Inked the line....Race Across the Sky, Here I Come

So I have spent the last several nights creating excell spreadsheets with time/distance conversion charts matching up to elevation gains, matching up with goal pace and cutoff pace.....all of this related to a monster of a challenge of which I tasked myself with overcoming this coming August 18th.  I signed up for the 2012 Leadville 100 Trail Run.  Yes, 100 glorious miles of jogging (or yogging) through the great Rocky Mountains just outside the charming little mining town of Leadville, Colorado.  It's pedigree of gunslingers and boom-town glory long since faded into poverty only to be resurrected by a force recognized more often in nature than in human form, which is a calling.  A calling to be out....further out than a simple walk. Further out than a even a simple drive.  And certainly further out than a simple run.  This calling comes from deep within the human soul and often lies restless and quiet with rarely felt fleeting moments of fiery, dedicated focus of power and strength that usually are only called into action by a reaction against an impending threat on our comfort and convenience.  Few of us listen to this calling more closely and are aware of what strength can be drawn from it.  Even fewer leverage that sensual connection and turn it on its head by pursuing it.  Following the stirred drumming of our heartbeat as we go and seek to answer the calling deeper and further away.

I am married, have two children, and work a more of less 9-5 job.  I pay my bills.  I have pizza and movie nights.  I love my family and the life we have more than I can even comprehend.  I also listen to the calling.  100 miles in the mountains in pursuit of it is my answer and my attempt to pay homage to this universal spirit of life that calls me to test my limits of my physical, mental, and spiritual strength.  The greatest risk of wasting this life is never hearing the call to go into nature and test yourself against it, and in doing so growing an unchangeable connection, moreover, a union with it.  Uniting human blood, breath, sweat, skin, tears, laughter, and thought with the infinite time of universal molecular matter in nature.  Our first clothing was nature.  Naked, running for survival.  We are slightly more clothed now, but even more so now should be running for our lives.

The wonderful pain I will most certainly feel throughout most of the 20+ hours in the wilds of the mountains will tell me I am truly alive and hear the calling....asking me to not only rejoice in my most perfect of living organisms, but to dance the beautiful dance of what my body was made to do, Run.  Softly and unrelentingly gliding through the cool misty air with foggy warm breath laying moisture upon my face as I push further.  The strength in my legs growing with every deep breath in perfect symphony with the beat of my heart pushing warm oxygen molecules from the universe straight in the voracious gormandizing muscle to propel me further.  My teary eyes smiling with every ray of light streaking Across he Sky.  I will race across you, my mind says as I go further....I will Race Across the Sky.