Brother Donkey

"I regard my body as I regard brother donkey. I feed him, and I care for him, but I ride on him and he does not ever ride on me". --St. Francis of Assissi

That is my favorite ultra running quote.

Tomorrow I go to my favorite place on earth, to be with some of my favorite people on earth, to do one of my favorite things in life. Why then the stress and fear? I need to remember that this is all a gift. The fact that I'm standing on the starting line of a 100 mile run necessarily means that I have the health, security in life, spare time for growth, and financial means to do so. I need to remember that this is a blessing and I need to be grateful. I also need to remember that a person can go a long long way on a pair of blown legs but will crumble without joy.

Thank you.

Believe, believe, believe.

Tapering

I know that I said that I would never include traning advice in this blog but I am going to cut-and-paste a note that I wrote recently to a friend re: tapering for the upcoming Mohican Trail 100 Mile Run. I should be forgiven for not keeping my word on this because: 1. noone wants my opinion anyway and so this one will go unused, and; 2. Sometimes I don't keep my word; this is one of those times.

Here is the note. I may or may not have changed the identity of my friend to protect her privacy.



Dear Terri Lemke of Loudonville, Ohio,

Thank you for writing to me and specifically asking my opinion regarding tapering. Thank you, also, for insisting that I go on at great length about this important subject!

Tired legs are one thing, but...

Really truly what we are doing in a 100 mile run is processing a slow trickle of poison for hours and hours. This is a tremendous stressor on our endocrine system (kidneys, liver, adrenal glands, spleen). The endocrine system adjusts chemicals so that we can digest food, maintain blood pressure, have an even level of electrolytes. Running 100 miles is really all about the endocrine system. When is the last time your heard of a runner dropping out due to being "tired" or having "sore legs"....almost never!!! Instead you hear of people becoming nauseous, hypothermic, overheating, becoming confused or disoriented.....these things are signs that the ENDOCRINE SYSTEM isn't operating well...signs that it has gone haywire.

You have got to go into 100 miles with a few weeks of having not been exhausted, or dehydrated, or suffering electrolyte imbalances etc. In other words your endocrine sytem needs 3 weeks of near total peace and quiet.....so even if your legs feel good you have to taper.

If you are doing Mohican you need to REST NOW!!! And I mean 50 miles this week, 40 next week, and 10-15 in the week before the race. No more runs over 20 miles and only 2-3 more runs of 10 miles or more. I know you will be climbing out of your skin and you might gain a pound or two but this is what you should do.

I will write more later regarding my opinion on that investment you made recently in the factory that makes solar powered flashlights.

All my best, --Mark

Monkeys, Maize, and Marathons: Part 2

Twenty miles into the “Forget the P.R.” 50K I knew that I was into uncharted territory. I knew it and my buddy Luc knew it too. He was standing at the covered bridge aid station and, when he saw me, he gave me a startled look that might have meant “Kudos to you my friend. You are running well and I see that on this fine day your years of training have paid off handsomely and your ship has come in”. Then again, the look might have meant “You have screwed the pooch this time buddy. You went out to fast. You know it, I know it, and the 18 calories worth of glycogen remaining in your liver know it as well. Have fun on the climb to the fire tower”.

The reason they build covered bridges is to cross rivers. They tend to locate rivers in low lying areas, such as river beds. The reason for fire towers is to spot fires. They tend to place fire towers in the highest spot possible so’s a person can scan a lot of ground at once. Race director Rob Powell is a nice enough fellow and I’m sure that his decision to run us from the lowest spot in the park to the highest spot in the park in just over two miles was a simple oversight at best, and latent malevolence at worst. He would never intentionally try to hurt a person.

At least that’s what I thought when I started the climb.

Twenty five minutes later I crested the last part of the hill and found Rob, whooping, hollering, and doing his best impersonation of a 1970’s track coach, pointing to his stopwatch and howling for greater effort. Rob likes to give his racer’s their money’s worth and today he was holding his own Blue Light Special on lactic acid…and loving it! I felt like my head was going to explode. But it didn’t. And I felt like my legs would seize up, but they didn’t. Instead I took an enormous gulp of air, ran past the aid station (surely Terri wouldn’t stop here and so neither would I; I didn’t want to let my species down) and automatically switched the quads from concentric contractions to eccentric contractions as we began the long, winding, swoop back down the hill to the bridge. Throughout this section I tried to get myself to forget that I could not do this. The idea that I could not run this hard and get away with it wasn’t negativity; it was an historical fact. It was 53 degrees and I had never been able to do this. Both of those were facts.

Actually I love the run from the bridge to the fire tower. I like it even better when we run it in reverse and have a long downhill on which to recover and chat. I remember running this section during the Mohican 100 mile run in 1997 with a good friend of mine who was and is a recovering alcoholic. My friend told me some pretty harrowing stories of his life of addiction. When I asked him if he thought that maybe he had traded one addiction for another by becoming an ultra runner he paused for a long while and then told me that he didn’t think that it was that simple. He told me that he had become an alcoholic for reasons that no longer mattered to him. He also told me that the act of transforming himself from an alcoholic into something different, anything different, forced him to create a skill set that he had used to morph into a Christian, and a better son, and a caring lover, and a runner.

