Inspired to Soar by SOAR

Saturday I helped my friend Jim in a small way with the SOAR event here in Highlands - the Special Operations Adventure Races.  Adventure races have become popular all over the country, and the one in Highlands has been held for 13 years now.  Its participants are an elite group of truly crazy and focused, and absolutely fit, men and women who are willing to run, hike, cycle, rappel, and row canoes for 50 miles or so through some of the most beautiful and challenging terrain in the southeast, while trying to avoid getting lost with their orienteering skills.   We learned yesterday that a man named Joe Bowman, who has a home in the area, has won the race for many years; he also belongs to that elite club of runners who have completed marathons in all 50 states . . . in under three hours.

The Highlands SOAR event benefits the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a non-profit set up to provide for spouses and children of Special Ops personnel killed in the line of duty.  Thus many of the participants are military teams, and they are always very inspiring.  I have run 19 marathons, but doing what they do in this kind of terrain all day, with a pack on your back, is way beyond my limits.  Jim knows I like to run long on Saturday, and he also knows that I love to climb Big Bearpen, so my assignment was to help his lovely wife Mary Jo on top of Big Bearpen, checking off runners and marking their "passports" - the first check stop on their long journal.  I left Town at 7:15 and arrived at the station 20 minutes later.  The men and woman who followed me up the mountain, in addition to being very fit, were uniformly positive in their outlook.  Many of them remarked on the beauty of the climb, the nice breeze, and the opportunity to spend a good day overcoming tough obstacles; they had that casual kind of confidence that veteran marathon runners have, jovial but focused, already planning on where they could enjoy some good beer at the end of the day.

Although most of the runners had come through in the time expected (one team said they gotten lost, going out Lower Lake Road instead of up Big Bearpen Road), Mary Jo and I noticed that at least six runners had not.  She suggested that I run down the mountain while she remained for another 15 minutes or so.  Surely they would be along soon.  I circled the top one time and then descended, and literally at the bottom of the mountain, nearing the stop sign on Chestnut, here came a team of four Adventure Racers.  I had no choice but to accompany them up to the top, hoping Mary Jo had not left and gone out Upper Lake Road, the only other outlet; if she had been gone, I would have recorded the team number and told Jim to give them their proper credit.  As it turned out, she was still at her station, and I had the opportunity to chat with some inspiring young men.  And shortly after that the final team came up.  (Both teams had opted to do the rappel first.)

In the meantime, I managed to run Big Bearpen twice, something I had not done in some time (I think my record has been four times), and I have to say I was a little tired by the time I arrived at Town Hall and joined the other runners in our group who had been running fast and flat as usual.  As I thought about the race throughout the day, I realized that every runner should rub shoulders with athletes like these.  They are simply inspiring.

How to I expect to get in shape running Big Bearpen only once?  Or twice?  That's no way to soar.