Humbled

 If theres one word to describe my experience this weekend, it is this: humbling.

Let's rewind to Saturday.

I woke up feeling overwhelmed. Four million things on my to-do list and at least 3 people who will be disappointed with me by the end of the day no matter how hard I try.

Looking back on it, I was reverting to old behavior, avoidant behavior. In an earlier time, feeling the way I did- anxious, antisocial-- I probably would have cancelled all of my plans, gotten behind my canvas, put on an audiobook, and hid. Maybe for a couple days.

Guess what? I can't do that anymore. It's not an option.

Hiding is no longer an option, because what I'm doing isn't really about me anymore. There is my team, a group of extremely dedicated individuals who want to make a difference in the world as badly as I do.
And more than that, there are all the people who I want to help. Veterans, athletes, non-athletes.

Barefoot Jake setup a meeting with some of his friends down in San Diego. They are veterans, and some of them have been grieviously injured in Afghanistan and Iraq. It might sound a little silly to you, but I was really nervous about meeting them. I guess when it comes down to it, in my heart, I don't really feel all that worthy to represent and champion the men and women who fought for our country. In the beginning, when I started this project, I thought I understood what "sacrifice" meant. I guess I put it in a box with a bunch of other cliches that I didn't understand. But I guess thats part of misunderstanding. You don't know how wrong you are until you get smart enough to realize how stupid you were before. Does that make sense? A more eloquent way of putting it: Hindsight is 20/20.

We met up with these guys in a park in San Diego. I brought Turner New Zealand Filets to cook on the Grill that were generously donated to us by Noel Turner because he realized how badly we were hurting for money and needed grocery money. On the way down, traffic was terrible. It was madness. Tensions were high. Communications were static. I was planning on interviewing them on film with Robot, but as the day progressed and our plans kept getting sidetracked and delayed, I realized that this would probably be something that I would have to let go.

When they showed up to the park, everything changed. I've never been so astonished and touched by another human being. And it wasn't just one human being, it was five.

I don't how to describe the simultaneous feeling of humility, admiration, respect, connection, and love I felt immediately. Even writing this makes me feel it all over again. All I have to do is think of their eyes. A light seemed to shine from somewhere inside them, like their irises were lighthouse windows shining in a dark storm.

I have to wonder…is it me? Just now waking up? Is it that I am just now noticing the light in people, a light that has been there all along? Why was it that every time one of these veterans spoke to me I felt so humbled, so grateful?

Some of these guys lost their legs in combat. All of them have been through much, have seen so much. They were beautiful, and confident, and shining. They were open, and generous, and kind. Their spirits seems so strong and bright, and every time they thanked me for what I planned to do, I felt a twinge of self-consciousness, of silliness, of shame. Like it was such a silly little endeavor compared to what they had already been through. It makes me that much more motivated to run harder, to push farther, and to really make what I am doing count for something.

When I think about James or Tim or Cody rock climbing or running down the street with a prosthetic leg, it makes me realize that my bravery is a drop in the ocean. There is so much courage in the world, and so much love. I just wish there was some way to see it, to know it is there, to remind us that we are not alone, and there are people out there with valiant hearts and spirits that understand ours.

And now I think about their eyes, and I see that the light in them is like a beacon.

I'm starting to feel that way a lot. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand why I'm doing it in the last few weeks. What it began as certainly isn't how it's ended up thus far. I'm constantly being humbled by the aptitude,  kindness, generosity, and greatness of the people who I'm working with, and the people who I'm running for.

Even though I have yet to come up with the money I need to complete this journey successfully, I'm finding that more than ever I am getting the spiritual and emotional strength I will need to complete the journey.

Drug-Induced Honesty (this blog may be taken down within hours, better read it quickly)

This morning I learned that if you jump up and down while holding your breath, the snot that is lodged in the top of your nasal cavity falls down like an avalanche into your mouth and makes it a lot easier to hawk a loogie. This is not something that works all the time, but if you have bronchitis or pneumonia, or some other kind of respiratory condition like I seem to have right now, it really does the trick.

It took me getting this sick in order to actually lay down on this couch, and cover myself up with a blanket and get down to writing. It's been a couple months since my last blog. I've just been busy. When I say that I'm busy, I mean that every waking second of every day I feel simultaneously that I am being chased and I am chasing something. I no longer know if I am the hunted or the hunter. All I know is that I am driven towards my goals in a way that could be described as maniacal.

The sand is filling the bottom chamber of the hourglass, and it seems to be falling quicker as the days go by.

I just coughed up some more blood.

Lately, I feel like my time and my body no longer belong to me. I am constantly striving, talking, organizing, running, stretching, talking, e-mailing, more talking, filming, refilming, programming, designing, connecting, delegating.  Thoughts and connections are coming at increasingly rapid speeds. It is exhilarating. It is what you read about. 