Over the years I have noticed that the participants in our sport skew toward individuals who have lived difficult and troubled pasts. Others have noticed this as well. I once read the work of a theorist who believed that depressed personality types self-select into endurance sports for the endorphins they provide. Other theorists paint this picture in a more positive light; they believe that perhaps endurance athletes achieve a state of Zen or an inner peacefulness through the act of running. I heard ultra running once compared to the act of self flagellation...the claim was made that we are masochists.

I’d like to suggest that my fiend came closer to the truth. I like to believe that possibly the reason that our sport is populated by a higher than normal percentage of individuals who have experienced psychosocial challenges is because these individuals have mastered the art of change. Darwin said that the species that survive are those that adapt best to change. Why then, shouldn’t survival sports be populated with change artists? And why shouldn’t those who have experienced stress also be among the best users of stress as a change agent?

Stress IS a change agent in organisms you know. I wrote the following paragraph in a very old and boring posting that no one ever read, here it is again:

In the body, stress is needed for growth. Without stress there is the opposite of growth; atrophy. As tissues are stressed, an inflammatory reaction occurs which leads to environmental changes including increased temperature, a lack of blood flow to the affected area, a buildup of damaging acids, an accumulation of waste products, and a lack of oxygen. This environment, though unpleasant, does have beneficial side effects. If the body is stressed, cells called osteoblasts spring into action and repair an area using collagen; a bony material which makes the tissue stronger. Osteoblasts only function in a hot, acidic, low oxygen environment and so stress is always needed to strengthen tissues. There is no growth without inflammation and no inflammation without stress. The next time the tissue is stressed it takes more stress to cause the area to become inflamed because the body is now stronger and more stress resistant. Continued mild stress applied to tissue being repaired causes it to form itself to new job demands. This process is known as remodeling. It’s a great system.

I wrote it then and I’ll write it again now: It is a great system. And I believe that it works not only for tissues but, metaphorically, for the mind and the soul as well.

The final mile of the “Forget the P.R.” race turns cruel. I arrived at the base of the North Rim Trail nearly 40 minutes ahead of my predicted time. Even though the race leaders finished over 4 miles ahead of me I was having the race of my life….all I had to do was keep it ‘rubber side down’, and I managed to. But the last mile of the race brought cramps into my inner thighs that felt like high voltage electrical shocks, my balance was thrown off and I repeatedly stumbled over rocks and tree roots. I had absolutely nothing left. None of it mattered, of course. I slowed to a crawl, lost a minute or so, and met a smiling Rob Powell at the finish for a hug.

The immediate joy of the finish line remained, but was soon accompanied by a realization that my race, as strong as it had been by my standards, showed a need for growth and change before I could expect to finish the Mohican Trail 100 Mile Run in two months. I would need to become patient; no more howling nasty words into the woods about poor old Rob Powell when I become tired of the hills. I would need to take care of the details; no running 12 miles with a rock in my shoe. That sort of thing produces bloody socks in a 100 miler. And I would need to learn to handle the slow trickle of poison that my body would produce better than I had in the 50K. Dehydration, low blood sugar, and swinging blood pressures make for a good post-race story when they happen in the final miles of a 50K but they make for sober sounding excuses when told by a runner seated in the back of an ambulance at a 100 miler.

My long winter runs with Terri had turned me into a better 50K runner. And I now need to leave those skills behind and change again if I am going to survive those same trails in June.

That’s OK though. I can change. I know that I can.

I have been asked to change so many times this year, and in so many areas of my life, that at times I can almost forget what my old life was like. I might be stronger and I might be weaker. I’m probably a bit of both I suppose. But one thing is certain. I’m here. I’m not extinct. I’m alive because I have been given a gift that allows me to change and to adapt. It is a gift that is so unique to us that I wonder if God even needed to warm up to the idea.

The Old Testament is chock full of stories of God telling us what to do. In the stories we routinely DIDN’T obey him, and then we were punished. And God didn’t mess around either. We aren’t talking about getting grounded or not being allowed to watch TV. We are talking plagues, boils, locusts, floods. And still we didn’t learn. God doesn’t seem to operate this way anymore.

This is going to sound blasphemous but I like to think that maybe God didn’t understand us.

Maybe God sat up in heaven and realized that we were different. So he took on the form of a man and came down to be with us. And maybe God then realized that being human is hard. After all, God is perfect. This means that everything that God does is Godly, which means that nothing that God ever does is a sin. And that’s absolutely perfect and unchanging…like sweet corn. But the problem is that if God never sinned then this means that maybe God was never tempted. Maybe God didn’t understand envy and greed and lust. Maybe God didn’t understand guilt. Maybe God didn’t understand stress. And if these things are true then God wouldn’t understand how we couldn’t follow VERY SIMPLE ORDERS, no matter how many times he punished us. I like to think that after God became man he understood all of these things. It seems like it. The relationship sure is different than it used to be, at least that how I see it.

So why doesn’t the North Rim Trail get easier after I ask God to allow it to? Why do families break apart if God loves us? Why do healthy young people die horrible deaths and wretched sinners prosper? Where is God at these times? Maybe God is practicing his new sense of empathy. Maybe God is cheering for us and watching us grow, and watching us change.

Maybe God is proud of us.

Monkeys, Maize, and Marathons: Part 1

Generally speaking corn does corn stuff.

