My current running addiction is the 10 mile “commute” run from the Headlands above Sausalito, down to Vista Point, across my Bridge, through the Presidio and Marina Green, all the way to my office. Crazy views of SF Bay, GG Bridge, Alcatraz, Headlands, and the Pacific.   After running the last 8 miles at 8:30 pace, I arrive winded, feeling strong, and laughing with the parking attendants about how I “forgot the car again”.   No one else I know runs 10 miles to work, so I feel like a bad ass.  Yes, for a moment or two I’m a bad ass, but only for a moment or two.  

Because it is all relative.  If you’ve got a 6 handicap in golf, you’re feeling pretty good until you meet up with one of the several million with a lower one.  Or you may be the best singles tennis player at your club, but the woman cross town will run you around like a rag doll.  It’s all relative.  And so It is with trail running.  What I’m doing is fun, and maybe impressive at some level.  On the other hand, Veronica, who works at my firm, is a serious endurance athlete.  She’s done several ultras, and also did a crazy run across Iceland a few years ago, a 156 mile, self-supported ultramarathon.  Wow!  And then there are my running buddies.  Urban is training for his third Dipsea Quad a month from now, and Mark has run the Grand Canyon’s ultimate test, the R2R2R (rim to rim to rim), and there are three or four Dipse “black shirt” winners among my Saturday morning running crew.  So, as I’ve said before, I’m a relative slacker.

With this in mind, after hearing about it through Veronica, I attended the screening last week of “Diamonds in the Rough”, a short documentary about former professional baseball player Eric Byrnes.  Byrnes is quite a character, known for body-risking dives and extreme hustle that earned him nicknames like “crash test dummy” and “pigpen”.   Several years after retiring and focusing on a second career in broadcasting, Byrnes was challenged by some former junior high classmates to do a sprint Triathlon.  He competed, and got his butt kicked by them and many others.   An incredibly competitive athlete and person, Byrnes licked his wounds and quickly set his sights on improving.  Though he’d never run more than four miles prior to that, he trained hard and went on to do a half dozen ultras and eight Ironman Triathlons in the last five years.  Then, earlier this year, he “won” the lottery and got into the 2016 Western States 100 miler, the ultimate ultra.

The movie is well done, and shows an interesting intersection of professional athletes and ultra runners, a Venn diagram that normally has almost no overlapping territory.  Anonymous endurance athletes toiling alongside Byrnes as he’s coached by top coaches, paced during the last 25 miles by none other than Lance Armstrong.  And several major league players made it to the screening, including Barry Bonds.   But what I really loved was hearing Byrnes espouse so many of the feelings that are at the core of the trail running culture:

• Do things that remind you that you’re alive
• The reward for trail running is being on the the trails
• The only place where his mind is quiet is on the trail
• We’re at our best when we are vulnerable and uncomfortable, and trail running (especially ultras) does that

It was also interesting to learn more about the world of ultra running, and especially the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run.  The Western States course runs from Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe to Auburn, and began in the 1950’s as the Western States Trail Ride, a 100 mile course covered by accomplished riders who could get their horses to cover the route in less than 24 hours.  

Twenty years later, the first runner accomplished the feat in less than 24 hours, and a few years later the Western States Endurance Race was born and soon became an annual event, drawing the top athletes from California and around the world.  The Western States is Incredibly popular now, requiring a lottery to enter, with 5,000 applicants a year and only 300 spots.  And fuhgetabout you or me entering.  Just to enter the lottery you must run a 100 mile or 100k qualifier race deemed difficult enough by the Western States board.  Until you’ve racked up a handful of qualifiers, your odds are between slim and none.

The mental strength required is mind-boggling.   Imagine running a hard trail marathon, then having 74 miles left to go!  Seriously?   At the screening, I’m surrounded by these alien creatures, and, surprisingly, they look a lot like you and me, mere mortals.  So, the difference is training and mental toughness.  It’s all relative.  Of course it is.