All Cory's Fault

Ouch! Dang it! Scheisse! I am sore! And tired! And rundown! And I blame it all on Cory Brundage. He's such a damn good example. He tries to pass himself off as a cautionary tale of how to misspend your life, but it's all bluster and facade. In fact, he's the most annoying of all friends, the good example.

So how exactly is my pathetic condition his fault? Isn't it obvious? He went out and trained hard and ran hard and did really well at the JFK. So well that he's still recovering from all his efforts. As for me, well, we know about me, Mr. Phone-It-In.

Sadly for me, in a moment of moral clarity I realized that I should be more diligent, more industrious, more given to hard work and sacrifice. In sum, more like Cory Brundage. So I signed up for the HUFF 50 (aka the Huntington Ultra Frigid Fifty), a 50 kilometer trail race through the woods around a lake near Huntington, Indiana. It was held yesterday, with an inch of snow on the ground and a starting temperature of 8 degrees. And now I realize something really, really important--when moral clarity comes calling, I need to pretend I'm not home.

I ran two of the three laps of the race--about 21 miles--and stopped because--believe it or not--I wasn't having much fun at all. Even cleverly reminding myself that "the woods are lovely dark and deep/But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep" ceased to be amusing long before I ceased to be running. And now my legs ache, my knees have swollen up, my quadriceps hurt when I go down stairs, and my energy level is where it would be if I'd been desanguinated by a vampire, only without any of the intriguing psycho-sexual overtones. And it's all Cory's fault.

But I have a plan! A most excellent plan! If I get the urge to run, I'll put my running shoes and socks on, limber up, and collapse on the bed.

That way, cold toes won't wake me from my nap.

I haven't given this plan any thought, since that would require effort, but I'm sure it's foolproof. I'll take a nap every day. And who else takes naps every day? Why children take naps every day! And what do we know about children? We know that they are young! And what else do we know about children? We know that they are full of energy! And what else do we know about children? We know that when they do really dumb things, everybody thinks it's cute! So how can there be any doubt that my plan will make me young, energetic and cute? Watch out, Justin! You're about to be Biebered!

What can I say? Other than

2011 IS GOING TO BE AN INTERESTING YEAR!

JFK 50 RACE REPORT 2010

     BOONSBORO

     Boonsboro Maryland is a small town nestled in the rolling countryside that surrounds the Appalachian Trail, about seventy miles northwest of Baltimore.  It's kind of like someone took Kentucky horse country and threw in a lot more rocks and a long, undulating ridge that juts up 500 feet or so from the surrounding hills and runs forever from one horizon to the other. Surrounding the town is a mix of some pretty snazzy country estate-type homes and much more modest, pickup-with-a-gun-rack places. Hunting seems to be a major pasttime. In fact, the day before the race,  when I stopped in Crawford's Restaurant for coffee, the staff was having a laugh at one of the regulars who apparently bought the wrong kind of bullets with his morning hash browns. This seemed strange to me because I hadn't noticed "bullets" on the menu, however, as I looked around it became clear that Crawford's had hit upon the ingenious marketing plan of offering munitions along with your meal. On the way out I took a closer look at their sign.

That appears to be Grandma Crawford whipping up a batch of Thirty-ought-sixes for dessert. No 

wonder Granny and the girls were having a laugh at the poor sap who bought the wrong bullets--she clearly knows her stuff.  In fact, the whole population of Boonsboro seemed quite proud and maybe just a little defensive about knowing their stuff. A bumper sticker we saw reminded all visitors that "We're just rural. We're not Stupid". Given their obvious firepower, I wasn't about to disagree.  Granny was nice though and the coffee was fine and nobody seemed hostile to the notion that the next day a thousand looney runners were going to clog up Main Street, just outside their door and just behind the only stop light in town, while they waited for the gun. Ironically, the hostility came later, almost at the end, when the pack was strung out over the last eight miles and occupying only a small sliver on the exteme edge of the back-country road. There just seems to be something about the sight of staggering weirdos stuggling along that incites twenty-something guys with decals of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbs peeing on a Chevy on the rear window of their Ford F-150 to swerve over menacingly and yell "Fucking idiot."

     Really, there was no need for the young gentleman to point that out because, at the time, I was more than willing to agree that I was, indeed, a fucking idiot for deciding that running 50 miles was just a ducky idea. By that time I was about eight hours into what had become a kind of never-ending fever dream. But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I suppose most of these "race report" things start with a bit more reportage under the theory that others want to know what to expect if they do the same race. So, here goes.   

   THE START

      Like most races the JFK has a "mandatory" pre-race meeting. You can skip it. It's located in the high school, which is a good half mile from the start and we didn't go and got through the day just fine. I'm told all they do is explain the rules and logistics and tell you not to litter, which is all  stuff you can pick up on the internet before you go.

       I liked the actual start (right in front of the old Guns & Ammo Cafe).  Unlike a lot of races there was no speech from the mayor, no frustrated fireman/rock star signing the Star Spangled Banner and no wave from Miss Boonsboro Gourd Festival. They just said "Ok, thirty seconds" and then shot the gun.

     THE FIRST COUPLE MILES

     Probably the second best part of any race is the beginning. There's a jolt of adrenaline and everybody's ready to rock & roll. At the JFK, you start on paved road and, as you run out of Boonsboro, you go up and up and up toward "South Mountain" where you finally go onto the Trail. The incline is steep enough that even though everybody is chomping at the bit to get into the run, most people do a good bit of walking because what you gain in time from running you more than lose in energy and muscle fatigue. This year the weather was almost perfect, for me at least, with the temperature in the thirties at the start. It looked like a lot of people did what I did, which was to wear an outer layer at the beginning which they intend to shed when they meet with their crews at Weaverton, the 16-mile mark.

