I am of the nature to grow old, I cannot avoid aging.
Buddha

I feel it more each day, the creaks and groans that emanate from various regions of my body. Injuries and insults I have hurled at myself linger long past the time when inflicted. The morning brings stiffness that demands conscious effort to loosen.

The realization that aging is an intrinsic part of life provokes feelings of sadness; this knowledge gives me the ability to take action, providing the foresight to know that I need to keep living and enjoying the privilege of a mobile and healthy body. I can appreciate the phases my body will go through during this journey with the understanding that each step is just as beautiful as the changing light of the sun as it makes its arc across the sky from dawn and into twilight.

Because the decay of this body is inevitable does not mean I should sit back and wring my hands in anguish. Though the aging process will continue unabated, I can be a part of deciding how it will progress. If I treat my body with kindness and care, it will respond. If I have high expectations of what it can do, it will rise to meet them, despite its protestations. As I surrender to aging I will do it not as a defeated warrior with my head bowed in shame, but as a lover engaged in a heartfelt embrace with bittersweet tears streaming down my face.

First draft originally written 3.30.14

This is part four of a series answering the question of Why I
Run

Running has been humbling recently. I am one week away from the Everglades Ultras and I already feel like I've got a DNF (Did Not Finish). Last week I struggled to finish a 17 mile training run. My exhaustion brought me to tears by my perceived failure. I felt as if I had fallen so far. How could someone who completed a mountainous 100 mile run through thunder and hail struggle so much to finish doing 17 miles on flat terrain? No matter how much I might want to hang on to who I was just 8 months ago, that person is gone. The body I now inhabit is not the same as the one of last summer. Running's latest lesson for me is about impermanence.

When I signed up for The Everglades Ultras, I planned to run the 50 mile version of the race, but I’ve come to realize that just completing the 30 mile variation will be a struggle for me right now. I worked hard for six months preparing to run The Bryce 100. I was focused in my approach to training and got up to run despite the cold of winter, the snow and ice on the ground, or my own desire to just sleep in a little later. My body and mind adapted and got stronger. I changed who I was.

But nothing stays the same, no matter how much we wish that it would. In the months since Bryce, I approached my running as a casual endeavor and when I began preparing for the Everglades Ultras, I allowed a busy schedule and lack of discipline to prevent me from putting in the miles required to be fully prepared. Once again, I changed who I was.

Life is change. Nothing stays still. Everything is in motion, including the composition of our bodies and minds. Everyday the decisions we make affect who we are and how we impact the people and the world around us. Achievements don't last, but fortunately neither do failures. Each moment we have a choice, and those choices effect a change in who we are.

Impermanence can be a disturbing aspect of life, but it also creates new opportunities. We are not stuck with who we are and we can change our situation if we are not satisfied with it. Change will happen regardless of what we do or don't do so we might as well take some responsibility for what direction we move in. To be healthy, we must choose wisely what we put in our mouths and what we do with our bodies. To live a fulfilling life, we must decide how to spend the limited amount of time we are allotted. We can choose to be positive, even when our initial reactions to a situation might dictate otherwise. Each choice, each decision we make causes a change, and over time, these changes help to create who we are.

Are there changes you want to make in your life?

What choices will lead to that change?

Mind in Motion
Like Leaves Blowing in Wind
Come Home Now To Rest

After meditating the last few mornings, I’ve been doing a prayer of gratitude and asking for the strength to “be my best self”. This is the self I aspire to be. The self who is good and kind to those he interacts with, who thinks before he speaks and does not use words that would bring harm to others. I want to be the self who follows through on the things he commits to.

Too often the self I have been lately is distracted, my attention moving rapidly from one meaningless thing to another. I have allowed the whims of my taste buds to dictate what I have put into my mouth and allowed boredom or stress to regulate how much I consume, whether that be in the form of food or digital distractions. I have made my lists, and then ignored them for weeks on end, choosing instead to chase down rabbits in long, dark holes. I have chosen the quick fix instead of the things that could add value and knowledge to my life.

I want to be that guy who crossed the finish line at Bryce Canyon. I want to be the guy who put in the daily work needed to accomplish a goal, who did the little things that were necessary to get where he wanted to go, who sacrificed doing the things that might have brought fleeting pleasure for the tasks that brought a life long reward. I want to be the guy who faced pain and difficulty and still managed to be nice to his crew, to tell jokes, and do a little dance even though the road ahead was still long and difficult and soon to be dark. I was my best self that day and now I want that for every day.

