Blog Subtitle

Reverse-engineering the Ultramarathon

Thursday, April 26, 2018

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.