January/February 2007 Entry
Posted February 26, 2007

 

If anyone happens to be reading this thing…my apologies for the New Year’s silence.  January and February have been very intense, but good, months and I’ve not had time to write.

 

I sustained an injury from sitting on my ass in a moving truck for a week.  No it’s not a hemorrhoid.  It’s a sprained ankle.  How on earth did I sprain my ankle sitting?  I’m really not sure.   My theory is that all that sitting caused my feet to swell, triggering an old injury.  Anyway, I’m doing a customized version of the RICE trick—Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation.  My version removes the “R,” making it “ICE.”  Not smart, I know, but I just moved to Boulder and can’t imagine not running here.

 

Speaking of Boulder, it definitely is a runner’s heaven.  It reminds me, though, of heaven as C.S. Lewis describes it.  In his version, heaven’s not a big billow of cloudy softness.  It’s a place of angles and textures and beauty so intense that it hurts a little at first to be there.  That’s what it’s been like in Boulder.  It’s sharp and big and hard and dry and bright and steep and stunningly beautiful.  It hurts.  My runs leave me panting and stooped.  My nose bleeds.  My eyes ache from all the sunshine.  Once I become acclimated to this intense version of paradise, though, my blood will be redder, my eyes will see more, my body will become stronger, and I’ll be charging up these mountain trails whooping as I go. 

 

For now, though, it’s beating me up.  Yesterday I was running up a hill breathing loudly, hurting much, when I heard crunch crunch behind me.  My trail had merged with another and I assumed that another runner had entered the trail just behind me.  This runner wasn’t breathing loudly and seemed to be keeping pace with me comfortably.  The crunch crunch was a little slower than my own stride but didn’t get any fainter.  Finally I gave in and looked behind me to see who this runner was…it wasn’t a runner at all.  It was a skinny college girl and she was…walking.  Walking!  I can’t wait until I acclimate to this place; until then, I’ll just learn some humility.

 

My training is going fairly well, move notwithstanding.  I will start using a pack with about 15 pounds next week and will bump it up to 25 lbs as my body gets used to is.  The keys to running with a pack are:

·         Regular core strengthening (abs and lower back)

·         Running tall with your core engaged, back neutral, and hips forward

·         Lifting –esp trapezoids

·         Adequate recovery (the pack strains your legs more than usual running…be sure you honor rest days)

·         Go slow (ultras, especially self-supporting ones, are designed for tortoises, not hares)

 

I’m very excited that my trainer-to-be, Ray Zahab, has finished his epic run across the Sahara Desert…I mean the whole blasted thing!  All 4000 miles of it…in 80 days.  It’s really the most amazing athletic feat I’ve heard of.  A request went out from Ray’s assistant to write something about Ray for posting on his website to celebrate his return.  Here’s what I wrote:

 

When I ran the Sahara Race with Ray in 2005 I was immediately impressed by his dazzling smile.  He smiled all the time.  At first it confused me.  What was he so happy about?  It was hot.  There were snakes and camel spiders.  We were running painful distances with sand in our underwear.  But Ray was smiling. 

 

And it was a real smile, not a pasted on smile or a grimace, but a warm, friendly, sincere and—in the blazing Saharan sun—blinding smile.  I always wore my sunglasses when talking to Ray.

 

My wife, Beth, was a checkpoint volunteer for that race, so I asked her what Ray was like out on the course charging ahead of everyone (he won the race) at blazing speeds.  Surely his good humor left him out on the course in the 130 degree heat.  Was he serious and focused?  Did he bark orders at the volunteers?  Did he complain about the pain?  Did he demand foot rubs?

 

“No,” Beth told me with a laugh, “he just smiles and checks on the volunteers.” 

 

“What?! What do you mean he ‘checks on’ the volunteers? The volunteers are supposed to be checking on him!”    

