Saturday crew ran the Dipsea trail to Cardiac, then we worked our way back over alternate routes.  Four weeks to the Dipsea, five weeks to the Double — flippin’ time to get serious!   My splits are ok.  I’m about a minute and a half slower to top of Cardiac than in last year’s Dipsea, but I know of a few places I’ll pick up time, and will leave nothing on the course that day.  I’m cautiously optimistic that if I can avoid injury (right now it’s a cranky hamstring and sore right foot)  I can match my time from last year and get a qualifying time again.  

As we run,  am thinking about an interesting article in the NY TImes about a British scientist who is on a quest to “engineer” a two hour marathon. To run a 2 hour marathon, you’d have to run at a 4:34 minute per mile pace!   This scientist has some crazy ideas, and is trying to raise $30MM to get it done.  Nutrition, biometrics, genetics —  they are all in play.  And he’s challenging some well-established rules of training.   “We know nothing about the science of training” he insists (won’t tell Dorette that).  Instead of “live high, train low”, he’s suggesting the right approach may be “live high, train higher, and run very low”.   He thinks the best chance for breaking the 2 hour barrier is on the salt flats that adjoin the Dead Sea, which lie a quarter mile below sea level, with 5% more oxygen than at sea level.   Run at February, when temperatures are a cool 46-48 degrees, with experienced marathoners, and other non-traditional training, and the barrier may be broken.  

So what does this have to do with me?   On one level nothing.  The flat paths of the Dead Sea are a world away from the rooted and rocky trails of Mt. Tam.  (I averaged just over 12 minutes a mile today, and that was fine.)  Little in common other than legs and lungs. But why do pickup basketball players like to talk about or imitate Steph Curry?  None will ever drain a step-back 25 footer with LeBron’s hand in their face.  Why do recreational tennis players channel their inner Federer?   No chance of the rest of us drop volleying to greatness.  But the feats of the legends inspire us, push us, to do more, more than we ever could if left to our own mere mortal devices.  I’m not racing others, or even the clock (though God knows I would like to hit 1:19 or so and qualify again for the Dipsea!).   I’m racing against myself, against my 58 year old joints and cartilage, against the forces of time and Newtonian gravity.  No one else cares (or needs to).   There is nothing more innate in our DNA than the desire to improve and the fear of failure.  Both play out whenever we expose ourselves.   And I feel fully and comfortably exposed.

And an afterthought.  It dawned on me (yes, I’m more than a bit slow), that if the British scientist thinks a key factor to running a faster marathon is the 5% extra oxygen at the negative altitude (500 feet) of the Dead Sea, what does that imply for running the Bridger?   A simple check of the Internet says that (if I get in) I’ll be dealing with more than a 20-25% shortfall of the stuff we breathe.  What was I thinking?