Before we get to today’s post, a quick announcement to help you grab some cool-weather apparel: from now through January 30, Patagonia is discounting its fall inventory to 30% off. They currently have plenty of options available – I picked up a nifty flannel shirt – and the timing is perfect to get some cozy goodies while it’s still chilly enough to put them to good use. So get going to the sale, then come back for my own little story that's been giving me chills.
** “How can you say you don’t want to know –
Don’t want to know the truth?”
- Sublime with Rome, “Panic” (video after post)
I don’t do this very often … but I’m actually going to make this post a lot shorter than I originally intended. (Usually, of course, it goes the other way.) Make no mistake, the subject is something of significance to me – but I’m just not sure I’m completely ready to talk about all the ramifications yet.
Have you ever been so excited about something that you’re hesitant to actually tell anybody about it, because doing so will trigger a whole lot of questions and discussions which make the whole thing that much more tangible, and you’re not quite sure you’re able to deal with those issues yet? If you’re a parent, think of that wonderfully head-spinning period in between the moment you found out you were expecting and the time when you finally announced the news to family and friends. It’s the time when you know the truth, but on some levels you don’t quite want to.
So I guess the best way to do this is to get straight to the point: a couple of weeks ago, I entered the Leadville Trail 100.
An old-school logo (courtesy of Wikipedia), but one of my favorites
And if you listen closely, that faint sound you hear through your computer screen would be me hyperventilating
The Race Across The Sky. The highest hundred in America. The 100-miler that’s second in age and prestige only to Western States – and many would argue that the prestige ranking should be reversed. In other words, it’s kind of a big deal.
Hope Pass above 12,000'; photo from race website
And, um … I think that’s all I’m able to say right now. Obviously there will be a lot of discussion about Leadville around these parts – and seeing as how I’ve already made the comparison to childbirth, the analogies are likely to get even crazier from there - but honestly, my head is still kind of spinning at the prospect of what I’ll be attempting this August. I know the truth, but I’m not sure I quite want to address all of the considerations yet.
Those discussions will play out in the weeks and months to come; in the meantime, it’s time for me to do a whole lot of training. And probably a little bit of panicking as well.
Sublime with Rome, “Panic” (click to play):
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"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn."
- John Muir
In my mind, the Tahoe Rim Trail looks like this:
Largely thanks to warm memories of pacing Gretchen there last summer, on a day and night when I absolutely fell in love with the course, and knew it was one that I had to try for myself someday.
In reality, the trail looks more like this:
As seen in a photo that was included in a pre-race e-mail sent to all participants on Tuesday night. Good golly.
It’s probably not quite as bad as it looks, as the memo states that the snow cover is only on 10% of the course. On the other hand, since it’s a double-loop course, I’m not certain if that actually means 20% of the mileage … and at this point, I’m kind of afraid to ask.
Whatever the case, the event promises to be a grand adventure. I don’t have any specific goals for this race other than to make it to the finish line with my body and my moccasins intact. Aside from that, I’m primarily seeking good tidings from the mountain, peace from nature, freshness from the wind and sunshine through the trees. (I wouldn’t mind missing out on the storms of energy, though). If all those things fall into place, I’m absolutely certain that I’ll be content and satisfied.
If you want to follow along, the race has a webcast page set up, but as of this writing there are no bib assignments (UPDATED: My bib number is 615) or any indication of how frequently the page will be updated. I’ll post a brief announcement here as soon as possible once all is said and done ... but until that time, there’s really not much left to say.
The mountains are calling me again. It’s go time!
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"Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book - It took me years to write - will you take a look?" - The Beatles, "Paperback Writer" (video after post)
* I sincerely didn't think I'd ever write this post.
Countless times over the past few years, my Monterey Herald writing partner Mike and I have had a variety of conversations that go something like this:
Mike: We should put a bunch of our newspaper articles together and write a book.
Me: Yeah, right. I don't know why anyone would buy it.
Mike: We've done some pretty good stuff, and a lot of it's applicable to everybody.
Me: It's going to be a ton of work. No WAY am I spending that kind of time just to write a book.
And I guess I figured we'd keep going on like that: him proposing something, me shooting the idea down, sunrise, sunset, all through the years. So you can appreciate my surprise when Mike went ahead and did it.