 

“He runs up, smiling, and gives us a big Canadian greeting, like ‘how’s it goin’ eh?’ and then asks each of us how we’re doing, if we’re comfortable and having fun and drinking enough water…that kind of thing.”

 

It makes me laugh to remember.  Ray is really a good soul.  Smiling Ray.  It’s always inspiring to see people accomplish great feats—like run the width of the Sahara Desert; but it’s especially sweet when someone like Ray succeeds.  He’s humble, happy, and generous.  Sometimes good guys do finish first.  It’s a good thing to see.

 

Congratulations, Ray.

 

 

December 2006 - Uncle Mort
Posted December 19, 2006

Since turning forty, I’ve taken to adopting uncles.  These uncles are men a few paces ahead of me in their life’s journey and from whom, I believe, I have much to learn about how to live my next fifty years.  The other night, I had dinner with my “Uncle” Mort.

We met at a Cuban restaurant in Palo Alto for dinner and cigars.  Uncle Mort is something of a genius, with numerous advanced degrees including an MFA, an MBA, and two PhDs—one from Stanford and one from MIT.  He learned to write fiction alongside Ken Kesey and Larry McMurtry under the tutelage of Wallace Stegner and has published several novels; his poetry and short stories have appeared frequently in magazines such as the New Yorker.  On a lark, Uncle Mort designed and built the first human powered airplane to successfully cross the English Channel; you can buy a book on it from Amazon entitled Gossamer Odyssey. 

But that’s not all. 

Uncle Mort regularly publishes academic research, speaks six languages fluently, is an accomplished musician, just built a high-performance aerobatic plane with his son, is a commercially rated pilot who flies his own Gulf Stream twelve-seated jet, and, at 78, courts his new girlfriend in four different languages.  In his spare time Uncle Mort makes a living as a major player in the venture capital world.

But that’s still not all.

When his wife died of cancer two years ago, one of Uncle Mort’s strategies for managing his grief and expressing his anger at the disease that had stolen his soul mate, was to create five patented cancer treatments.  We’re talking about two years here!  Uncle Mort is lean but strong; in profile his jaw is a sharp boomerang of bone and he carries himself with posture that any ultra runner should emulate—tall; hips tucked in; head, shoulders, pelvis and knees aligned.  Did I mention that he’s 78!?  Last year he decided to change his weight lifting regiment in defiance of the prevailing medical notion that men over the age of sixty cannot build new muscle mass.  Since beginning his new program he’s gained ten pounds…of muscle. 

But even that’s not all. 

Conversing with Uncle Mort is the intellectual equivalent of treading water in big seas…if you try to do much more than stay afloat, you may drown before you make it to shore.  The minute he starts talking the room is filled with a moving, surging, rising flood of information and ideas.  But don’t panic!  Much better to relax, float as best you can, and take big gulps of air whenever you get the chance.  He loves to teach and seems able to cram an entire graduate-level course into the space it takes to eat dinner and smoke a cigar.  So I have to conserve my energy as I ride these high intellectual swells.  For every topic covered in the course of a conversation with Uncle Mort—and the topics in this particular conversation ranged from business strategy to Chinese poetry to psychotropic medication—Uncle Mort will recite lines from a few of his favorite books on the subject, as if to give skeptics proof that he really does know what he’s talking about, which, in the course of a full evening, is nearly everything. 

All this to say that Uncle Mort would fit my archetype of a “skinny old man with stories to tell” (see previous journal entry) except that he’s not actually old; Uncle Mort is ageless.  Guys like Uncle Mort give me hope that there is always more to do and learn and experience.  “I’ve never left school,” he said, “I’m always learning, taking classes, reading, exploring.”  Uncle Mort’s ageless approach to life reassures me that there’s no need to grow old before I die. 

I asked him what his secret is to accomplishing so much.  He cocked his head and shrugged.  “Well,” he said, “you know the Nike ad, Will.  It’s simple, but says it all. Just do it.”