     THE TRAIL

     I had one plan for the trail and that was to not break my damn neck. As it turned out, that job required my complete attention. There's a technique to trail running and I have had no occasion to acquire it. I fell four times on the trail (well, actually the fourth time was just off the trail, but I'll get to that).  The first time  I tripped on a rock. The second time it was a root. The third time, I'm convinced it was a shadow. By then I hated the goddamned place. What I learned is that you can't run a rocky trail and stay upright unless you eyeball the ground like you just lost a contact and prance like a pony. The minute you let your guard down and start to sling your feet in a normal stride you're going to bite a boulder.  It also helps to be naturally light on your feet. It seemed to me the women were doing much better than  larger men who try to bull through the thing. In a way, it's like dancing and, like dancing, most women are just naturally better at it than most men. In any case, I was lucky and even though I pancaked a few times, I didn't get hurt. I did get vocal by the last time and told the trail exactly what I thought of it, much to the amusement of the people stepping over me. Disappointingly, the trail was unapologetic.

     THE TOW PATH

     You come down off the trail at Weaverton Clifts and that is just what they are--clifts. You lose about 500 feet on switch-backs that are so steep there's a real risk of pulling a Tour De France type alpine crash. At a few of the hairpin curves there would be a sapling you could grab and do a kind of 170 degree pole dance that would fling you down the next stretch with enough centrifigal force to put you in fear of launching the person in front of you over the edge. The guy behind me lost it at one point and lurched forward, pushing me in the back with both hands. Fortunately, the path was zigging around a big tree at that point which stopped us both from becoming airborne. It was a great relief to finally come down.   This is one of the places where your crew can meet you and you can shed any extra clothes and make adjustments. As I hit the nice, soft, flat area, I scanned the crowd for Jim's wife, Joyce, relieved for once that I didn't have to run with laser focus on slippery rocks. 

      I was feeling pretty cocky at that point and mentally trash-talking the trail for having failed in it's mission to render me crippled. Little did I know that the trail and the tow path work together like two old grifters to hoodwink the unwary. Something, I don't know what, tripped me and I took my fourth and most spectacular header of the day. As I tumbled ass-over-elbows, I heard the crowd go "Aww" and when I completed my barrel roll and through sheer accident came up on my feet moving foward like a Cirque de Soleil clown, I heard someone say "Way to hang in there, man!", which was nice but didn't quite drown out the guy who yelled "Showboat!"

PUNCHIN' THE CLOCK---HAM AND EGGIN'---ANOTHER BITE OF THE APPLE

     Once you get started on the tow path it's like being the second dog on a dog-sled team. The scenery ahead of you doesn't change much. For a little over 26 miles what you will see is the Potomac River on your left, a flat, leaf-covered road in front of you, and woods and clifts to your right. It's pretty but it doesn't change. Here's a picture of the Potomac, looking down river. The tow path is not visible but it would be on the left.

That picture is taken from a dam at the end of the tow path where you start the last 8.3 miles on paved roads. It is looking back at the direction from which you have come. This next photo shows what it looks like for great stretches as you run along the tow path with the river to your left.

     For four or five hours, that's it. That's what you see. It's pretty but it doesn't change much. There's nothing to do but keep plugging. On this stretch, my strategy was to run ten minutes and walk two.  It was monotonous but had the benefit of being simple. No decisions to make, no subtleties to evaluate; just punch the clock. It seemed like the distance remaining to be covered was endless but, on other hand, with each ten minute run a little over a mile went into the bank and the end was that much closer. A couple of thoughts crept into my brain. I'm not zen enough to have a sophisticated, all-purpose, solid-gold mantra but that day a couple of cliches served as sort of one-use, disposable mantras ( at least I hope they're disposable because I got really tired of them going off in my head like a car alarm). One was sort of a mutation of the saying "You eat the elephant one bite at a time." It occured to me that I don't know where they eat elephants but it didn't matter because somehow, whenever the all-too-short two minutes of walking was over, what would repeat in my head was "Time to take another bite of the apple". Of course, after a while I began to argue with myself that I didn't want any more damn apple but I could handle the thought that I just had to take one little bite.

     For some odd reason, the other thought that crept unbidden into my brain and wouldn't leave was a golf expression: Ham and Eggin' It. When two golfers team up for a scramble and one is driving well and the other is putting well they say they're Ham and Eggin' It. I found myself involutarily thinking of my ten minute runs and two minute walks as ham and eggs. So there you have it. My deep yoga-like source of spirital strength: food metaphors.  I am relieved to report that once I got onto the final eight mile-stretch of road, I snapped out of  the hypnotic boredom of the tow path and switched over to thoughts of beverages. I wanted a beer--bad.

ZOMBIES

     I can't leave the tow path without first telling about Jim. This should have been his day. I could tell the whole last three weeks before the race that he was ready. Sometimes, if you've trained well, avoided getting sick, and tapered off sufficiently before the race, your feet just seem to spring up off the pavement. You feel good and your anxious to go get 'em. That was Jim. While I was all foreboding and caution at the start, Jim was like a kid at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning. Once we got up the hill to the trail, he was gone. I didn't try to keep up. He's a good trail runner and when you're feeling it, you've just got to let it happen. 