Words to describe what it was like to complete the Bryce 100 have been difficult to come by. How do I summarize a 31 hour 37 minute roller coaster ride that was 6 months of intense training, years of previous running experience, and countless miles in the making?

I guess I could start with some facts. My crew and I saw a bit of everything in terms of the weather. A cool morning start with the smoke of a controlled forest burn in the air gave way to alternating periods of mostly sunny skies and light rain. At one point, we experienced an intense thunder hail storm with pea sized chunks of ice pouring down on us and lightening strikes within less than a mile of where we were standing. Leaving the comfort of the aid station heading into that mess on my way to the high point of the course at around 9,500 feet felt almost comical at the time; I was already trying to run 100 miles and now this? Thankfully, the same clouds that brought us the occasionally wet conditions also acted as a blanket, preventing some of the day’s heat from escaping and keeping nighttime temperatures in the 40’s instead of the predicted 30’s. After the dawn of day two on my feet, it was warm and the sun intense. Afternoon storms again arrived, thankfully after I had finished.

The scenery on the course was stunning while the difficulty of the terrain was unrelenting. When I told fellow runners that this was my first 100 miler, the response from veterans was universal: “you picked a hard one.” The route was a mix of single and double track, and forest service roads with around 19,000 feet of elevation gain. The climbing and subsequent descending never let up until crossing the finish line. I was grateful that I found the trail portions to generally be less technically difficult than the wet, rocky, and root strewn paths of the Appalachians. The rain did create some extremely slick areas, but these quickly regained some solidity in the dry, high desert air.

In the end, none of the above really matters. When I reached the starting line, I knew that there was no reason physically that I would not be able to complete the distance. I worked with a coach and was in the best running shape I have ever been in. If properly prepared physically, running 100 miles is easy. All you have to do is just keep moving forward. The harder part is convincing yourself that you can do it and that there is a good enough reason to keep going. In the early miles of the event, it still seemed impossible to me that I would be able to push my body that far. The two things kept me going were a stubborn desire not to quit and a lot of support from both my friends and family who were there at the race and those that were with me from afar.

I’ve dabbled in a lot things in my life, whether that be different colleges and degree programs, employment opportunities, or hobbies. For many of those things, when the going has gotten tough, I’ve decided that maybe there was something better out there for me to do. I have quit many things, and though I do not regret most of those decisions, I was determined that barring physical injury, running 100 miles was not going to be one of them. I wanted to prove to myself that I could move through struggle and difficulty and not succumb to the urge to bail. Yes, quitting is something I have done in life, but I needed to demonstrate that my past actions do not mean that I must define myself as a quitter. These thoughts were with me during much of the run.

My resolve to not quit was strong, but even so, I can scarcely imagine completing this endeavor without the aid of my support system. I saw my crew every 20 miles or so and they took really good care of me, providing both logistical and emotional support. Every time I left an aid station where they were present, my spirits were uplifted and my energy renewed. For the last 50 miles, I had a pacer to keep me on track and to provide some needed company during the night and the difficult miles once the sun had risen again. Completing the Bryce 100 was not something I did, it was something we did.

It seems that after such an epic undertaking, there should be more to say, some profound life lesson learned during the depths of the night while dancing at the edge of exhaustion. Perhaps once more time has passed some buried insight gleaned while running the Bryce 100 will resurface. But maybe not. Like most stories, the ending was anti-climatic: I ran for close to a day and a half without sleep, and then I stopped, and the experience was over. The old cliché holds true, it was always about the journey and not the destination. Along that journey, I got to experience countless beautiful moments during my training runs, connect deeply with friends who shared time with me both on and off the trail, and learn once again that we are all far more capable than we let ourselves believe.

Thank You

And now for the Academy Awards acceptance speech….

Paul Morris: Thanks for letting me pace you at the Pinhoti 100. Experiencing that event with you provided the last bits of motivation I needed to convince me to try and run 100 miles. Thanks also for letting me tag along with you for a good portion of the Georgia Death Race for some excellent hill training.

Sean Meissner: If anybody needs a coach, I can’t recommend Sean highly enough. Thanks Sean for working with my ever changing schedule and crafting a training plan that taught me that you don’t have to log a ton of weekly miles in order to prepare to run 100 miles, so long as they are quality miles.

Dr. Edwin Gray and Patsy Gray: Thanks Dad for leading by example and demonstrating the importance of physical fitness and making it a part of my childhood. Thanks to both of you for your support of my not so conventional lifestyle and always being there when I needed you.

