The Worst Laid Plans of Rodents and Primates

 I do try for accepting openness, so why limit to just mice and men? Bad ideas are for all! In my first stint as a bike racer, I had the habit of forming negative goals, things I hoped NEVER to do. Examples included racing the Cactus Cup unofficial season opener in Arizona and joining a team for a 24 hour race. Not only was I not interested, I had a decided interest in NOT doing those events. Nope, I'm not going to do them.

Then in early 1998, I spent February and the first half of March in Tucson with Steve, my high school friend, person who started me riding and then racing a bike, and eventual fellow Five Colleges student and first tour guide to the Amherst area trails. Look at a map and you'll see Tucson is quite a bit closer than New England to Scottsdale, suburb of Phoenix and home of the Cactus Cup. I couldn't be that close and not do the race.

At least I could still hold my goal of never experiencing the sleep deprivation of a 24 hour race. Then a few years later, Bill started calling me, a few times a week, always with the same query: would I join his five person team for the 24 Hours of Dalton. 

No! 

He tried to entice me, saying that while there was no prize money, there was always a valuable merchandise award for the fastest lap, and he proffered I would definitely win that, but I pointed out the whole reason we actually race rather than just hand prizes to the favorites is no result is guaranteed. That is how it should be.

Bill kept calling, and in addition to the endurance for a 24 hour race, he also had far more phone stamina than I, so I tried to cut it off pointing out that a professional races for money. His response: "How much?" So yes, pay me $200, and I'll join a 24 hour race team, and yes, I did post the fastest lap time, as well as the second fastest, so I feel I earned my pay, but my greatest joy of the weekend came from the other five person team, composed of my good friends, who beat us, no ringer required!

In much more recent years, I've become a sort of trail runner. Sort of sorta, both apply. In addition to what I consider a sensible and valid running goal of not doing so much damage that I can't walk when 80, I've also, as seems my tradition, adopted the negative goal of NEVER running a marathon distance. 26.2 miles is the distance between the cities of Marathon and Athens, run by a messenger during a time of war (humans, go figure) who delivered his message then died of exhaustion. Hmm, seems a bad idea to try a sporting event that killed the first person who tried it.

Note, 30 miles is not 26.2 miles. Yes, 30 is a bigger number and seemingly harder, but that also means a slower pace, and it doesn't hold the same fatal history. 30 would be fine. In recent years, I've run upwards of a little over 25 mile's in one go, safely NOT a marathon, and I'd never decided exactly how much over 26.2 was safely NOT a marathon distance, but I know yesterday's 26.3 miles (according to friend and companion Matt's GPS) was definitely a failure.

Sure, I could try to claim it wasn't true marathon conditions as we were mostly off-road, or that it was really two runs of roughly half that distance split by my stop at the Ludlow Reservoir outhouse, or I could even try to add to the total that afternoon's 10 mile bike ride to stretch my legs, but in some ways failure of a "NEVER" is a relief. I can never undo having run a marathon, but I needn't ever worry about that number again. And oh yes, most importantly in all the things we do, it was quite a good time!