Lost in Hawaii
The Hartford, the company that’s been so good to me and the US Paralympic Team over the years, sent me to Honolulu late last week to represent at three speaking gigs. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like this job.
While there wasn’t a ton of time to play, I did spent some quality hours with my very good friend Joel Sampson and his family. Joel—a congenital right foot amputee—and I met at the Gimpy Triathlon World Champs in 1998; we’ve been thick as thieves ever since. We kinda look alike, too, and ten years back when a woman approached us at a night club and asked if we were brothers, we each yanked up our respective pant legs and said we were Siamese twins attached at the foot. She swallowed it…clearly after swallowing a lotta liquor. Sh then professed to being intimate once with an amputee “and it was allllllright.”
Dropping it back into third…
I spoke to a group of insurance brokers at The Hartford office on Thursday, then to the entire staff at ProService, a local payroll company, on Friday morning. The focus of the trip was a Friday afternoon talk with the National Association of Social Workers Assurance Services, Inc: NASW-ASI. This final presentation was a great fun and ended with wonderful questions along with an invitation to visit some women transitioning out of prison; I had to decline due to other plans, regretfully missing what I would expect to be some seriously stimulating conversation.
I talked up going on a long trail run the following morning; I was fortunate that the president of ProService was a runner and he pointed me in the direction of a gorgeous, fairly technical, muddy, duck-under-humongous-ferns trail that weaved along side of whatever mountains backdrop Honolulu.
Round trip was 3.5 hours and 15 miles. I’ll need to keep not only keep training hard, but race hard at least once more in the next few weeks—I discovered while on this trip that last weekend’s 50 plus kilometer trail race wasn’t fast enough to qualify me for Comrades Marathon. Looks like I’ll be marathoning somewhere soon…
(Speaking of the run, if you’re the least bit into fitness—or reading—you gotta read Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I finished it on the flight home and was so fired up when I got home that I ran 20 miles yesterday at a pace 20 seconds faster than any of my recent long runs.)
Joel came to get me and we headed back to Waikiki Beach, just across from the Hyatt Regency where I was staying.
I made a solemn attempt to paddle board with limited success. After 30 minutes the paddle was dropped back at the beach in hopes of surfing-surfing but the lack of waves turned my quest into a float fest. Joel and his kids, Lauren and Carter, were also out there floating around in the sunshine so there was little to complain about.
Until dinner … when it finally became clear why my hands felt so naked: my wedding ring now resides in the same waters where Sharon and I honeymooned and where we lost our surfing virginity …
In the end, with the theme I drilled into the audiences over and over again in the previous days—”Make your adversities work for you, not against you”—Sharon and I have already agreed to renew our vows a scant five years into marriage with the diamond I’ve yet to buy her and the replacement ring the fine folks at J. Albrecht Jewelers in Boulder will be happy to sell me. They’re cool like that.
Red Hot 50+
One hundred and forty men and fourty-six women lined up in Moab, Utah Saturday morning—a balmy 19 degrees at the start—to tackle the Red Hot 50+. We were all there to cover an extended 50k trail (33 miles) on foot.
I signed up to use this event as booth an introduction to ultra-marathoning and as a qualifier to complete my official registration in the 56-mile Comrades Marathon this coming May in South Africa.
Many of Saturday’s runners were surprised at the difficulty of the course conditions, primarily due to the snow—8-12 inches of it from miles 11-12—and lots of slush and mud throughout.
Most of the runners were probably well aware of the technical difficulty of the course without the snow cover, but yours truly was completely ignorant. I naively assumed that when they make a race 34-mile running race competitors are going to able to run nearly all of it … or at least almost all of it.
My five hour and fifteen minute goal was completely blown out of the water and would have been in even the driest conditions. Those of you who’ve read any of my ramblings will know that this prosthetic leg of mine might not be much of an advantage, but rarely, if ever, has it been such a disadvantage.
The combination of the steep descents on slick rock and off-kilter footing throughout reduced me to a shuffle and a quick march for much of the event. (In retrospect I would have been well-served to use more of a walking type leg than a “C” shaped runner, particularly in 12 inches of snow!)