Of course, that doesn’t really say it all, but it says a lot.  Uncle Mort is endowed with genetic material that will make his doings different from my doings no matter how much doing I do.  Uncle Mort is bionic; I am not.  But Uncle Mort is a gracious man and grades on a curve.  “Everyone is different in terms of their innate potential to achieve.  What we generally have in common, however, is the delta between our innate potential and our realized potential.  Most people achieve or produce or do only about fifteen percent of what they’re capable.  So the trick is to engage more of our potential; think of what would be possible if people would turn off their TVs and just do the things they dream of doing.”   Of course, Uncle Mort happens to be writing a book on this topic of latent human potential.

So as I approach this New Year and contemplate how to move onward and upward in 2007, I’ll resist the urge to create complicated lists of resolutions.  Instead, I’ll work hard to follow Uncle Mort’s borrowed advice…I’ll “just do it!”  After all, it’s worked pretty well for him.

TRAINING

I’ve been averaging about five to six hours of running per week recently.  Just cruising.  I’ve also been doing two circuit training sessions per week with three sets of 12 – 15 exercises.  I try to keep my weight reps at around fifteen per set (ends up being between 8 and 17 depending upon the exercise and the set number). I have gained about fifteen pounds since the Sahara Race (184 pounds at the moment); some of this is muscle and some of it is fat, so I’ll be working over time to lighten up again.

This month I plan to slowly build my running base back up.  I’ll also begin planning my gear and training strategy.  I’ll be sure to post this info as I found it immensely helpful to read other peoples’ gear lists and training details (esp. that of Matt Chapman—thanks Matt) prior to the Sahara Race. 

For now it’s been nice to just cruise and reclaim my enjoyment of running.  It’s been important to run trails as much as possible and treadmill as little as possible (despite much travel) to ensure that my runs are enjoyable.  Now that it’s cold, I can take my old dog, Blondie, on short sections of certain runs.  She used to do seventeen milers with me…at high altitude.  She’s enjoying our little spins in her old age and so am I.  A good running dog is an absolute gift.

Merry Christmas and Happy Training, Everyone!

 

October 2006 - The Crash
Posted November 13, 2006

 

This month started off well; I added a bunch of new elements to my training—lower-body weight workouts, more training days per week, increased mileage, hill repeats, speed workouts, etc.   It was all going fine, but then my knee started to ache, I sprained my ankle several times and I started to feel sluggish during my workouts.  By the end of the month I was skipping workouts and had to shove myself along through the runs and lifting workouts that I did make it to.  In short, I crashed.  I just wasn’t having any fun.

 

So I unloaded my woes over coffee to a new friend, a sports psychologist who works with professional triathletes.  I told her about my lackluster training for the Leadville 100, my difficulty getting back into training afterwards, and my surge of training and subsequent crash this month. 

 

After listening patiently, she asked a simple question: “Why do you run, Will?  Maybe you need to revisit that.”

 

Bing!  The light bulb went off and I immediately knew that she was right.  I’d lost track of my real reasons for running even before Leadville, which, I realize in retrospect, I approached with a real sense of boredom.  My goals for that race were much higher than they’d been for any race I’d run up to that point, but my results were the worst of my running career.  Hmm.  What did that mean?

 

So I’ve reflected a bit on what really motivated me to run in the first place and what kind of thinking has led to my best training and my best races.  It’s been a great exercise to re-examine my “running mission”  and I recommend it to anyone who’s planning to run the Gobi March or any other ambitious sporting event. Here’s what I discovered.   

 

A SKINNY OLD MAN WITH STORIES TO TELL

 

In a nutshell, my mission as a runner is to someday be a skinny old man with stories to tell.  Not long ago, while I was training for a triathlon, my dad came to visit.  I asked him if he wanted to lift some weights with his son.   Sure, he said.  The request, I admit, was a bit patronizing; I figured I’d show the old man a thing or two and make him proud.

