MINDSET

The Foothills 50k Frenzy took place Sat, Oct 5. It's been a week, and I finally feel like I can start to put the experience into words. This event was both exactly and nothing like any event I have done before. On one level, it's very simple. Do the work, day in and day out, then show up and run. On another level, it was very profound to experience the culmination of months, even years, of training.

It's sometimes difficult to pin down a watershed moment. I can't quite recall precisely when or how I learned that there were folks who ran farther than a Marathon (26.2 miles, or 42.2 kilometers). Within a few weeks last summer, I heard about Dean Karnazes and his running exploits for the first time, and learned that my buddy Rich had signed up for a 50 kilometer (31 mile) run called the "Vaquero Loco" (aka "Crazy Cowboy")!  All I know is that instead of instantly thinking, "That's insane!" I thought, "I gotta try that!"



What's funny is I didn't say what I have heard from oh-so-many others when talking about running long distance, "Oh, I could never do that!"  I just assumed that I could, if I wanted to and trained up for it. The last few years have been something of a big science experiment with me as the guinea pig. After running my first 10K (6.2 mile) event for the first time in 20 years, I set my sights on a half-marathon (13.1 miles).  Once I proved I could do that, I set my sights on a Marathon. (The story of how I skipped right past the Marathon to a 50K is in the post from April.) Then Ultra-marathons!

Deciding to do a thing and actually doing it are very different animals. I haven't had a lot of success in that arena in my life; I seem to lack that "stick-to-it-ness" that some people have. Certain things in life have come easily for me, and as to the rest I just couldn't be bothered. That hasn't exactly served me very well in life, as I don't have a lot of practice meeting challenges.  But there's something about running that changes all that. I am not sure why I have been able to stick with a training routine for months and months, preparing for the next run. It's a lot of "bother"! Is it that there is enough instant gratification to keep me going?

As much as I enjoy -- thrive! -- with long-distance running in my life, I still feel very odd talking about it to most people because it is so odd to most people. Recently the topic came up with a client at work, and I mentioned that I had gone for a "short run" that morning before coming in, "Just an hour." She exclaimed, "You ran for a whole hour?!"  Her response reminded me how uncommon that is.  And that was a "short" mid-week run! My weekly long run easily goes for 2, 3, sometimes 4+ hours.

I live at the edge of the suburbs and a rural area with many real, actual, working family farms. My runs take me along the roads around these farms and I see folks out there working hard, busting their buns to make an honest living.  Plowing, tilling, planting, harvesting fields. Tending to cattle and other livestock. Dredging the irrigation ditches. I feel an overwhelming sense of how lucky I am, how blessed, how RICH! that I have time and energy to literally burn on long, lonely, meditative runs simply for pleasure. For an alternative to my cerebral day jobs. For a hobby.

I think about that a lot. What exactly am I accomplishing here with this activity?  I'm not producing anything. At the end of a run, what do I have to show for it? The farmer has grain or beef. The artist has a painting or sculpture. The musician, a composition. Running is like dishu, Chinese water calligraphy. As soon as the task is done, it is gone. Yet, in spite of my guilt I find my bliss on these long runs. I am so lucky, so blessed, so rich! to be able to enjoy a pursuit just for the pure self-fulfillment of it; to have an existence right at the peak of  Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  The self-actualization of setting a goal, working towards it step-by-step, daily, slowly, until that goal is met.

(Next up: the actual race report!)