People ask me sometimes what it is like to run a 50 mile race...

Pain spread through my legs like a creeping virus army…

 infecting my muscles with lethargy bordering on leprosy.

I began to feel like I was falling apart, piece by moving piece.

“Just keep moving forward.”

That was all I could think, as the unfamiliar sounds of moans and whimpers pried their way through my clinched teeth. I was here to prove that I was a man, but I just felt like a scared boy…a scared boy who was determined to run 50 miles!

My feet kept moving, the pain kept coming, and somewhere along the way, somewhere out there on that trail, the Man met the Boy and decided to form an alliance. They both whispered to me from deep inside my mind.

“Just keep moving forward.”

“Just keep moving forward.”

And so I did.

Running Lennon’s Race

They say John Lennon died 30 years ago.

But I saw him today at an intersection in Ballard.

He is older and rounder.

And he walks with a cane.

But it was him.

I could tell by the glasses.

I whisked by, 10 miles into a 13 mile run,

and he mumble-yelled something in my direction.

At first, I thought he was crazy, or drunk,  

or maybe humming the words to 'Imagine' backwards.

Then I realized that he said,

"If only I could run like that!"

I raised my fist in the air, a sign of solidarity,

as if to say, “Brother, if only I could sing like that!”

And then my feet carried me into a place far away from there

Where all the people share the world

and live in peace.

brush up on your navigation...you never know when you might need it...

http://www.learn-orienteering.org/old/nocompass1.html