     We reconnected at the base of the clifts and started on the tow path togather. I suggested it was time to start the 10 and 2's and he looked like a fourth grader who was told it was too rainy to go out for recess. He said we really ought to go for at least 20 since we weren't really tired yet and, against my better judgment, I said ok. For the next 20 minutes I ran along with him thinking we were going too fast but not saying anything because I tend to be a pessimist in the beginning of races and  maybe he was right, maybe we could run like crazy people! and get away with it. Shortly before 20 minutes was up, we fell in stride with a young woman who was running well. She and Jim began talking and pulling ahead of me noticably. I let them go figuring that when Jim started walking in just a few more moments I'd catch up and we'd walk our two minutes togather. Didn't happen. Twenty minutes rolled around and Jim was feelin' it. When that happens, you've just go to go with it. I started walking and pretty soon he was out of sight.

     By this point we were about 20 miles into the race. I kind of figured I'd catch up with him later, probably at one of the points were Joyce was going to meet us, because he would stop to stock up on the stuff she was bringing and maybe change shirts. So the ham n' egging began. Eventually, I saw Jim up ahead. When I was finishing a ten minute run I would just about catch him. Then I'd start to walk and he'd start to run and he'd pull away. Little by little the gap was closing and, as we approached the crewing station at 27 miles he was only a dozen yards ahead. As I ran up he was standing with his back to me talking to Joyce. When I walked around in front to him this is what I saw:

                                                                     

     Needless to say, I was a little taken aback. Jim wasn't wearing his number!  No, seriously, the whole left side of his face and entire eye socket was covered in blood and he had an open wound on his temple. I was stunned. I been following close behind him for a long time and I hadn't seen anything happen. It was like he'd been hit by a thrown rock or something. He said that just before he got to Joyce he slipped on the only part of the tow path that wasn't soft dirt. There was a short stone bridge where he must have caught a toe and he fell forward and skidded along the rocky surface.  Head wounds bleed a lot and he looked horrible. I was afraid he'd broken the bones around his eye or gotten a concussion, although his eyes were clear, he said he wasn't knocked out, and he was making sense.  He said he was going over to the first aid station and he thought he was done for the day but that I should keep going and Joyce would meet me 10 miles up the course, as planned. I took a long look at him and he seemed in contol so I told him to get patched up and I'd see him when he caught up. I took off thinking that he'd either catch me before it was over or they'd discover he was more messed up than we hoped.

     When Joyce wasn't there in ten miles, I knew they must be at the hospital because otherwise one or both of them would have been there. I was worried that he'd gotten a concussion after all. A broken eye socket they can fix. A concussion would be another matter. Between the two of us, he's the only one with a brain (lawyer, hospital administrator, math professor) and if he got scrambled who would there be to help me figure out pace times and things like change for a dollar?  As the day wore on and my mood got darker I began to imagine all sorts of gruesome outcomes. I had a picture of me pushing Jim along in a wheelchair through the Boston Marathon as his drool cup rattled on his chin and the crowds politely saluted his courageous spirit. (Naturally, this would cause all the women in the crowd to look very favorably on me as the steadfast and loyal friend--who wisely did not deviate from the plan and run off ahead like a crazy man).

THE ENDLESS END

     Finally, after 42 miles, you come off the tow path. The last 8.3 miles are on rolling county roads and it's a relief in some ways to have a little variation in the terrain. You are released from the monotony of the tow path but, at the same time, you are forced out of the comfort of the mindless routine of 10s and 2s or whatever pattern you've employed. B.F. Skinner, of Skinner Box fame, said that people don't really like freedom because having to choose creates anxiety. I don't know about that as a universal principle, however, I can tell you this. When you've been running for 7 hours and now you're deciding on a case -by-case basis whether you should run or walk up that hill in front of you, it tests your mettle. I had driven the last 8 miles the day before the race and I thought to myself that on a regular training day I would have run the whole way. I also knew that most people who have done a few JFK's agree that you should walk the first hill that leads up and away from the river for about a quarter mile, and maybe some of the others along the way. The problem is nobody paints on the road "walk this one" or "run this one, you wuss". It's just up to you and how honest you are with yourself. I had no trouble accepting the advice that the first one is a definate walker. Here's a picture of a sign a the top:

     That pretty much sums up the first hill. The problem is after that they aren't as long or as steep but still, they're hills and your mind says, "Boy, you know, it really might be a good idea to walk this one because you're really tired and you've still got a long way to go and your quads could give out and you might bonk all of a sudden and not be able to finish at all and wouldn't it be better just to walk it in than to fall over and have to crawl and maybe not finish at all?" But then you start to feel guilty about walking and you start to run again and you find out that even if your body doesn't like it much, it's not refusing to do it and you really can keep running if you just stop whining and keep plugging. So, you suck it up and keep shuffling along and run those little bumps that part of your brain keeps trying to convince you are dangerous peaks. 

     At this point, about 45 miles, even though my legs felt terrible and my arms and shoulders ached, I was noticing that I could manage a relatively smooth running pace at maybe a little under ten minutes a mile. That won't set any records but at least it's moving. The time was passing awfully slowly, though, and I was ready to be done. The old "one bite of the apple at a time" thought wasn't doing it for me anymore. I wanted whole thing to be over and I wanted it over NOW.  My mind kept trying to think of ways to solve the puzzle of how to make it end. There must be some simple way to stop this discomfort.  This is where it became like a fever dream that just continuously looped back to the beginning and ran it's fuzzy course over and over. The answer to the puzzle was the same every time: the only way to end this is to keep going. The only way it is going to be over is to run to the end. The problem and the answer were the same: how do you solve this problem of having to keep going? You keep going. I think I got a little nuts.

