As I turned a corner in the road and caught sight of the ski slope, my spirits sank. This was not going to be easy.
Running with the Devil is a timed race that takes place on a 3-mile loop at the Mountain Creek Ski Resort in New Jersey. Each loop takes you up 1,100 feet to the top of a ski slope, and then back down again. The average grade is 14%, but in some sections it approaches 30%. The goal is to do as many loops as you can within a 12-hour time-limit.
I had been looking forward to this race for many reasons, including not only the challenge of battling the mountain and the joy of being outdoors on a summer day, but also because my sixteen-year old son had been reading up on philosophy and had asked me recently, what did I think about free will? I replied that surely anyone who would run up and down a mountain for twelve hours is exercising free will — why else would they do that?
The Long Brown Path 