Why The Long Posts?

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Saturday I have a 50 kilometer run planned. Last year it took about four hours and forty-five minutes. Much of it will likely be run alone; my normal training partners are in better shape this year and will likely run a faster pace than I will be comfortable with. Commonly I am asked what I do to fill such an expansive period of time. Do I listen to music? Do I listen to audio books? Half-jokingly I often respond that do a lot of thinking. Although there is an edge of sarcasm to this, it is the truth. For several hours my mind is often engaged in quiet contemplation.

Speaking of which, I was once taught to meditate using the following technique. Imagine an expansive floor; mine is always a simple black and white tiled one. With a mental broom sweep away all thoughts except the one you wish to focus on. As outside thoughts drift in, keep sweeping them away. The floor should be clean except that one thing so that your focus is unimpeded. This process of maintaining a clean mind seems to happen naturally on the long solo runs. The background is breaths and strides instead of dichromatic tiles, and there is room only to allow in the plainest of thoughts. For much of the time the idea is merely present, and I would say that little thinking actually occurs. Instead I merely allow the thought to be an uncertainty worthy of examination.

It goes without saying that we live in a world where we are constantly being bombarded by information: some relevant, most inane. All of it competes for our attention, and we try to focus on much of it. The effect is a splintering of the mind. I see this everyday as my students try to work in class while listening to music. For years I have struggled with whether I should even allow it in class while the kids do independent tasks. The real issue is not whether the kids can work with music being pumped into their heads but whether they can think. Unfortunately school has become completing tasks not thinking through questions and problems. Can we really devote our full attention to a task if we are not given the mental space to consider it clearly and without competition?

A second common question that I am asked about this project and specifically the blog is why the posts are so long. Most are in essay format. Why not turn the blog into a Facebook page? Why not tweet about the runs once I am done: “50K, OMG my legs are toast, glad its over”. While this would surely simplify my life and likely also reach a much broader audience, this project, the Endurance Scholarship, is at its soul is about time. The kids who I want to reward have stayed focused on surmounting their obstacle for, in some cases, many years. They have swept away distractions because they knew that there was one thing that deserved their complete attention. For me, accomplishing my goal is also about time and the process that inevitably occurs as a result: a mulling over, a deep contemplation, and an unwillingness to accept the first thing as the best. No one I know could get off the couch and run 50 miles without a serious investment of time first. You cannot cheat in the process and still expect to finish.

Therefore the long runs are processes of discovery. They peel back the layers of strengths and weaknesses and expose, only after the passage of serious time and effort, what is really at the core. This is why the posts are not blurbs. You cannot explore in the 140 characters of a tweet. A Facebook post is not a thought but a bullet-pointed statement let alone a process of exploration. You only really uncover what you believe by trying to fully articulate it. These long posts are attempts to strip down an idea and reveal not just the heart of the issue in a way that is bumper sticker ready but to also consider the layers that lead to that condensed statement.

It is true that I do a lot of thinking on the long runs. Ideas are rolled across the mind the way wine should be drunk. A single glass is swirled and sniffed. The liquid is rolled across the tongue and aerated against the palate. Consumption is the last and least of the steps. The same is true for the thinking that occurs. Settling on the result is like swallowing the wine. It is merely the end of the larger and more meaningful process. Sometimes endurance is not about outlasting something that you wish would end but wishing something would last because the end is the least meaningful part.

Julie Moss competing in the 1982 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon

What Is Wrought From Failure

I have been thinking about Julie Moss quite a bit recently. Even if you don’t know her name, it is reasonable to assume that you have seen her mesmerizing finish to the 1982 Hawaii Ironman where she stumbled, staggered, and then crawled across the finish line—only to be passed in the final yards by the woman who had reeled her in slowly and ultimately won. As easy as it is to be moved deeply by her profound will to finish, I believe that there is more to her finish than drama.

Most of us will never come in first or second or even third in any competitive event of real substance. The majority of us live decidedly mediocre lives in the sense that our accomplishments are rarely noteworthy on a grand scale. Last year I placed 14^th in the Capital Peak Ultra, more than an hour and a half behind the top three finishers and 14^th out of 82 who finished. When I was in high school, our rowing team placed seventh in the New England Interscholastic Rowing Association Championships. Both finishes are respectable but generally average athletic highlights.

I am proud of my 14^th place finish not because of the actual position or the time but because I did relatively well as a “non-runner”. It is true that I trained for and had several marathons under my hydration belt by the time I laced up to train for Capital Peak. However running is not something that I identify as being my primary pursuit. Looking back through my training log from last year, I found that I was only running, at most, three times a week with a maximum weekly mileage of just over 40 miles. I don’t read running magazines, weigh the merits of one shoe versus the next, or surf the running forums on the web. The same is true for placing 7^th in the NEIRA championships. At the time we were an emerging club team, only a few years in existence, competing against schools with varsity programs that were decades older.