This process has been completely transformative and I haven't even started my journey yet.

My spiritual beliefs have changed. I have come to an understanding with the Alpha and the Omega, with the piles of lotus flowers that erupt in my dreams, with the intuition that flips my stomach head over tail when it is time to make a judgment, with the tears of gratitude that come at the most
unexpected times-- when I am on the phone with the lead designer Nike, when I have an impromptu connection with a stranger in public, when I witness something beautiful and profound and fleeting, when I come to terms with the person I once was, and the person that I have become. I have relinquished control and have begun to see myself as tool, as something to be of service to others and the world at large.

I am humbled.

I am not afraid of failure. I am not afraid of injury. This is not to say that I have a sense of invincibility, that I am untouchable. I used to feel this way, but I have learned that I am fragile and mortal the hard way. I am learning this lesson now, as I struggle to breathe, as I continue coughing, and coughing, and coughing. I understand the possibility of being injured, and I understand how difficult it will be when it happens. I do know that no matter what happens-- broken bones, pneumonia, sickness, tendinitis, mental breakdowns, difficult people, I will finish the run. If I have to do it on crutches. If I have to do it in a wheelchair. Whatever it takes.

In the beginning, this run was a selfish idea. When I say selfish, I mean that it was all about my own gratification. Experiencing the country, getting bragging rights, proving something to myself and others. I decided to run for veterans, to learn about what they have gone through, to use the run as an opportunity to help others. This is when everything changed. Even as I write this, I am overwhelmed with emotion and my heart swells with pride. I feel that I have no place in this world which I have intruded-- the world of war, the world of the military, of sacrifice, of destruction, of brotherhood, of valor. Incrementally and over the course of the last year, I have begun to understand it. I am still outside of it, and I think I am supposed to be there. I do not know if I am strong enough to see it from the inside, to truly empathize. I am probably not.

I have seen that the heroes I have idolized my entire life--the ancient Greeks, the Odysseuses and the Joan of Arks-- exist. The people that have shown up in my life in the last year are extraordinary examples of human beings. I am meeting them everywhere, all at different stages of their evolution. They are seeds waiting to be germinated by some unknown catalyst, they are green shoots jutting up through the earth and facing the sun for the first time, they are in full bloom. They are all around me.  I see it in the eyes of veterans. They have known it--that lost love. That nostalgia.  The bitter, slighted feeling that was once self-actualization, but has progressed into disillusionment. To know your greatest self, but have no way to express it in the context of your culture. That is torture.


And then I think about what it takes to go into battle, something that I may never be able to fathom, and I wonder what makes that kind of bravery possible. And I see that it can maybe happen by embracing the principle that love is greater than fear. Something I never understood about the military before I started this project was the brotherhood that exists between soldiers in combat. I have been privileged enough to learn about it from the interviews we have conducted over the course of the last year. And it seems that this principle is that which drives us as human beings to do that which terrifies us. Out of love for our brothers, out of love for ourselves, out of love for the people around us. When that much love exists, nothing is impossible.

I asked one veteran recently whether he thought that this kid of brotherhood would be possible outside of combat. He said no. We talked about it for while. I asked if he thought that you needed a common enemy in order to unite people. He said yes.

I have found my enemy, and it is apathy. All of the worlds problems can be traced back to apathy towards our fellow man and toward our planet. It shows up as carelessness, it shows up as laziness, it shows up as nonchalance, it shows up as "cool". So often we extinguish our desire to show compassion or care for another, to shut ourselves off to our emotional responses, to connect with others. Apathy is learned,  and it is a protective device. But it can be unlearned. We can move past apathy and into empathy, into compassion, into love, but you cannot fight against a negative idea and turn it into a positive one. You can only starve it. Starve fear and apathy of your attention, and give that attention to love instead and see what happens. I am trying it. It is working.

My greatest battle will be conquering the apathy I have for myself. It is my cyclops, my Medusa, my fire-breathing dragon.

I have a lot to be afraid of. I don't have the money I need to get across the country. I have an RV, but no gas to put in the tank. I have Superfood shakes and supplements and workout snacks, but no food to eat. I have a team of people who are helping me for free, and I don't know how I will feed them. I don't know where we will stay.

But I am not afraid.  I have faith in God, or the Universe, or the ultimate, or whatever you want to call it. I have faith that I will get exactly what I need. My job is simply to do the very best that I can.

I have been lucky enough to find people who are willing to be generous. People who have no reason to help me except that they believe in what I am doing, and for that I am eternally grateful. Every day I am given gifts, whether they are lessons that are difficult to learn, or amazing things that fall into my lap. I don't know if I deserve them, and I feel that I must continually improve and make myself better as a human being so that if I don't deserve them now, maybe I will in the future. Maybe I am getting these blessings on credit.

