We drove up to Bear Mountain, NY, for the North Face Endurance Challenge races this weekend. Arriving at the expo and finish line, Denise and I watched the marathoners, 50K runners, and 50 mile runners complete their runs over the rough, single track trails of Bear Mountain.The finish line had a picnic atmosphere as families and friends watched their runners complete what most of us would consider super-human feats of running. Normally Denise and I stand out in a crowd as two near anorexic seniors. Here, we fit in as just another fit couple, maybe with just a bit of extra weight hanging on to us. In this world of endurance animals, we're just another pair of running "smucks".
I had to think about what it is to live to be able to run 50 kilometers or 50 miles over mountainous single trails. In 2004, when I started running, I ran in part as a purification from the volubility around me. America was in an orgy of self-indulgence. Economists in the federal administration were actually beginning to tell us that federal and personal deficits were good for economy. To eschew the rampant self-indulgence and go out and run became an act of purification and penance for the excess going on around me.
Walking through this crowd today, I see people who eschew the seductive glow of the CRT and LED. By doing so, they miss the propagandist message that "you deserve a break today". They miss the condition known as metabolic syndrome, which now affects nearly two thirds of the U.S. adult population. Instead, they go out and run 5, 10, maybe 15 miles in training. Its simple, direct, and sometimes brutal. It is life without all the electronic and pharmaceutical drugs we have created to inure us against it..
Tomorrow I take Denise on our first trail race. Its only a 5K. But we are crossing over into a still another way of viewing ourselves and the world.
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