Corey Hadden: Corey thanks for the all the time we have spent together on the trails and for coming along with me for a portion of my 12 hour training run.

Susan Drakeford: Susan, thank you for your friendship and running with me while training for Bryce.

Greg Gillett: Thanks Greg for the miles of conversation we have logged together.

Steve Ackerman, Sue Pegrume, Cameron Richardson, the aforementioned Greg Gillett, Anthony Francis, Shawn Robbins, Corbin Massey, Julie Burns and the North Carolina Outward Bound School: The spark, inspiration, and ass kicking I received while a student of yours profoundly changed me, transforming me from someone without energy and enthusiasm into a person intoxicated with the possibilities that life has to offer. Thank you for the care and guidance you provided me at a time when I desperately needed it.

Rich Roll: The Rich Roll Podcast provided me with hours of inspiration while training. Rich’s goal is to “inspire and empower you to discover, uncover, unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self”, and his conversations with elite athletes, nutrition experts, entrepreneurs, social activists, and everyday heroes do just that.

Thanks to all of you who sent out words of encouragement via social media while I was running. My crew relayed your words and they became a great source of strength and inspiration.

Thanks to My Crew

Trish Haitz: Who else would floss the dirt out from between my toes but Trish Haitz? I did not ask Trish to make the long trek out to Utah to be a part of my crew, she just showed up like she always does for her friends. Trish, I do not have the words to express how touched I was by this act of friendship. Thank you.

Katie Dunn: 38 miles together. Thanks Katie for the conversation, the periods of silence, and the laughter. Thanks for staying with me through the night and the heat of the following day as my energy and mood roller coastered back and forth. Thanks for your gentle reminders to keep eating and drinking.

Adventure Dog: It’s always good to enter an aid station and see a happy dog running towards you. Thanks Baloo for lifting the spirits of not only me, but many other runners and crew members.

And most importantly…

Thank you to my beautiful bride, Mary Fingeroff. Thanks for your unwavering support for whatever crazy endeavor or idea I’m currently obsessed with. Thank you for running with me for 12 of the toughest miles of the course as night was falling and so was my energy. Thank you for putting up with weekend after weekend of me being gone many hours training and then being tired for the rest of the day. Thanks for giving up whole days to follow along and support my long training runs. Thanks for running beside me, wherever life takes us.

This is part three of a series answering the question of Why I
Run.

My life is full of noise. There is the near constant hum of a machine working to keep me at my desired temperature and the sounds that manage to penetrate the insulated boxes I live and travel within. My field of view is noisy with messages to buy this or believe that. There is the noise that I invite in, like the radio I’ve turned on that I’m not even listening too and the stream of texts, status updates, and emails that I allow to fill my days. And that is just the external noise.

Internally, the noise can be even louder, a barrage of thoughts and feelings, self-critiques, and observations about everyone and everything, creating a cacophony of distorted realities. The days pass with my mind continuously turning over the past, planning (or more likely just worrying about) the future, or jumping from distraction to distraction in an attempt to stop thinking about past and future. All of it is just noise.

But there are moments when I am running when all of the noise drops away. The quiet of the forest envelops me, and sometimes, if I’m fortunate, my internal chatter settles like debris drifting to the bottom of a still pool of water and for brief moments, there are no more thoughts. At these times, there is nothing but the sensations of my body moving with every living and non-living thing surrounding me and there is no separation between any of it. Thought becomes irrelevant, the past and future merge into the now. This is why I run. I run to find the silence where all is one.

 Today I’m going to run 30 miles. I say this not in boast but in a state of nervous trepidation. Suddenly my knee, which has felt fine for the vast majority of my training is giving a dull throb, there are butterflies in my stomach, and the tightness of worry across my brow. Every muscle seems tighter than I would like it to be.

I have chosen a challenging course to run for the 30. My mind won’t let go of the idea of modifying it to something easier. I want to be excited, but am too obsessed with thoughts of pain and suffering.

This is what must be faced on the road to running 100. Doubt, dread, nerves, the sensations your body presents you with to try and convince you that maybe this isn’t such a good idea. When you know your body is capable of something, then the mind becomes the only thing preventing you from accomplishing something. Let’s hope that today, I am stronger than my mind.

This is a piece written back in May. I had been in an intense period of training during the fall of 2013, culminating in four ultra marathons in four months including the Lookout Mountain 50 Miler and Mount Mitchell Challenge. After the last event in late February, I took an intentional, and much needed break from running that lasted until the day I wrote this.

