Pillars of Sand (Kahuna Update)

“I used to rule the world - seas would rise when I gave the word -
Now in the morning I sleep alone - sweep the streets I used to own …

One minute I held the key- next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand - upon pillars of salt, and pillars of sand.”
- Coldplay, "Viva La Vida" (on sidebar – click to play)


Driving home from this race in 2006, after beating my best-case scenario time by nearly 10 minutes to finish in 4:51, I felt like the king of the world: there was no obstacle I couldn’t overcome; no limit to the possibilities that lay before me.

This year, the walls closed on me. I finished in 5:04, which isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been - but not as well as I was optimistically hoping, either. Although the outcome was fairly well expected, the feeling driving home this year was still a bit of a bummer.

So apparently all that training stuff makes a difference. More specifically – all of that NOT training makes a very noticeable difference. When it comes to tackling challenging races on minimal training, I’m obviously not Superman - and I definitely don’t rule the world.

Despite the outcome, I actually had a pretty enjoyable day at the race. I’ll have a full report posted here later this week; in the meantime, enjoy the Coldplay video and don’t feel at all badly for me. I'm living the life.

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Returning to the Mistress*

*If you haven’t been a subscriber long enough to understand the reference, this should bring you up to speed.

**And I’m REALLY curious to see what kind of promotions the above title triggers on my Google Ads sidebar.


So … remember when I used to call myself a triathlete? It seems like a long time ago – but trust me, that guy hasn’t gone away. He just got a little preoccupied with wanting to run 100 miles.

Despite my recent ultrarunning pursuits, I always intended to come back to triathlon for one final race of the year – which is now just a few days away. Unfortunately, due to the Western States cancellation, my summer training schedule didn’t go quite the way I had scripted it.

My original plan was to do States in June, take a week or two off, then start hitting the tri-training hard, with high bike mileage and a lot of track workouts to recapture some of the running speed I’d lost during countless multi-hour trail runs. Then I threw the Headlands 100 onto the calendar, leaving me one week to rest, and only three weeks to shift into tri-mode. I was cutting things close, to say the least.

One more factor about my recent training regimen is worth noting: namely, since the 100-miler, I’ve been an absolute lazy slob. I’ve routinely blown off scheduled workouts in favor of sleeping in, and turned my car towards home instead of the pool even on the most beautiful sunny days. Each workout I’ve managed to show up for has been a “going through the motions” exercise, instead of pushing my body towards any increased level of fitness.

Needless to say, I don’t have soaring expectations for this weekend’s half-Ironman race. I’ve already told myself that I’ll just do the race for fun, and go as fast as I feel like. You know ... have a good time, enjoy the day, yada yada yada. Over the past two weeks, I’ve repeated these thoughts to myself so often that I almost started to believe them.

There’s only one problem: I’ve done this race before. There’s a finish time out there to measure myself against. And if I don’t beat it - or come darn close - I’ll probably brood over it for most of the fall.

(On a related note … sometimes it sucks to be as inherently competitive as I am. Yes, it helps with motivation for difficult training or racing situations, but the flip side is that you can’t let anything go. I swear, a sports psychologist would make a killing on me – it’s a good thing I don’t know any.)

Predictably, I’ve analyzed each of the three disciplines to figure out how I can squeeze a few extra minutes out of my performance, which I’ve distilled into the following race preview:

Swim (1.2 miles - 2006 split 29:40): This is the only segment where I actually feel somewhat confident. I’ve mentioned several times here that I maintained regular swim workouts throughout all of my ultrarunning exploits this year – so I’m hoping that what my swim training lacks in volume will be made up in consistency. Plus, I’ve got that sexy new wetZoot now – so even if I swim slowly, at least I’ll feel good doing it.

Bike (56 miles - 2006 split 2:35): This is where I’ll probably fall hopelessly behind my previous pace. I don’t think there’s any way on Earth that I can average 21mph again – especially since I can count on one hand the number of training rides I’ve done this summer.

