No mystery that I’ve been running for 20 years. Also no mystery that I’ve not really taken it very seriously. I’ve never really competed, and after that marathon in 1998, I’ve not worked towards a running goal with any seriousness. I’ve run lots and lots of miles, sure. But with modest goals, and few indicators that I was really getting any better; my running was about doing something I enjoyed and that was about it. This weekend I had an epiphany of sorts.
I’m in Atlanta, and I went over to the Chattahoochee to run some flatlander miles. I was a couple of miles into the run when I noticed a path veering off to the right and heading straight up a mountain. I’d been clocking a good 9:50 m/m pace which explains why I was already 120 feet up before the “what the freakin’ hell?” side of my brain caught up with my “owwwww, look at that, something nasty to run up, weeeeeee” side of my brain. But, by then, it was too late.
This was good gnarly mountainous running at its best: camouflaged slick rock, gullies of loose dirt, malevolent roots, lots of attitudinal altitude, some nice views, and only a few other walkers/ runners/ crawlers. Getting the crap pounded out of my quads was something I really needed, and I could tell most of the trails I’d been on for the last few months had some hills here and there, but were nothing like the gut busting, bone jarring ascents and descents of good rough trail running.
So I ran to end of the trail, turned around, ran back down, did another couple of miles on the flat, looked at my watch and saw two things. Thing one was that I’d clicked off the 10 miles I’d set out to do. Thing two was that I’d kept a 10:40 pace for the whole run. A 10:40 pace for the whole run. The whole run with the mountain included.
“Holy shiiiiiiiit”, I muttered. This training stuff does work.
For many years now I've left a trail of flecks across the Internet. Just begun novels; explorations of culture, music, writing, food, the future, mountains, long distances, shallow oceans, deep canyons; oddly-composed music; even more oddly-constructed poetry; impassioned editorial; strident analysis, and a slew of images, sounds, and scribbles. Most of this has passed into the aether, waiting only for some semi-sentient algorithm to pull it from obscurity twenty years hence. In the meantime, there is this lodestone, gathering what it can.