The Next 100 Miler!

Next weekend I’m running the 100-Mile Haliburton Forest Trail Race. Yes, to answer your question, I’m excited. Also, pretty freaking scared.

My brother, The Photographer, will be there as usual. Here are some pictures he’s taken in past years.

That’s the starting line. The race begins at 6 am. Many runners wear headlamps, and most of us will see the sun rise twice before we stop running.

Think of me when you get up on Saturday morning. By the time you eat breakfast, I’ll hopefully have run 15 miles.

Think of me again at lunch, by which time, I’ll be somewhere around mile 32.

By dinnertime, I’ll be closing in on 60 miles.

By the time you go to bed, I might be at mile 72.

When you get up early Sunday morning to take a pee, I’ll hopefully be close to the finish line.

Or maybe not. You never know. Running through a forest for 24 hours straight is kinda like running through a Grimm’s fairy tale. It’s incredibly beautiful, but there’s danger too. And there’s no guarantee of a happy ending.

Photo hat tip: andyscamera

Looking for a good book about running?

My first review. From a friend, but still.

Colleague & friend @writerunrepeat just published YA novel about running an ultra marathon, ULTRA. Just read it. May have cried a bit.

— Erin Balser (@booksin140) August 25, 2013

This is What a Dream Comes True Looks Like:

Yesssss!

My first novel. In my hands. For realsies.

It was the hardest thing I ever did. Writing the thing was only half the battle. Getting it published was even harder.

But this feeling, this moment, makes it all worthwhile.

To those of you who are struggling to get your writing into print, please, don’t give up! It can be done. Hard work pays off.

And I must give a huge shout-out to my nieces and nephews – who inspired this story, lent their names to some of the characters, helped me with the jokes and dialogue, and even shared early versions of the book with their classmates. You all deserve a finisher’s medal:

Aaron, Alex, Ali, Ben, Benjamin, Brody, Caelan, Caitlin, Caleb, Christopher, Daniel, Darcie, Grace S., Grace W., Jackson, Julia, Julian, Kara, Kelsey, Kiernan, Leonardo, Lucy-Claire, Luke, Monty, Madelaine, Maggie, Mateos, Nate, Oliver, Olivia, Parisinia, Quinn, Ray, Riley, River, Rowan, Rylee, Sacha, Skyler, Sofia, Sydney, Tahnee, Tobias, Zoe.

Aren’t We All Running 100 Mile Races?

“One heals suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”

-Marcel Proust.

I’ve got a 100-mile race coming up in two weeks. I’m excited about running it, but I’m psyching myself up for the pain I’ll suffer over 24+ hours. It’s gonna hurt.

People tell me I’m crazy for running these races; for inviting such discomfort into my life. But like the Proust quote above, I really do believe that pain teaches us things we can’t learn anywhere else. Important things, like, how it feels to go hypothermic, and to have the blisters on your feet sliced open with a razor blade and then sealed glued back together with Krazy Glue.

I know that sounds unpleasant, but for some reason, I can’t wait! I’m a glutton for punishment. But aren’t we all? Aren’t we all running our own 100 mile races?

If you’re a parent, you know what I mean. Parenthood is endless worry and diaper-changing and housecleaning and chauffeuring and heartbreak and sleep deprivation, but whoa! – those moments of beauty… And the stuff you learn!

Kids are running 100 mile races too. School, for instance, starts in a week. That’s a 100 mile race. And whether you’re passionate about gymnastics, or want to play for the NHL, or want to become a rock star, or write novels, or climb mountains, or write computer code, all those things take a huge amount of work and commitment. All those things are like 100 mile races.

Life is a hundred mile race! It can be painful but…it’s full of learning and beauty and people who love us and who are hopefully standing by with a cup of hot chocolate and a tube of Krazy Glue.

Re-writing is your Friend

People often ask me how many times I re-wrote my first novel, Ultra. Trust me when I say, YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW.

I wrote the first version waaaaaay back, in the summer of 2008. It was 20,000 words long, and it swallowed two months of my life. Back then, it was titled “Quinn and the 100 Mile Race.”

I finished the second draft a month later. By Christmas I’d rewritten it a third time, and then I sent it out.

I sent it to an agent and also a publisher. The publisher said some nice things about it. She said the narration was lovely and warm; perhaps too lovely and warm. She explained that the warm tone made it hard to believe that the central character was living on top of a calamity. Which was why she was going to take a pass.

The agent didn’t reply.