THE FINISH

     Finally, there was a little more than two miles to go. It was clear that no disaster was going to strike and, if I kept working, I had a chance to finish under 9 and a half hours, which, if anybody had offered to me beforehand I would have gladly taken. I knew the course flattens out  more and more as you get closer to the end, except for an up-hill finish of a few hundred yards, so I resolved to run the last two miles as briskly as I could. It hurt but it was doable. At about the one mile mark Jim appeared out of the crowd and started to run along beside me.  He really didn't look bad at all and he was pretty cheery. He told me that he'd had to go to the hospital to get stitched up (six in all) and that it took forever. He was full of apologies for not meeting me at the aid stations later in the race. 

     That's Jim, he almost scrambles his brain and he apologizes. He was cheering me on and telling me how well I was doing and how well I was running and, even though I thought at the time how nice it was have a friend to jar me out of the desolated wasteland of my dark ruminations, I just couldn't talk. Just about that time, about a half mile from the end, a guy passed me. My first thought was "I don't care. I'm going as fast as I can and I just want to finish." Then I noticed that the fucker had grey hair. For a few seconds I argued with myself not to be a child and to let him go. That it didn't matter and sprinting now would be stupid and prove nothing and would really hurt. Then the little boy in me said "Fuck it. I do care" and I started after him. It came as a surprise to me that my body responded. It actually liked running in a different manner than it had been for miles and miles. I leaned forward and got up on my toes and my quads quit complaining. As I gathered momentum I felt like I was flying. Throughout my running life, this has happened many times and it's one of my favorite things in the world. Running becomes automatic and effortless. You feel strong and fast. In reality, my pace at that point probably wasn't anything to brag about but the feeling, after all those miles, was ecstasy.  I blew by old grey hair (who I later found out wasn't even in my age group so it was all unnecessary--but I'm glad I did it) and looked up just in time to see the finish line photographer pointing his camera at me. I think for the first time all day I smiled 'cause I was feelin' good.

EUREKA! More Insights--

1. Running in snowy, windy, 25 degree weather isn't as much fun as I remembered it being.

2. My rugged manliness isn't as much of either as I imagine it to be.

3. T. S. Eliot had it right when he said, "The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are asked to do things and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down." (And by "things" I'm sure Eliot was meaning "running in snowy, windy, 25 degree weather".)

4. T. S. Eliot even had it more right when he said, "Teach us to care and not to care-- Teach us to sit still."

5. "I shed my blood at Antietam." How many Americans alive today, besides me, can say that? Maybe Shirley MacLaine was right, and I had a prior life as a Civil War soldier. Heaven knows, there's not a smidgeon of "flake" in Shirley MacLaine.

6. Did you know that "you gotta be cruel to be kind" didn't originate with Nick Lowe? I discovered this week that it is said, in a slightly less elegant way, by Hamlet to his mother, "I must be cruel only to be kind." Which raises the metaphysical question of whether it was a flash of brilliance or a criminal insult to the source to have "Cruel to Be Kind" on the soundtrack for "Clueless." Feel free to weigh in on this topic. Inquiring minds want to know.

7. "Among twenty snowy mountains, the only thing moving was the eye of the blackbird."

WELL DONE!

Let me start by congratulating Cory. He never felt good before or during the JFK 50, which probably wasn't helped by his 4 tumbles on the Appalachian Trail, but he looked the race dead straight in the eye and told it, "You ain't got enough hurt to make me quit." (When the going gets tough, Cory gets talking like a guy that grew up in Evansville.) It was really a remarkable performance. In his first 50 miler, in the largest and oldest 50 miler in America, he was 5th in his age group. As Albert Einstein said when he published the theory of relativity at age 26, "Well, it's a start."

I, on the other hand, was only too glad to say, "I've got an oowie; I've got to quit!" One stumble, one scratch on the noggin, and I'm heading for the beer tent. Well, actually, the Washington County Hospital, but, judging by the amount of attention being given to patients, it might as well have been a beer tent. Below, on left, how I pictured myself after the fall; on right, how I'm sure I actually looked.

Anyway, now Cory and I will find another race to run between now and the Boston Marathon (April 18, 2011). Due to chronic substance abuse in our younger years--i.e., up until yesterday--we only have short-term focus. So we need a race in the near future or we'll turn back into the bloated slugs that are our true natures. We'll let you know what we pick.

P.S. I owe an apology to all bloated slugs for that last comment. What I should have said was "grotesque, hideous, degenerate, obscene slime creatures." Yep, that's accurate.

Mixed Results

THAT was hard. I finished in 9:25 and some change and Jim fell on some rocks, got six stitches in his head
and finished in the Hagerstown Hospital. More to follow.

FINALLY

      At last.  Thirtysix hours until the gun.  Let's get the party started.  The weather is supposed to be great.  The two of us are healthy and, if we don't get some serious exercise soon, I'm going to jump out of my skin. Next stop: Boonsboro, Maryland and the JFK 50.

WAITING, WAITING,WAITING

     I agree with the essence of Jim's post, below.  You would think that finally beginning to taper off on training would be great but it kinda sucks. While my decrepit body is beginning to feel relatively normal, my mind, such as it is, has been freying at the edges.  I'm imagining all sorts of terrible possiblities including blizzards, broken bones, abject failure of will, or most likely, hours and hours of pure discomfort. The compulsion to squeeze in just few more long, hard runs is strong.

     In my rational mind I know that tapering is the right thing to do, as proven by generations of runners who have had their best races after periods of reduced training and sometimes, because of injury, illness, or lack of bail money, total inactivity.  All the science shows it's even more important to taper the older you get--which, in the case of Jim and I, means we should have started years ago. The problem is  that the neurotic side of most runners' subconcious nags and nags that taking a few days off or even just cutting back a little will cause you to get totally out of shape in just a few hours. Another problem is that while the amout of exercise you're getting goes way down, your appetite stays just about the same which, as we all know, leads to just one thing:

A Fine Mess . . .

