Two to Thirteen Miles (and Free Tacos)

Last night was the weekly "Taco Run."  Every Tuesday evening, Wahoo's on Grant (in Denver) sponsors a run out to City Park and back and then gives out free tacos to all the runners.

Taco Run!

This little arrangement had been going on for quite a while right under my nose (my apartment is right next door to Wahoo's), but I was oblivious to it.  In fact, last fall, when I was just starting to train with some regularity, I would run to City Park on my own (purely by coincidence around the same time the Taco Run was going on), then run back to Wahoo's for dinner (paying for my tacos), not noticing all the other sweaty people around me or realizing that they were eating for free.  This went on for weeks before someone noticed that I was the only fool paying for free tacos and clued me in to the deal.  Since then, the Taco Run has been the single most consistent part of my training schedule (even if it is primarily a social run versus an actual workout).  Such is the power of free food.  Also, I've met some fun and interesting people through this group.

The Taco Runners (Fil is Chris Sullivan's LT100 pacer, and Denise is my pacer)

Last fall, back around the time I was still paying for free tacos, I was brand new to trail running (obviously, with all of ten months experience, I'm still a novice) -- I had finally figured out where a couple of the Fort Collins trails were, and I had discovered White Ranch in Golden, but I knew I needed some real trail experience before the November registration date for the LT100 in order to make an informed decision whether to register or not. 

So, back in October 2010, to get that quick trail experience, I ran an XTERRA half marathon in Cheyenne Mountain State Park in Colorado Springs.  It was my first real race of any appreciable distance, and I (admittedly somewhat naively) viewed it as an early yardstick of my potential to finish the LT100.  I figured if this 13-mile race crushed me, then that would be a clear sign from above that I was deluded to think I could run 100 miles by the following summer.  In the weeks prior to the XTERRA race, I remember being more than a little intimidated by the distance and the hills on the course.  After all, I had only about five weeks to increase my endurance from two miles on flat terrain to 13 miles on some pretty decent hills.  I admit, that sounds like a fairly reasonable goal now, but at the time, it was a challenge.

Well, the XTERRA race didn't crush me, and I came away very motivated by it.  I ran the first half of the race at a very controlled pace with Molly (her first half marathon too) and the second half alone at a "less controlled" pace.  I don't recall my time (maybe 2:20-something), but I do recall the exhilaration of flying on the downhills on the verge of catastrophe (a habit I've reined in a bit).  And I distinctly recall, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, momentarily imaging myself a persistence hunter and feeling that faint, almost subconscious, flickering sense of being connected to the trail.

That rare feeling, more than any other I get while running, has motivated me through my long-distance training runs.  I haven't really talked to anyone about this (because I recognize how hokey it sounds), but it is a powerful thing -- kind of like a primal and preternatural deja vu.  Maybe I'll write more about it later ... after my good buddies grow tired of the mocking they inevitably will give me now that they've read about my persistence hunter fantasies.