It Makes No Sense

In stark contrast to yesterday, we awoke this morning to thick fog; I could barely make out the crooked white line made by the surf breaking on the beach.

So it was a good day to take care of some errands, like having some maintenance done on our car at the excellent Honda dealership here, and doing a little grocery shopping.  And then settling in to read all afternoon.

It was good to learn about my friends Paul and Fred and Jennifer completing the Hilton Head Half Marathon last Saturday; Paul, wearing his "EVERYTHING HURTS AND I'M DYING" shirt, was the Senior Pastor at the Methodist Church in Highlands until he was transferred to Hickory, and Jennifer (it was her first half-marathon) is the current Assistant Pastor.  Fred is 77 years old and is still running very well; in fact, as I told Jennifer, I ran MY first half-marathon with him in 1998.

It was inspirational to see my friends, and it solidified my own plans to run the half marathon that will be held here on March 4.  In fact, were it not for that race and for a concert that we will be attending on March 3, we would probably be heading back to Highlands sooner; temperatures are moderating and friends and loved ones will be happy to see us again after such a long time.  This is the longest we have ever been away from Highlands, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Martha's aunt Lizette for making her condo available to us for so long this winter.  It has been a good time to read, write, re-connect, explore, and get in some good training.  It will be a fitting conclusion to our time here to be able complete a race of significant distance - Martha, too, may attempt her first race since the injuries that sidelined her last year, although she has not yet been able to complete the training required for a 13.1-mile race.

There is something very difficult to describe about distance running, although I keep trying to do it from time to time in this blog.  I went back and read what I wrote about the 5-K I completed on February 4 and it seemed to not at all capture the experience of even a short road race.  In a half-marathon or marathon it is even more profound:  the bright sun (or the cool rain), the flashing lights and bright colors, road stretching out ahead, the cheer and the misery of fellow runners, the way a runner has to dig deep to find that long, enduring, steadfast strength that makes such long distances possible.  We pray and we dream, we hurt and we laugh, we look around us at everything going on in a race (and to some extent during the long solo training runs leading up to it; I have a 12-mile run planned for Saturday).  I rarely feel so completely alive as during those times!

My fellow-blogger J. P. Krol (a talented ultra runner) recently posted this quote, which applies to the ultra runner but also to all of us distance runners:

 "It makes no sense in a world of spaceships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers. But as poets, apostles, and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense. The ultra runners know this instinctively. And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit swing open with physical effort. In running such long and taxing distances they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being - a call that asks who they are." - David Blaikie