It grows. It produces pollen. It lines nearly the entire 70 mile route between Delaware and Findlay. And because, for the past 6 years, I have routinely driven this route, I believe that I have come to gain a serviceable knowledge of corn and its doings. I believe that sweet corn is one of the surest signs that God loves us. During August I stop at roadside stands, buy corn, and eat 3-4 ears every day. I’m enthusiastic about August sweet corn because I know that in just a few weeks the corn will be gone… except for that stuff they have in the grocery store. Oh, I know that I can get corn in May. I saw some in Kroger yesterday. I know that that stuff is supposed to be corn but I also know that it is not the real deal. That corn is grown somewhere in Central America and I believe that it is insincere. God doesn’t get corn in Central America and he doesn’t buy it in the grocery store. I believe that God stops at a roadside stand in Ohio and loads up. And so I do the same.

Corn is noble. Corn is completely and utterly dependable. It is nearly always “knee high by the 4th of July”. Sometimes it is even taller. In July corn begins to change the landscape of Northwestern Ohio from an endless expanse of nothingness into a mini-woodland. From late July until early November drivers have to actually stop their cars at road crossings to check for traffic, because the corn obstructs the usually endless views in this part of the state. Corn makes this area, formerly the site of the ‘Great Black Swamp’, into a cozy and homey place. In the fall corn mazes pop up. Cross country races run between the partially harvested rows, and hunters begin a ‘secondary harvest’ of the fattened corn pilfering deer in the area.

And it happens this way every year.

Rotary dialed phones have come and gone. Hand cranked windows are no longer placed in new automobiles. I no longer need to get newsprint on my fingers to learn of race results and stock prices. But corn still does corn stuff. That’s comforting isn’t it?

I was thinking about corn as we came roaring into the Hickory Ridge aid station at the “Forget the P.R. 50K” a few weeks ago. I was thinking about corn because I noticed that the enormous cornfield visible from Hickory Ridge hadn’t been planted yet. In fact it hadn’t even been plowed. It seemed to me that it was getting just a bit late in the year for a cornfield to lay fallow and this caused me a bit of vague discomfort. But it didn’t cause me as much discomfort as Terri Lemke was causing me. And the discomfort that Terri was causing me wasn’t vague at all. Terri had her chin pressed against her sternum and was administering the anaerobic word of God to anyone attending her Sunday morning service. A pack of 5 of us held on, sucking wind on uphills, holding on for dear life on downhills, while Sister Terri testified. I had never, in my 33 years of running, been lulled into such a recklessly fast pace so early in a race. If it was too late in the year for a field of corn to lay fallow then it was too EARLY in the season, and very certainly too early in this race, to be pushing this hard. But we were pushing hard anyway, because this is what we have become. It would have been so easy to drop off the pace, have a Hammer gel, a sip of water, and walk a bit. But I couldn’t because I knew that this is who we now were, this is what we had made ourselves into.

I guess that developing our strange ability has been a PERSONAL evolution of sorts, although Charles Darwin would disagree that there is such a thing.

Darwin never said “Only the strongest of the species survive”, even though everyone thinks he did. He also never said that the smartest of the species survive. What he said was that the species that survive are those that adapt best to change.

Darwin never believed that an individual organism could evolve. He suggested that it takes many generations for a species to change its form. Natural selection involves the weeding out of some species as a result of the success of other species. The species with the greater advantage takes over that phylogenetic niche, forcing the less adaptable species into extinction.

Fundamentalist Christians tried, in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, to outlaw the teaching of the theory of natural selection in public schools, by disproving Darwin. They failed. Even today, in some parts of the south, fundamentalists argue against such teaching in schools. They ultimately fail as well. But Sister Terry was doing one mighty fine job of proving Darwin wrong. I know she was beating the Devil out of me!

If human beings cannot evolve within their own lifetime then how on earth was Terri doing this? Terri was built for speed. She was an elite 5K and 10K runner in college. She would be the first to tell you that a 30 mile jog back then would have landed her in bed for days. Nowadays a hard and fast 31 mile run doesn’t even get enough respect out of Terri to earn a stop at the six mile aid station…she ran right through it! And if human beings cannot change then how does one account for the strange behavior of Casey Clark?

Casey was racing his first ultra marathon and he was doing it in style. Casey is one of my running buddies from Delaware. He’s not a newbie. He finished the Mohican 50 mile run last summer with another friend of mine, Scott Wolf. But they jogged and walked in that event. They grazed at aid stations, and more or less enjoyed the day. What was happening here was extreme. We were running the toughest 50K course in the Midwest and covering uphill miles at just over eight minutes apiece. Casey was breathing through his nose and looked perfectly at ease despite the 25 miles (!) that lay before us. Casey was a basketball player in high school. He can jump. I’ve seen him do it. And he’s fast. He’s a cross country sort of fellow and can lay down a nasty-ass kick when the occasion calls for it. But over the past few months Casey had turned himself into a fine and fit runner of long trails.

And that’s something, despite all of its glory, that corn will never do.