I went through a phase of tremendous guilt last week. A hard look at my past. At the apathy I used to feel for everything and everyone around me, including myself. I saw how my actions were like stones dropped into a pond, with the ripples extending out farther than I could imagine. I committed myself to act more cautiously, more presently, and with more kindness. I know that I have a long way to go.

Maybe it is the sickness or the cold medicine that is prompting this kind of honesty, or maybe this what they call the unbearable lightness of being…?

Why Perfectionism Blows

The most miserable people on the planet must be perfectionists.We work so hard for something that is by nature impossible to achieve and in doing so are never able to enjoy any of our accomplishments. Because the marker for our goals is always moving, always inching forward moments before we reach it. 

It's the horse that keeps chasing the carrot on the end of a stick.

The horse never gets the carrot. I never get the carrot. No one ever gets the carrot. 

We run ourselves to exhaustion, trying to snatch it. 

But, really... why do I want that dumbass carrot anyway? I guess I never stopped to think about it. And now that I am, it's really simple. The fact is that I want it because somewhere along the line I decided that she who gets the carrot is "good enough" (i.e. deserving of love). And there's nothing I want more in the world than to be good enough. Good enough for myself, for my lover, for my parents, for my society,  and maybe even for history. It depends on how far I take it. 

California is full of perfectionists--people who look amazing on paper, who have great jobs, great cars, great looks, great educations, great spouses. They're just so beautiful to look at. I mean, really they are! So, why is everyone so unhappy? Why is everyone on antidepressants, or spending the last half of their day trying to forget the first half of it?

Maybe it's this idea that we have to present a perfect image to the world, that there is something so inherently wrong with us that we must hide it  in the console of our BMW's, underneath our cosmetically enhanced facades, and buried deep under one failed relationship after another. It's all a charade, and at the end of the day, we still have to look at ourselves in the mirror, and know deep down who we really are. We don't wake up or go to sleep as the avatar that we present to the world. When we are alone, we don't have others to reflect back to us the image of ourselves that we put forward to the world. When we have moments of stillness, of quiet, of solitude, and we remove ourselves from the worlds expectations, thats when we have to face our true selves, and the facts about who we are being. 

So, we keep ourselves distracted…through television, through the internet, through shopping, through drama. We wrap ourselves up in the stories others and ourselves, either fictional or real, that perpetuate the myth of our masks. 

Advertising agencies and media have done a really good job completely saturating the market with this dogma, and now people can brand and sell themselves to their friends on social media. We are all basically advertising how beautiful, how cool, how talented, how interesting, or how right we are. We are building a case for ourselves on-line that we are "good enough".

But it doesn't matter. We can fool the rest of the world about who we are being, but we can't fool ourselves. 

This used to eat me alive! Seriously, the lengths that I have gone to and continue to go to in order to present the perfect picture to the world....It has literally nearly killed me, and it took seeing that I would have to choose between my perfectionism and my survival in order to change. And of course, I knew that before anything else, I had to change my thinking. 

I started looking at myself with a microscope. Not externally, but internally. I started looking for irrational thoughts, unhealthy perceptions, and false beliefs that I held about myself and the world that were keeping me from both knowing myself and knowing happiness.

Here is the conclusion I have come to after peeling off a few layers of the onion.

Perfectionism is boring. And stressful. And more than that, I think most people innately sense that people who are seemingly picture perfect 24/7 are doing it to cover a deep-seated darkness or insecurity. 

I have a friend who is a really good lawyer. He spends most of his time analyzing human behavior, decoding it and searching for motivations. He tells me that he doesn't trust anyone without flaws, because you know they are hiding something truly grotesque. 

So, instead of trying to hide my own flaws, I've been practicing the art of laughing at myself. Laughing at all my weird quirks and idiosyncrasies that drive the people around me crazy, at my sometimes self-destructive habits, and at my moments of embarrassment, when I make an ass out of myself, or when I don't have all the answers. I even have started to poke fun at what I perceive as a shortcomings. At risk of sounding like I have all the answers, I will venture to say that I've had shift in consciousness. And the shift says: these things don't say anything except that I am more human than I thought. And that's okay. 

And luckily, I'm not alone. There are a lot of us. 

Don't get me wrong. A lot of the time our shortcomings need to be recognized. We should be more honest, more kind, more generous. We should have more integrity. We should be healthier, and more disciplined. But the thing is, we don't need to make ourselves wrong for being the way we are. It's good to look at ways to improve, but once we make ourselves wrong for being a certain way, our first impulse is to cover it up, to hide it from the world, to conceal it under layer upon layer of paint. As long as its covered up, we are able to continue throughout our day harboring our secret. But in the darkness, this ugliness only grows, as we feed it more energy…and it takes a lot of energy it to keep up appearances. So much energy that you might feel that you don't have a moment to actually be, instead of constantly projecting who you think you should be. 

