June 5, 2023
Greetings from where I join the club,
A few times I had this familiar feeling, some echo from another time. I didn’t focus on it, figured it was one of those sensations that come with dehydration. Or insanity.
Under the heading of ‘make the interesting choice’ was the prospect of running a trail race, and, goaded by my much more accomplished sister, I fell into the temptation. The process of preparing for the race was interesting and challenging, and on occasion, humbling. It’s where the growth is, sometimes.
Someone labeled this distance an ultramarathon, because you have to call it something, and marathoners get huffy when you call anything but 26.2 miles a marathon. Even so, it felt a little pretentious saying it out loud: Ultramarathon. Sounds like a Marvel superhero. They told us it was fifty kilometers so that, other than the Canadians, we wouldn’t be freaked out by the distance.

We set off into the woods, a subdued launch of maybe fifty competitors, all duly warned that it would be hot. We settled into a colorful samba line, talking, laughing, running between the green, grateful for the shade.
I ran with different groups, trading places dozens of times, little knots of runners weaving through the trees, listening to their conversation, noting the various tattoos on their calves or shoulder blades, peeking out from behind their packs. I’d met a few runners the night before, and early that morning, mostly listening, since I was the novice. Mileage and training and nutrition and chafing and puking. That kind of thing.
I met Joey, she said, “…like the baby kangaroo”, who was running the 100k. Her mom told me that she had been running since she was eight, and loved it more than anything. Kam, who said she was hooked on ultras after the first one, intrigued by how every race was so different. “Every trail, and the weather, and what your body tells you, every time it’s a new thing.” They are a different breed, but I recognized them.
There is something really cool about stumbling through the woods and coming upon a blue canopy with three volunteers who will give you water and ice and Gatorade and shots of pickle juice or Fireball whiskey and pretzels and tell you encouraging lies about how great you look. Outposts in the wild, a mix between the Red Cross and some really specific bodega. Yes, shots of pickle juice.
The pack strung out after a while, and for a long time, I was alone. The only sound was the soft swish of my gear, the gossiping birds, and the wind in the treetops. Somewhere in the mid-twenties, it dawned on me what the familiar feeling was.
I grew up in the city, a place where anything that wasn’t paved had a building on it, and so the exceptions stood out. There were some good parks, and as nice as those were, they didn’t speak to a ten-year-old’s sense of adventure, like the woods behind Pierce Elementary.
Every town has some version of these woods. We had several, little spits of land no one could figure out how to develop into something, and so they just went wild. And we carved paths in them and built forts in them and started fires there and swore and read comic books. And like little boys any time in forever, we ran everywhere we were. When we played Cowboys and Indians, I was an Indian, loping through the trees, stealthy in my sneakers.
The feeling that came back to me, a virgin ultramarathoner, chasing little orange flags on a winding path, was the memory of running the paths in the woods behind Pierce. Pretending I was an Ojibwa scout, lance in hand, floating through the woods, silent amidst the silence.
It was one of the most natural feelings I’ve experienced, as instinctual and sensible as humming or rolling down a grassy hill or swinging on the playground. It came back to me, the cadence, the form, the intuitive movement, maybe inspired by the feel of being deep in the forest, but I knew it deep in my flagging muscles.
I hadn’t thought of Chris McDougall’s book, Born to Run, in years, but another runner, Emily, reminded me of it this weekend. In the book, now over a dozen years old, McDougall intersects with the nascent ultrarunning community, gypsy hippies and eccentric super-athletes, who wandered around the country looking for challenges. It was almost an underground thing, a subculture of sports that barely registered with the mainstream runners, let alone the sane portion of the citizenry.
Born to Run draws a line from early human experience, where we ran to chase down game, through the Tarahumaras who, even today, run hundreds of miles at a time in the gorges of Chihuahua, to the dawn of the ultrarunning movement in the US. Ultras are a big thing now, but still a little bit fringe, still a bit outside of the ordinary weekend experience. It felt that way to me, lower key, more relaxed, even with the challenge, the contest, of running a race.
The distance and the heat took its toll, and some of our number had to pull the plug. I struggled in the final miles, legs rebelling in bizarre cramps, but managed to run smiling, wobbly, to the finish. It was a strange, nearly anticlimactic experience, as if I just interrupted a backyard party, but someone gave me a medal, and pointed me to the pickle juice. And just like that, I was an ultramarathoner.
I was running for almost seven hours, not a radical experience, but new for me. There is a lot of time to think, but surprisingly, most of my energy was absorbed in noticing what I was doing. That’s driven by the demands of the terrain, but also by virtue of being in the forest. It feels like good practice for me and not a bad way to spend a warm summer day. The bonus was falling in step with my ten-year-old self, feeling that pulse, that tempo of movement that is so much a part of us, and so easily covered over with the other living we do. I wonder where else I can find it.
Hope this finds you seeking the cadence,
David
Copyright © 2023 David Smith
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