 

Well, into the garage we went, where he proceeded to stomp me.  I took him through my standard circuit of exercises, each of which he added either weight or repetitions to.  He really hammered me…and I loved it!  He’s what I mean by a “skinny old man.”  I really mean a fit old man.  At twice my age, he can still do anything that I can and that gives me hope for a lot of great years and adventures ahead. 

 

In addition to wanting to be a skinny old man like my old man, I want to have lots of stories to tell.  My grandfather, Poppy, lived his life as an adventure.  He lived with a great sense of curiosity and freedom and, for better or worse, license.  When he was eighteen he decided to run off to sea. He signed onto the Alta, an Australian square-rigged lumber ship, and sailed around the world.  He learned to box onboard and boxed his way from country to country, fighting men in every port of call.  He scrapped his way through the Great Depression, made a small fortune out of the pennies he saved, and spent his spare time writing poetry.  When I knew him as a boy, he was close to the end of his life and was so full of stories and experiences that he overflowed with them.  He loved to tell these stories and even wrote a manuscript of his sailing and boxing adventures, which is now one of my prized possessions.  Like Poppy, I want my life to be full of adventures and stories.

 

Running is, of course, a great way to stay fit.  Trail running and, of course, running in places like the Sahara or the Gobi Desert, provides a lot of adventure. I’ve bumped into rattle snakes and bears, traversed skinny mountain ledges with deadly drops, flirted with heat stroke, gotten lost in the wilderness, and stumbled upon drug dens.  So running is a great way to pursue my goal of being a skinny (aka fit) old man with stories to tell.  In order for that to happen, though, I will have to keep running until I’m an old man.  Otherwise the mission’s kind of shot.  That means I have to be careful to preserve my enjoyment of the sport.  In this respect, I’ve recently taken a wrong turn.

 

I really enjoyed training for the Sahara.  My goal was just to have a great adventure; the pressure was very low because I had no idea whether or not I would even be able to finish.  My training, as a result, was relaxed but consistent and enjoyable.  It was a great bonus, then, to do well in the race.  This is how I’ve approached every race I’ve competed in except for two: Leadville and a half marathon in Aspen many years ago.  Those two races took place after very good performances in other races; I got distracted by the desire to perform (i.e. by vanity) and approached these races with very high, specific  performance goals.  Distracted by those goals, which I ultimately found both boring and stressful, my motivation suffered.  I didn’t have any fun training and I didn’t perform well on race day; in fact, those were the two worst runs of my career.  I know that performance-driven running works for a lot of people, but I have plenty of goals in other parts of my life to keep me adequately busy and stressed; I run for fun. 

 

So I’ve got to hit the reset button.  This winter will be about enjoying my running again and re-envisioning a lifetime of running (or walking, or crawling, or wheeling, as my body dictates) my way toward the goal of becoming a skinny old man with stories to tell.

 

TRAINING PLAN: REVISED

 

To that end, my ambitious base-training routine (which, I realize now, was hardly just a base-training routine) as described in September’s blog is on hold until spring.  I will be running 3 - 4 times during the week for now with low miles (about an hour each weekday run; 2 – 3 hours on my long run) and low to moderate intensity.  I’ll be cruising.  I’ll be exploring.  I’ll be having fun.  I’ll lift two days a week with some core work on those days.  I’ll seek our cool new trails whenever I can; moving to Boulder, which I’ll do in January or February, will help me find those trails.  

 

The Gobi March is a ways off and old age is a long ways off; I want to stay fresh for both.

Here’s a picture of me with my eighty year old dad just before he kicked my ass…

 

 

September 2006 - Temporary Insanity
Posted October 9, 2006

In my short career as an ultra runner, I've been asked lots of questions. One of the most common is: "are you insane?" I initially assumed this to be a friendly rhetorical jab and would just smile and change the subject. But I've noticed that people pause after asking the question, indicating that they actually want an answer. So I'm going to try to come up with one.

