Dipsea Eve!   24 hours from now, give or take five minutes, I’ll stumble down the “stiles” (short for turnstiles), then take the last couple of turns on the road before crossing the Dipsea finish line at Stinson Beach.  With the age and gender based handicapping and staggered starts, four or five hundred runners will have crossed ahead of me, roughly a thousand to follow.  I will welcome the sense of relief, exhaustion after an unforgiving eighty minutes on the trail, almost none of flat, most of it narrow, rutted, and on race day, bursting at the seams with runners.   

Today the signs are up, marking off the Depot square where nervous bibbed runners ranging in age from 8 to 80 will be anxiously milling about before their assigned group queues up in the corral area.  The parking and other signs are a constant reminder of what’s to come tomorrow.

Try as I might not to obsess about this silly race, it is hard not to.  The spirit of the annual Dipsea resides in the collective psyche of this town, and, exponentially so in the hearts and souls of my running buddies.  Of course, it shouldn’t matter whether I run these seven ridiculous miles and 2000 feet of climbs in 1:17 vs 1:20.  It won’t affect my family, my day job, or anything of significance.   But after months of training, for this day and for the Bridger two months from now, race day is exciting, and I welcome the adrenalin rush that will build in the two or three minutes before group “N” crosses the starting line next to the ornate clock that was donated to the Mill Valley Fire Department in 1929.  

Glancing to my left, that clock will read 8:44.   I’ll squeeze the trigger on my watch so I can gauge progress as I hit the key markers along the route — top of the 672 Dipsea steps, the crest at Panoramic, the entrance to Muir Woods, Halfway Rock, and then goddam Cardiac.  Mind will be racing as I run up Throckmorton Avenue, then through Old Mill Park and up the steps, dodging the already building jam of runners (younger passing older, and even at 58 I’ve got senior running statesmen ahead of me).  Can’t burn too much on the steps.   Need to be strong for the six minute push up to Panoramic, neighbors lining the route, shouting encouragement.  Then big exhale, and hop-step the winding stretch down to Muir Woods road.  Lengthening stride till the trail resumes.  Surviving Suicide, prepare to accept a slide or stumble, just not a major fall.  Cross the road again near the entrance to Muir Woods and the bridge over the creek.  Knowing that the next thirty minutes will be a thigh-burning up hill grind on Dynamite, Hogsback and to the top of GD Cardiac.  Dig deep.  Dig deep.

The question looms.  Why?  It is clear why people care about the Dipsea, a local ritual, a shared torture that gets talked about throughout the year.  That makes sense.  But the larger “why” relates to my (and my friends’) running obsession.  Why run through the aches and pains?   Why get up at 6:30 rather than curl up and extend a welcome Saturday morning slumber?  My addiction.  Why?  What am I running from?  Where am I running to?  I’ve been thinking more about these questions the last few months, and I’ll have plenty of time for self reflection as I gear up for the five-plus hour Bridger.  But here’s my current view.   The friendship and camaraderie of the Saturday morning crew.  Plus, trail running encapsulates so much of life.  The reward and payoff for hard work, and the satisfaction of mastering a physical challenge, performed in a natural cathedral that overwhelms all the senses.   I love that feeling, the reward for all the effort.  

But what I really love, my personal heroin, is cutting loose on a gentle downhill after cresting a ridge.  Breath returning, stride lengthening, almost sprinting (as much as one can at my age).  If I could bottle that feeling — the exhilaration that starts in the toes, spreads like ink, permeates the hams and quads, turns the arms into pistons, heart happily racing — I’d be a billionaire.  That sense of pure athleticism, albeit fleeting, brings me back to being a kid, when it was so easy to accelerate around the bases, outrun a fly ball, chase or be chased in a spirited game of tag, or sprint just because I could.  As Lukas Graham sings, “Once I was seven years old!”   Or twelve.  Or fourteen.  I’m both running toward that feeling, and away from it.  Toward it, trying to turn back the clock, to taste that wonderful elixir again and again.  But I’m running away from it too.  Sprinting as fast as I can from the suppressible but ultimately unstoppable ravages of time, from my mortality.  Knowing that someday — though no day soon — my muscles and limbs will disobey my commands.  And so I run.