2008 Team USA 24 Hour

I wanted to be on a U.S. National running team.  The only problem was I was an almost-40 year old stay-at-home mom who ate lunch and played tennis.  I hadn’t even run in college, other than a casual 10k where a running coach told me I “was better than [he] thought,” (is that even a compliment?).  Truthfully, I had no business even watching elite runners on television, much less think I could ever be one.

But you come up with crazy ideas when you are desperate.

Ten years earlier, I had quit my job as a prosecutor when I gave birth to my twins.  After they were born, I went back to work, but the stress of trying to practice law effectively, with two small children at home, proved unmanageable.  I wasn’t being a good lawyer OR a good mother.

I tried my hand at Junior League, tennis, PTA, community class teaching, and a number of other volunteer and/or social commitments to give me some level of outside stimulation, but none of it was the right fit for me.  I had casually started running a few mornings a week with some girlfriends with the vague idea that I would someday like to run a marathon.  For a couple of years, I messed around, loving being a stay-at-home Mom, but dreading the hours when my kids were in pre-school.  I didn’t feel like I had a purpose when I wasn’t ‘mothering’.  I’d been working since I was fourteen years old.  I wasn’t good with downtime.

Slowly, I started running more and more.  After several months of building up my mileage, I finally finished my first marathon.  I went on to run three more, qualifying for the Boston Marathon in December of 2005.

Then I read a book that changed the course of my running career, and my life, forever.  It was “Ultramarathon Man,” by Dean Karnazes.  Karnazes was part of a small community of runners who ran races of distances greater than the marathon; usually 50, 60, or 100 miles.  I was fascinated by this.  I read as much as I could about ultrarunning, discovering that most races took place on trails out in the middle of nowhere and that many had you running for more than twenty-four hours.  It was running and adventure all rolled into one!  Where could I sign up?

I decided I wanted to run 50 miles.  But, I didn’t want anyone to know about it.  I wanted this to be my own private goal – something that I was doing just for myself, win or lose.  I chose 50 miles because it was long enough to get excited about, but I thought (prayed) it wasn’t long enough to kill me, and I would attempt it at the 24 Hours of Boulder race.

So, having picked my race, I began the daunting task of training for it.  The question was “how?”.  I didn’t want to ask anyone in my running group for help because, one, no one had ever run an ultra and, two, I knew they would think I was nuts.  I knew I had to keep my dream a secret.  I started running a lot.  I’d run with my regular group in the morning, take my kids to school, and then head out for a second run.  I needed to get my mileage up, but I didn’t want anyone to know.  I soon found out though that it’s pretty hard to train for a 50 mile race without anyone finding out about it.  Especially when your husband is the one telling everyone what you are doing.

“Stop it!” I cried to him when I found out he was the source of the leak.  “People are going to think I’m crazy!”

“They already do,” he laughed.  “Do you honestly think you can run 75 miles a week without anyone noticing.”

I was tempted to take my training indoors, to hide out if you will, running secretly on the treadmill, but that was even a little kooky for me, not to mention boring.  I continued with my training, refining it from running “a lot” to a specific plan when I signed up with a coach.  I dismissed comments from people about my obsessiveness when they found out how many miles per week I was running.  I ignored the looks of pity I got when I assured them I was having fun.

I tried to come up with the perfect (read, sane) answer to explain why I wanted to do this. There was no monetary reward for running 50 miles (heck, there wasn’t even a medal), and it went way beyond a rational approach to physical fitness.  But I was simply drawn to ultrarunning.  It felt right: Adventure and physicality rolled into one.  I could train for it relatively cheaply, it wasn’t (particularly) dangerous, and it didn’t require a team or a lot of equipment.  It just required time and dedication, both of which I had in abundance.  And thick skin to ignore all the snide comments, which I was working on.

But there was another reason I wanted to run 50 miles.  Because I had lost my nerve.  After my twins were born prematurely, life took on a much scarier hue.  Things that I had done before without a second thought seemed inordinately risky.  Having children, and especially preemies, makes you all too aware that life is dangerous business.  I became frantic that something bad would befall my children.  When they thrived and seemed less vulnerable, I widened my scope of fear to encompass my whole family.  My father suffered three heart attacks and my mother started to go blind.  I felt helpless to the whims of life and chance.  I wanted to feel brave again.

Running helped me get there.  Running a marathon made me feel capable.  Running 50 miles made me feel brave.

After I completed my 50 miler, I set my sights on bigger goals.  Within 7 months, I ran my first 100 miler during another 24 Hour event.  Six months later, I won my first 24 hour event at FANS in Minnesota.  I was hooked.  I wanted more.  I wanted to make the US National 24 Hour team.

(to be continued…)

Why did you start running?

Happy Running!

Tagged as: 24 hour run, national championships, ultracentric