My only saving grace might be this: the 2006 split was accomplished on my old-school green machine bike, and this year I’m riding my vroomin' Cervelo. It’s an age-old question among cyclists: just how much can a sweet bike make up for a lack of fitness? In that regard, Sunday’s race might be an interesting experiment.

Run (13.1 miles - 2006 split 1:35): Ironically, given my running background, the run portion of the race may be where I fare the worst. Ultrarunning has a lot of positive aspects, but one major downside (for me, anyway) is the way it slowly bleeds away your leg speed after a prolonged period of time.

Think of it this way: in my most recent race, in 95 minutes I would have covered somewhere between 7 and 8 miles. And while that doesn’t represent my top speed, it’s a reflection of what gear my legs typically settle into when they’re fatigued – in conditions, for instance, such as the end of a half-Ironman. In light of this, I have to think there’s simply no possibility that I’ll throw down anything close to a 1:35 half-marathon this time around.

Of course, I’ve already touched upon one x-factor that might carry me through, which is this: I’m an idiot. I get crazy when it comes to these race situations – and if I see a steady parade of people flying past me on the bike or overtaking me on the run, I’ll be borderline psychotic. And since it’s my last race of the year, I’ll be more willing to keep the needle in the red zone if I’ve got a realistic shot at the time I’m hoping to run.

The race could be intense; it could be painful; it could be fun. More likely, it will be all three of those things – in which case it will be awesome. It also seems like a perfect way to end the season.

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Not Your Father's Power Bar

Lady Astor: “How dare you, sir! What kind of woman do you think I am?”

Winston Churchill: “Madam, we have already established that. Now we are merely haggling over the price.”

(I’m aware that the above exchange may very well be an urban legend … but that doesn’t make it any less funny. Or any less appropriate for this post.)


Hopefully, if there’s one thing I’ve made perfectly clear over the past several months, it’s this: I’m always available for the right price.

The cost doesn’t even have to be remarkably high; in most cases, all it takes is a few samples of something for me to try out a product, and post a review here for all the blogosphere to see. Unfortunately, when my ultra season was unexpectedly extended an additional six weeks, I fell a bit behind with the most recent review, which I’ll rectify with today’s post.

By the end of this month, I hope to have four product reviews online, which seems like enough to justify a separate heading on my sidebar at right. If I were really talented, I’d figure out a way to make the links into little picture icons – but at this point, that seems entirely too time consuming for me to bother with.

Also, if you scroll down slightly further on the same sidebar, you’ll see my recent flirtation with the devil: a sampling of Google Ads. If you happen to be feeling bored and generous, feel free to send a few clicks my way. As I said, I’ll never be one to haggle you over a price.

**

Back in June, I was contacted by a rep from Power Bar, asking if I’d like to review some of their new product line.

Power Bar is to sports nutrition what the Nike waffle iron is to running shoes: a revolutionary product that gave rise to an entire industry. However, if you’re old enough to remember those initial Power Bar products, your memories may be something less than nostalgic – for the concept was far more advanced than the application.

First-generation Power Bars were more of a novelty than a food item: depending on the temperature, they were either hard as a rock or soft as pudding; they often took longer to digest than most folks took to run a marathon; and the taste of any flavor left much to be desired.

And yet, the company clearly tapped into an enormous demand for performance-related nutrition products; within the next several years, countless competitors flooded the market with variations on bars - not to mention gels and blocks and tablets and other concoctions aimed at endurance athletes, or anybody who just wanted to look like one (the vanity factor was a very big one in the late 1980s). All the while, Power Bar continued to tinker with its product line, frequently introducing new goods to keep pace with its competitors.

However, no matter what new formulations they came up with, Power Bar never entirely shook that old school reputation as the bars that don’t taste very good. To steal a phrase from the auto industry: they were your father’s energy bar. And that’s the image the most recent products are attempting to dispel.