My reflexive answer is: no, I am not insane. Though I have moments of doubt, I'm reasonably secure about my sanity. I've also observed that ultra marathoners in general are, with some pointed exceptions, a remarkably sane bunch. A high proportion of ultra-marathoners are professionals with titles like banker, engineer, doctor, and scientist-all positions that imply the capacity for rational thought and behavior. Many ultra runners are, in fact, just athletically gifted nerds who love to read original research in areas such as biomechanics, biochemistry, exercise physiology, and nutrition. Many pour hours into the construction of complicated training charts and scientific food combinations. These are very organized, rational, almost hyper-normal folks.

That being said, I have to acknowledge that there is an element of insanity in the act of running fantastic distances. But I would argue that rather than coming from a place of insanity, this kind of extreme running involves going to a place of insanity. Ultra runners voluntarily seek extended periods of pain and suffering. For many of us, this pain and suffering is really the point of it all. After hours and hours of sustained physical discomfort and exhaustion, the state of a runner's mind can begin to shift and slip. Especially when racing, many ultra runners experience visual and auditory hallucinations, and/or exaggerated mood states-including everything from a kind of drunken ecstasy to stark terror to an uncontrollable urge to sing out loud. When I was running Leadville, I felt my mind slip to the edge of panic at about mile 72 just as I was leaving a checkpoint to run out into the night. After the Sahara Race, I became weepy and paranoid and decided that my wife was through with me. I could just see it in her eyes. I made all kinds of noise about it. "Would you be quiet!" she finally said. "You are crazy. Crazy! I'm going out. You're going to bed. Sleep it off. I'll love you again in the morning."

Though all of this might sound terrible, I would argue that it's why many of us love this sport. The adventure outside, which, yes, is full of dangers and uncertainties, is nothing compared to the adventure inside, which is full of even greater dangers and uncertainties. Those of us who love adventure love stories; in particular, we love the suspense that makes a story a story. What will happen next? It may be wonderful or it may be terrible. Maybe I will win, maybe I won't even finish. Maybe I will have an epiphany or maybe I will have a panic attack. That's adventure. The tension between disaster and discovery keeps you awake and, for better or worse, makes you feel and see and sense in extreme ways. It makes you a little crazy.

While I did not enjoy my brushes with panic and paranoia in Leadville and Egypt, I have experienced other, more blissful forms of madness while on long runs. I've had inexplicable rushes of gratitude and joy, feelings of grandeur (uh-oh), and one life-changing epiphany. After my Saharan paranoia passed, I confided with my extraordinarily longsuffering wife that I had had an epiphany around mile thirty-five of the fifty-mile day. A nearly audible voice said "do what you do best. Everything has to change." No, it was not the voice of Peter Drukker. In that moment I decided to quit my job and start a new career. It was a sudden and rather crazy impulse that was, nonetheless, so powerful that I obeyed it. Within a few short months of the race I'd quit my job and started a new career with a startup-a terrifying process that I don't think I could have engaged without a dose of temporary insanity. It was exactly the right thing to do.

Recently I was having dinner with a friend who is an experienced and accomplished ultra runner. "Lots of great runners, you know, are druggies and drunks," he said, punctuating his point with a big gulp of beer. "Take Prefontaine.that guy loved to drink. In fact, drinking's really what killed him. I think that the same thing that drives some people to use drugs and alcohol is what makes ultra runners run. You can go to a new place, feel things you don't normally feel; even with all the pain, the things I feel after I've been running for a few hours are amazing."

So I finally have the beginning of an answer to the question "are you insane?" The answer is "yes, but only when I'm running." I do not run because I'm insane; I do, however, run to become insane.

TRAINING

Last month was devoted primarily to healing from my injuries and getting fat. I was successful on both counts, achieving these goals through a disciplined regimen of sitting, eating, and drinking beer. Encouraged by last month's success, I'm ready to engage my next phase of training.

