Who’s Crazy?

People tell me I’m crazy all the time. Just the other day, my friend told me I was crazy for running the Tamalpa Headlands 50K. He meant it as a compliment, but he also doesn’t know the half of it. If he knew even a fraction of the work that’s gone into getting ready for this race, he’d really think I was nuts.

Over the last 12 weeks, I’ve run nearly 500 miles with over 100,000 feet of elevation gain. That includes multiple mountain summits, endless morning hours on a treadmill with the incline set between 10-15 percent, lactate threshold workouts in stifling East Coast heat and humidity, and one really hard fall where I cut up the entire left side of my body from my ankle to my shoulder.

When you peel back the layers, however, there’s nothing crazy about my training. It’s the product of consistent effort applied over a long period of time. Cultivating discipline isn’t crazy. Eating nutritious food isn’t crazy. Sleeping 7-8 hours a night isn’t crazy. Strengthening my body with core work and my mind with meditation isn’t crazy.

You want to talk crazy? Spending all day staring into a distraction machine with nothing to show for it but an eroding central cortex and an atrophying physique. Now that’s crazy!

I’ll admit, I am trying to do something “crazy” on raceday. Well, crazy in that I am attempting to shatter my personal best performance on a course with more than 7,000 feet of elevation gain. Perhaps my plan isn’t crazy so much as it’s audacious. A 52-year-old East Coast runner shouldn’t have a chance in hell of setting a 50K PR in the Marin Headlands. That would make the accomplishment all the sweeter.

While I have specific performance goals in mind, I’m not going to share them until after the race. My real goal is to run a complete race from start to finish. To be smart, to be bold, and to never allow my energy to drop until I cross the finish line. If I can do all that, the finishing time will reflect my overall fitness level. I think I’m pretty fit, so the time should be relatively fast. That’s not crazy. That’s just training math.

This idea of running a “complete” race, is of course, highly subjective. Attaining this goal is less about checking off performance boxes and more about generating a feeling of accomplishment that will dwell in my bones for the rest of my days. I’d like to look back on this race one day, and tell myself: Dude, you really crushed that one.

How will I know? I can look back at 13 years of racing and recall similar feelings after everything from 5Ks to 50-milers. I know it can be done. I’ve just never been able to do it in a 50K. Over the years, I’ve run numerous 50Ks under all kinds of conditions and circumstances. I’ve run fast and flat courses along with slow and steep. I’ve run in sleet and snow, and in ungodly heat and humidity. I almost had a breakthrough 50K race in my grasp once, but then I puked my guts out at Mile 25 and shuffled home short of my goals.

No matter the environmental factors or course conditions, every 50K has left me feeling like I had something more to give. I’d like that streak to end on Saturday in the Marin Headlands. Why here? Because I was born out here, and as I wrote back in the spring, I feel like I was reborn on this course two years ago when I made my first attempt. Accomplishing a deeply personal goal in this particular corner of the universe would be a full circle moment for me as a runner, and most importantly, as a human.

So, you tell me: Is that crazy?

A few days before the race, my family went on a hike up the Dipsea Trail from Stinson Beach to Pantoll Ranger Station. This was a dress rehearsal because the course will have us going down Dipsea to Stinson, then turning around and going right back up, covering Miles 21-27. With roughly 1,500 foot of climb (and drop) over six breathtaking miles through a grove of redwoods with iconic views of the Pacific, it’s an incredibly scenic backdrop for an all-out sufferfest.

This section will serve as the fiery crucible through which I must emerge if I’m going to accomplish my goals. No lie, it’s going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in a race. That’s OK. I’ve made it through harder tests in my life. This is just running.

On our way up the trail, we stopped to chat with a lovely woman who was headed down in the opposite direction. “You know,” she said. “Sometimes you see these people who run up and down this trail. They’re crazy!”

I smiled and said, “What if I’m one of those crazy people?”

She looked at me and smiled back. “Ah, you are one of those crazy people!”

I sure am.