You’ve probably seen the ads already; for example, this image took up a full page of my most recent Triathlete magazine:

That guy at the bottom would be Michael Phelps; you may have heard something about him lately. He’s a pretty decent swimmer, and apparently he’s been a Power Bar user since 2000. What he lacks, however, is a blog – and that’s where folks like me come in.

(This may be an appropriate time to mention to PR people out there – what’s a more affordable marketing strategy: paying top dollar for Phelps, or spreading the wealth among a handful of overly verbose bloggers who collectively get thousands of page views per month from aspiring athletes? It’s something interesting to think about. Remember, I’m here to help.)

A couple of months ago, I received the following shipment at my house:

Included were samples of three new products: “Energize” Fruit Smoothie Bars, Gel Blasts, and electrolyte packets. According to the website, the bars and gel blasts each feature something called a C2 Max carbohydrate blend, which is supposed to speed more energy to your muscles (and this where I insert my standard disclaimer: I don’t claim to know what the heck these various nutritional concoctions are, let alone vouch for their scientific accuracy). The electrolyte packets are a low calorie way to replenish sodium and potassium (among other things) during exercise. Let’s go through all three:

1. Energize Bars. Before you even open the packet, the first thing you’ll notice about these is their texture. They’re slightly soft to the touch, but still hold their shape well.

Remember when I said that the old Power Bars were always either too hard or too mushy? Well, there was also a very narrow “sweet spot” temperature range where the bars would be the perfect consistency for chewing, but solid enough to not be messy. Whenever you were lucky enough to accidentally discover it, those old bars actually went down pretty well.

I was pleased to find that the new Energize bars broaden that temperature range by a factor of about 100 – in other words, the bar is always at the right consistency for eating. So they’ve clearly made some progress in this regard over the past 20 years.

The bars come in three flavors: Berry Blast, Tangy Tropical, and Creamy Citrus. I sampled all three, and they all tasted great. In fact, since I used them this summer as a post-exercise snack following swim workouts, I found myself having flashbacks to my childhood, where I spent an unthinkable amount of money on Tangy Taffy from the Sugar Shack at our neighborhood pool - the taste and consistency of the Energize bars is (to my grown-up brain, at least) very similar. Anything that triggers memories of long, carefree summer swimming days is always going to earn high marks in my book.

2. Gel Blasts: These are comparable to Clif Blocks, and I used them on a couple of long training runs in place of my customary Sport Beans. They come in lemon or cola flavors, and their texture reminded me of biting into a jumbo marshmallow that had been left on the counter overnight: slightly firm to break through the surface, but chewy on the inside. And they didn’t taste as good as Sport Beans.

These were my least favorite of the three product types - but I suspect some of my dissatisfaction might just be a personal thing. During triathlons, I tend to use gels instead of chewy blocks, and during ultras, I prefer “normal” food like potatoes or PB&J sandwiches to replenish my fuel supply. The block-type products are a middle ground that I’ve never really embraced – that’s why the Sport Beans were such a revelation when I discovered them last year.

3. Electrolyte mix: This isn’t marketed as an energy drink (they have a separate sport drink for that), but a means to help replace fluids and electrolytes during exercise.

They are similar to the Nuun products I reviewed this spring – but with 10 calories per packet, they can add a bit of flavor (berry or lemon) that makes these taste much better (in my opinion) than the Nuun tablets. The taste is really nice – it’s flavorful, without being too sweet. Another huge advantage is that the Power Bar electrolytes are not carbonated, which addresses my biggest pet peeve about Nuun – namely, their tendency to explode out of the bottle after bouncing around in a waist pack for a few miles.

Each packet is intended to be mixed with 17oz of water, but I typically used them in my 20oz bottle, and they still tasted great. The packets are small enough that you can stuff a few in your pocket to use at water fountains later in your run or ride, so you don’t have to worry about carrying bulkier drink mixes if you’re primarily worried about replenishing electrolytes instead of calories – which in my world is any workout less than two hours.