I'm pretty sure thats why in Alcholics Anonymous, the first thing they ask you to do is to admit to the whole room that you have a problem. You resist it, and you're scared, and then you stand up, and you say it, and you realize that you are safe. Because you are in a room full of people exactly like you. 

And the thing is, the planet if full of people who are exactly like you. We all experience the same basic desire--to be loved, to be secure, to be happy. What separates us is the ways we go about getting these things. And it seems to me that the main problem we face as humans is a lot of misdirection. 

Are there just so many people on the planet that we feel that we must divide ourselves into groups, draw lines in the sand, and jump on either side of it? 

I understand that a lot of you probably don't relate to any of this. You are secure in every aspect of who you are, and who you've become. You are light as a feather, and happy with the decisions that you've made in your life, and you go to bed every night with a sense that you have spent another day satisfying your life's purpose. For the rest of us, for those of us feel that we are still searching for it, maybe it's time to take a look inward. To lift the painted veil of our assumed identities and peer at the trials and joys of our life in the light of truth, and give others the opportunity to do it too by withholding our judgement and being gentle with each other. 

And….because I feel like I should definitely be practicing what I preach, I'm starting a video diary starting on Tuesday, so you can watch my own social experiment-- of hopefully showing a conscious effort of transformation. Tuesday happens to also mark exactly 101 days from when I'll be leaving to run across the country. When I originally decided to run across the United States, the idea was to push myself-- physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

One of my favorite proverbs is, "The best time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining." And because I know the battle between my true self and my own insecurities, shortcomings, and flaws will be my hardest-won, I figure I should tackle that on-line, and in doing so inspire and encourage others to start to push themselves in the same way.

And instead of being embarrassed about who I am, or trying to present a perfect picture to the world, a branded image of who I am instead who I really am, I'm going to keep it real. And hopefully, when I say my truth out loud,  the power that my secrets have will vanish, and it will give me the opportunity to break my invalid ways of thinking down and seeing them for what they are. And then all of a sudden, through the habit of catching myself in, say, judgment of another, or losing my keys for the third time in one day, or deliberately distancing myself from others -- it's no longer a reflection about who I am as a person. It just means I have room for improvement. 

Getting Down to the Very Last Feather

In the center of a small, bright room, there is a bed. It is heaping with overstuffed pillows. They burst at the seams with delicate, white feathers. This is the room I am born into, and this is where I learn to play.

I have an extraordinary time. I jump on the bed, hurling the pillows above my head, until the feathers break free and fly into the air. Around me, I conjure brilliant hurricanes and tornados, and I am the creator of my Universe. I sculpt feather clouds and then lay back on the bed and write their legacies. I envision sparkling cities, and pristine forests. I witness valiant men on horseback who are galloping towards noble deeds.

One day, the door opens to my little room and I realize that there is a world outside. I become self conscious of what I am doing. I peer outside, but it makes no sense when compared with the beauty that I experience in my sacred haven. Some of the feathers fly out in gusts of wind, and then suddenly, someone is in the doorway. A dark figure casts the first shadow to ever enter that space of light.

The shadow begins to yell, "What are you doing? Don't you know that pillows are for sleeping, and not for dreaming? Go to sleep or I will take away all your pillows, and then you will not have anything. You will be stuck in this room with no possessions, and nothing to do, and you will be powerless. When you've put all these feathers away, then I will set you free from this room. Out there is the real world. Out there is real freedom."

Confused and suddenly aware of my myself as something painfully different than this shadow, I become frantic. I look at the at the feathers that have settled on the ground, and they are no longer full of magic and possibility. I am ashamed of them.

They have transformed into a senseless mess.

I spend hours, days, years, painstakingly putting the millions of feathers back into their pillow cases. I become obsessed with this task. I equate the absence of feathers with stability and happiness. The dark figure starts coming to the door at all hours of the day and night, offering me encouragement for my diligence. I am constantly looking at the door, waiting for him to arrive. I begin to look forward to his praise, but soon the encouragement turns into reprimands. And so, I work harder. The feathers that once formed moss-covered mountains and filled the oceans with electric jellyfish become symbols of my oppression.

I continue working furiously, but the supply of feathers seems inexhaustible. There are just too many. I work my fingers to the bone pushing the feathers into piles, stuffing them into bags, and picking them out of the mattress, but they never completely disappear. The shadowy, dark figure is now always hovering in the corner of the room, mumbling under his breath. Eventually I am unable to tell the difference between his voice and my own thoughts. He tells me that I'll never leave the room, that it's pointless, that I might as well give up. I persevere, and I work harder. I want to be happy, and I want security. I want the security that is out there, in the real world.