Well, we are now a little more than 2 weeks away from the first checkpoint in our plan ("Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." -- John Lennon), the JFK 50 Miler. Sadly, life hasn't managed to happen in any way that would excuse us from this race. Despite my best efforts, neither Cory nor I have sustained any debilitating injury, been the subject of incarceration, or been committed to a mental institution so as to render us unavailable for the race. In light of the postings on this blog, I find the last fact to be particularly troubling. Doesn't anybody keep an eye on severely disturbed individuals?

With 16 days to go, the serious training (clearly insufficient) is over, and the time for easing up (and ballooning to the size of the "Ghostbusters" Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man) is upon us. Now is the time for reminding ourselves of all the things we should have done better in our training, and of all the well-deserved suffering that is waiting for us on race day because of our pathetic character flaws.

In short, now is when we finally understand the way our friends looked at us when we said we were going to run 50 miles--like we were either liars or idiots. Dang it, why did they have to be so right? And now that the race is almost upon us, we are forced to acknowledge that we would rather be idiots than liars. Curse you, Virtue!! Who could have foreseen that Cory or I would bow at your altar?!

The main solace I have is the knowledge that 10 or 11 hours after I start the race, it will be over. And though I must face the fact that I will spend most of the race creeping at a petty pace, rather like the whining schoolboy (who himself creeps like the snail) unwillingly to school, it is also true that this is enough, t'will do. And at the end, the finishers, one and all, can claim, like the dog that sings opera, "It really isn't important whether we did it well. The important thing is that we did it at all."

And, for me, that solace will be accompanied by the further thrill of having Cory announce upon finishing, "You know, Jim, don't you, that the Comrades Marathon will be a lot harder."

Being Like Mike

Wow. Cory's last blog is really good! Who knew he had thoughts? It's kind of embarrassing for me--having to have a shirt made with an arrow and the legend "I'm With Erasmus."

Not that I'm a superficial guy myself. I even have a favorite philosopher, but in my case it's a contemporary thinker--Mike Tyson. Not only has Mike offered the deep thought, "If I only tattoo half my face, then I must only be half crazy", but he has given me a philosophy of life: "Everybody has a plan, until they get hit in the mouth."

I'm going to postulate that what marathoners and ultramarathoners are about, after you scrape down past the DSM IV stuff, is about Mike's philosophy. 'Cuz one thing I know for sure is no matter how prepared you are and how smart you are, a race like the JFK is going to hit you in the mouth. And more than once. Something will happen that throws up all over your plans like a President at a Japanese state dinner.

We wish it weren't true; we wish races were about having done good training and having a good race strategy, and then the race itself is easy. But what racing is really about is how you handle the throw-up. Your best success, unfortunately, comes from doing what is not easy.

At least, that is what Tysonists believe. And while I belong to no organized religion, I am attracted to the "hit in the mouth" message of Mike.

That and the idea of following his advice on relationships. I will be sure to shout to the other runners, "My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want to rip out your heart and feed it to you. I want to eat your children." Who wouldn't be charmed by friendly banter like that?!

Herman or the Hottie?

     The question that comes up when considering an ultra-marathon, or a regular old 26-miler for that matter, is: Why do it?  For non-runners the answer seems to come easily. "Because you're nuts", they say, some with more distain than others. (The ones that love you usually say it with what passes for fondness. Your friends say it with a slight shake of the head that signals "I like you but sometimes you're just a little on the flakey side". And strangers and others who may feel a little guilty about not exercising say it with barely concealed disgust.)  The only answer that really matters, of course, is the one that works for you.  It may be that you're one of those lucky people who are satisfied with the realization that "I just like doing it."  If so, bless you.  Chances are, however, that some time or another, on one of those really dark, gloomy, cold, wet, windy, miserable, dead-of-winter twenty-milers you've asked yourself "Why the hell am I doing this?" I distinctly remember two particular runs over the years when the rain and snow was blowing sideways with the temperature in the teens and the slush-ruts in the road held ankle deep ice water that splashed up to my groin with every step when that question pounded me in the brain like it was on a pogo stick.

     I hate it when that happens.  It ususlly means I'm over-trained, hung-over, or just really feeling my age. I'm afraid to open that Pandora's box and analyze whether all the five a.m. alarms are worth it. But sometimes it's just unavoidable--you've got to come up with an answer that works for you or just stop in your tracks.
     Lately,  I've concluded that one of two people can supply the answer: Herman Melville or Paris Hilton.  Melville knew that humans must have goals and the most valuable goals are the ones that cost you the most dearly and, if you pursue them to the point of obsession, they may destroy you in the end.
     Paris Hilton, on the other hand, knows how much fun it is to look in the mirror.  Ever since Narcissus humans have loved to see their own reflections. Those of us who don't get as flattering a return from a mirror tend to hold up other surfaces to measure ourselves by.  Like a 50-mile stretch of road.  In that sense an ultra-marathon is like a mirror for plain looking people.  Or, if you want to be a bit more generous to us and a bit less so to Paris, she's shallow enough to be satisfied with herself simply if she thinks she looks "hot" but runners need to feel like they've probed deeper into themselves and found something of merit because they didn't quit at 38 miles.

     So, who's more correct, Herman or the Hottie? You've probably dealt with the question yourself and have a pretty good idea what your answer is. As for me, call me Ishmael. 



            

Herman



The Hottie

                          

TIN FOIL HATS

     Ok, I admit it. When I went to crew for Jim in Leadville for the 100 I expected to see a bunch of skeletal, grinning weirdos in tin-foil hats communing with their home planets as they rattled their boney ankles over the rocks.  It really wasn't like that. Oh sure, there were some obviously disturbed types that you wouldn't look you straight in the eye on the subway but there were relatively few of them--probably no more than in any crowd.

