Articles

I wanted an Ice Age belt buckle. At 72-years-young, now wouldn’t be too soon. I expected to be on the edge, chasing the cutoff most of the day… if most things went right.

I began mentally rewriting song lyrics as a way to pass the miles, entertain myself, and poke a little fun at the absurdities and idiosyncrasies I see within the subculture of this sport I love.

I didn’t intend to run my first ultra in a blizzard.

A lifetime can be broken down into many, many individual moments. Those moments blend together as times passes and we often misremember past events, confuse memories, and forget large swaths of moments altogether. It’s rare that we can look back to a particular moment and mark it as a definitive one. But sometimes those defining moments do stick in our memory.

It was a perfect day for a race in the shadow of WWII heroes. Hosted by the Military Museum of Northern Florida, the race is held on a former WWII airbase and loops through magnificent cypress swamps around the perimeter of the old base. Remains of crashed aircraft and old bunkers are still visible.

As I make my way down the asphalt path I am conscious of the sound of my feet hitting the ground. It’s something I usually don’t pay much attention to but today is different. I am running with more attentiveness to my form. Is my posture good? Am I leaning into this short grade properly? Am I engaging my glute muscles?