So here’s my quick recap of the new Power Bar products: The Energize bars and electrolyte packets are awesome; the gel blasts, not so much. Of course, your opinion may vary. I’ll definitely continue using the items I enjoyed here, and it’s certainly worth a few of your dollars to do some sampling of your own if you get the opportunity.

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Olympic Depression

Given that the Closing Ceremonies wrapped up almost a week ago, it’s somewhat late to write a postmortem on the Olympic Games – but when you have a newspaper column that only appears only a couple of times per month, occasionally the timing gets screwed up like that.

Additionally, in light of all my 100-mile hysteria, I managed to neglect posting anything about the Olympic track and field events that I so passionately promoted in this space just before the Beijing Games got underway. Make no mistake, I was still watching as many races as possible – but unfortunately, the majority of the coverage left me feeling dissatisfied.

Those issues are the topic of this week’s Monterey Herald column, in which my friend Mike and I were more specifically focused on our perspectives as fans of distance running (and then, as is our custom, we got a little bit silly towards the end). Actually, the running contingent wasn’t even the most afflicted fan base at these Games; God help you if you tried (like me) to watch any of the triathlon or open-water swimming events.

Anyway, the column is below – which all likelihood will represent my first and last words on the Beijing Olympics for the foreseeable future.

**

Running Life 8/28/08 “Olympic Depression”


Runners are used to being misfits — so it will be no surprise to us if we're in the minority with the opinion we're about to offer: namely, that we didn't enjoy watching the Beijing Olympic Games very much. Instead of being impressed by all of that "faster, higher, stronger" stuff, we found ourselves depressed about the competitions that interested us the most.

See, here's the thing about being a distance runner: no matter how old you are, or how fast you are, you get extremely little recognition for your accomplishments. Even when you're among the best in the world, you're doomed to an anonymous, impoverished career. You can even be overshadowed under the bright glare of the Olympic flame.

This wasn't always the case. There was a time not too many Olympiads ago where the 1,500m run was the premiere event of the Games, with the 10K and marathon a close second and third. While we understand the interest in the seemingly huge variety of sports that have attained Olympic status recently, we hate seeing our beloved events kicked to the curb. (In a related story, we're puzzled over NBC's determination to make every person in America a platform diving fan.)

We've always known it was tough to be a competitor in distance running events — what we didn't realize was how difficult it would be just to watch these races at home. Most nights, we waited patiently through synchronized diving and trampoline gymnastics and preliminary BMX heats (called "motos" — See, we were actually paying attention) without any idea when our coveted events might appear.

Unfortunately, TV listings weren't much help to us, either — they'd only list "track and field" without mentioning whether it was the 5K final or the prelims of the women's shot put. Our options were to record and wade through 20 hours of coverage each day, or take our chances that some of the high-profile distance races would be shown in prime time. You already know how that one panned out.

Even when we found our races, the coverage was sadly limited. For example, the women's 10K was televised at 2 a.m. — and even at that late hour, NBC only aired the first four minutes and last four minutes of the race. Consequently, most U.S. viewers missed an incredible performance from Shalane Flanagan, who won a bronze medal in an American record time of 30:22.

It's almost certain that nobody at NBC suspected Flanagan was going to medal, which explains how the coverage got buried in the middle of the night. It also illustrates another sad truth of distance running: if there aren't any Americans competing for medals, you have zero chance of seeing the event on TV. During the women's marathon, American cameras didn't even show the finish of Blake Russell, the only U.S. woman to complete the race, who came in less than one minute behind world-record holder Paula Radcliffe.

However, fans of distance running enjoy these races even if U.S. athletes are not involved. It's like being an American soccer fan who enjoys watching David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo. We always cheer for American favorites like Kara Goucher, Ryan Hall, and Dathan Ritzenhein, but we also enjoy the brilliance of Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, Aussie Craig Mottram, Kenyan Catherine Ndereba, and other foreign distance running heroes.