     What I saw was a group of seemingly normal people who just happened to be facinated with the idea of trying to run 100 miles. Now, by "normal" I don't mean the kind of normal you see in a crowd of random people at the mall and certainly not at the Indiana State Fair, where the big hit this year (I am not making this up) was fried butter. I mean normal in the sense that they probably have relatively sane day-to-day lives that include friends and families.

     In fact, most of them had friends and/or family members there to crew for them. As far as body types go, they weren't all gristly Mick Jagger-Madonna clones. There were a few of those, sure, but just about all types, except for the truely overweight, were represented. There were some pretty beefy guys and more than a few kinda fleshy people. In fact, being fleshy didn't necessarily seem to be a big drawback. There is some scientific support for the proposition that after your body burns through all the glycogen it can store, it switches over to fat burning for energy. This is not to say that being fat is a good thing--it's not. But we all have some body fat, even Jagger if you look hard enough and, as it turns out, science says a little body fat is a good thing in an ultra marathon.

     Women make the transition to burning fat more efficiently than men, which probably accounts for the number of women who seemed to be doing really well at Leadville.  Also, most of them seemed to have dialed in their mental approach to the challenge of the race. They were so smooth and serene. While a lot of the guys, especially the younger ones, would come charging into the aid stations and bark at their crews, "Gimmie my Power Bars", "Where are my special socks?",  the women would tend to glide in smiling and their mostly female crews would hug them and say things in pleasant voices like "Oh, Sweetie, you're doing so well". The best runners seemed to have a kind of zen thing going and the best crews just seemed to know that psychological support is as important as groceries.

     One thing they stressed at the pre-race meeting is that you can keep going long after you think you can't. So far, the hardest training I've done is a hilly 15 on one day and 30 the next. I did notice that even though it was profoundly uncomfortable toward the end of the 30, it was, in fact, possible to keep going. What they didn't mention at the pre-race meeting, however, is that the realization that you can, indeed, keep going does nothing to lessen the really irritating, pervasive discomfort.

     Oh well, nobody's making us do this and it is kind of interesting to search for that zen-like serenity that the women showed at Leadville. Maybe I need to get in touch with my feminine side. Like Yogi said, "90% of the whole thing is mental and so is the other half."

                                                                              

Whining into Race Shape

Cory has reported "the facts, ma'am, just the facts" of our exploration of the race course, in a manner that would make Jack Webb proud. (However, unlike Jack Webb, it is possible that Cory could provide a rendition of "Try A Little Tenderness" that would not make you Try A Little Neuro-Toxin.) [Before you accuse me of slandering Jack Webb's memory, go on the internet at http://www.bomb-mp3.com/index.php?search=try+a+little+tenderness+jack+lemmon and give Jack's version a listen. There are some things even the First Amendment shouldn't protect.]

Anyway, now let me give you my perspective on the weekend's benefits. First of all, I learned that there is an official highway sign that contains the information: "CAUTION. WATCH OUT FOR D.U.I. DRIVERS." I saw it beside the road in western Maryland. It was right after I passed "Scott's Pizzaria", which struck me as two words I would not normally associate with each other. Truly, travel broadens one's horizons.


The biggest benefit of the trip, though, was to help me whip my whining skills into race shape. Luckily, I was able to get a great workout of complaining in on Saturday. "The weather's too hot!" "These rocks are too hard!" "This hill is too steep!" "This trail is too bumpy!" "This is hard work!" "I'm tired!" "I'm bored!" "My feet hurt!" "My knees hurt!" "I'm not having any fun at all!" All useable complaints for the 10+ hours of running, walking, crawling and/or whimpering I expect to be doing on race day. My physical stamina may fade during the course of the race, but--thanks to my first-rate training regimen--my mental attitude will be as stoutly negative at the last step as at the first one.

Thanks to this training, if I complete the JFK 50 Miler on November 20th, I will know in my brainwashed brain that I have achieved a super-human accomplishment, that no person in all of history and pre-history has ever suffered one-tenth as much as me, that at a minimum I deserve sainthood for what I have endured. It is only my modesty that keeps me from pointing out that I truly am the greatest human being of all time.

Preview

     Jim and I went out to take a look at the part of the JFK 50 course that's run on the Appalachian Trail. Wow. It was an eye-opener for an Indiana boy. The race starts in Boonsboro, Maryland and you run the first few miles on a highway leading out of town to where you jump onto the Trail. Those first few miles are bad enough in that they seem to go uphill forever. It isn't long after you get on the Trail, however, before you realize how good you had it on the road. This is the elevation map for the course:         

     As you can see, you climb over 1200 feet in the first five miles or so. What you can't tell from the map is that the footing is absolutely trecherous. In some stretches it's like running on cobblestones that have all been sharpened to a point. In others, it's like they tore down a five story building, piled up all the rubble, and marked a trail right over the top. Here's a picture of a random portion that was actually one of the more innocent parts:

     Seeing this firsthand has caused me to lower my expectations for what kind of pace we can carry over the first fifteen miles. There's a lot of technique required to run trails like this well without breaking your neck and I, for one, haven't got those skills.  Even Jim, who's run the entire Leadville course, said that patches of the Appalachian Trail are worse than most of Leadville in terms of runability. I saw large portions of the Leadville course and I know what he means. While parts of it looked unrunable to me, at least they are clearly so, like the steeper side of Hope Pass. The thing about the Trail that's dangerous is that you are tempted to run by seemingly harmless stretches that all of a sudden turn into ankle-breaking mine fields.

