As a general rule, ultra marathons don’t tend to reveal life’s great metaphors early in a race. You usually need to suffer a bit longer for your wisdom. Yet barely a few miles into the Tamalpa Headlands 50K, while beginning the first of a half dozen serious climbs, the day’s great big revelation hit me hard.
“You don’t have to be anybody but you.”
You don’t have to be elite. You don’t have to be legendary. You don’t have to be, as I told a friend the day before the race, dramatically bold and/or potentially stupid. You just have to be you. It was you that got yourself to this moment with your hard work, and it’s your hard work that will get you where you need to go.
Thus liberated from the burden of expectations, I proceeded to undertake an incredible 6-hour odyssey that stretched my limits well past any heretofore recognizable points. A partial list of impedime
nts: Leg cramps that felt like my quads were locked in a vise whenever I tried to climb uphill. GI issues that forced me to stop consuming calories two thirds of the way through the race. (Take that, high-carb industrial complex.) A free floating rock in my shoe that carved up my foot over the final three hours.
As I said to an aid station attendant at Mile 25 after running down my list of woes, “Clearly, I’m in a really good place right now.” He responded, as only Mile 25 aid station attendants can respond: “Brother, you’re in the only place that matters.”
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