I wasn’t too upset about it. I’ve written lots of stuff over the years that never got published. That’s the writer’s life. I stuffed the manuscript in a drawer and forgot about it.

Two years later, I picked it up again. I re-wrote it for…let’s see…the fourth time.

After 5 months of work, I pitched it 50 agents. 49 of them said, “Thanks but no thanks.”

The fiftieth agent (the brilliant Scott Waxman who represents some of the finest sports writers, including the legendary John L. Parker) called me on the phone. When I saw the 212 area code on the display, I knew something was up. Scott told me that he liked my story. He said, however, that he wasn’t quite ready to offer representation just yet. There were a few things I ought to think about – if, that is, I was “willing to re-write the manuscript.”

I thought about the improvements that Scott suggested. I thought about them for all of ten seconds.

Once again, I started re-writing. When I finished that re-write I did another.

And then another.

After six months of re-writing, Scott Waxman accepted my novel. I received an “Offer to Represent” in the mail.

Cue the champagne corks! Cue the s’mores!

A couple of months later, the novel sold to Scholastic Canada.

MORE champagne! MORE s’mores!

In the year or so since I signed with Scholastic, I’ve done three more rewrites. The first took 3 months, the second took one month, the third took a week.

That makes eleven re-writes in all.

I know that sounds like a lot of work, but listen: with every single re-write the book got better!

Lesson learned:

Writing a book, and running 100 miles, are similar in two distinct ways.

(1) Both involve a TON of pain.

and (2) The finish line is incredibly sweet.

Real Life Superheroes, Part 2

Take a look at the runners in these pictures. Can you tell what makes them all special?

First, there’s America’s Dick Beardsley (on the left):

Up next, Spain’s Fernandez Anaya (in green):

And finally, Ohio track star Meghan Vogel (blonde hair, on the right):

Any guesses? Yes, they’re all runners, and yes, they’re crazy fit. They probably run 100+ miles a week and eat nothing but salads and nuts. But these incredibly healthy human specimens have something much more interesting – and much more valuable – in common.

You’ve got fifteen seconds to figure it out. Tick tick tick tick tick…TIME’S UP!

ANSWER: All of these runners are real-life superheroes. They’re not only fast. They’re also super kind.

Take Meghan Vogel. She was competing in her third race of the day. Ahead of her, a runner crumpled to the ground in the heat. But instead of dashing past her, she lifted her up, helped her to the finish line, and literally pushed her across the finish line.

Fernandez Anaya (the guy in the green shirt) was equally generous. He was running second in his race, a ways behind the race leader, Abel Mutai. As he entered the finishing straight, Fernandez noticed Mutai pull up about 10 metres before the finish line. Mutai thought he’d crossed the finish line, BUT HE HADN’T! He still had 30 feet left to go!

Instead of racing past Mutai for the win, Fernandez slowed down and gestured at him to keep running. He literally helped the OTHER guy win.

Which brings me to the black and white photo of Dick Beardsley at the top. Dick was running the very first London marathon in 1981. He and Norway’s Inge Simonsen spent the race battling for first place. In the finishing stretch, instead of trying to prove who was better than the other, the athletes clasped hands and crossed the finish line together.

How awesome is that? They acknowledged they were evenly matched, and split the first place prize two ways.

Someone should show these videos to Lance Armstrong.

Out-of-Body Experience

A friend says to me, “hey Dave, want to know the fast track to aging?”

“What’s that?” I say.

“Running!” he says.

Sadly, there’s some truth in the joke. For every mile you run, you burn 100 calories. Once you’ve trimmed the fat off the usual places, it starts coming off your face and upper body. Makes you look a little, er, grizzled.

I don’t care, I’m addicted. I’ve got a 100-miler coming up next month, so I’m cramming in as many long runs as possible. Twenty, thirty, forty miles at a time.

I love the long runs. After a couple of hours of plodding down a trail, I generally slip into a trance. The breath goes in, the breath goes out. My feet smack the pavement 180 times a minute. Running becomes a meditation. I do not smile or wave at the people I pass. Instead, I focus on keeping my body tilted slightly forward, and snapping my feet right back into the air the moment they hit the pavement. (That’s the trick to being fast, by the way – let your feet touch the ground for as short a time as possible.)

I’ve got pictures of me running, and it always astonishes me to look at them. Usually, both of my feet are in midair. Given that I’ve been running every day for the last 17 years, I have to wonder: how much of my life have I spent completely disconnected from the earth?

Once, during a marathon, I had an out-of-body experience. I was running up a nasty hill. I’d covered 22 miles, and I was getting tired. “Blinding wall of pain” is a little strong, but I was getting into that territory.