The comparison might seem unfair. Corn has no legs, which might put it at a disadvantage in a race. I’ll give you that one. So let us compare Casey to another runner. Let’s compare him to a Quarter-horse. No matter what sort of bounce Casey has in his legs he’d get his ass kicked by a quarter horse...for a quarter. Is this comparison still unfair? “Quarter horses are sprinters” you might correctly claim. Fine, then lets compare Casey to Secretariat. Casey loses again. But Casey would nail either of them in a 50K trail race, and here is the thing: A quarter horse will ALWAYS beat a thoroughbred over a quarter mile and a thoroughbred will ALWAYS beat a quarter horse over eight furlongs. And neither of them will EVER beat Casey in a 50K. These fine animals, in fact all fine animals, cannot change their form on the fly. Except one…

Casey could train for a few months and become a pretty serviceable 400 meter runner. He could also become a good miler. I’d bet he could get his jump shot back if he wanted to. Wilt Chamberlain finished a 50 mile race several years ago. Do you know how he did it? He trained hard and TURNED HIMSELF INTO AN ULTRA MARATHON RUNNER!

We are the only species with the ability to change our form to follow our chosen function. God gave us this gift to use. It’s a miracle and it’s a miracle unique to us.

Only us.

Isn’t that amazing?

The fundamentalists have it wrong. They needn’t worry. Evolution doesn’t disprove the existence of God. Pure happenstance wouldn’t produce a rule that exists for every species except for one. Maybe we need to stop thumping our bibles and start reading them. The Old Testament states that God favored mankind above all other creation. What greater act of favor could there ever be than to allow us freewill and couple it with the latitude to develop our own tools so that we can pursue our own dreams? What good would free will be if we cannot move in the direction that our will drives us? Perhaps no other animal has this (adapt)-ability because no other animal has been granted free will. We can become who we want to be.

That amazes me.

I have other thoughts on this. I think that God gives us this ability to change, and couples it with the greatest change agent possible, the gift of stress. I’ll continue on in a few days. I love that a few people read this blog. I’m sorry that I have been so infrequent with the postings. I’ve had some stress and some change recently, as well as some changes to my form and function. I promise that part 2 of this post will be out in a few days. I hope you come back and read it. Peace. --Mark

The Cover of the Rolling Stone

I was watching the ground ahead of me. I was looking for a shadow and scared that I would see one. The blazing sun was directly overhead and so shadows were short, but dear God this leg was long. And it was not going well. Not well at all. My buddy Paul leaned, from the waist, out of the passenger window of the Isuzu Trooper and poured water, from a gallon jug, over my head. “We’re driving ahead to drop Barry at the exchange point. That guy is right behind you and coming fast. Pull your shit together!” And with a crunch of wheels on gravel the Trooper pulled ahead. I could see, for a moment, into the back of the truck. Stu lay prone, in a sweaty pile, recovering from his leg. Barry sat, paralyzed, knowing that I was pissing away any chance he might have had to hold off Paul Aufdemburg on the upcoming leg. My other pal, Willy, was driving the follow-up car. He was a bit calmer. “Just hold steady Mark. You can lose some ground- just no catastrophes please”. But a full-on catastrophe was underway. I had managed to lose an eighty second lead in 2.5 miles. I had 5.5 miles left to run, and this race allowed no time-outs or substitutions. I was losing it and I was losing it for all of us.

We were the “Low Budget Athletic Club”. We were a group of largely untalented, hard training guys. All of us were post-college. None of us had any place to go athletically, so we roamed the central Ohio road race circuit, garnering top-five or top-ten finishes. Sometimes we would find an open cross country race. We had hand-lettered cotton jerseys, plain white with the words “Low Budget” arching over the letters “A.C.” We wanted the jerseys to look exactly like those of our heroes in the “Summit A.C.” We trained furiously, got injured often, cheered for each other when not racing and tried to kill each other when we were. More than anything else we loved to be together.

On this occasion we found ourselves to be the only non-Michigan based team in an inaugural event. The year was 1990. Nine other members of the Low Budget A.C. “Fighting Amish” and I were running in a relay race across Michigan. The race covered 330 miles in 3 days and ended at the Mackinaw Bridge. It sounded like a lot of fun when we signed up. It seemed like it wouldn’t be very competitive…more like a chance to drink some beer, camp, and get some miles in. The reality was that we found ourselves perfectly matched, almost eerily so, against a team from Michigan, who seemed to be our mirror image in terms of ability. The first day our team managed a 53 second lead over the course of 110 miles. The average pace was under six minutes per mile and the temperature was in the nineties. Being young guys, we figured that we needed to defend the honor of our home state. And we were defending it by the slimmest of margins. Every leg yielded a gain or loss of a few seconds, but I was poised to lose several minutes. My exhalations started to sound less like breaths and more like small sobs. Panic was setting in all around.

After running through soybean fields all morning, the upcoming town promised respite. There could be shade. There might be a kind soul with a garden hose. Someone might notice and acknowledge the struggle. Instead of relief I got Christmas music. I suddenly heard Dean Martin singing a Christmas song…that horrible one where some poor gal wants to leave his apartment and he’s refusing to take her home due to the weather. I thought that it was all in my head. When I saw the Christmas trees and garlands strung across the street I was certain I was hallucinating. I also heard the van full of Michigan runners approaching with their hoots, hollers, and cheers for their runner. At least they were drowning out Dean “Baby its cold outside” Martin whose smarm was, as it turned out, being pumped from public address speakers.