Unfortunately, we realize that these folks will always play second banana to marquee names like Phelps, Nastia, or Walsh and May (all very attractive to look at, by the way — which is no small factor in TV exposure). So it's clear that distance running needs a bit of an image makeover. At the same time, maybe we could infuse a bit of running's old-fashioned sensibility into some of the higher profile sports.

For example, it seems like there's always a controversy about gymnastics scoring. This year, Nastia Liukin lost a gold medal to a competitor with the exact same score. If runners were in charge, we'd alter the events to eliminate any scoring issues. Take the balance beam; instead of 90-second routines that are different for each competitor, we'd set up a row of several parallel beams that are about 50 meters in length, then have the gymnasts race on the beams simultaneously. They'd still be required to do four back flips and two pirouettes and other tricks before they dismount at the other end — but in this case, the fastest gymnast who gets across without falling wins. Controversy solved!

There's no question that swimming is one of the most popular events at the Games, even when Phelps isn't in the pool. Some runners might find it strange that swimming has several races over the same distance using four different strokes. For runners, the object of races is to reward the person who gets from point A to point B the fastest, regardless of what type of stride they use — but maybe this is an area we could tweak to our advantage for next time.

We're thinking that the runners could have competitions at all the standard distances, but include hopping, skipping, and backward running categories in addition to the usual "running forward" technique. They could also have medley events for those who excel in all four disciplines. Throw in a couple of relays (forward-style and medley), and a talented guy like Usain Bolt could definitely win eight or more gold medals.

It's sad that we may someday need to resort to carnival-style stunts in order to attract viewers to what were once the most prestigious events in the Olympics. What we really need is a stunningly beautiful, overwhelmingly dominant, American-born runner who can enter 10 different events as the odds-on favorite — but sadly, that wish may go ungranted for quite a while.

In the meantime, we'll continue to hunt around the TV dial in the dead of night, resigned to our pitiful fate as frustrated fans of long distance running.

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Fairynomics

*with apologies to Steven Levitt, who probably never envisioned such nonsense …

**and to anyone who doesn't like looking at gross foot pictures. You might want to skip this post.

As soon as I took off my shoes following the Headlands 100, I knew that both of my big toenails were doomed.

They bothered me a bit during the race, but never to the extent that I felt the need to stop and deal with them on the course – so I made an ongoing decision to just power through those issues and deal with the aftermath, um … afterwards. Call it a rookie mistake. In the ensuing weeks, both of the nails started to wither, and they've had that “dead on the vine” look for many days now.

The right one was the first to fail, coming partially detached, and prompting me to finish the job after I came home from work earlier this week. In the midst of my pulling and wrenching, my 7-year-old daughter strolled into our bathroom, which led to the following exchange:

Daughter: What are you doing?

Me: I’m pulling off my dead toenail.

Daughter: Cool!

Me: I know – it’s totally cool. How many of your friends have ever seen the back side of a big toenail?

Daughter: Hey! I’ve got an idea: you should put the toenail under your pillow, and see if you get money for it, like when you lose a tooth.

Me: You know what? … That’s a fantastic idea. How about if I give you the toenail, so you can put it in your tooth blanket tonight? Let’s see if we get some money.

So that’s exactly what she did. And to our shock and delight, the next morning she found a dollar bill wrapped up in her blanket where my toenail had been. My lost toenail became my daughter’s financial gain – and after she explained as much to her 4-year-old sister, the younger sibling now wants to get in on the act once the other toenail falls off.

Luckily, before it disappeared into the fairy ether, I took a picture of my foot sans big toenail (don’t act like you didn’t expect this):

In regards to the photo, allow me to answer a few inevitable questions:

1) Yes, I shaved my toes for the photo. This should shock exactly nobody.

2) It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as you might think. The sensation is more of a mild downward pressure, like if somebody were lightly stepping on your big toe – that’s what it feels like all the time when I’m wearing shoes.