     Six weeks to go until the race. I think I'd better try to find somewhere around Indy to practice Trail running. Maybe they've torn down a big office building somewhere.

FINGERS CROSSED

      We're seven weeks away from the JFK and so far, so good. Our training has been going well. Jim and I run together on Sundays and make up our own programs during the week. There seems to be a consensus in the information we've found on the internet that the best way to train for an ultra is to put in some pretty significant back-to-backs on the  weekends. For me, that means running up and down whatever hills can be found in good old Indianapolis (they're aren't many) on Saturday and going long on Sunday. We've done the first of what will be three thirty milers and we'll hit it pretty hard through the rest of October. The JFK is on November 20th, so we'll taper for the first three weeks in November.

  

      I have no doubt that Jim will  be ready.  After doing well in the Indianapolis half marathon on  May 8th and the Fargo marathon on  May 22nd, he went on to run the Rainier to Ruston Fifty Miler in Washington state ( race motto: "You can rest when you're dead") on  June 5th,  where he promptly set the "Men's Super Master (aka: "geezer") Course Record" by turning in a 9:11:04. That's Jim above being congratulated.
  
      That's a half-marathon, a full marathon, and a 50 miler in less than a month. Not bad for an old dude. But that's Jim. I don't think he's ever been out of shape. In fact a few years ago he spent several months in the mountains in South America teaching math to indigenous kids. (It isn't bad enough that they have to live in poverty high up in the mountains where there's never enough to eat and life is hard---they make 'em learn math, too). While living and hiking in the cold, damp, thin air he managed to get a nasty case of pneumonia. He drug himself down out of the mountains and made it to the capital where he sought help.  After unsuccessfully attempting to shoot himself in the butt with a syringe full of who-knows-what they sold him at a pharmacy, he stuffed down a handfull of the "miracle drug" they also provided (which turned out to be ibuprohen) and somehow got his obviously diseased carcass onto a flight home. They met him at the airport with an ambulance and slapped him straight into surgery where they cut him open and drained the fluid out of his collaped lung. I saw him. He was a shade of bilious, Grinch-like green you don't usually see on living people. Three months later he ran the Marine Corps Marathon. See what I mean? I think he can handle the JFK.

What Now?

If you have read the prior posts, you know that Cory and I have told ourselves, and anyone else who will listen, that we are going to run a marathon, a 50-mile race, a 56-mile race, a 100-mile race and climb a 19,000 foot mountain before next September.

So now your question becomes, where will this scheme go off the rails? Because surely a spectacular, fiery crash is the way this will end. I don't know about Cory, but I agree with you completely. Sooner or later, this madness will go terribly, terribly wrong.

Only, not just yet. We ran our first 30-mile training run last weekend; Cory ran 18 miles and 20 miles on consecutive days this weekend; and I ran 9 and 20 miles on consecutive days. Next weekend, we go out to Maryland to survey the first 15.5 miles of the JFK 50 mile race. The course rises 1200 feet in the first 5.5 miles and then zig-zags like the teeth of a handsaw along the Appalachian Trail for the next 10 miles. We don't have any place in Indiana that can prepare us for that part of the race. (The difference in elevation between the lowest point in Indiana and the highest point is about 900 feet.) Our plan is to do a 30 mile run including that first 15.5 miles of the race course.

This provides us with our first really good opportunity to smash some vital body part. Steep ups and downs on a rock-strewn, leaf-covered trail are excellent places to tumble. So the madness may soon be over. Keep your fingers crossed and your animal sacrifices active!

A Memory Is A Terrible Thing to Lose

I am really impressed by Cory's first blog. He tells an incredible story. By the way, "incredible" has a definition of "not reliable; not to be believed." Sadly, that summarizes Cory's blog. It is true that I have committed to the stupid plans described by Mr. Brundage, but any of his suggestions that "we" had these ideas is the product of a troubled, deluded memory. (Lest you think I am exaggerating Cory's delusional behavior, the picture below is just one of many examples of his tendency to wander aimlessly toward certain death.)

Let me tell you what really happened.

Starting at the beginning, this is all Cory's fault. If he had had the good sense to remain the pathetic invalid I had come to expect, none of this would be happening. You see, after running 6 marathons in 25 months in the mid-90's, including a 3:00:08 marathon in Ohio and two Boston Marathons, our Mr. Brundage had spent the next 12 years finding ever-increasingly-unlikely ways to injure himself. So when he came up with the idea of running the 2008 Boston Marathon at age 60, I thought it was "cute." Like when a little boy tells you he's going to be a pirate when he grows up. (Or, in my case, when my little girl decided that she was going to be a pirate when she grew up.) You know it's not going to happen, but you play along. "Great idea, sweetheart. You'll be the best pirate ever!" So, thoughtlessly, I encouraged Cory in what I thought was a harmless delusion. If only I had seen where it was heading . . .

Well, Cory seemed to be living up to my expectations. As Exhibit A for the Buddhist belief that "Life is Suffering" he managed to hurt himself 8 weeks before the 2007 New York City Marathon (his intended qualifying marathon for Boston) and couldn't run more than 6 miles at a time. So surely that was the end of this story.

Certainly, if there were any justice in this world it would have been. But I am convinced that Mr. Brundage has opted to avoid justice through some despicable alliance with Satan, because he not only finished the marathon, but qualified for Boston with 5 minutes to spare.

So on to Boston in 2008, where Cory ran 26 minutes faster than his New York City time, finishing 31st in his age group. He followed that up at the Fargo Marathon this year with what he called "a good time." Yeah, and Angelina Jolie is okay to look at. What he actually did was to win his age group and run the fastest age-adjusted marathon of his life--an age-adjusted 2:40 marathon. So, yes, I am now sure that ownership to Cory's soul is now held by the Dark One. Still, if I could be as fast as him, . . .