We were about 70 miles into day two when we entered Frankenmuth. I had never been there before and so I didn’t know what to expect. Frankenmuth makes itself famous, and presumably makes a few bucks, by maintaining a Christmas-year-‘round environment. I was caught and passed on the main street, right in front of a concrete snowman in the town square with a cement icicle hanging from his ceramic carrot nose. Down the street I could see a much sunburned man mowing his lawn.

“Don’t race him just run with him” called Willy from his front row seat. Willy was about two years older than the rest of us but infinitely wiser. I settled in, stared at the other runner’s back, and tried to use as little effort as possible to stay with him. For a moment I wondered why runners, given a two-lane road, will still choose to stay inches apart. But mainly I just stared. “This isn’t a race man, huff huff, its a tempo run” I said to my own mind. “Be cool and hang, puff puff, let HIM worry for a bit”. And from that moment on everything changed. We left town and it was two runners and the curve of the earth, visible in all directions through the waves of heat. A buzzard hovered overhead, and two cars hovered nearby, but these things didn’t exist in our universe. The other boy decided to force me back into the lead and I simply took it. Soon he was gone. People were yelling but I didn’t pay attention to them. Heat was my friend, sun was my friend, and pain was my close personal buddy. Soon I could hear only my own team mates and the predicted catastrophe came true. But it occurred several hundred yards behind me, then minutes behind me.

And that’s all I remember about that.

It was easily the best race I ever ran in my life. Nothing else that I have ever done has come close. Not even remotely. And I have absolutely nothing to show for it.

On the other hand, I DO have a trophy as tall as my waist, that I won by finishing 4th place in my age group in a race in Zanesville, Ohio. I chickened out early in that race and jogged in…but sponsorship, and trophies, were plentiful. And so I got a beauty.

I also once won a shrub at a race where I finished mid-pack. I put it in my back yard and forgot to plant it, or water it, and it died. Alas. I won a pair of shoes for running 4 minutes slower than my P.R. in a 10K. I ran my fastest-ever road marathon in 1986 and my prize was a congratulatory form-letter from Dick Celeste mounted in a frame (I’m not making that up). I finished 10th place in a race once and learned at the finish line that I was the sixth master’s runner to finish…so no hardware that day. Once I finished behind 7 guys in the 50-59 division but still managed to win the 40-45 age division. That time I won a plastic foot bath. It was cool because it created bubbles. But it broke and I no longer have it. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere but I can’t think about it now. Its just too sad.

There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to awards. Its hard to know what they really mean, isn’t it? Ancient man didn’t run for awards. Maybe we shouldn’t be running for them as well. Ancient man would run to bring messages or track game. He was probably considered to be valuable to the community and thus was likely to be revered. As a proven provider he would possibly attract a wonderful mate. But no awards, no trophies.

Actually, on second thought, we are getting screwed!

After all, if winning a race would bring me riches, respect, and my choice of the ladies I would train like the wind! Instead we get trinkets. And not cool trinkets like socks with toes, or body glide. But large trophies for modest performances and congratulatory letters from the man who reduced my college financial aid package for good ones. If they are so unreliable in their value and prestige can ‘things’ be considered to be awards at all?

I won a trophy in college for placing high in the “Open” race at the Malone Invitational in 1984. The reason that I was in the open race was because I was not a top-seven runner for O.U. and, thus, did not qualify for the varsity race. My third place time in the open race would have netted me 63rd place in the varsity race. Strangely, my team mate Dave won the varsity race and received no award of any kind. I tried to sneak the trophy onto the bus in my gym bag but my team mates found it and razzed me mercilessly all the way back to Athens. They each took turns presenting the award to me by making increasingly more audacious and outrageous presentation speeches. It was wonderful. And hilarious. It also summed up our attitudes about awards.

No one cared about them at all.

And when you think about it that’s a beautiful thing.

We didn’t run for awards. That’s what we said and I believe that’s what we wanted to mean. Our cross country team at Ohio U. was ranked 18th nationally for a while but we knew that the football team, with a 1-9 record, would still get all of the attention and money. It had been that way for all of us…and for all of our lives. The truths of the inequalities and unfair nature of fame had been pounded into our psyches so many times that the concept had lost all of its integrity. I have spoken about this with so many runners, at so many events, covering so many distances, over so many years and spanning generations, that I have come to believe that the enmity we have for awards is nearly universal. And sincere. And yet incomplete.

We must desire awards for SOME reason or races would not have them. I have to admit that I love getting a trinket at the end of a race. I do now and I secretly did then. It’s a guilty pleasure. I know that at my level any award that I receive is as much a matter of who DIDN’T show up as it is a matter of who I finished ahead of. But really you can say the same thing about awards at any level.

Maybe what we are really seeking is peer review. Maybe we want an honest assessment; an outcome measure of our hard work. I recall that occasionally, on LBAC training runs, we would spontaneously break into song…and it was always the same song: ‘The Cover of the Rolling Stone’ by Dr. Hook. Geeber would sing harmony while Kevin and I would perform backup duties. We thought it was a goofy song and I don’t recall it having any particular meaning for us at the time. But all of these years later I wonder if we chose it accidentally. Sing along please:

We’ve got lots of little teenage, blue eyed groupies,
who’ll do anything we say.
We got a genuine Indian guru,
who’s teaching us a better way.
We’ve got all the friends that money can buy,
so we never have to be alone.
And we keep getting richer, but we can’t get our picture, on the cover of the Rolling Stone.

