Peter BG Shoemaker

Running to the end

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http://ultra.petershoemaker.com/2009/06/running-to-the-end/

A week ago I finished my running of Tom’s Run – a 200 mile relay race hosted by the Coast Guard. It is run from Cumberland, MD to Washington, DC along the C&O Canal towpath. I had set out to run the back hundred – from Williamsport, MD to the end. I managed 63.8 miles over about 20 hrs. It is not the result I’d hoped for, nor the experience I’d prepared for, but it was unlike anything I’d ever done, and I’m thankful for it.

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3 Responses to “Running to the end”


  1. reb
    on Jun 7th, 2009
    @ 9:52 pm: 

    wow. really. wow…


  2. KvS
    on Jun 16th, 2009
    @ 8:49 am: 

    As always, this is remarkable–I have widely shared. How are you?


  3. AJ Johnson
    on Jul 26th, 2009
    @ 12:05 pm: 

    Hi Peter,

    I haven’t checked in for a while and just got done reading you report. As always, well written and well done regardess of the out come of your run. You really didn’t disclose your injury that you sustained. Sometimes it is better to live to fight another day. There are plenty of 100′s out there waiting for you too. I just ran my second Vermont 100 and learned a lot about myself as well. At mile 93 I had an almost total system shut down and experienced pain like I never have before. Luckily I was only 7 miles out so I was able to claw my way in (race report not done yet). If I was at mile 63.8, would have had to give in to the injury and live to fight another day too. Take care and I check back in more often. I saw the quote below some time ago and liked it due to believing it applies to this crazy thing we do called ultras.

    Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
    – Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Coordinates

I've spent the last 15 or so years exploring the borders of markets, innovation, curiosity, technology, culture, society, and policy, with very little regard for passports or visas. While my early travels are documented elsewhere, I now spend my time with Pinyon Labs, a strategic foresight research firm. We do spectacularly interesting and innovative stuff in transportation and energy for private industry, government, and non-profits.

Elsewhere

I've been slowly trying to consolidate the virtual me, spread as it has been across the nets. Most of my writing (at least my better stuff) is available at atelier tushu, my workshop and exhibition space. There too you'll find a smattering of painting, photography, and sound sculpture past, present, and future. Elsewhere is my writing on running really, really far. There is also an irregularly updated collection of cultural ephemera called CultureLust that I maintain when I think about it.

You + Me

Email: peter dot shoemaker at gmail dot com
For the paranoid or exceptionally well-informed: I can be contacted securely through any public key database.
Twitter: pshoemaker / pinyonlabs
Skype: peter.bg.shoemaker
LinkedIn: pshoemaker
Also: there is a facebook account that I maintain for cultural reasons. You'd be better off being a friend elsewhere first.

© 2011 Peter BG Shoemaker. All Rights Reserved.