3) So far, it hasn’t prevented me from running or swimming, but my cycling shoes are a bit uncomfortable because of their narrow toes. But that shouldn’t be a problem, since I don’t have any triathlons coming up for … oh, wait. Bugger.

Those questions are the easy ones to answer; more challenging are the ones my two daughters are considering for the potential return of the Tooth and/or Toenail Fairy. This recent development has turned their comprehension of the whole fairy system completely inside out.

Accordingly, my 7-year-old is currently compiling a list of questions to tuck in with the next toenail, chief among them:

Dear Toenail Fairy –

Are you the same as the Tooth Fairy?

It seems like a simple enough question - however, for my daughter and me, it’s only a conversation starter, as these follow-up questions illustrate.

If so: how did that occur? Is it part of your regular job description, or did you improvise when you saw the tooth pocket filled up? Is collecting toenails like cross-training, or simply a moonlighting gig to earn a few extra body parts on the side? Which are more valuable: teeth because they’re cooler looking and last longer, or toenails because they are so rare (albeit somewhat disgusting)? And should we call you by a different name?

If not: that means there are separate Tooth Fairies and Toenail Fairies, right? Who decides what kind of fairy you’ll be? Is there a regular rotation, or are there tryouts and a selection process? Is it more prestigious to be one type of fairy instead of another, or is it a classless society like Fairy socialism? If there’s a hierarchy of positions, does more extensive education and/or training improve your place in the pecking order? Do you have to pay your dues as a Toenail Fairy (assuming those are the lower rungs) and climb the corporate fairy ladder before being promoted to a Tooth Fairy? Is there some kind of Fairy CEO in charge of the whole conglomerate, or is the system completely deregulated? And why don’t you pay as much as the Tooth Fairy?

OK … so I took a bit of literary license with the wording of some of those queries – but trust me, these are the discussions my daughters and I are having lately. To them, it's some sort of fairy riddle, hidden in a fairy puzzle, wrapped in a fairy enigma.

I haven’t the foggiest idea what any of the correct responses are, but I know one thing for certain: time is running out on my other big toenail. And when it finally succumbs to its own mortality, it will be tucked inside a blanket pocket alongside a note demanding some answers.

The clock is ticking.

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Sign of the Times

(Admin note: as predicted, I've got a few more loose ends to tie up before moving on from this month's 100-miler. This will be the final Headlands post before getting back to business as usual, I promise.)

*
“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land –
And don't criticize what you can't understand -
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command –
Your old road is rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand –
For the times they are a-changin'.”
-Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”


Before you get the wrong idea – this post won't incite any sort of social protest: it's about the minor, but somewhat symbolic changing of the guard around my house in the wake of this month’s Headlands 100. (But in my defense, there's never really a bad reason for including what might be the best song lyrics of all time.)

Anyway ... back to the event. One of the items included in our goodie bag on race morning was this:


It’s your standard-fare plastic license plate frame produced by many races and athletic companies. I’ve had other ones given to me in the past, and they usually go into the recycling bin very shortly thereafter. If PCTR had been charging for them, I almost certainly wouldn’t have bought one.

But since I got this one for free, and since I had such a great experience there, and since I feel like I’m headed down a new road of sorts … I went ahead and put the frame on my car. But that’s only half of the story.

The second, more important half involves the plate that my new frame replaced:


It’s a Big Sur Marathon frame that I actually paid for, more than ten years ago.

The frame was placed during a phase in my life when the Big Sur Marathon meant everything to me. It was the race that defined me as a runner, the one that I built each year’s race schedule around, the one that preoccupied my thoughts during almost every single training session.

Over a period of more than a dozen years, Big Sur gave me my greatest challenges, my greatest joy, and my proudest moments as an athlete. I attached a far greater portion of my identity than I’m willing to admit to my participation and performance in that race. Back then, if anybody had told me that there would be a day when I voluntarily walked away from the Big Sur Marathon, I would have called him insane.