The song was ultimately about a band that had everything but the thing it most desired, the respect of its community. Did we choose that song accidentally? Twenty-some years later I believe that there was absolutely not a chance that our collective consciousness didn’t choose it for us. We were a bunch of young guys blowing every last cent we had on running shoes and entry fees. Pounding away on concrete sidewalks, and for what? I have come to believe that we did it for the same reason ancient man did it; for respect. And ancient man did it for the same reason a bus load cross country runners gave up the bars on Friday nights; for standing within their community. Were the tales told around a campfire thousands of years ago any grander than the tales told around a tailgate of an Isuzu Trooper parked near the entrance gait to the Mackinaw Bridge? Were the rites of manhood bestowed upon a young hunter really worlds apart from the taunts, which told a beaten down college sophomore that “You don’t need a trophy. Screw the trophy. You showed a spark of life today…and we noticed…and the reason we noticed is because you are one of us”?

I recently had reason to clean out my basement. In a dusty corner I found a piece of poster board, encased in a picture frame protected by cracked glass. The award was evidence that I was part of a team that ran across the enemy's state in 1990. The poster states that the Low Budget Athletic Club finished in second place, by a total of 65 seconds, over a distance of 330 miles. I will never throw this award away. It is a modern-day eagle's feather. It has meaning because it is evidence of a time when I counted coup with my tribe...maybe other awards are as well.

The evening after the third day of the Michigan relay race the two tribes sat around a public park, sneaking beer from brown paper bags. Suddenly it was just one tribe, a cluster of individuals who could understand the thrill of the hunt. Winners and losers didn’t matter any more.

These are nice memories. But they do not make me sad and they do not make me nostalgic. We are blessed with the best reward of all. If thousands of years didn’t erode the sense of community that runners can share then surely 20 years can not possibly make a dent at all. The community and sense of peer approval that echoes across years and generations, when we test ourselves on the field of battle, will never end. It’s the reason why the winner of the Mohican 100 mile run can jog along with a runner who finished in last place, they can compare their buckles, and they can share stories, and they share a bond. I believe this connection exists in no other sport.

Just ours.

Chances

Just a short while ago I was out running in the dark, down one of the sidewalks on Lake St. I was hopping over piles of brown ice, and an old muffler, and someone’s lost (and late) cat. Normally I run in the street during a “pre-melt” period because, no matter how dangerous cars might be, it seems like my chances of breaking bones are still less than if I slipped on an icy sidewalk.

Lake Street changes the odds though.

Lake Street includes a 200 yard stretch of State Route 42, as it dog-legs through Delaware. You have probably been on this piece of road all of the times that you have had occasion to drive from Plain City to Ashley. Lake Street contains three bars, a pizza shop, and a tattoo parlor. One of the bars has been in business since 1888 and they have never once, in all of that time, cleaned the bathroom. That bar used to have a very beautiful barmaid named Terrii. She ran off with a man with a small heart and a large Harley and no one has seen her since. I asked her once why she spelled her name with two i’s. She told me “Well, because I have two eyes silly!” It made perfect sense to me at the time.

I still miss her.

Running on a sidewalk on Lake Street is a good idea because the patrons typically own awesome motorcycles but bad cars. There’s no reason to invest in windshield wipers when spring will be here eventually, you know. Late February means that car seats fill with dead skin, half used matchbooks, and the scrap of paper with the number of a faith-healer you’ve been meaning to call. Sometimes floorboards have chocolate milk cartons and bottles rolling around. As I ran down Lake Street’s sidewalk I imagined a bottle lodging under a brake pedal. And then I imagined me and my new pet cat going to meet Jesus. I looked at the shadows slouched in the front seats of the vehicles and ciphered that about half of them were drunk. I imagine that more than half of them thought that I was stupid. Since I believe that being stupid is generally more dangerous than being drunk, I wasn’t casting the first stone. But I wasn’t taking any chances either. I hopped fluffy and took a left on Central Avenue. Soon I would be at the river, then over the bridge and back to the safety of my 600 square foot apartment. My apartment smells like the guy that lived here before me. But he smelled better than Kintz Liquor’s bathroom so it was my destination of choice.

To get there though, I had to battle the wind roaring along the frozen surface of the Olentangy River. As roaring winds go it wasn’t all that bad. But it signaled that more snow is on the way and, on February 25th, snow has lost most of its charm for me. I love to run but I was glad that this run was only going to be four miles. I was running easily because I am tapering.

I am tapering because I want to throw a final punch at February. February and I don’t get along. This year I have fought my opponent with all that I have in me. If this was a 28 mile trail race February and I would run the last three miles together, give a manly fist-bump at the finish, and figure it had been a battle well-fought. But February isn’t giving in until the final round and so neither am I. The other day, while on a 13 mile run, I argued aloud with February. “Screw You February!” said I, “In 5 days you will be gone and I will live on”. February is hurtful though and responded “Go ahead and beat me. We both know that you lost the only thing that is important in life.”

