With the Coronavirus pandemic sweeping the country, it was no surprise that the races I’d signed up for were all canceled. However, one of the organizers offered up a “virtual” option, allowing you to run the distance you’d signed up for, in whatever location you happened to be, within a few weeks of the event date. At first I dismissed this as a pointless exercise. But after a week of sheltering at home, I was eager to get outside and cover some miles. So I picked Saturday morning to execute the virtual option, deciding to run my marathon at a local university track.
Author: Barefoot Ken
Texas Clouds
As a teenager I was fascinated by Nietzsche (I was desperate, of course), but now, forty years later, here I am on an airplane flight, Beyond Good and Evil on my lap — and no, I don’t remember what prompted me to dust it off after all these years.
The page falls open to an aphorism so widely quoted it has become cliché —
“Take care that if you fight monsters, you do not become a monster. For if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
I wonder what was he suggesting — did he mean that introspection is dangerous? That would be a strange thought, since every schoolchild knows the unexamined life is not worth living. But maybe there is a question of degree. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow describes Kurtz as lost — “I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.” Alone in the jungle, Kurtz’s soul “looked within itself.” And whatever it saw drove him mad.
Perhaps Nietzsche gazed into the abyss and saw the heart of nothingness. For elsewhere he wrote that the self contains an “abysmal sickness, weariness, discouragement” — symptoms of the impoverishment of life that results when the “will to power” turns against itself – symptoms of the spirit of nihilism that grasped 19th century European culture, once it became apparent that their god was dead.
Abyss means “a deep or seemingly bottomless chasm.” You lean over, drop a stone, listen.
I picture a cave hidden deep within a canyon. A cave which lies in the bottom of my mind. It reaches back to my earliest memories. Reaches back farther — to the source of that collective, ancestral knowledge handed down over generations. I wonder, if you followed this tunnel far enough, would it lead you all the way back to the inception. If you ventured deep enough within the darkness, would you bump into the primordial forces that animate us?
I put down the book. Glance out the window. Staring straight at me is — a cloud.
This was a year or two ago. Ever since then this strange idea has stuck with me, namely, that deep within the abyss you might find a cloud….
5,000 Miles Barefoot
Last May I reported on reaching the 4,000th mile of barefoot hiking and running since starting the practice almost five years ago. Last week, the finish line of the Knob Hills Trail Race marked mile 5,000.
When I started, barefoot was primarily an experiment, to see if the practice would improve my form and reduce the risk of injury. However, there was also in the back of my mind the idea that for an aging athlete it might not be a bad idea to embrace shorter distances and a slower pace, as would necessarily be the case without shoes.
The surprise was how much fun it’s been to run and hike without shoes. I found that the barefoot practice taught me better agility and balance and a lighter step and turned every hike or run into an adventure. Because barefoot’s more fun, I no longer train in shoes unless there’s snow or ice or too much gravel for me to handle, although I still wear shoes at work and other places where they’re expected….
Knob Hills Trail Race
By way of background, I’d registered for this race a year ago, curious about the trail, only to find out a few weeks later that it was canceled. Evidently the Knob Hills Trail is maintained by mountain-bikers, and when conditions turn muddy, they close the trails to prevent erosion. The race was rescheduled to January 18, 2020, and my prior registration rolled over automatically.
For barefoot runners, the nature of the trail matters for the obvious reason that smooth dirt or sharp-edged rocks have different implications for speed and thus goals and strategy. Since this race would take place on the northwestern shore of Grapevine Lake, I imagined a mix of sand and dirt with some crumbled limestone strata, which is what I’d experienced on the lake’s southeastern shore, where I’d participated in the Rockledge Rumble…. Continue reading “Knob Hills Trail Race”
BMW Dallas Marathon
In December 2018, I’d run the BMW Dallas 1/2 marathon without shoes. A year later, it was time to take on the full distance, which if successful would be my first barefoot marathon….
Managing Chaos at the Rockledge Rumble 50k
In the last few weeks a little bit of chaos has been spreading through my life, or so it seems (maybe it was always there). I attribute the chaos to excessive business travel, but some amount of disorder is inescapable, whether in daily life or in ultramarathons for that matter. Here’s my account of the Rockledge Rumble 50k ultramarathon, a recent race along the Northshore Trail in Grapevine, Texas, together with the travel, logistics, planning and other headaches that led up to and spilled into race day, and how I tried to manage them….
Continue reading “Managing Chaos at the Rockledge Rumble 50k”
Batona Trail Races 33-miler
A few notes from the Batona Trail Races 33-miler, October 12, 2019, which was notable for being the first ultramarathon I’ve run without shoes…
Jeffrey Adams’ Account of his Record-setting Long Path Run
This is a guest blog post by Jeffrey Adams, an experienced ultrarunner who recently thru-ran the 358-mile Long Path in 7 days, 12 hours, and 18 minutes, establishing a new fastest known time (FKT) record on a supported basis.
Continue reading “Jeffrey Adams’ Account of his Record-setting Long Path Run”
Steve finishes the 35
A few notes from my latest Catskills hike, in this case, the ascent of Eagle and Balsam with my friend Steve Aaron, for whom these were the final two peaks in his quest to join the Catskills 3500 Club. To spare ourselves the staircase-steep climb out of McKenley Hollow, we met up Saturday morning at Rider Hollow, where we were joined by Chris Rokos, an avid hiker and volunteer maintainer on the Long Path. I’d hiked these two peaks from this trailhead on November 3, 2017, and in addition to accompanying Steve and Chris I was looking forward to repeating the same route at the same time of year and seeing what would be the same and what different — but this visit was going to be a completely new experience….
2019 SRT Run Race Director’s Report
The sixth edition of the SRT Run is now in the books. The event celebrates the values of self-reliance and endurance, and we congratulate every finisher… Continue reading “2019 SRT Run Race Director’s Report”
The Long Brown Path 