Booker T. Washington

In the winter you start out cold. Always, but never wear pants. Pants inhibit movement and make you sweat. Sweat evaporates and makes you colder. You’ll wear a base layer, a sweatshirt, a wind-stopper or a fleece. But always the same swim trunks. Always run in the swim trunks. Even when it’s so cold, that you’re legs get numb and you don’t feel when a briar rips blood out of your thigh.

You start out cold. Your fingers begin to get tingly, and your face is numb.

The trail leaves a parking lot, goes to gravel, and then enveloped by woods. The gravel is mixed with red clay, and then turns into all red clay in an inverted, outside, sloping turn. By the top of the turn, your calves start to feel like the targets of a circus knife-thrower, or your knees feel creaky, and you feel like there’s some big rock in the gears down there.

The blood starts pumping, your fingers feel warm, and you start to sweat. You wish you hadn’t worn that base-layer/sweatshirt/wind-stopper/fleece. Oh well.

You run up another hill, then another, now for easy street. You get to run down hill, you feel great, knees are smooth, calves are cool, there’s wind in your lungs. You’re moving to Kashmir.

The woods now end at the shore of a lake slough. The trail follows the shore. You brace your legs for the ramp, a sickening drop, then right back up. It’s like running through an ax wound from Paul Bunyan. Your breath catches after that. The slough is giving way to the lake. You see the trail bank hard right to parallel the lake shore. There is a massive tree bent over the trail.

In civilization, a bent tree like this is considered a deformity. Trees aren’t meant to bend over like arches. No, they should be straight and tall.

In civilization, this tree’s deformity will be copied with metal and bent over a river. It will be called an artistic wonder.

You don’t run away from things. You run to them. You don’t run away from your anger, guilt, shame, heart break from two years ago. You don’t even run away from last night’s heartbreak.

You run towards a deformed tree, under its arch and around a hard, right turn. You run towards a hill top, with your head craned to the left to gaze at sail masts on the far shore, where the sun refracts off their polished metal.

You run towards a place where arches don’t need to be six hundred feet tall to be magnificent. A place where a seven-foot arch mystifies you and tells you that yes, there is a God. That he made you. He loves you. That he made that tree for so many reasons, one of which you realize is simply to give you joy on this day when your knees are smooth, your calves are cool, and the red clay has given way to black dirt, pine-needles and dead leaves.

The Good Hurt

I did it, I finished the Southern 6k Trail Race in 40 minutes and 33 seconds. This put me in the top 25-40% by my rough estimation, and that's fine with me, it was my first race, and an awesome experience.

I showed up to Southern Adventist University's gym about 45 minutes before the race, and was immediately struck by what a big, fun deal this whole race was. The University's jazz band had set up to serenade the runners, and there were tables set up all around with bagels, fruit, water and Gatorade. There were volunteers everywhere.

I walked up to the registration table, told them my name, and then received my goodie bag. It was really astonishing. The main bit of swag was a mesh Patagonia jersey with the race logo on the front and the sponsor's on the back. I was expecting a cheap, cotton shirt for the $30 entry fee. This shirt was far more, It was a Patagonia Run Shade jersey, the fabric was a thin mesh, but strong, with great venting and a comfortable cut, I wanted to put it on immediately, but in my internet wanderings searching for race-day tips, I read that the only people who wear the race shirt during the race are the first time racers, because apparently there's some superstition about wearing the shirt before completion. Yes, I was a first-time racer, but I didn't want to look like a first time racer. So I kept the shirt off.

At about fifteen minutes till the start I was standing outside looking at an enormous, Mountain Hardware dome tent set up by the MH representatives (they, alongside Patagonia, Marmot and Smart Wool were the sponsors). I took the plug of dip out of my moth, and washed the tobacco juice out with a swig of water, the racers around me looked disgusted. Sorry, I may look like one of you, but I'm a country boy at my heart. When I opened up a peanut butter Power bar they all seemed a bit more approving, but that approval went away quickly when I washed down the bar with a 5-Hour Energy Shot.

Oh well, you can't please everyone.

The race started with a .4 mile run on the main road through campus. There was a big banner lifted about 12feet in the are with "start" written on the back side, and "finish" written on the front. The 170-or-so racers milled about behind the start in a chaotically organized fashion. The lanky ones who were in it to win it (you could tell these apartfrom their absolute lack of muscle and fat, it's amazing what chicken legs can carry a man/woman to) naturally gravitated towards the front, the rest of us were content to fill in behind, not too worried about our uncompetitive starting positions.