February is a mean motherfucker. But I know that I could have filled the hole that was blown through me with drugs, or booze, or hatred. But instead I filled it with children and work and running. Lots and lots of running. And that is why this Sunday I will try to create a silver lining on the last day of the worst month of the worst season of the year, and of my life.

This Sunday I am going to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I’m going to go to Dublin, Ohio and run around an office park, on a one mile loop, 26.2 times. I’m not making that up. Such a race actually exists and, of course, it could only exist in February. February is nasty and so it will, of course, serve up another snowstorm tomorrow. I hope the City of Dublin has some road salt left. It seems like Delaware ran out weeks ago.

Boston intrigues me. My hometown used to hold a road race each spring in association with a large Sports Exposition hosted by Baldwin-Wallace College. Each year they would bring in a star runner and in 1978 they brought in Bill Rogers. At the expo Bill sat at an autograph table and, despite the fact that he was in the middle of a year in which he would win 50 of the 53 races he entered, he was ignored, while Bingo Smith, of the Cleveland Cavaliers, sat at a table next to him and had a line of autograph seekers 100 yards long. I was a shy 13 year old and, after I worked up the courage to approach Bill, we chatted for a while. He asked me about my running. He asked me what my favorite subject was in school. After a few minutes he looked around and said “You know Mark, I’m not needed here right now so lets take a break”. And that’s when I went for a 20 minute walk with Boston Billy. I asked him what it was like to win the Boston marathon and he told me that it was fun. That’s the word he used. Fun. He told me not to worry if my cross country times were slower than my track times. He told me they were supposed to be. Then he bought me an ice cream cone. Two weeks later he beat Jeff Wells by two seconds in a frantic lunge for the finish line in Beantown. Boston and its race have always seemed magical to me since that time.

I qualified for Boston 12 times when I was younger. I never actually ran the race though because I never had the money. I also never went because my “competitive” (I’m using the word loosely) marathon days coincided with the days before timing chips were invented and so I figured that losing 10 minutes at the start would wreck my race. Mainly though, I never went because I figured that I would always be able to. Youth makes you think that things will always remain constant. I was 23 years old when I ran my best marathon time. I was still gaining things in life and had never lost anything. My leg speed was intact, I grew stronger each year. Everyone I loved was still alive. All relationships were intact. Everything was growing and improving. Life’s stripping away process didn’t exist yet.

Twenty three year olds don’t write life’s scripts, however. Hip injuries, weight gain, and family health concerns took my running away and, several years later, when it returned, I could only run slowly. I could run long and so I did. But it was slow. Too slow for Boston. I was in Boston for a conference 12 years ago and jogged across Boston’s finish line. I teared up because I thought my last chance to run the race had passed.

The race on Sunday is called the “Last Chance for Boston” Marathon. It is traditionally held on the last day on which an individual can achieve a qualifying time. This year the Boston Marathon filled up very early. This caused the race directors to post a statement on their website stating that this year’s race would be a qualifier for Boston in 2011. They stated that “…because of this, our marathon is the ‘Last Chance for Boston’ in name only”.

I don’t know though. This one might be it for me. I run trails fairly well but I am very arthritic. Long runs require several days of recovery. Fast runs take even longer. Pavement just kills me. I am a physical therapist and, despite my ability to constantly shore up a weak area or shift pressure on one part of a joint to another location, I am running out of healthy places to lean. I am also 45 years old. Forty-five year olds get a ten-minute time increase rather than the typical “five-minute-per-five-year correction” offered at Boston. I feel certain that I am in my final years as a runner. It might be now or never for me. I am fit, I am relatively thin, I have no injuries and, most amazing of all…I am kind of fast in a relative sense for the first time in a long time. My main goal for the year is a Mohican finish. I will be doing heavy mileage on trails as soon as the weather breaks. That will be the end of my speed, however modest it may be at the moment. And, as I have learned so very many times lately, life offers just so many chances.

The day that I set my marathon personal best in 1986 I was trying to qualify for a marathon. It wasn’t Boston but it was a very prestigious race nonetheless. I lost my will at 24 miles and narrowly missed what I thought was an opportunity of a lifetime. I was wrong though. I guess I never thought that life could be so long. I don't regret missing the qualifying time for that race, but I have always regretted not running Boston. In the final minutes before the start of that race in 1986 my mother, who was in the late stages of lung disease, held my sweats while my Dad tied my shoes. I couldn’t tie them myself because my hands were shaking with fear and excitement. On that day I thought the race I was trying for was the most important thing in life.

This Sunday I will stand calmly at the start knowing that there is absolutely nothing important about running the Boston Marathon. The important thing is that in the middle of life’s coldest and loneliest times, and along its ugliest paths, we are given gifts. It is beautiful that the worst times can produce strength and the greatest challenges can be (if you believe Bill Rogers—and I do) “Fun”. I’m happy because for the first time in a long time I can try. And I’m grateful that I have come to believe that failing to celebrate, when given an opportunity to do so, might be a sin.

Regis

The first time I had a real chat with Regis was in the middle of a very dark night. It was during one of the Mohicans. I don’t recall which one and it doesn’t matter which year it was. I’m convinced that memories are supposed to blend into one another.

