Memorial Day weekend in the Nation’s capital. We have Rolling Thunder this time every year, which brings thousands upon thousands of motorcycles to DC and the surrounding burbs. We have a panoply of memorials, statues, plaques, inscriptions, and stones honoring those who’ve given themselves to military service and to the country. We have three national cemeteries within easy driving range including the incomparable, albeit still incompletely appreciated, Arlington.

We also have battlefields – national parks many of them – that have preserved the horrible geography of closely waged war far better than any school day lecture. These places, with their rolling hills, thick forests, expanses of wide fields, demonstrate the committed nature of warfare that placed men – many hundreds of men – in the midst of an impossibly complex calculus where whether you survived an engagement had little to do with anything other than the number of lead projectiles in the air, the direction they were traveling, and how many other soft bodies were between you and any one of those projectiles. This can really only be appreciated as you walk across the sharp liminality of the forest edge into the hot sun and exposed earth.

As often as I can, I run one of these battlefields – Manassas. I run Manassas because it offers a good selection of trail – crushed rocks, pounded dirt, grass, single track shuffle – and some reasonable elevation gain and loss. I also run it because moving through those forests and fields, up and down those hills, my eyes are drawn to the sight lines of July 1861. I notice when strands of trees block views of hilltops, when bends in the protective bed of a dry creek straighten suddenly with steep walls on either side.

Most importantly for me, however, it is not what I see, but what I hear. To move through this landscape and hear nothing but raptors on the wind, the even fall of my feet, and my increasingly more regular and practiced breathing fills me with a sense of thanksgiving and profound admiration. Because I know full well, that 147 years ago, these fields, these forests, this place was filled with the crack of musket balls, the sounds of artillery as it hurled pound after pound of lead across ever smaller spaces, the cries of heroism and inspiration, of pain and of despair, the thunder of hooves, and the harsh metallic grind of charges aborted, and calvary unmounted.

I run here because of what I cannot hear. And to honor those who have.

So, according to the little widget in the sidebar, I have 3 months and 19 days until the race. My long run of 10 miles yesterday puts me exactly where I want to be at this stage in my training. Throughout, the focus has been on not damaging myself, and aside from a nagging little pain in my right achilles, everything feels the way it ought. A large part of this has been fighting my urge to run as far as I can every long run. Instead, I’ve been focusing on running the plan, keeping mileage spikes to a controllable level. This is not always easy.

Take yesterday’s run, for example. While I should have been running 10 miles, because I took a week and a half off earlier, my revised schedule said 8. Yesterday was gorgeous, and I drove out to the Manassas battlefield for my 8 miles along the trails. Manassas has two distinct sets of trails, the first, aptly named First Manassas is about 5.3 and meanders through the major engagements of the first battle. It is well marked, and originating at the visitor’s center, is by far the more popular of the two trails. It features a nice combination of forest and field, single track and wide track.

Second Manassas is quite a different story. The trail alternates between well marked and disturbingly chaotic. Second Manassas is also complicated by a much larger set of subtrails, sightseeing diversions, and working farm roads. And, if by some quirk of fate, you manage to stay on the main trail, the circuit is about 7 and a little miles. That’s on a regular day. Yesterday was not.

First off, we’ve had ungodly amounts of rain over the last couple of weeks so things are wet. By wet, I mean quicksand-like mud that oozes over the tops of your shoes, and streams that have – on their own accord – found much more interesting ways to get where they are going than the boring old stream bed they’ve flowed through for the last 20 years. Secondly, about 3 miles in, a landscaping project designed to make the environs look much as they did at the time of the battle, but resembling at this point nothing less than a cyclone devastated couple of square miles, closed the trail. Past the closed sign were felled trees, washed out trails, unkempt supports, and the unrestrained and unchallenged supremacy of the local food chain. So I ran right in.

Here’s the thing with a landscape devoid of recognizable landmarks, natural tells, trail signage, and any-which-way stream flows: it is impossible to only run 8 miles. No, really. I mean, I guess I could’ve stopped when my watch said 1 hour 20 mins, but then I’d be standing in the midst of a pile of broken trees, looking forlorn, and wondering if any of those funny looking bugs were edible.

Instead, I ran down trails that weren’t trails, up trails that were trails but leading exactly in the wrong direction, and spent an ungodly amount of time turning around, fashioning sextants from poplar branches, scrounging for magnetic ore and a needle, and other where-in-the-hell-am-I activities. Finally, and purely by the power of elimination (thank you scientific method), I managed to land on a bit of trail I did recognize, and started motoring into the finish.

As mile number nine clicked over, and I could see my finishing point off in the distance, I realized that I was really happy. Not so much for knowing where I was, because face it: in this world of gps, google maps, and “find out anything in a second” digitalia, being lost is actually a wonderful thing. No, I was happy because I’d just spent the last hour and half doing nothing but moving through the forest and fields, listening to nothing but my own breath and the steady cadence of my footfalls, seeing nothing but the late spring colors of nature and the hawks on the wind.

What a way to spend a Saturday morning, and what a way to feel 3 months and 19 days out.

A month or so ago, a woman named Rochelle Frazeur posted to the ultra list seeking people to help crew on a 200 mile run she was planning to do.  Having never crewed, and preparing to ask some of my own friends to crew for me, I figured I needed to throw my hand up/hat in the ring and offer whatever clueless services I might be able to provide.  Much to my surprise Chelle responded positively, and a week or so later I found myself on Team UltraChelle.

I volunteered to drive, to run, to bike, and to lance the occasional blister.

We start at 8pm on Wednesday and end at around 11am on Saturday.  We don’t come off the trail.  We don’t futz around.  We just move inexorably forward (and least she does; I hope to hell I can).

So, I’m beginning to prep up (aside from running and buying little bits here and there for my bike), and feeling pretty good.  One of the things that got me thinking in a not quite, but possibly could be nervous way, was what sort of schedule we were going to need to manage in order to get Chelle across the finish line, and her crew where they needed to be.  For the two of us (Tom and I) who will shadow her the entire time, I was worried about rest and the like.  Then, just the other day, I received an email from Chelle, that among a number of juicy bits of information, had this beaut:

We’ll rest every 6 hours for 20 min. and 45 min every 24 hours.

For 60 hours!

Education has begun.