Wide Open Scary

     The weather is perfect in the low 40s with moderate humidity and drinkable air that is crisp and clean. Engaged in an early miles stride that is coming unexpectedly easy enroute to finishing my eleventh consecutive week of 100 miles+ I am feeling a bit timid.

    “Should the run be unfolding this comfortable with almost 70 miles passed on my feet in just four days? Is this a physical setup for injury? How is the turnover so mindless and fluid?”

     This situational freeform gift of seamless running is wide open scary. It is a physical and mental representation of circumstances that say, “Here you go. It is exactly what you wanted.”

     You would think it would be a point of ecstasy, and that feeling does well-up inside you but it is only temporary. In tandem with that fading sentiment surfaces an empty palette. Now I am holding a paintbrush with all the colors that have ever existed and the ability to paint anything. What am I supposed to be doing?

     I could play it physically conservative and quit at 10 miles. While contemplating the next move, within just 200 meters of home I am alternating between two grass rectangles each about a quarter-mile around, broken apart with a short walking break on pavement, just going back and forth, back and forth and back and forth. The previous sentence is not a typo, it is a true route representation. Miles eleven, twelve, thirteen and fourteen have slipped past unconsciously during this internal dialogue.

     After crossing 16 I have committed to leaving this relaxed routine double ring and have chosen to push harder on other neighborhood grounds. Maybe that is the answer? To set up another burden to break down this complacency, to try to run into the infamous runner’s wall.

“This guy is a wrecking machine and he's hungry!” – Mickey Goldmill (played by Oliver Burgess Meredith) in Rocky III (1982)

     Images and thoughts of this scene and its meaning play out in my head. Throughout the endurance phase and up to this moment of transferring these notes, Rocky III of the first five movies in the series has been my favorite.

     Approaching 19 miles another motivator I recently added (to what has become a varied-type collection) is moving to the forefront of my consciousness. It is the book Out There: A Story of Ultra Recovery by David Clark. Sure, you could easily be impressed with the differences in his before and after picture clearly displaying a man who has lost over 150 pounds, but it is the story – the path – that is the real brick and mortar. Here is just the first sentence of the Amazon description, “David Clark went from the rock bottom of bankruptcy, addiction and obesity to becoming an accomplished athlete.”

     After crossing 19 miles I am looking at my phone battery and making the commitment, “If David Clark can beat addiction and finish the Badwater Ultramarathon, I can stretch twenty miles to twenty-two anytime I get this far on a training effort.” And all I have read in his book up to this moment of making this decision is the cover and interior review comments, the foreword by ultra-beast Marshall Ulrich and the first chapter. And the first chapter happens to be only one full page; it is that powerful. Twenty-two miles then finishes at 22.60, and RunKeeper adds support posting this message in specific emphasizing punctuation with a picture of a cartoon jet, “Flyin’ 1:10 faster than your usual pace for this distance!”