I understand what it means to be tired. I become so tired that for the first time in my life, my eyelids grow heavy. When I fall sleep, I dream of feathers. I remember where I've been, the worlds that I've created, the love that I've known. I dream of a swirling white reality where ballerinas dance on cliff edges, suspended in time. I start to look forward to sleep. But slowly, as the years go by, the feathers that were once my whole existence start to disappear even from my dreams. I start to only dream of the world that I have seen the shadowy figure emerge from. I tell myself that once I finally succeed, he will disappear and I will be safe and comfortable.

Then one day, I get down to the very last feather.

The moment of my success has arrived! I am overjoyed. I grip the end of the feather between my calloused fingertips while the dark figure encourages me to put it in it's place. I hold it for a very long time, and I stare at it unwaveringly. I place it in front of my lips and blow, watching each tiny hair tremble against my exhalations.

In that feather, I see infinite Universes. Silver elephants are ladened with the unbearable lightness of woven bags that erupt and spill over with magnolias and lotuses. They stampede through steamy jungles and jut their gleaming ivory through blankets of fog, leaving trails of blossoming white in their wake. A slender woman in a tattered linen dress pulls back her wild hair and walks crookedly up a windy beach. The sand is sugar and the choppy water is a thousand shattered chards of mirror reflecting the face of the sun.

The dark figure opens the door a crack, and beckons me to see my future. He allows me to glimpse the skyline of a towering city that shivers in the opal light of the moon. In this terribly soft storm, I think of the room, the door, the shadowy figure, and the world beyond. I think of all that I have seen, and of what lays ahead.

I look back down at the feather, and I know what I will do.

                               

   

Odysseus Talked Sh*t Too

When I started this project nearly a year ago, it was shortly after I read Homer's "The Odyssey" for about the 50th time, and I was little obsessed with the idea of the hero's quest.

I really wanted one.

I don't know what exactly this says about me, but the idea of battling both man and beast, being lost at sea, and being tossed from one adventure to the next by the whims of mischievous and vengeful Gods is one that inspires me.

The parts of Odysseus's story that I love the most are when he acts so damn human. Homer calls him by all sorts of different name throughout the book-- god-like odysseus, the man of twists and turns, the master of many exploits. But I love Odysseus the most not when he is conquering troy, or blinding the cyclops, or slaying six-headed snake monsters. I love him when he is acting like a total ass. 

Like when he narrowly escapes being captured and killed by the freshly blinded Cyclops, and is pulling the boat away from the shore, sneaking away without revealing his identity, but he just can't help himself. It's too easy. Odysseus gloats at his own cleverness and yells, "Haha, you dumb monster! If anyone ever asks you who messed you up so bad, you tell them that it was Odysseus, from the line of Zeus!" Basically like a serial killer leaving his calling card on the scene. Except that Odysseus, being from time to time exceptionally stupid, forgot to consider that the Cyclops was the son of a vengeful Sea God, and how that might not be the best person to piss off when you're leaving on a cruise. 

Come on, it's hilarious. I do that kind of stuff all the time. You know, poke the bear. 

And so when Odysseus does things that are prideful, and selfish-- when he lets his ego get in the way of getting back to Ithica, I can really relate. It reminds me that both ancient and modern day heroes are very human. You can surround a man with luxurious things, and dress him fancy clothes, call him a King, or a president, or a millionaire, or a movie star, and all of a sudden he will have this aura of importance around him that wasn't there before.

Guess what. 

It's not real. 

In the last six months, I've started pushing myself to be more understanding, more forgiving. When I stopped indulging gratuitously in catty or judgmental talk about others, the thoughts themselves started disappearing. If I've been wronged, I imagine me at my worst do something similar (which usually isn't a stretch of the imagination) and I think about all the insecurity and bewilderment and pain I go through every time I inflict pain on someone else. Or if I'm just mentally pigeon-holing someone, I imagine the times that I've excitedly tried to look or come off a certain way, and I remember sinking feeling I got when I realized that I had failed. When you put yourself in another's shoes like that, talking shit isn't so fun any more. 

I really challenge you to try this at home, kids. It's not easy, but it's awesome. You'll learn a lot about yourself and about the people around you. Maybe you will realize that some of your relationships will grow and others will diminish. You might run out of things to say quickly when you aren't bagging on other people or indulging in drama. Maybe you'll have similar results to me, and nearly every time you think a judgmental thing about anyone, it won't be something to laugh at. You'll just feel kind of sheepish. You'll laugh at your childishness. You'll start to immediately ask yourself, "Why am I separating myself from this person?" And maybe you will have a really hard time disliking anyone, no matter how they treat you. 

