 100 miles. I mean, that’s like running four full marathons, back to back. I know you have superpowers, but … And how did you keep from getting bored? Did you listen to music along the way?
    QUINN: No, but I sang a lot.
    SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What did you sing?
    QUINN: My own songs, mostly. I’m a songwriter. I’ve written ninety-three songs so far. I can play some of them on piano; others I just keep in my head. I’m always singing them, even though I’m not a very good singer.
    SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: So singing helps you relax? What about running — does that help you relax too?
    QUINN: Yeah. It quiets down my brain, you know? My brain is always screaming crazy stuff at me. Like, when I walk down the hallway at school,