Yesterday I Became a Runner Again.

It was a short, three mile jaunt around the neighborhood. The small hills felt hard, yet somehow exhilarating. The pain in my left Achilles tendon was still there, though I had hoped that the two month layoff would cause it to disappear. I felt slow, even awkward at times, a baby taking tentative first steps. All this, but most important, I felt like me. I am a runner.

Moving over land by my own power, shifting my body position as the terrain rises, falls, and undulates before and underneath me just feels so right. After the tumult of a stressful week, to run again brought tears to my eyes. Running is my release; release from whatever weight is bearing down on me. It is a lifting, at least temporarily, of burdens. It is how I return to myself.

“I used to be a runner”.

This had been my ongoing joke with Mary every time we had seen someone running during the last few months. The break did make it seem as if that had been another person, another life. Yesterday, running again, I was again amazed to think that I had done this activity, that at this moment felt so difficult on a flat paved trail, for fifty miles up and over mountains and through the slop of rain drenched earth. Who was that fool? That fool was me. The best parts of me. The part that does not mind putting in long hours and working hard to achieve what I set out to do. The part of me that will keep pushing through, even though the task is difficult and the end result may not seem worth it in the moment. The part of me that can find joy and happiness in the midst of suffering. The part of me that knows that whatever difficulties I may be facing will pass if I just keep moving forward.

I am a runner again.

We were traveling through the depths of the night with the frigid air of winter’s first cold front easily penetrating our thin layers of running attire. I was supporting my friend Paul by running the last 30 miles of the Pinhoti 100 with him. In the flickering fire light at the mile 82 aid station, I noticed another runner, sitting on a stump, hands holding up her head, elbows on knees, anguished eyes providing a steady flow of tears streaming down her cold flushed cheeks. “We won’t see her again,” I thought to myself. 26 hours, 51 minutes, and 58 seconds after Paul began his journey, he crossed the finish line at the high school in Pelham, Alabama, and not long after that, the girl from the aid station came around that final loop running strong, her face bursting with a smile.

I Run to Be Inspired By Others

Though the act of running is a solitary activity, there is also a strong sense of community surrounding it. That group includes fellow runners, the communities in which races are held, and the friends and family who lend support. The help and inspiration of others can be instrumental in getting through the tough times and completing an endeavor as difficult as an ultra-marathon.

Running long distances is not easy. I don’t have any idea what was going on with the runner at mile 82. Was she physically hurting or battling some internal demon at that late hour of the night? Most likely it was both. Regardless, to witness her resilience, and that of others who compete in these events inspires me and provides motivation to face my own struggles. The people who come out to lend aid also inspire me to be a more giving and compassionate person. If you are a fellow runner or someone supporting one in a race or the long training period leading up to one, thanks for all you do and for giving me another reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

If you want to read more about why, I run check out Part One of this series.

Regular readers of this blog might wonder what changed in the time between Committed: The Quest to Run 100 Miles Begins and the previous entry when I was questioning why I run. The answers are many, and I hope to provide them over a series of short posts.

I Run to Explore New Places

Running allows me to see places I would probably not get to otherwise. In early December I ran on a trail only 20 minutes from my apartment and got to see parts of the mountains here I had never visited before. I wrote about my experience during that run and the insights it provided me on the Dirtbag Way. It was a true adventure, and yet I was home by early afternoon. As a hike it would have taken me all day to complete the route, and unfortunately these days, I don’t often have that much time to spare. Running allowed me make the journey in only a few hours.

While traveling, running has given me an excellent opportunity to get to know my surroundings. A few years ago while visiting Portland, Oregon I looked up some running routes using Map My Run and discovered one that took me 10 miles almost entirely on greenways and allowed me to traverse downtown and the parks that line both sides of the Willamette River.

Running the Bryce Canyon 100 will be a great way to explore a new environment. I will get to see the sun rise and fall over the canyon walls, and run under a canopy of stars during the depths of the desert night. I will experience Bryce Canyon in a way that few others get the chance to.

For me running is about exploration, and that journey is not limited to the physical world I am traveling through. More importantly, running creates the opportunity for me to explore my inner landscape. I get the chance to know my internal peaks and valleys, learning along the way what my body and mind are truly capable of. Though this exploration can often be difficult and uncomfortable, it is also filled with moments of supreme joy and wonder, and those times make the journey well worth the effort.