I'm lucky enough to have a few close friends who also refuse to engage in negative talk. Being very chatty and working as a cocktail waitress makes it hard to avoid gossip. Talking about other people is how most people (especially waiters/waitresses) fill most the hours of their day, and I, too, have gotten really good at it. I used to be downright mean. I mean, really mean. I used to write down gossip and pass it back and forth in a notebook with my friends during Jr. High. I used to write sonnets about how offensive people's outfits were. 

The thing is, when I stopped wanting to engage in negative talk, all the negative self-talk in my head started to quiet down too. I started liking everyone more, and seeing the best in them. I started liking myself. I stopped looking at myself so critically, and beating myself up when I didn't do everything perfect. I stopped worry what other people thought. And then it all crashed in on my head at once: that any difference between me and anyone else is all in my head. We are all from the same creator/explosion/alien implantation (call it whatever you want, we all came from the same place), and no one has more of a right to be here and to be happy than anyone else. 

It's too bad that the misconception that some people are more or less deserving than others isn't something that our parents try to beat out of us when we are little kids. Imagine if, as a toddler, you were taught that believing people were somehow essentially different from you was actually an immature way of being.  Maybe it's something that all 7-year olds should know. Maybe we need to learn this lesson on the same day we learn to share our toys. Can you imagine how different our world we be?

I don't want it to seem that by writing this that I have transcended being a snotty brat, because I haven't. I still catch myself thinking unkind things, or thinking of myself as more deserving than another person. But I'm trying, and it's getting easier every day. I try to be gentle with myself and those around me, and to remind myself that Odysseus was a pompous ass too, and he made it back to Greece. So maybe, just maybe, if I don't let my head get too big, I'll find my way to New York.

(here's my shameless self-promotion. please help me get there http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/anna-runs-america--2/x/5016817) 

(DNF) Did Not Finish- First 100 mile race attempt

I am laying on my stomach in my room at a Super 8 motel, drinking hot chocolate, and feeling down. Outside, temperatures are in the low thirties and snow dusts the pine trees and mountains. It is a picture-perfect scene in West Yellowstone, Montana. It is the day after my very first attempt at running a 100 mile ultra-marathon, and I am gorging myself on humble pie.

To be honest, I went into the race not knowing if I would be able to finish. I think there's probably nothing more boring than another blog about ill-fitting shoes written by a disgruntled runner, so I'll spare you the long version of the story. 

The short version: I made the very rookie mistake of switching to a new brand of shoes just weeks before my race. 

The Outcome: Arriving at the starting line of a 100-mile race with two already-swollen toes, and the sinking feeling that perhaps I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I'd compartmentalized the feeling in order to get myself to the starting line, relying entirely on an act of God to magically heal my purple toes at the last minute. 

The Lesson: Don't let optimism cross the line from helpful to hurtful. Just because you get lucky sometimes, doesn't mean that unicorns are going to visit you in the middle of the night and leave new shiny feet under your pillow.

The Backstory:  The days leading up to the race, I loaded up on carbs and protein. I made sure I was super hydrated, and that I got enough rest. I was very aware of everything that I was putting into my body. I wanted to give it exactly what it needed, so I didn't eat anything that I didn't consider perfect fuel for my body. The months leading up to the raise I trained hard, and I trained smart. I arrived in town with enough time to rest and get ready for race day. I met my coach Lisa, which was brief but exciting. I met some of the other runners who I have been reading about and looking up to for years. I was excited about racing and about challenging myself. But in the back of my mind, the gnawing suspicion that my feet were going to cause me major problems was starting to develop as a full-blown fear. 

When I put my shoes on at 4:30 am, and headed out the the finish line, I was painfully aware that the race would be extremely difficult. From the first steps of the race, I pretty much knew I was in for an extremely arduous fight. 

I started meditating immediately. When experiencing pain during a run (not from an injury, just from soreness/fatigue), I am usually able to manage it through breathing and meditation. This is usually how I do it. 

1) I focus on the feeling of pain completely. I try to feel every uncomfortable sensation fully and observe the feeling casually, without judging it as bad. 

2) Then, I put parameters around the pain, and keep it from growing to be a bigger part of my awareness. 

3)So then I'll switch back from focusing my attention on the pain, and then focusing on the nature that is surrounding me. I'll continue to do this switching of attention until the location of the pain is easy to find in my awareness, and it is separate from what I am experiencing externally (the road I'm running on, the runners next to me, the path that lays ahead).

4) Then, I focus on the pain more intensely, trying to make the parameters smaller and smaller. I then take the pain, and put it in a small black box that I visualize, lock the box, and refuse to let it out. When I begin to feel the pain overtaking the larger part of my awareness, I imagine the black box, making sure that it is staying inside of the containment area, and isn't creeping into my external awareness. 

