“The Dude abides. I don’t know about you but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there. The Dude. Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals.” – The Stranger (The Big Lebowski)
What was my key to this race? I was going to run with love no matter how scared, hurt or tired I became. I thought about Khalil Gibran, who wrote what has become the theme of this journey:
“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night. All work is empty, save when there is love; and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.” – The Prophet
Pre-Amble: I write this race report about an epic event that started over a year earlier and “ended” in a celebration that took over a full day to complete.
I will try to stick to the race itself and leave the surrounding pre and post-drama to other episodes of my blog.
The Numbers: By the numbers, my team and I ran the 2010 Leadville Trail 100 in 27 hours, 50 minutes and 35 seconds. WAHOO!!!
The Quick Backstory: When the running community met me just 15 months ago, there were doubts that I could pace my good friend and coach Jason Lippman the last 50 miles of the 2009 Leadville. Read about that experience…the bottom line is that I have struggled over the past 15+ months with the most important element of ultra-running: attitude. A few of the key words that kept me going:
What transpired over 15 months? Well, if you were there, you would have seen a bunch of crying, yeast infections, decommits, expletives, laughter, stories that made the rest of the team try and hang themselves (remember airplane?) and general melodrama. Just the way I like it, uh huh uh huh.
- Mile 0 – 13.5: Going Anaerobic
- Mile 13.5 – 23.5: Coke and the Birth of Bombing Downhill
- Mile 23.5 – 27.5: Metallica Nostalgia
- Mile 27.5 – 30.5: IT is a Band in the Knee (Here We Go Again)
- Mile 30.5 – 39.5: Can I pole-vault down to Twin Lakes?
- Miles 39.5 to 50: Big Dreams & High Hopes
- Mile 50 – 60.5: Burial and In Memory of a Legend
- Miles 60.5 to 69.5: Spiritual Heretic and To The Pain Consequences
- Mile 69.5 – 72.5: The Big Toe: Broken
- Mile 72.5 – 76.5: Death on a Stick MATE!
- Mile 76.5 – 85.5: Bad Form, Cheating and the 17 mile Road
- Mile 86.5 to 100: In 3 HOURS Baby!!!
As I ran down the red carpet, my video camera was recording and I was looking for my ladies, my coaches, my team, Ken Chlouber, and anyone else that helped me get here. I did it. I felt great. AND, I stayed true to my promise: I worked with love. Thank you for reminding me of this Mike!
“when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God”