Suddenly, all pain vanished. I couldn’t feel my legs. It seemed to me that I was sitting inside my ribcage, peeking out between my bones at the scenery floating by. I wasn’t doing the running anymore. Someone else was. I was just sitting comfortably in that ribcage, like a kid in a grocery cart.

Then suddenly, I was looking down on myself from above. I saw a short-haired dude in Mizuno sneakers and Drifit shorts, struggling up a ten degree hill. I didn’t see this person as a runner though – I saw him as an extension of the earth. I thought to myself: what silly perseverance! What pointless ambition! And then I stared to laugh.

Of course, the moment I laughed, the vision disappeared. My normal consciousness – and the pain – returned.

I finished that marathon in 3:04:25. Did pretty well in my age category too. My age category, by the way, is 35-49. Of course, I don’t look a day over 60.

Thunder Running

Reasons not to run on the Bruce Trail during a thunderstorm:

A tree could fall on you and you could die.
You could get swallowed by the mud and die.
Lightning could strike you and you could die.
You could slip off the 500-foot scarp face and die.

Reasons to run on the Bruce Trail during a thunderstorm:

It’s super fun.

At a certain point, when you’re soaking wet and freezing cold and lathered in mud, and the forest is as dark as night, and the rain is lashing you like a blizzard of molars, and you’ve still got 15 kilometers left to go before you get back to the car, well, at a certain point, you’ve just got to throw up your hands and laugh, don’t you? After all, you checked the weather online. You saw the probability of precipitation (75%) and the expected accumulation (20 – 40 mm), and you saw those clouds amassing on the horizon like an army of unwashed hoodies. You knew what you were in for and you just laughed, didn’t you? Well, now it’s time to laugh again.

As for all that mud, well, that can’t be a surprise either. You do you know what happens to dirt trails when you add water to them, don’t you? You did play in a sandbox as a child, right? When water is added to dirt, that dirt turns into mud. You know this. If you add enough water, you get something worse than mud. You get a slippery, shoe-sucking, toffee-like substance called glop.

But it’s not all bad, is it? There’s nothing like hypothermia and mud inhalation and blood loss and the threat of plunging into a crevasse cave fathoms deep to fire up the old endorphins, is there? Especially when you arrive back at your car after three hours of slogging through rushing creek-beds, and stare at yourself in the rear-view mirror only to see a hollow-eyed, scabby-elbowed, tick-bitten runner; hair singed from stray lightning bolts, face besmirched with mosquito guts, and you swear you’ve never seen anything quite so idiotic!

“We Can Always Do Anything”

It’s time for another INSPIRATIONAL THURSDAY!

And I’ll start it off with a question. Is it really possible for a 13 year-old to run a 100-mile race?

I get that question all the time, since that’s what my book is about: a kid who runs the longest of ultra-marathons in an attempt to outrun a tragic family secret.

Is such a thing actually possible?

HECK YEAH!

Of course, I don’t actually know any 13 year-olds who have successfully completed a 100-mile race. But it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they had. Kids are capable of ANYTHING. There are kids out there who’ve run multiple marathons, and kids who have swum across great lakes.

And then there’s Conner and Cayden Long, who take the word inspiration to a whole new level:

“We can always do anything.” Love that.

Bad Sun, but not Badwater

Hot day for running today. 35 degrees in my neck of the woods.

Heat, as a rule, is a bad thing for runners. Increase your core temperature by a mere 8 degrees, and you’ll likely die of multiple organ failure.

I thought about this while I ran today’s 20-kilometer loop, sweat pouring off of my body like I was Chris Farley’s masseur.

I also thought about the fact that the heat from the sun takes precisely 8 minutes and 16 seconds to travel from the surface of the sun to the surface of my face. You probably already knew that. But did you know that the energy that warms your face also had to spend between 10,000 and 1 million years traveling from the core of the sun through a soup of hydrogen 320,000 miles deep, before it reached the sun’s surface?

That means, that pesky sunshine that’s heating up your body to dangerous levels spent up to a million years (plus 8 minutes and 16 seconds) trying to get to you. So be grateful.

Unless you’re running the 135-mile Badwater ultra-marathon in California’s Death Valley, where temperatures are likely to hit 50 degrees celcius. Then you can complain all you want.

You’ll notice in that video that most people run on the white line at the edge of the highway. That’s because it’s the coolest part of the road – and therefore the least likely to melt their shoes.

Looks like fun!