This usually works. I didn't read any books about pain management techniques, I just kind of made this up myself. I don't know if it will work for other people, but it works swimmingly for me. 

But then again, I've never really employed this technique for use with anything but the soreness and fatigue associated with running long distance. By mile 8, I felt like my both my big toe nails had ripped completely off, and I was afraid to look at them because I felt that it would dissuade me from finishing the race. So I kept running, despite the steadily increasing pain and discomfort. Between mile 48-49, the pain was so terrible in my feet that I could barely walk, and I spent the last 45 minutes crying as I walked down the road, realizing that I wouldn't be able to finish the race.

And so my first ultra-marathon attempt resulted in a failure. More than anything, I'm embarrassed. And I am embarrassed that I'm embarrassed. 

I didn't finish a race. That it a first for me. And, my coach was there to witness it. She didn't actually see me drop out, since she was busy facilitating the entire race, which was being run by some of the biggest names in ultra-running. The fact that she wasn't there to see my defeat almost makes it worse. I just dropped off. I would have rather had her there, maybe to convince me to keep going, or to give me the okay to eliminate myself. In the end, I guess I didn't need anyone's okay at all, however I wonder if someone telling me that the kind of pain I was experiencing was a normal part of the sport would have pushed me to go farther. I pushed myself as far as I could go, and then I stopped. In the end, I was able to run fifty miles on two swollen, black toes. The amount of physical and mental focus it took to complete that was legendary. But it wasn't enough. 

It doesn't matter that it was my first ultra, or that my shoes screwed up my feet just weeks before the race, or that I did everything else I could to prepare. It doesn't matter about the 7,000 ft elevation difference, or the fact that I'd never experienced weather so cold in my entire life. The outcome is the same: I didn't finish. What can I learn from this? Well, there is the obvious answer, which is also the easy answer; I have to take better care of my feet. The harder answer, the one that I don't want to think about? There is no faking long distance running. It is not something that you can do with style, not something you can pull off at the last minute, not something you can power through. Running a one hundred mile race takes long, intense mental and physical training. You have to constantly be pushing yourself past your limitations. 

Not only that, but I have to recognize the fact that I'm a rookie. Unlike the legends that were present at the race in West Yellowstone this weekend (Pam Reed, for one), I'm new to this. I'm green. I'm not Andre the giant showing up to an amateur weight-lifting competition, about to be discovered for my innate talents and a perfect genetic make-up for the task at hand.

Here's the truth, which will make me sound very arrogant at first. People have told me throughout my life that it seems like everything comes easy to me. I like the sound of that, it makes me sound like I was well-crafted, a genetically superior human being. But the fact is, I'm not smarter or more capable than anyone. I'm just about normal.

I think it is really important for me to remember this in my training. I'm not gifted like Dean Karnazes or Pam Reed or my coach, Lisa Batchen-Smith. I don't have a natural talent or ability for running. Hell, I don't even know if my form is right. It seems every day a new article comes out about the new scientifically-proven perfect running form. Half of my nervousness about this weekend was centered around the issue of whether my coach would tell me that I had the wrong foot-strike. The result: The fear was valid- at mile 20 (or so), Lisa told me to stop running on my toes. But I thought a fore-foot strike was more natural, healthier? So much for that. 

I have to remember also to congratulate myself in some ways. It took a lot for me to get to Montana. Financially, I really had to work a miracle to be able to make it here. Support-wise, I couldn't have been more lucky. Matt drove me all the way from California to Montana, and was there supporting me the whole way. He made me drink water, eat food, and accept encouragement--even when I didn't want to. When I was walking down the road crying the last several miles, he gave me my space, drove up the road a while, checked back in to see if my situation improved, and was the most supportive and awesome one-man support team anyone could ever hope for. He drilled holes in my toenails, made me one of the most disgusting energy drinks I have ever smelled (I refused to drink it.) and played nurse to me for the rest of the trip. Lisa, my coach, wasn't able to give me a whole lot attention (seeing how she was the one who organized and administrated the entire race), but she was able to give me really solid advice and encouragement whenever I saw her.

Also, despite the self-disparaging tone of this blog, I have to say that if it weren't for my feet, I know without a doubt that I would have been able to finish the race. After running 50 miles yesterday, I'm not even sore today. My legs feel amazing, and I have a ton of energy. Today we spent the day touring around Yellowstone. We went to Water of the Gods, Hot Springs located in West Yellowstone. We went to Big Sky Montana, and saw where infamous Yellowstone Club is located. We walked through Hebgen Lake and Quake Lake, and I climbed down a slope to a sun-bleached carcass of a tree tree that had been uprooted decades before. I'm sure that had I doubled my efforts yesterday, and completed the entire 100 miles, I would have definitely been hurting more today, but know that I could have done it. 

