Taper time can be such a creative and inspiring time of the year. It can bring out some of my best stream of consciousness thoughts and ramblings. Or it can be a weird in a relativistic way – like time is slowed down. Work and life dragging on, as if waiting for the dang Easter Bunny. It becomes an excruciating waiting period fraught with worry and distraction and wondering the million what ifs: Did I run enough? Did I run too much? Is this ankle sore or am I just imagining it? Do I wear the Mudroc or Roclite shoes? Grey gloves or black ones? What should I put in my drop bags? Does Hillary have any chance of catching Barack? Will there be any TV worth watching when Scrubs is gone? And of course, my mind wanders. Did you notice?
This time around, the taper just feels different. Maybe because, unlike past Grandma’s tapers, there is no Chesney’s visit to look forward to, no frantic trip to the greater Knife River Metro area for good times and lobsta boat restoration updates, no frantic dashes to find more Toyota water bottles outside the DECC. That used to be my Mecca – Grandmas, and perhaps the whole party atmosphere is what’s missing.
Oh well. At least up until now, I’ve managed to keep my obsession in check. Maybe at least a little bit. I have mostly been looking and checking the weather forecasts (40 at the start, 63 for the high with low dewpoints). And I do so knowing that the only thing I can do about the weather is adapt my clothing to meet the needs of the day. So I also make lists of things to stuff in my drop bags in the hopes that I’ll need none of it. And I speculate about what time of day it will be when I am running the through the uncharted waters from mile 33 to mile 43.5 (I know that I’d better hit mile 43.5 before 4:26 pm or my race is over). And I wonder what magic elixir is available that will give me instant zip when my butt starts really dragging. In case you were wondering, all of my research leads me to believe that my best option is Placebo. So I have stocked up on lots of that.
So there it is, staring me in the face, Fifty Miles. 80.5 kilometers. It breaks down like this: 9.5 miles of wide cushy (dare I say pillowy?) ski trails followed by 40.5 miles of rolling single track trail with rocks and roots and grass and dirt and I think maybe a bog or swamp, you know – all that good stuff we evolved to run across and through as we chased the antelope for supper. Only all I get is a burger and a belt buckle if I make it to the finish line before they pull the plug on the timer. And I pay them for the pleasure(?). It is a relative bargain though, at 1.30 per mile. Much cheaper per footstep than the 1 mile race that happens tonight for Kicks.
In a way that I’ve never experienced before in my all too brief running career – I am staring at something that seems so far beyond what I’ve ever attempted before either in training or in a race. In my first marathon I was woefully undertrained, and yet I had at least covered 70% of the distance in training. Here, I feel pretty clueless about what is going to happen after 31 miles. In fact, I have wondered a few times what the heck inspired me to want to tackle this endeavor. And then I remember – it was after my 50k race down in Kansas, and I was wondering if 50 miles would be 1.609344 times the fun of a 50k. And of course, there was only one way to find out. There was also the weird and maybe sick thought of wondering I had it in me to cover that kind of distance in a single shot.
So, I asked around, “what is a good race to try for running one’s first 50 miler?” Ice Age was definitely near the top of many people’s lists. There was even one suggestion that I can’t seem to forget – do Ice Age, then the Voyageur 50 miler in July, then the Superior Trail 50 mile in September, after which I would be primed and ready to do the ultimate 50 miler – the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim. (I’m definitely thinking about the last one).
So I watched and bided my time and waited for the registration for Ice Age to open up. It finally did on January 25th. This I noticed one morning as I did my daily ritual that included logging on to check the weather, seeing what the shirt du jour was over at shirtwoot.com and checking on registration. Funny thing that, I seem to need to be signed up for a race in order to make training for it seem more real. It seems that my persistence paid off in a small way, as I was listed as the first person to sign up. Hey – I got to be first at something! I am secretly hoping I’ll get bib number 1. Not that I have any chance of living up to that billing. But it would be cool to be thought of as a top seed, at least until the gun goes off and I am left standing in the line to the port-a-potties while everyone else takes off.
This week I started reading Maurice Herzog’s “Annapurna”. I like these adventure stories because they inspire me. I am also reminded of what the late sir Edmund Hillary said once: “I
believe that if you set out on an adventure and you’re absolutely convinced you are going to be successful, why bother starting?” Indeed – that is the edgy appeal that an ultra has for me. It’s not so much I want to do it because I can, rather I want to do it because I’m not certain about the outcome. There is a great mysterious territory out there beyond 50 kilometers which I’ve never seen. To be fair, I also haven’t explored that mysterious territory of 26.2 miles run really well either. So I do have some unfinished business there, I suspect. But first things first. For this adventure, I know that most if not all of the battle will be fought within myself, within my head, against my own demons.
Now all that’s left to do is through a few more things in the bag and hit the road. And try and decide for the last and final time which shoes I want to wear (to start). I’ve already picked out my socks, shorts and hat.
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