3-2-1- Go!

The start caught me a little off guard, I moved into a trot, about seven or eight miles an hour. But there was a problem, my music wasn't playing, I had locked my iPod, and so instead of hearing Steve Miller Band's "Take the money and Run", I instead heard 340 shoes pounting on pavement, a few grunts and mumbling. I reached down into my pocket and fixed the issue. "This is a story 'bout Billy Joe and bobby Sue..." Perfection.

Recent research has found that static stretching weakens your muscles for 30 or so minutes. So instead of toe touches and sumo-squats I had loosened up with a set of twenty split jumps. It seemed to work, I felt loose, and the three Advils I had taken 45 minutes before had preemptively neutralized the pain from my fledgling shin splints. I felt good, and started to pass.

On the road, there was room to maneuver, I looked ahead about 20 feet and picked out a path through the slower runners. Zigging and zagging, i had advanced about 30 places by the time the race left the road and entered the trail.

I don't remember much after that. As I anticipated, the hills were murderous, beginning almost as soon as the pavement transitioned to dirt and tree roots. I shut my mind off. It was a gorgeous day, 65 degrees and sunny. The woods we ran through were rich and full, streams cut through at odd intervals and I imagine that, at least on a subconscious level, I was soaking in the sights. But my fore-consciousness was occupied elsewhere. Left foot there, spring over that tree root, push of the right foot, left foot again, avoid the rock, now the right.

My wind left me right as James brown lead his bad back to the bridge on "Soul Power". I was halfway up the hill, wanted to stop, bend over, cough out my guts, force bellows-full of pure oxygen into my lungs. I pushed on.

There was a healthy competitive spirit in the air, the people behind and in front of me encouraged one another and me, I joined it. I wanted, desperately for these others to succeed, but not to succeed as much as me. This type of competition was alien to me. I knew football, I knew the overwhelming desire to grab my opponent by his jersey and throw him to the ground in a fit of strength and rage, to spit on him, kick him, to hope that he stays down just long enough to realize what a bad idea it would be to get back up and return to his huddle. But this desire wasn't there, I loved these people, they were my brothers and sisters of the trail, their success was my success.

The hills rose and fell, time lost its meaning, I guessed at miles, thought wandering thoughts of no consequence. "Man, James Brown has soul." "Man, that guy in front of me is wearing cologne, cologne! To a trail race!" But even these soon subsided into the recesses of my mind until only my left and right feet, my lungs, my calves held all of the meaning in the world.

5 days earlier I had come and surveyed the trail, this did me little good until the end. That tree, that creek bend, that walking bridge! I know these landmarks! I'm at the end. I dug down deep, found some bit of stored energy left for me by my ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago running away from sabertooth tigers and dire wolves. Thanks, I needed it.

The dirt soon gave way once again to pavement, and I started on the most miserable .4 miles of my life. My legs were churning, but their movements meant nothing, I felt them not, the whole world was encompassed in my lungs and the cramp building itself up beneath my rib cage.

At the finish line I saw my parents and little sister. They looked so wonderful to me in those seconds, their love thrown out for the world to see if it took the time to notice, the banner, "finish", a skinny man about an inch shorter than me slapped me on the shoulder. "Good job." "*Cough* Than... tha... thank you."

And just like that, with AC/DC telling my to shoot to thrill, the world came back, it expanded away from my lungs. My legs reentered reality first, the cramps, the pain, then my feet, my left arch curled up into a vicious cramp. Then the tents, the spectacle, then the university, the town, the country, the world. These things whose very existence I had so completely forgotten for 40 minutes came back to me in a flood.

It was a beautiful feeling.

Cardio Killer

Today, my La Sportiva Wildcats and I will try to avoid tree roots and irate speedsters at the Southern Six Trail Race. 6k= ~3.7 miles, I run that four times a week, no sweat. But... the trail here is supposed to be unmercifully hilly, and so there's a bit of apprehension on my part, but I get a t-shirt, so what the hell.

Race Playlist:

Take the Money and Run- Steve Miller Band
Soul Power- James Brown
Magic Carpet Ride- Steppenwolf
Good Times, Bad Times- Led Zeppelin
Paperback Writer- The Beatles
The General Specific- Band of Horses
Roadhouse Blues- The Doors
The Passenger- Iggy Pop
Spirit in the Sky- Norman Greenbaum