The Old Man and Tennessee

One Journey Through the Heart of the South, 2025

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It was the weirdest, most disorienting wake-up yet. There was a faint sort of moonglow coming in at an odd angle from one corner of the space I was in. I needed a bathroom, so I carefully felt around for a floor at the side of the bed I was in, stood up, and began working my way toward the glow. It looked and felt slightly uphill. Feeling around, I discovered a wall of flimsy-feeling doors to my right. I was in a narrow 'channel' between the bed and this wall, as I took one careful step after another toward the source of the glow, gently running my hand along the doors, using them as a guiderail and trying not to lose my balance and crash through them. Finally I reached the corner and discovered the 'moonglow' was coming through another door, open, also to the right. My handrail hand felt a doorframe and gripped it as an anchor as I turned to go through the door and saw... my bedroom hallway at home.

"Oh yeah, I'm home." I'd arrived a few hours earlier, at 2 AM, and tumbled into bed after nearly a full day of travel to get here.

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2023 3 Days at the Fair 72-hour

The McHenri - on the road together again.

(Photo credit - Claudia RunsandPaintsalot)

"You're walking like a sixty-five-year-old man," Karen said, as I shuffled my way from the car toward the entrance to the convenience store, at a stop we made on the second leg of our drive home the morning after I finished my fourth "3 Days at the Fair."

"Not bad," I thought. "I'm sixty-two."

2022 Lost Turkey Trail Races 100K

It's 1:30am on a Monday morning and I'm eating a turkey dinner that, by my estimation, weighs about two pounds.

I have always noticed that in recovery from a tough race, my body follows a strict hierarchy of needs. When I got home late Sunday afternoon from running the Lost Turkey 100K, I had been awake for over 36 hours not counting the little nap I took Saturday afternoon before the race's 6pm start. I badly needed sleep, but I also had not eaten a real meal since noon on Saturday.

Which would take priority? My stomach told me, unequivocally. I ate a turkey dinner (just like the one I am eating now, both supplied by the race). After that I couldn't keep my eyes open no matter what I did, and I went to bed around 6pm.

But now it's 1:30, I've slept for seven hours, and I woke up kind of hungry. At first I thought to mollify my re-disgruntled stomach by feeding it a nutrition shake and going back to bed, but as I lay there (not going back to sleep) it became obvious that though it had accepted the shake (and some leftover popcorn that Karen had left on the kitchen counter) happily enough, it was still prodding me to go scrounge around for something more, and was now hopefully suggesting, "You know, that second turkey dinner might be good about now."

That's why I'm eating a two-pound turkey dinner at 1:30 in the morning.

But I've finished it now, and I'm pretty sure I'll be asleep again before I can finish this race report. Maybe I'll do this one in installments.

'night, everyone!

Why not?

With love and respect to all of my non-running friends, there are some stock things that many of you tend to say to runners, and pretty much all of us have heard them many times. A couple of examples:

When someone finds out that I run a lot...
"Isn't that hard on your knees?"

When I explain I'm an ultrarunner and tell them how long my last race was...
"I don't even like to drive that far!"

Vol State Glossary

A couple of years ago I was asked if I could produce a glossary of Vol State language for a group on Facebook. Vol State is growing in popularity and visibility each year, and there are always new, curious ultrarunners and fans who are a bit baffled by some of the colorful (and often eccentric) terms that have evolved around the event over the years. My little glossary has been well-received by many of them, and I decided to get it set up a little better for future years here.

The Freedom Paradox

Wall-E Humans

I've been noticing a perplexing paradox off and on for the past couple of years, the "off" and "on" of which correlate with the "on" and "off" of my lackluster, halting attempts to get trained back into something like ultrarunning shape.

Why

When I think about it right now, I picture myself in a chair in Manchester, Tennessee.

The chair is tucked up against the side wall of a small building, maybe ten steps off the course, shadowed from the streetlamp out front by a corner of the building. It is two or three o'clock in the morning - on the second night.

Mostly it is quiet, as you'd expect at two or three o'clock in the morning. The late-summer night air is warm and humid and still, not rustling the leaves of the trees that shade my spot during the heat of the day, though I do hear an occasional rustle in one of the nearby tents. I try to be quiet as I rummage through my ice-filled, cheap styrofoam coolers for whatever I'll be drinking, hoping to avoid disturbing those resting around me more than I have to. I know they will understand my need though, just as I understand theirs. I'm among friends here.