8. Ultra

Within days, I signed up for another marathon and started a cycle of planning events, with each marathon being about four to six months apart. This schedule allowed me to always have a target on the calendar that I would be preparing for, to remain in shape, to be ready mentally and physical for races, and most importantly, to remain sober. This also allowed me to tell people about my plans at the gym and bask in my pride of accomplishment. I was eager to let people know that I had quit drinking and found this “new” untapped motivation and ability.

This need for attention and pride didn’t seem negative to me, because I felt like I could impact people positively through stories of effort instead of stories of partying or cynical humor. I didn’t share much on Facebook but I was pleased when someone shared something about me, or perhaps snapped a picture of me after a race. The number of Likes on one of those posts did boost my mood, or alternatively flattened my mood based on the lack of Likes. I wanted approval, just as I always had, ever since childhood. From my friends, from my parents, from my peers - I wanted to know that I was good and sought validation.

By the time I had done three more marathons, I began to notice a pattern of anticipation leading up to the event and then afterward a kind of bottoming-out. The race prep held excitement and wonder, and the race itself felt like a purging of pent up time and energy. But then the day after a race, perhaps partially from soreness or from the depletion of nutrients, an ennui toward life took hold. A dysphoria swung back after the euphoria of the race and I finally realized that this low feeling prompted me to start searching for the next race to run so that I could get back to where I wanted to be. In essence, the races were like being drunk. The highs and the lows still followed my life like a vice whether I was in shape or fat, sober or drunk. The restlessness and anxiety could re-enter the stage at any time and the worst days, those “black dog days” of dysfunction and hopelessness, could arrive without so much as a stubbed toe to blame. I considered how I had started taking medications like Lexapro and Wellbutrin, so long ago, going to the doctor to get something to address my malady and yet the symptoms still returned. Tweaking dosages could help, but then I had been taking those pills for years. Depression is a disease, I was assured. Depression happens due to an imbalance of chemistry in the brain…but wait! Haven’t we heard this before in the form of the bodily humors? Maybe Lexapro helped to reduce my black bile and make me more sanguine. The old was new again and the new was old. Perhaps the Stoics were correct after all and time is a flat circle. I started to doubt the efficacy of pharmaceuticals for this infinite loop of highs and lows. There was something else at work.

Those difficult days of moodiness I dealt with in one of two ways. One way was acceptance and realizing that life imposed hard days for no reason, and that I should stop whining and deal with it like a grownup. The other way involved acting more like a baby. In the latter experience, little things set me off, not with anger toward others, but negatively toward myself, and no amount of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or positive self-talk could re-orient my mind on those days. I wanted to complain and find fault. In fact, the easiest way for me to tell that I was in a bad state would be to monitor my thoughts about my neighbors, immigrants, racial issues, politics, and various religions and world views. When I was in a foul mood, some scapegoat outside of my tribe of one person would receive my ire, for no reason other than I was upset with myself in some way.

Rather than take this ride to the bottom again, I signed up for more races. A marathon no longer thrilled me so I bumped up to a 50K race. That was enough to put the carrot out further on the stick. A book by ultra-marathoner Dean Karnazes had a great quote that led me to believe I needed to go farther, that I wasn’t yet in the zone of knowledge in regard to body pain and mental commitment.

If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon. If you want to talk to God, run an ultra. 

The first two I had already confirmed. Running a marathon had changed my life. So naturally I wanted to the know the third part and talk to God. This was reminiscent of my younger self wanting to experience love, poverty, and war because that’s what O. Henry said a person needed to experience a full life. I wanted experiences. I had lived in Europe, worked on farms, been in the Army, worked at a homeless shelter, skydived, tried drugs, pursued sex, experienced the highs and lows of sports, fallen in love, had my heart broke, tried exotic foods, gone camping, canoeing, fishing, hunting - but I hadn’t done an ultramarathon or triathlon yet. The fat and happy life had not provided any deep insight to me, even as I settled into my comfortable bed and read books at night. I still needed to find a struggle, one of my own choosing. The comfort of modernity was driving me to seek hardships like an ultramarathon because my membership in the privileged class had satisfied all wants and desires.

So I signed up for the 50K and ran it. It wasn’t enough mileage.

So I signed up for a 50 mile race and a full Ironman for the coming summer.