This month, I plan to ease into a new base-training routine. My goals for this routine are to: increase the number of my weekly aerobic training days to six, and to introduce hill repeats, speed work, cycling, and lower body weights. My training for the Sahara and Leadville consisted of four runs per week, mostly flat; the emphasis was on distance, with most runs over 90 minutes long and my long run up to eight hours-all with a thirty pound backpack. I trained in the intense Carolina heat and humidity and supplemented my workouts with upper body weights and core exercises (to manage an old lower back injury). This set me up well for the Sahara, which was mostly flat, very hot (130 degrees Fahrenheit), and, of course, very long. My strengths in that race were endurance and heat tolerance, which allowed me to run at a constant pace in relative "comfort" for the whole race. My weakness in that race was speed; I would have liked to have notched up the overall pace slightly and had some speed bursts at strategic moments.

This worked less well, of course, for Leadville because of the steepness of the course. Though I would have finished in decent time had I not gotten injured, the hills still would have taken their toll on my ankles and knees, slowing me down due to stiffness. So my weakness in the Leadville was a lack of course-specific training which, in this case, meant a lack of leg-strength training. I was actually pleased with my initial performance-minus injury-in Leadville given my training limitations in North Carolina.

For the Gobi March, which will be a combination of elements from both the Sahara Race-heat, sand, and flats; and Leadville-steep, rocky sections, I want to work on increasing my speed and strength. I also want to enjoy my running and not burn out before the race. To these ends, I've put together this basic base-training plan (a peak-training plan will follow):

Day	Run/Bike	Lift	Core	Stretch
Monday	Run-Hill Repeats: 45–60 min	Circuit-whole body (45–90 min)	15 min	15 min
Tuesday	Run-Recovery: 60–90 min		15 min	15 min
Wednesday	Run or Bike: 60 – 90		15 min	15 min
Thursday	Run-Speed: 45- 60	Circuit-whole body (45–90 min)	15 min	15 min
Friday	Run-Recovery: 60-90		15 min	15 min
Saturday	Run-Long: 2–4		15 min	15 min
Sunday	Rest		15 min	15 min
Total	6.5–10.5 hours/week	1.5–3 hours/week	1.5 hrs	1.5 hrs

Because my previous regimen allowed for lots of recovery time, the challenge will be to introduce more training days and more intensity without hurting my old body. The combination of my age-41-and my general tendency to engage things with spastic intensity means that this new plan will have to implemented with care in order to avoid injury. I'm very excited about the increased intensity of this plan, as it should improve my performance. I'll be planting a training race in the middle of my preparation for the Gobi March to see how my training plan is working.

In future journals, time permitting, I will keep you apprised of my training and preparation along with ongoing assessments of how it seems to be working. I found similar journals to be incredibly helpful as I prepared for the Sahara. Many thanks to Matt Chapman of Australia who provided great material and personal guidance as I prepared for the Sahara Race. In the spirit of his journals, I will make myself available to other athletes wanting to dialogue about training. My email address for this race is walaughlin@yahoo.com.

NEWS

I'm excited to announce that Ray Zahab has agreed to coach me as I prepare for the Gobi March. Ray was my tent mate in the Sahara Race 2005, which he won, and is a tremendous runner with lots of international wins under his belt. Ray is also a gifted coach and trainer based in Canada, and I'm very fortunate to have his assistance.

Ray will be running the entire width of the Sahara Desert with two other runners-Charlie Engle and Kevin Lin (another friend from the Sahara Race)-starting at the end of October. The run will be documented in a film to be directed by Academy Award winner James Moll and narrated by Matt Damon. You can follow Ray's truly great adventure at www.runningthesahara.com. Assuming his survival, Ray will start coaching me upon his return. I'll document his input in this journal.

Happy training!

