Posts

Showing posts from November, 2014

When the fix is ... nonexistent

Image
On July 4, 2004, I watched an only-in-Alaska sporting event called the Mt. Marathon race in Seward. Runners climb 3000 vertical feet in a mile-and-a-half, then turn around and scream down the mountain. The fastest runners average 12 miles per hour on the descent. To borrow from Woody in Toy Story , “That’s not running, that’s falling with style.” The mountain is mostly bare rock, and you can watch much of the action from the streets of Seward, where the race starts and ends. I watched runners stumble across the finish line mud-spattered, bloodied, gasping for air. I had to do the race. I just had to. The giddy thrill of my spectating experience instantly morphed into a delusion that I would run the race the following year. I wandered around Seward babbling my newfound ambition to anyone who would listen. Locals explained that I would literally have to win the lottery to get a race number. I was undaunted. Undaunted, that is, until I hiked the trail the next day. Pa