I started trained all winter in the snow, like in Rocky IV but without the abs of a ‘roided up Stallone. I began swimming at the lap pool, having no idea how to swim a proper freestyle stroke. I received the kindest insult from a veteran swimmer who, before giving me some critical tips, said, “You look like a person who came to the sport of swimming late in life.” He was right. Forcing myself to learn swimming came with that click of a mouse button, when I signed up for the Ironman without really having any hope of completing a 2.4 mile swim. Paying the fee for a race somehow has the power to steel my determination. Though I came to swimming late in life, I was still hell-bent on developing enough stamina to finish the race.

Surely the Ironman would cure me. This was the thing.

And if it did not cure me, there were 100 mile races out there waiting in the hinterlands of Death Valley and Leadville, Colorado. Training in snow still seems somewhat mad to me, since I recall hobbling along snowmobile trails and waving at the riders. Surely they thought I was insane. But I was sober and still pouring my heart into family, coaching, training, and my job. Perhaps it was insane but it was working. Except for one thing:

I had found a new path to isolation. Again, like every hobby before, the fitness craze aligned perfectly to a solitary person like me. Yes, I could have joined running groups or Crossfit organizations, but I liked the quiet and the silence of the long runs. Even at the gym, I wore headphones. Everyone at the gym seemed to be working out together, but alone. Only if we saw a familiar face would we pause the music for a minute and chat before returning to isolation in the earbuds.

I always had myself to talk to. Learning to swim and training for endurance offered plenty to ponder. Someone asked me what I thought about while running for hours, and I said, “The same things I think about in bed at night staring at the ceiling.” Exercise didn’t remove the brooding mind from me. No I carried my brain with me, but as the body exhausted itself the mind became less prone to brooding. In fact, after several hours of running I found doing even basic math problems in my head difficult, because I had a hard time calculating my pace and mileage despite it being simple math. Running seemed to pull the blood out of the brain and into the legs, which can be nice for someone with a tendency toward rumination.

My workout schedule of preparing for the Ironman started nine months in advance. Most days required two workouts, yet I always wanted to pound miles. To pound miles - I wanted to run myself to exhaustion or wreck myself on the bike so that when I arrived home I collapsed into the arms of a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Being wasted from exhaustion on a bike or on a run made me feel more alive. I recall a hot day when I set out for a 20 mile run and I brought only a liter of water. The heat exceeded my expectations and after three hours of running I was not yet close to home. The last four miles felt like a desert and I suffered greatly for my lack of foresight on water. Normally I was careful about water, recalling military obsessions about carrying enough water. The hour it took me to walk to the house seemed like a day. Now I was never in any real danger, as I wasn’t verging on death, but this was an experience that I learned a lesson from and took a strange enjoyment from due to the test of my body. This wasn’t like Jesus in the desert for 40 days, it was just me in the sun without water for a few hours. Yet the devil could have bartered my soul for a cup of ice water that day. (I just hope the devil doesn’t know about my love of breakfast cereal, too.)

Here’s the odd thing that I started to notice. Suffering by useless tasks like marathons does test a body and mind, but the real tests in life are those things that are not glamorous or prideful, like doing the laundry and dishes. Cleaning the bathroom floors, toilets, and mirrors for forty years and raising children and dealing with people - that is the real test of endurance. Yet I don’t feel the need to write about the last time I cleaned the bathroom, unless I were to tell you about the clog of hair in the shower drain that looked like a dead squirrel when yanked out. The actual test of endurance is in the small daily things and the ups and downs of family and community life.

Endurance sports appear as virtuous through the persistence and training that are required to finish them, but if looked at closer they could be seen as personal pursuits performed in isolation for recognition from others. I don’t want to discount all goals, but the the wetsuits, bikes and running shoes all adorn the athlete with a shine to make the pursuit appear glamorous and worthy of respect. In the end, the accomplishment is itself a purchased product. These achievements allowed me to wear a persona of success, not very different from purchasing a luxury car, and basically to brag about my ability. The marketing won me over. I had paid quite a bit for those marathon t-shirts and medals.

I realize that I could inspect every single action I take to find similar motives, and pick apart everything I do until there is nothing left but the dry bones of criticism. But as I spent the summer taking long solo bike rides, rushing to the pool for laps, and running out the door for 10K training runs I had to consider my rationale for this goal. Because at some point, the need to test my physical endurance had started to unhitch from inspirational and slid toward selfishness. Luckily my family gave encouragement, but if they had objected to the amount of time I spent alone in this pursuit, I’m certain that I wouldn’t have stopped training because I wanted to be known as someone who had completed the Ironman, because then I would be special. Or something like that.