This is the rub with Julie Moss. She was, for all intents and purposes, a walk-on. With minimal experience and nominal training, she found herself in true competition with the best in the world, out of her league, literally. Often we want to take on competitors who are below us because it means that victory is nearly assured; we are at liberty to think smugly about how soundly we will beat our competition. Julie Moss’s strength was not in crawling across the finish line but in thinking until the very end that she could and would win despite the odds. It seems to me that her strength of character is not in that she willed her legs to walk but in believing that making them do so was actually meaningful. Otherwise she might have just lain there in the street and given up.

Along this same line of thought, the course for the Capital Peak Ultra includes an out and back section which is an 11 mile round trip. As a result the slower runners are passed by the quicker ones who have already turned the aid station at mile 30. I remember last year counting the men who passed me going the other way. One. Two. Three. Then five and six as a tiny pod. Nine and ten, then eleven. That was all. It shocked me that I was so close to the top ten. Starting the race, I clearly understood that I was “J.V.” and all around me were runners of substantially greater speed, endurance, and experience. Yet there I was genuinely competitive in the field. In that moment I understood Julie Moss’s motivation in a way that I had not before. She got up because of what she had already accomplished as much as what was still possible. I wrestled out the final 20 miles in much the same spirit.

Yet in the final miles I was arrested by severe pain in my foot. The rain was coming down in violent sheets as I pulled my shoe off to inspect the damage. Finishers eleven, twelve, and thirteen who I had been battling with for the last few hours passed me as I sat in the middle of the gravel road. What else was there to do but lace back up and keep going? And so I did. Yet I lost my battle and so did she. Even still, I like to think that we both illustrated the same point. Our endurance was not physical but psychological in origin, because it brushed against the insane to ignore the clear futility of action and keep moving forward and then be proud of what was so bravely wrought of failure.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Heads)

Flipping the Coin

I have waited longer than I did last year before resuming this blog for one simple reason: injury. Over the winter break I severely sprained my ankle while climbing in Colorado. The trip was essentially ruined. More demoralizing than that was the concern that I would not be able to train for and run the ultra-marathon again. Without the ultra, there was no scholarship as this blog, my preparation, and the race itself were integral components. For the month following, I perched on my bike, set up in a track-stand in the basement, and wore down the rubber on the tires. Running was temporarily out of the question.

There was a lot of time to think while pedaling away the hours, staring out the window at the pooling mud and thickening carpets of moss in my backyard. At first I considered soliciting donations regardless of whether I trained for and ran the race. That idea was quickly wiped away as it lacked substance. The scholarship is a demonstration of my own personal determination and willingness to put forth substantial effort to reach a goal. A hand out for a handout is weak and not in the spirit of the endeavor.

More than a few people have asked me if I planned to attempt to repeat the scholarship and the ultra-marathon. Some seemed to suggest that my point had already been made, that a student was served, and that the goal was achieved. Yet I was left to wonder if it was all a fluke, like the first time the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2002; or if it was something repeatable like when they won again in 2004…and again in 2005. We often judge success by whether it is something that can be replicated.

Of course there is also the element of luck. Everyone can call heads or tails and be occasionally right. Sometimes the elements of chance line up perfectly for you, and by some bizarre arrangement of the cosmos you make the right call every time and therefore have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern type moment.

Whether my ankle would hold out on a 50 mile trail run is to some degree a game of chance, but much of life is a matter of odds. I am not convinced that we should withhold reaching for those things that we wish to attain because the odds are not entirely in our favor. They rarely are. Last year I had to train while being a new dad to a six month old.

However, we can develop a plan that puts the odds in our favor. When computer scientist Roger Craig earned a chance to play on the TV game show Jeopardy, he took it upon himself to stack the odds in his favor. He studied databases of past Jeopardy questions to determine the statistical probability of certain types of questions showing up so that he could focus his study of the content. He also knew the probability of where the Daily Doubles would appear and the likelihood that he could answer the questions. The result was, among other things, a record single day’s winnings of $77,000.

I am running again, although tentatively, and plan on going ahead with the scholarship. Last year the unknowns included whether I could even finish the 50 miles. This year the questions surround how to deal with new liabilities, so my plan is to be a little bit of Mr. Craig—stacking the odds, the Patriots—with something to prove, and Rosencrantz—blithely calling “heads!” time and time again.