Anyway, that should be the end of this woeful tale. Cory comes back from years of degeneracy and disgusting excess to prevail over all others. If he had any grasp on reality, he would have realized that he had succeeded beyond anything he could have hoped for, and committed to spending the rest of his days boring all those around him with the story of his triumphs at New York, Boston and Fargo. Why, instead, he came up with the insanity which he refers to as "The Plan," I can't explain. You have already read his description of that lunacy, and have no doubt said to yourself, "Could these guys be any more nuts?" To which I'd have to respond, "No, not really." Of all the stupid things I have ever done, The Plan is the Sir Isaac Newton of stupid ideas. It does, in fact, stand on the shoulders of the Giants of Stupidity.

So, what is my message to you, the reader? Simply this. No matter how many bad choices you have made in your life, Cory's and my pursuit of The Plan will convince you that you could have done worse. Welcome to our Ill-Advised Adventure.

THE PLAN

  Ok, here's how it all got started. Jim ran in the Leadville trail 100 in August, 2009. I went out to crew for him. I'd been injured the year before and had recovered but had lost momentum for running and had degenerated pretty far down the evolutionary scale. Jim, on the other hand was his usual super-fit self.
 Leadville has to be the toughest 100 miler going. The percentage of finishers there (less than 50%) is way lower than at  the Western States 100 or any other 100. Unfortunately, Jim drew the hottest day they've ever had for the race and called it a day after 50 brutal miles. Heat is to Jim as light is to Dracula. He wisely resolved to return and fight another day. This is Jim, blisters, scabs, scars and all after a hell of an effort.

Watching him soldier up and over mountains for fourteen hours shamed me into getting off my increasingly pudgy butt and lace 'em up again.

      

     Our training went well in the fall and into the spring of 2010. We did the Sam Costa, a small half marathon in Carmel, Indiana in March for a tune-up and then did pretty well in the Indianapolis half marathon ("the Mini") in early May. Three weeks later we headed to Fargo for a marathon. (Fargo's city motto: "We're so nice it's spooky").

     We both had  good days at Fargo and qualified for Boston in 2011. The only problem was that left us with eleven months with nothing to do but train, clearly more than our  limited attention spans could handle. Our minds began to wander. Doing the Indy half marathon again was a no-brainer since that's our home town but that's pretty much old hat to us by now. Besides, that's a couple weeks after Boston and didn't really give us anything new or exciting to think about. We started trolling the inter web to find something just a little more exotic than Fargo.

      I was talking to this South African guy who owns a running store in Indy (Ashley Johnson--he was a world class runner and South African Olympian. He and his wife Andrea, herself an accomplished  runner, own the Running Company in partnership with Bob Kennedy, past US record holder at 3,000 meters, 2 miles, and 5,000 meters.) We were talking about Alberto Salazar and how he had a spectacular come-back race and won the legendary Comrades Marathon in South Africa in 1994. Actually, Comrades is not just a marathon. At fifty-six miles and 18,000 participants it's by far the oldest and largest ultra marathon in the world. It's a point to point race and every year they run it in the opposite direction. One way's mostly up hill and, of course, the other is mostly down. It's held In late May, which means we couldn't do it until next year after Boston and Indy. Next year it's the up hill route. Now there's a challenge.

     It certainly meets the exotic requirement and, since we'd be in good shape after Boston, why not? We added Comrades to our list. Then we got to thinking. We'll be in Africa, we'll be in killer shape, we'll never be any closer to Tanzania and we'll never be any younger (although we do seem to get better looking every day, Jim's Leadville picture notwithstanding.) The next step was obvious---Kilimanjaro. We could take a week or so to recover from Comrades, preferably somewhere at altitude to prepare us for the 19,000 foot climb, and then let 'er rip. It takes somewhere from five to seven days to make the climb, depending on the route. That would put us somewhere around mid-June when we get back to the States. Then we got to thinking. We'll be in great shape, we'll be used to steep terrain, and we'll be adjusted to altitude. Now what could we do with that? Great shape, used to climbing, adjusted to altitude, hmm...? LEADVILLE!  August, 2011. One hundred miles starting at 10,200 feet and going over 12,600 foot Hope Pass --twice. Thirty hours to finish.  At thirty hours a man comes out to the finish line with a gun. He turns his back so he can't see who's stumbling, staggering, falling, or crawling inches away from the tape and, exactly at ten a.m., he shoots his gun. That's it. Race over. If you haven't crossed the Iine by then, they don't know you. You are DNF even if you've made it 99.9 miles.  Make it and you get a belt buckle. Come up short and you get to see that guy's back. Those mountain people are tough.

     So, we had a plan. The only problem was it still didn't  start until Boston 2011. What to do until then? A little more web searching and the answer was easy: The JFK 50 on November 20, 2010 in Maryland. Sixteen miles on the Appalachian Trail, 26+ on the Chesapeake and Ohio tow path next to the Potomac River, and eight final miles on country roads. Twelve hours to finish. Our Fargo times got us in. (Qualifiers are called "Elite Citizen Athletes" by the organizers, a nice touch.) After the JFK there's the Huff, a fifty K trail run Huntington, Indiana in mid- December.

      After that, we'll still have four months until Boston. We may add some more races if they tickle our fancies or stroke our fantasies or whatever. We're open to any suggestions.

    So, that's it. That's the plan. Sometimes it feels a little ambitious but the more we think about it, the more doable it seems. A lot of people do these events every year and if they can do it we can too. I think. Anyway, we'll never be any younger and we'll never know unless we try so, why not? It ought to be a hoot.