-Will


August 2006 Entry
Posted September 10, 2006

August was dominated by two things: my new job with Vive! and the Leadville 100, with the former eclipsing the latter.  Since starting with Vive! I’ve been traveling about 3 weeks per month, so my training for the Leadville 100 suffered.  I’ve been so busy that I didn’t realize the extent of my under-training until Beth (my wife) and I landed in Leadville and I had a moment to reflect.  Lying in our hotel room the night before the race, trying to nod off, I turned to Beth and whispered, “I think I forgot to train.”  She moaned and put her hand over my mouth.  Once I got that off my chest, I fell asleep.

 

Following is an email I sent to friends and family a day or two after the race, when I was still drunk with exhaustion.  The Leadville was my first DNF (Did Not Finish), which I consider sort of an ultra-running developmental milestone.  Are you really an ultra runner if you’ve never DNF’d?  So in a funny way I’m kind of proud of this failure and I’m relieved to have gotten my obligatory DNF out of the way.  Perhaps I’m on my way to becoming a real ultra-marathoner.

 

Hey Folks:

 

Some of you have asked how my Leadville run went.  Here’s a little update. 

 

The Leadville 100 is a 100 mile race on a steep, rocky single-track trail that goes over a 12,600 foot pass twice.  Less than half of the entrants finish each year.  My goals were to: 1) finish, 2) finish under 24 hours for a shiny silver belt buckle, 3) finish in the top 10%.

 

I started off at an okay pace but sprained my ankle and knee at mile 23.  Stupidly, I tried to finish anyway.  Favoring the knee hammered my feet (see how cute and fat they are in the photos?); so I ended up attempting to hop, rather than run, the 100 mile course.  By about mile seventy I was exhausted from pain and the frustration of being passed.  It took me most of those seventy miles to relinquish all of my race goals except one—to finish; it was an angry process, but a healthy one.  It’s always better to enter important life events with hope and curiosity than with rigid expectations; I entered this race with rigid expectations, and they made me miserable. 

 

When I reached the seventy-three mile checkpoint at 1:00 AM, I said to Beth, “I think I’m loopy.”  I was beginning to lose it.  It was pitch black and raining; I had twenty-seven miles to go and I was limping badly.  Beth suggested that I try to make it to the next checkpoint anyway—ten miles away—and we could decide my fate from there. Maybe I would have a sudden surge of energy.  Maybe I would feel better after a bowl of soup.  Sometimes she believes in me a little too much.  I ate some soup.  Beth walked me to the edge of the woods and gave me a kiss.  I flicked on my headlamp and limped into the darkness. 

 

Five hours later, my fate decided itself.  By halfway through that stage I could no longer bend my knee or flex my ankles; my pace was less than two miles per hour.   Try walking a mile or less in forty-five minutes; it will make you crazy.  Suddenly, at about mile eighty, the rain stopped, the clouds fled, and the stars shot sharp clear holes in the black sky.  I smiled at the stars and relinquished my final goal. 

 

I handed in my number at the last checkpoint before the finish line—mile 83—with a mixture of pride and shame over my willingness to hurt myself for I’m not sure what. 

 

So that was my Leadville 100.  I’m glad I did it, though I couldn’t tell you why.  I learned a lot, though I couldn’t tell you what.  Today, I don’t want to ever run again.  In a week or two, though, I’m sure I’ll start to get excited about the Gobi March; I’ll try to remember to expect nothing, but to move instead with hope and curiosity. 

 

Many thanks to Beth and her brother Jonathon, who gave up a whole night’s sleep just because I asked them to.  Thanks to Brian Cole at Clif Bar for the huge box of organic super-fuel—great stuff!  Thanks to Terry, Jenny, Jessica, and Mackenzie for feeding me a giant steak afterwards and making me feel like a hero just for trying. 

 

-Will

 

Look at those fat sprained feet/ankles!

 

Postscript:

It’s now two weeks later; my left ankle and knee are still too sore to run much, so I’ll start back in with walking and stationary cycling.  Next month I’ll share about my training plan which will involve three stages: recovery, base training, and peak training.  I’ll also review—for my own benefit and, hopefully, yours—lessons learned from past runs.