I am lucky to have come out of this without a sustained injury, which might have been the inevitable result had I pushed myself a little farther.

The only things that hurt now are my battered and bruised toes, and my tender ego. I'm pretty sure the latter will take longer to heal. 

Pre-Race Jitters

 I'm laying in my bed after a long, emotional day with a coffee leaning precariously against the pillow and several mountains random stuff surrounding me. Honey Stingers, Clif Bars, Bloks, a headlamp, a red LED clip-on light, a 6-pack of socks, my gym bag with a damp yoga towel in it, and piles papers everywhere. The papers are mostly drafts of to-do lists, their successors, packing lists, business cards, and receipts.

My ability to organize appears in my life like an unexpected storm. Kind of like El Nino. There are years of devastating drought, and then all of a sudden there's a torrential downpour. But California is the desert after all, and it only a takes a few days for people to forget that it ever rained at all, and put their umbrellas back into storage. Similarly, I have bouts of intense organization, where I get down to color-coating, alphabetizing, measuring, cleaning things with a toothbrush (and enjoying it), and then spend the next few days completely chipping away at all of my hard work piece by piece. Hence, the mountains of stuff all over my room.

It gets worse when I have a lot on my mind. You can tell when I'm really stressing about something, or extremely involved in a project, because it looks like the apocalypse visited me personally. 

That being said, my mental plate is at capacity. The day after tomorrow, I'm leaving on a road trip. Every great story begins with a stranger coming to town or someone leaving on a journey, so I thought I would give you a preview of upcoming events.

On Saturday, I'm running a one hundred mile race on a course that goes from West Yellowstone to Driggs, Idaho. Every fiber of my being, every hair on my head and the 8 toenails that are remaining on my blistered feet are all screaming for me not to go. Locking my door, climbing under the covers, turning off my phone, and playing dead is a very appealing alternative to actually racing at the moment.

First of all, I don't even know if I have any business running a 100 mile race. Sure, I've been training hard. I've been running hundreds of miles every month, going to yoga every day, swimming, and doing more push-ups and sit-ups than I'd care to admit. But the thing is, I have absolutely no idea how my body will react to anything after about 60 miles. I heard a few months back that women weren't allowed to race in marathons until relatively recent history, because medical professionals believed that their uterus would fall out from the physical exertion. When I heard that, I immediately thought that the men who said that were jerks to underestimate women so egregiously. But while I write this, I've decided that it was probably a woman who concocted this little piece of fiction, because however irrational it may be, I am imagining the exodus of my uterus at about mile 80. (Sorry, Mom. I know it's vulgar.)

I digress.

I try to usually keep my blog uplifting and positive, but I think this one specifically calls for brutal honesty, so I apologize if you were letting your 14 year old son read over your shoulder and were embarrassed to witness him reading the word "uterus" on my blog.

The thing is, I know that I have to go into this race with a positive attitude and an inner strength that I'm not sure that I possess. But blisters and rotting toes be damned, I'm running it. Regardless of how difficult it is, I'm going to give it my best shot.

I'm not what you would call religious, but I'm going to ask for help from whatever God that is out there, even if it means looking for him/it/her in the changing leaves and the gravel under my feet, and the buffalo on the hillsides, and the wide open sky. Even if it means singing, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine," as I run down the black highway in the middle of the night with nothing but my little LED headlamp to guide me. 

And...theres the problem with my shoes. Unfortunately, this is a significant issue that leaves me feeling rather helpless and in the hands of fate. The problem? I don't have any. I know. It sounds crazy. I've been having a crisis with shoes for the last 6 months since I've started wearing "real shoes" instead of vibrams (five-finger shoes). The real shoes actually do help a little with the cushioning...I don't feel like the balls of my feet are on fire after a long run, but they have brought with their neon colors and their sexy designs a whole host of other problems. Blisters, black toenails, stubbed toes, ankle pain, knee pops.

You probably already know what every first-time marathon runner knows. Never change anything about what you wear or what you eat the day of the race. You will regret it. 

Now, I sincerely agree with that little pearl of wisdom and it is advice that I have passed along to others. However, practicing what I preach is another deficiency of mine. I can only do it so much, and then the chaos of life makes it impossible. I ordered the shoes my coach said I should get, I ran in them, and my toenails turned black and then fell off. I returned the shoes, continued running in my Nike Frees in the interim, and got the most epic blisters I have ever seen. My blisters have blisters. So now, I am waiting for my new shoes to show up in the mail, at the last minute, so I can take them for a run and make sure they don't completely wreck my feet.

Sorry. I digress. Again.

I'm talking about material things so much is because right now, according to my to-do list, I'm supposed to be packing. Instead I'm procrastinating.

I better stop. 

Until next time.