The Mohican Trails Group has done such wonderful work on the trails in the Mohican State Park and Mohican Wilderness area that it almost seems like a different place today. The trails still get muddy, but years ago a good rainstorm would wreck them. The year Regis and I connected was a wet one. I was sick and my race was reduced to a slow trudge. I walked for hours from the Bridle Staging Area, making my way toward Rock Point. I had seen no one in forever, and I was walking down an eight foot wide strip of six-inch deep mud and horse shit that stretched on for as long as my headlamp would allow me to see. Miles and miles earlier I had given up on my strategy of keeping to the edge of the trail. The edge wasn’t any firmer than the middle of the trail and at least the quagmire in the middle wasn’t full of thorns.

I was young and I was angry. I was angry at the mud and I was angry that it had rained. I was angry that my goal of breaking 24 hours was broken, and I was probably angry at God. Regis appeared from the gloom with his pacer and walked up beside me. He had given up on the edge of the trail as well. Then he told me that he was thinking of dropping out. I couldn’t have been more shocked if we had seen a UFO land. Even though I hadn’t chatted with Regis Shivers before, I knew him well enough to know that HE didn’t quit. Regis couldn’t quit. Regis was a legendary strong-man. He was a pillar. He was fast and he was tough. He had a daring nature and a glint in his eye. Superman was fictional but Regis was real.

Yesterday a bunch of Regis’ friends, and people who would have been Regis’ friends, gathered to run an annual race held in his memory. The run was 50 kilometers, or a bunch of other distances including a half-marathon, an 18 miler, a 21 miler, or a marathon. One runner decided to run 24 miles because that is a fine fine distance. Regis would have approved.

Race director Tanya Cady created the perfect environment in which we could remember our friend. Some runners jogged slowly, some raced their hearts out. Old and new friends reunited and ran together through heavy, slippery snow, slush, and ice. After the run most didn’t seem to want to leave. Regis would have loved the unique ultra running community that has grown in northeastern Ohio. I believe that he would also love the Western Reserve Trail Running Series, of which this event was a part. Facebook and Blogging unite this community today. But just a few years ago this community was held together by Regis, and a few others like him, who liked to run but enjoyed their friends even more than they enjoyed their sport. Runners are forgotten, records are re-written, but love lasts a good long while. That’s why Regis hasn’t left our hearts.

The last time I saw Regis was also at Mohican. It was several years ago. I have always been honest about my successes and failures at Mohican and I can honestly say that the last time I saw Regis I was simply carrying out a planned DNF. I was working on my doctoral degree and my training was nearly non-existent. I entered simply because I wanted to be a part of the event. I planned on running 30 miles and I made it to the 45 mile mark at the Bridle Staging area near where Regis and I had met years before. Regis was well into his battle with cancer at that time. He approached me as I was sitting on the ground, under a tree, waiting for a ride. Speaking through an electronic voice simulator, he urged me to get up and go on. I explained to him that I had met my goal. He smiled at me and told me that I should continue if I could. I now imagine that Regis knew that life’s opportunities can be limited. Regis really wanted me to continue toward my ten-time finisher’s buckle. He would have continued, but I didn’t. I smiled back at him and said “Nope. I’ll finish it next year and so will you. We’ll run it together”.

Regis died later that year. Every single runner I knew grieved. What kind of man must he have been when, at virtually every gathering of ultra runners people tell stories about him, quote him, and just generally miss him? Being a good runner isn’t enough to achieve such status. Sadly, being a good person isn’t even enough. Being famous will carry you for a generation or so. We remember Regis because he served, and loved, and supported. We loved Regis because, to him, life was fun.

I ran really hard yesterday. I figured that Regis might have enjoyed how tough this race was. I imagined, several times during the race, that he would have been happy that I was doing well. I ran hard because I needed to pound on a few demons that have been trying to latch on to me lately. Regis passed away after a courageous battle with cancer and I learned a few days ago that my brother has cancer and his prognosis doesn’t appear too promising. I’d love to chat with Regis about it, but I can’t. So I ran hard instead.

Regis never quit fighting the cancer. The night we met Regis didn’t quit either. I mumbled some sort of advice to him about how he should stare at his pacer’s back and just keep moving. He offered me some kind words as well, and in this way two guys with nothing left exchanged the gift of energy. If that sounds smarmy to you then you simply haven’t experienced life on the trail. Care creates energy. I don’t know why. I just know that it does. The next morning, and for years after that night, Regis credited me with getting him to the finish line. Regis always gave the credit away.

The things I will always remember about Regis are different from the things I originally thought I knew about him. He was a terrific runner and he really was very tough. But Regis was human. Humans sometimes want to quit. God came to earth as a human and, for at least one moment, he wanted to quit too. I think that Regis knew enough to live life for every minute that he was here. I have memories of Regis in motion but the image that I hold closest of this man were the times when he was very still. He seemed overwhelmingly in love with his wife, and he seemed to be surrounded by his kids and grandkids at all times. I have an image burned into my mind of him, seated in a lawn chair, surrounded by those that loved him. At these times he would speak of any topic other than himself. He knew that his running would end but his family would not. I recall closing in on him at the finish at Mohican another year while he walked slowly toward the finish with his young grandson, who couldn’t have been more than 5 years old. Regis must have been desperate to finish…I know I was. But instead of pushing for the finish a couple of hundred yards away they stopped to look at a bug on the ground. Then they held hands and walked along as though they were spending time on a playground. In hindsight I suppose they were.