But now, that old road seems rapidly aging. I skipped Big Sur this year in order to concentrate on my buildup to Western States, and I’m 99.9% certain to skip it again in 2009. What’s surprising to me is that I don’t feel one bit of remorse for this change of focus. I guess the lesson here is that having a passion for events is OK, as long as it doesn’t blind you to other opportunities that may come along later.

Finally, I received the following item in the mail this week:


It’s a ceramic coaster - my award for finishing the Headlands 100.

Apparently the PCTR race directors have earned more belt buckles than they know what to do with – so in order to spare novice 100-mile runners like me the same awful fate, they purposely don’t award buckles. Um … OK then. I suppose I should be grateful. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

So I’m now the very proud owner of a new ceramic coaster. It’s pretty cool looking, I guess. But as I stared at it a bit more, another thought occurred to me: it’s really not that much bigger or heavier than a belt buckle. If I slapped some glue on the back and attached it to some kind of strap, don't you think I could strut with it around my waist for a day or two?

Sure, people will think I’m an idiot … but at least they’ll know I’m an idiot who can run 100 miles.

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Leaving the Shore (Headlands 100 Diary)

As you can imagine, I’m taking one or two more posts to wrap up this Headlands 100 business before focusing on other events – one of which, according to my sidebar, is rapidly approaching in less than two weeks. So indulge me with the ultra thing for a little bit longer, and then we’ll move on.

Today’s post is the conclusion of my Monterey Herald training diary, renamed - and perhaps drawn out a bit past its welcome – after the cancellation of Western States at the end of June. I mentioned a while back that I felt guilty for writing a series that ended so anticlimactically; so this column was my chance to write the ending I had in mind all along.

However, once I got started, it proved more challenging than I expected, in that I wasn’t sure what the focus should be. I couldn’t really stuff a 4500-word race report into a 1000-word column - and since I couldn’t realistically ask to run photos of foggy hillsides and steep staircases and wonderful friends and dudes with purple Mohawks, the report wouldn’t have been very fun to do anyway.

So I tried to tackle the question that came up most in conversation throughout this whole series: namely, why do we do it? Remember, this series was targeted at everyday newspaper readers - as opposed to bloggers or magazine readers or local endurance athletes who already know me – and for that crowd, there’s almost no rational explanation for this compulsion of ours. Whether the series were printed in ten parts or a hundred, that simple question would always be the lynchpin binding all the other stories together.

I still don’t know if I answered the question to most people’s satisfaction, but at least I gave it an honest shot.

**

Journey of 100 Miles: A Western States Headlands 100 Training Diary

Part 10: Leaving the Shore


"The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore."
- Vincent Van Gogh

*
It’s relatively easy to write about the what, where, and how of a 100-mile trail race. The difficult part is trying to describe the why.

Such as … why does anyone want to do such a thing? What’s the appeal of a sporting event that takes a full day and night to complete - one that grinds your body down and tears your willpower to shreds, all for no tangible reward? What’s the point of this whole sport, anyway?

Truth be told, I was asking a lot of those same questions myself on August 9th, as I stared out into the sea from Rodeo Beach in Marin County, the start area of last weekend’s Headlands 100. Over the course of the next 24 hours, I came up with some reasonable (to me, anyway) answers to the “whys” – but first, let’s get the what, where, and how over with.

The short story is, I finished the race. It took 22 hours and 55 minutes of constant forward motion, up huge climbs and down treacherous descents, through the heat of day and the cold darkness of night, fighting off a handful of problems that threatened to derail me along the way. 40% of the runners who left the start line on Saturday eventually dropped out of the race; fortunately, I wasn’t one of them.

(However, I can’t claim that I came through all in one piece; as of this writing, I’m one toenail short, with another one that appears equally endangered. All things considered, that’s not such a high price to pay for the experience I enjoyed.)