Things started out well with a long climb on snow-pack then leveled out for a nine-minute-mile followed by a couple of eights on a gentle downhill. Then we began climbing again things started getting technical: up and over and down rocky formations … some covered in snow. On occasion the obstacles were big enough that you had to reach for hand holds and much of it unrunnable for the early pack I was racing with.
When I was able to run I got in a few more nine minute miles, which was the goal pace, but 14-15 minute miles was the average. I even clocked a 28 minute mile!
Within that long mile came the highlight of the run: the view over the edge of a 1000 foot cliff. As I was marching up a hill I saw two women staring out behind me so I joined them to take in the view.
“This is nothing, go up to the edge over there and take a look over the canyon.” Since I wasn’t in it to win it, I made some fresh tracks through the snow 50 feet off course to take in on of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen with my feet on the ground (flying over NYC on a clear night might be the coolest).
The ground just disappeared below me. Highway 191 sliced through the redness of the valley toward the town of Moab 10 miles to the south. Arches National Park was to the northeast and the 12,ooo foot snow-capped La Sal mountain range popped out of the rocks to the southwest. This is the stuff that makes getting out of the house worthwhile and was well worth the few minutes tacked on to my finish time.
That delight came a couple of miles after checkpoint and aid station #4 at mile 18. Runners had the option to drop off special needs bags at the start of the race to be brought by the blessed volunteers to any of the several aid stations throughout the course. I opted for a PowerBar and a 20-ounce PowerBar Endurance drink—sure glad I did because they ran out of water just as I arrived. I stopped to reboot Stumpie—as I had several times along the way—reloaded my CamelBak (a beverage bladder you wear like a backpack with a hose to sip from) and headed out.
The course was so slick in places that the trucks who brought the aid failed to reach the next aid station at mile 25—the poor runners who didn’t get a chance to rehydrate at #4 would have to go a long way without water. I was so glad I’d packed that extra drink! I depleted that store before the final station at mile 30 and ate some snow to hydrate in the meantime. I imagine lots of folks were doing that.
Less than a mile from the finish, at the top of ridge we were to descend via a steep four-switchback plunge, I heard the familiar “Cooooo-wee!” call of my wife Sharon down below. I looked down and saw her pink fleece and waving arms and that told me I was certainly about to finish. She ran the final few hundred feet with me where I met Jack and Luke and snatched them up before crossing the finish line.
My goal late in the race was to finish before the awards ceremony at 3:30. Not four seconds after I crossed the line the winners were announced.
Victory often comes in the form of stretching your limits despite crossing the finish line after everyone else.
Run 56 miles?
Yep, that’s what I’m gonna do…
I was asked to be part of a team of athletes headed to South Africa to partake in a staggering fund-raising effort to benefit African children. I would be expected to generate 100 sponsors willing to commit to a child for the next five years. To prove I was serious about the whole thing, I’d have to run the world’s oldest and greatest ultra-marathon, The Comrades Marathon: a 56-mile jaunt started 80 years ago to honor the fallen comrades of World War I.
My initial response was an emphatic “no,” the whole “run 56-miles” thing was a bit of a turn-off. Eighteen hours later something had shifted around in the cranium and all of a sudden I was anxious to start training and called back to commit.
It must have something to do with the enticement of a challenge, one I can’t say I was expecting anytime soon. Not surprisingly, such a task requires some serious training for most of us mortals. So on Saturday I ran 13 miles then ran another 20 on Sunday. Looks like I can expect similar workouts—just longer—for the next five months.
And you can expect that I’ll be looking at all avenues to gather the sponsors I’ve committed to generate. On that note, if you’re reading this, please consider. I’ll have more information available soon, but it’s something to the affect of $35/month to help an African child get an education, some food and clean water, and some clothes on his or her back.
Perhaps you can get a group together willing to sponsor as a team. Perhaps you can get your company, your fraternity brothers, your family or your basketball team to pool funds and commit with me.
Please come back to this site in the next few weeks for more information about how you can help. I know that the suffering I’ll experience on May 30 (not to mention the many, many miles and the many, many hours of preparation) will pale in comparison to living without the means necessary to live the lives we’ve been blessed with.
Still more info can be found at www.comrades4thekids.com and www.worldvision.org.
