I’m not as eccentric as I once was.

I’ve learned to relax some, control less, and live more.

But there are certain stimulants that elicit grand memories of a time long healed, but still raw.

Environments.
Weather.
Music.

Temporary silence.

They all fire the synapses in my brain which create the flashbulb memories of an insane history.

About two years ago this time, I would be home on holiday. I would run on average 7-9 miles in the freezing, salt encrusted streets of a suburban New England town at 7:00AM. For no other reason than I could. My speed was non-existent; My monotony established; My routine precisely that.

I would then return home, bathe, coffee and a small breakfast. Then it was onto the bike on the trainer. I remember watching the tragedy in West Virginia of those coal miners who perished on CNN Morning Addition from my trainer.



Then the day seemed to end. Training was over. School was in recess. And I was alone.

So I began to read, work in advance of my senior thesis due dates, and largely bury myself amidst coffee and books. Seemed like a grand thing.

Triathlon is a lethal creature if it is not tamed. For it can be loved as easily as it can be abused. After fulfilling Dr. Cooper’s minimum daily requirements of 30 minutes of daily aerobic exercise, one may feel validated. Not so in multi-sport. The bane of our very existence is the same thing that makes us better: The ability to endure pain and fatigue and distractions, while maintaining a quasi-life. To endure is to know achievement.

However after so many miles, so many beats per minute, so many strokes per cubic centimeter, the wheels will come off. And when they do, it is the equivalent of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. Hell hath no fury like an injured runner during the utopian season of cross-country.

As I begin my off-season now, I come off a largely successful season: A sub 4 hour marathon, a sub 3 hour Olympic distance triathlon, and placing second in my age group in an 8k road race. I feel validated.

My memories and passions are pure. Running in the snow and then going to Starbucks to bury myself in a presidential history book. Cycling on the trainer until I feel as if the room has become 105 degrees, only to run outside to my deck to completely cool off, and then collapsing on the carpet for 2 hours. Notwithstanding these curious habits, I find great comfort therein.

Yesterday I ran a 10-mile Turkey Day course, which I felt fantastic pursuing. Then this morning I hammered the largest hills I can find, including one of which I have for 4 years longed to test myself on.

I was quite sore shortly thereafter, as in these short moments of man versus 9.8 meters per second of downward force, I meet the extent of my physiology. I fight my genes. I fight my pain. And I fight the earth.

The hill brings man down to his innermost strength. Its what children stop in the middle of a game of tag when their prey runs up a hill in the playground. They realize the struggle ahead, and they falter.

It therefore makes perfect sense for the non-runner to see a lonely figure in the distant grass going up and down a steep knoll, to just shake his head in disbelief

The hill is one of the few periods in a weekly training regimen that guarantees the most opposite of emotions. It’s a sweet nexus of adversity and triumph. It elicits only the deepest and most guarded instincts of man. For it is in the hill that a man knows what he truly is. It sheds away the façade from even the most conditioned of athletes.

A man can have a heart the size of a boulder. He may have the legs of hydraulic compressor. But every physiology is challenged on an incline. Cars change gears, cyclists shift if its not too late, and the runner’s legs pool with litres of lactic acid. Every runner suffers on a hill. But so does anyone who attempts this noble feat. There is an absolute truth in escalating one’s heart rate while moving above, and admirably, beyond a 180 degree plane of earth:


Within incline lies equality.