High Five By 55

I’ve gone silent here. Actually, I’ve gone silent in with any writing, really. I had a rough spring of waves of getting sick and then recovering and then almost immediately getting sick again. Four or five big waves. It was not fun. It put me in a real funk for many months. It’s not what led me to DNFing at Bighorn 100, but it certainly contributed. I was not as well trained as I would have liked to have been, which was in my head from the beginning of the race. But alas, I want to get back to writing. Writing is rewarding to me. I don’t need anybody to read it, I just need to write. Though when people read and comment positively, that makes me feel good, too. I want to get back in the practice of writing daily. Today I begin taking a stab at that. I’m thinking a theme in my next bit of writing is to explore some basic truisms or tenets of running, in particular mountain ultra running, I can lay out for myself to lean on when things get bad. What do I mean by this? I’m not sure. An exa...

Yesterday I got a reminder of perhaps the skill I most need to work on. A skill that a have bizarre mix of real strength and profound weakness. A skill that will really determine if I'm able to finish this project or not. The skill: mental strength. What do I mean by this? In the context of the High Five By 55 project, I mean the mental strength to continue to endure. Endure in the face of adversity. Endure in the face of pain, of boredom, of fear, of uncertainty. Just like the physical training is designed to build the capacity to physically endure the demands of an adventure like High Five 100, I was reminded that I need to mentally train to mentally endure the demands of the same adventure. Yesterday, I ran a fitness test to try to gauge my current fitness as I really begin to dive into training for California International Marathon. The test was a simple one: after a 5 minute warm up, run 25 minutes at a pace roughly between half and full marathon pace, then without any rest ru...