In almost every regard, the race unfolded exactly like I hoped it would. I ran the first 50 miles conservatively, enjoying the beautiful day and the scenery and the company of those around me as much as possible. As the sun went down and the miles wore on, I kept a steady pace, then finished strong, even completing the last 25 miles faster than the previous 25.

My favorite memory will probably be the hours between midnight and daybreak, running through pitch blackness, fighting off fatigue and soreness, with nothing but a flashlight and headlamp to light my way. The miles were lonely and quiet, with only the occasional flickers of other runners’ headlamps in the distance for company.

It reminded me of playing flashlight tag when I was a kid: dashing around bushes and down dark pathways, watching for flickers of light that revealed someone else’s location, while being cautious to conceal my own position in the process. Best of all, this game continued all night long, without anyone’s parents making us come in for the night just when things got exciting.

I suppose that’s as good a point as any to start answering the “why” of ultrarunning – namely, it makes me feel like a kid for a while. It satisfies my sense of adventure, and indulges my inner explorer – not only in discovering the natural beauty of my surroundings, but in pushing towards the limits of my physical ability.

And just as a child experiences countless challenges and difficulties while struggling toward maturity, the most trying miles of an ultramarathon provide opportunities for personal growth. Iron is only forged by fire, and diamonds by pressure; so too is inner strength built by overcoming hardships.

There’s an overwhelming cultural mentality today that difficult tasks should be avoided; that volitional discomfort is an indication of some psychological oddity. Meanwhile, ultramarathons promise exactly the opposite; the expectation is that the race will be strenuous. Your body will get battered, your spirit will get broken, and you’ll question your sanity and emotional stability. (What’s more – you’ll pay somebody a lot of money in race fees for this to happen. If it weren’t for ultrarunning, there’d be a huge boom in masochism support groups. Clearly, we need this sport.) It’s no wonder most people think we’re insane.

But here’s the good part: our gain for suffering through all of this is something akin to enlightenment. We understand that our bodies and minds are capable of far more than most people ever realize - that the primary limiting factors in life’s journeys are the extent to which our minds can dream, and to which we’re willing to work to achieve them.

These truths we discover about ourselves are what keep us coming back for more. In that regard, ultrarunners are the fishermen leaving the shore: we’re fully aware that the storms might be terrible – but the rewards we harvest by venturing into the sea are always worth the hardship.

Now, I’m the first person to admit that ultrarunning is a crazy sport. It’s time consuming and physically draining and profoundly trivial in comparison to most other things in life. While I take pleasure in this activity, I’m probably not the healthiest of role models for someone to emulate. In light of that, you might wonder why I’ve been writing about the whole thing so much.

I guess the best way I can explain it is to say that I enjoy watching documentaries about expeditions to Mount Everest. I like seeing open heart surgeries on television. I love to watch rock climbers scale the face of El Capitan with nothing more than the gear on their bodies.

None of this implies that I have any desire to be a mountaineer or heart surgeon or rock climber. In fact, I’m 100% certain that I’ll never do any of those things. But it’s inspiring to know that they’re possible – it gives me a sense of the amazing things that everyday people are capable of.

And trust me: guys don’t come more everyday than me. I’m a regular dude with faults and weaknesses who usually has a hard time putting matching clothes together. I don’t have any special abilities; just big dreams, and a determination to work diligently towards accomplishing them.

In the final analysis, perhaps that’s the lesson you can take from this series: It’s OK if you don’t want to be an ultrarunner - but perhaps you can try to be a hard-working dreamer sometime. If you’re able to figure that part out, most other things will probably fall into place.

Finally, on the subject of leaving the shore – it’s time for me to sail into the sunset for a while. I’m done with trail racing for the year, and I’m taking some down time before considering race plans for 2009. The option of entering the Western States Endurance Run next summer is out there, but I’ve got a bit of time to decide for sure. For now, I’ve got some sore feet to tend to, and a weary body to pamper for a few months.

Thanks to all who shared this Journey of 100 Miles with me. It was a wonderful run.

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