Somewhere around six hours into this year’s UTMB, I began to feel a dull ache in my legs. Small, lingering twinges in my feet, ankles, and knees from the Colorado Trail Race a month before were turning into more acute pains slowing my forward progress.
I ran conservatively, expectantly waiting for some pep to animate my legs, but time only led to a further decrease of my pace and an intensifying of the discomfort. Surprisingly though, despite my lackluster performance, I was mentally lucid and content, staving off negative thoughts that are all too often debilitating in these types of situations.
By the halfway point, I was physically crushed, struggling to make sense of what exactly was driving me to keep pushing myself around this mountain. I had finished the race once before and was very familiar with the Chamonix Valley as this was my sixth visit to the area.
My primary goal for the race was to try to run fast, despite not having put myself in the best position to perform with the recent bike race and an excessive amount of running the rest of the summer.
With that objective evaporating in the early hours of the race, I began to seek motivation outside of myself. Running can be an exceedingly selfish pursuit where only our own well-being, goals, and aspirations matter. I have found though, particularly in these long events, that I get to a point where my mind comes into focus and I can not only intellectualize the reason I am out there, but also feel it in my emotional core.
Climbing up to Refuge Bertone, in the wee hours of the morning, tangibly uncomfortable, my headlamp on full beam to repress sleepiness, the realization of why I kept on going hit me.
This is bigger than you. This is bigger than you, I repeated to myself.
I had just passed through Courmayeur, where I got enthusiastic encouragements from my family, friends, and the Buff crew. I sat in the gymnasium to eat and change shoes, while Pau tended to all my needs. I apologized to him for not doing better, but he immediately interrupted and with cutting sincerity told me how great I was doing.
It is truly wonderful to experience such an unwavering level of support. My desire to continue the race and perhaps more fundamentally what drives me to run stems from this feeling of togetherness, this exchange among runners, family, friends, and other supporters where the personal meets the collective.
This past weekend, I experienced a similar feeling of fellowship, as I helped organize the Fourmile Firefighter Challenge, a local 10-mile uphill race from the Boulder Adventure Lodge up Fourmile Canyon to Gold Hill, Colorado.
I rode my bike ahead of runners in the first few miles of the race, snapping photos and watching the strain on their faces as they fought gravity. Uphill running is a strange mix of pleasure and pain, a battle between the feeling of tangible progress toward an objective and the difficulty in getting there.
As each runner passed by me at their own pace, they all shared a commonality in their effort, reaching for the pinnacle of their ability. To me this is where running departs from its individual nature and merges into the collective experience.
As runners, we connect on an essential level, a mutual understanding of the headspace required to drive a hard physical effort. As a spectator, I find myself being drawn into that headspace, living vicariously through the participants. I am therefore thankful for what running brings me individually, but also how it broadens and enriches the greater human experience.
Call for Comments (from Meghan)
- When in your running has the very personal experience of running externalized into a group effort?
- When was the last time you were a part of someone else’s running experience, focusing on their effort and goals, as opposed to your own?
