"I wasn’t a truly genuine trail ultrarunner until March 7, 1992 at the
Wild Oak 50 near Harrisonburg, Virginia.  It was a rainy day and
simultaneously, while I was piddling on the run, chewing on an energy
bar and washing it down with Mountain Dew, my nose was dripping and I
farted.  That was the ultimate defining moment in my trail running
career, if not my entire life."
- Bob Boeder

"Perhaps the genius of ultrarunning is its supreme lack of utility. It makes
no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances
on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the
approval of peers. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted
from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense.
The ultra runners know this instinctively. And they know something else that
is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that
the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort. In running
such long and taxing distances they answer a call from the deepest realms of
their being -- a call that asks who they are ..."
- David Blaikie

"The people that I have met are not foolish; they are aware of how
tired and cold and hungry and frightened and hurting and discouraged
and disoriented and how possibly injured they will become. They know
they will face great physical, mental, emotional, and possibly
spiritual challenges as they make their way to the finish. This is
what they are racing against. This is their challenge. This is what
I admire."
- Carolyn Erdman

"The race continued as I hammered up the trail, passing rocks and trees
as if they were standing still."
- Red Fisher, Wasatch '86

I woke up this morning at 5.43, and instead of grunting and going back to sleep, I reached over, turned on the radio, and watched the clock move towards 6am. As the nine resolved into a zero, I thought ahead one week. That’s when I’ll be starting: 6am next Friday.

Tick tock, or in this world of digital,”…. ….”

I ran 20 miles yesterday as my final long run before the 100 in two weeks. I mixed things up a little, partially to test out a couple of things (like whether or not I’d hurl drinking Ensure (turns out: no)) and because I wanted to go easy and slow (and so ran just with water and s-caps instead of Accelerade). I left in the late afternoon and finished 4 hrs +.

It was, without a doubt, one of the worst runs of my life. I can’t explain it. I mean, I know what variables were different, but some of what went wrong just couldn’t be so easily explained away. It is true that my legs could still be wiped out from the 50M a few weeks ago; that going from a protein based drink to water confused my body’s chemistry; that introducing something like Ensure further confused me; that dinner and wine from the previous day still hadn’t processed; that I didn’t take an Advil; and that I forgot (how, I’ve no idea) my glide.

But 12 miles in I was done. Feet hurt, ankles hurt, attitude pinwheeled from ecstatic to depressed. In other words, a truly crapalicious slog.

My mental game around the 100 hasn’t been a problem. I’ve been all systems go. This worries me a bit, so I’m going to ratchet back and give my body (and my mind) a little time to pull themselves together.

Then. Well, then, I’m back in the game.