Earlier this spring, he sent me an e-mail with a 300-page word document attached, and a subject line saying "Here's our book!" - and from that point, the die was pretty much cast. The compilation wasn't anywhere close to being worthy of publication, but after far more hours of revision, replacement, reflection and rewriting than I want to admit, we put together something that actually turned out sort of cool.
The result is The Running Life: Wisdom and Observations from a Lifetime of Running, which is scheduled for release later this fall. It's effectively a "greatest hits" collection of our writing over the course of six years, with a representative sampling of the topics we typically write about: the benefits of running, basic training guidelines, inspirational stories and motivational boosts, social commentary, and accounts of our running and racing adventures. Some of them you may have read on this website in the past, but I can guarantee that there is plenty of content you haven't seen before, mainly because I'm a bit of a slacker when it comes to republishing our newspaper articles here. Besides, I know how many people were reading my website five years ago - or, more accurately, how many people weren't.
Given the newspaper's target audience, our compilation has a strong bias towards novice runners; the articles are ideal for the "I'm thinking about running to get in shape" or "I'm a new runner trying to figure all this stuff out" crowds who comprise the majority of our readership. However, experienced racers should find at least a few items of interest inside as well. There's certainly plenty to choose from, as the book includes nearly 100 columns taken from all our years of newspaper writing - which only sounds like a lot until you consider that it's less than half of the number we've composed overall. A couple of related points are worth mentioning here:
1) When you're able to pick and choose only your best efforts and discard all of the forgettable or regrettable things you've done over a long period of time, the resulting collection actually begins to look somewhat impressive. Nobody hits a home run every time they step to the plate - but if you're allowed to take away all your strikeouts and pop flies, your resulting batting average will look pretty nice. That's basically what you're getting with this book. On the other hand ...
2) Choosing more than 100 articles to discard is a somewhat excruciating process. Mike described it this way: "They're all my children," and we're publicly separating those children into one group who did us proud, and another who simply didn't measure up. And yes, Mike and I had differences of opinion on more than a few of them. On the plus side, the arguments never escalated into fisticuffs, and neither of us needed counseling afterward. I found this rather impressive, all things considered.
After all of this came the really hard part: editing the columns we selected to make them applicable to a larger audience. It might sound strange, but there are HUGE differences between writing for the dozen or so people who read our column and writing for the community at large. Practically every article had to be tinkered with to one degree or another; add this to my natural proclivity as a serial reviser, and the whole editing process became this time-sucking vortex that I could never completely escape. Remember the exchange with Mike I described above, where I dreaded the amount of time it would take to put everything together? Well, it took at least 5 times longer than I thought - and on more than one occasion sent me fleeing to the beach to examine the larger meaning of everything, and contemplate why I was even putting myself through this.
(I've mentioned before that I can find the downside of anything, right? This is exactly what I'm talking about.)
Thankfully, the result of all this toil is something that both Mike and I are fairly pleased with. I'm satisfied with how the book turned out, and I'm excited to start counting down to a launch date later this fall. Over the next several weeks I'll do a gradual buildup to the release, as well as provide a few anecdotes about the whole writing process, information about advance ordering if enough people express interest, directions to a new website for direct sales, and a promotional contest or two along the way. It's taken us years to write this thing, so I'm going to try to savor at least a few weeks of the experience before becoming obsessively neurotic about having something in the public domain with both my name and a price tag on it.
Now that I'm nearly on the other side of the process, I can honestly say that I'm glad I went through it, and I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend Mike for making it happen. Without his initiative, there's a very strong (as in, 99.9%) chance that this project would have never been completed - and now that it's done, I'm hopeful that The Running Life is something a lot of people will enjoy.
And if for some reason you don't ... just remember that it's mostly his fault.
* Long before I developed any sort of literary aspirations, this was one of my all-time favorite Beatles songs, and features a lot of what I loved about their music: a cool little guitar riff, an infectiously upbeat melody, and a compelling narrative told in the space of two short minutes. Having said that, this video is completely corny, and - as with any discussion of the band - I can't for the life of me figure out exactly what Ringo contributed to this one.
