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| Still Kuma |
19-Jun-2009 09:01:06 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
it's 2pm on friday here. fleetwood mac is up on the mix--nice upgrade from the bryan adams the other day. it's a gorgeous day out and we're camped in a grass-covered elm grove, with mountains lining the distance. all the competitors are strewn about--eating or chatting or blogging or soaking the sun. after 5 days of relative intensity a calm sits over the camp. the last competitor came in an hour or so ago from the long stage, punctuating the entire event. he arrived to the typical banging drum, but also to cheers from nearly everyone in the camp--in shared experience and respect and admiration.
i really dont know where to begin in summarizing yesterday's 80kms. the short of it is that it was long. my mind's eye only sees the torturous riverbeds we traversed for what seemed like half the day--shredding feet and morales and times. like most other days, pat and i stayed together for the entirety. you can imagine that over the course of a long event there are plenty of periods where one person is up, the other is down, and you're managing the push-pull that goes with that. yesterday wasnt short of its obstacles, including no fewer than three stops where at least one of us, shall we say, fertilized (or rather spray fertilized) the rocks. it was grand. i'll spare you further details. our stomachs--and bodies in general--are in knots by now. indeed, pat paid a visit to the medical tent last night for his diarrhea only to discover that he has tonsilitis as well. i gotta hand it to the guy--he dug deeply yesterday to finish strongly. (although i think he hated me for it at the time--check his blog.)
from here the race is over. we have today off and then finish tomorrow with what is essentially a ceremonial 10km run into the old city of kashgar--i imagine that it will in a small way resemble the last stage of the tour de france. there are various people who may actually "race" (pat included) as their final placings will hinge on beating one or two certain individuals. i sit 7 minutes behind pat and an english guy. realistically there's no chance of making up that much time on either of them in such a short distance. unless the english guy lays down, then my final placing in the race is set... which is actually a nice feeling, albeit bittersweet considering our now-thoroughly-flogged-horse of a 1-hr penalty. by the by, i threatened to push pat off a ridge yesterday so i could get those seven minutes back, but the slippery bugger ran away from me every time we were near something steep. steve's placing is set as well as he continued his run of impressive days, climbing to 12th. all in all it's been a great finish for team kuma, and i can assure you that even if racingtheplanet says differently, we still are, in fact, team kuma. this has been an exciting adventure together, and i think i speak for all of us when i say that we are just as much of a team right now as we were sunday morning at 9am when this journey started.
the finish yesterday was semi-exciting, as pat and i began closing on an irish runner named shane and one from the UK named john. i hear that john is 51 years old, and he's so frequently called a machine in camp that i think he deserves to be called *the* machine. john saw us coming from behind, about 5-10 minutes back, and the two of them stepped on the gas. 5-10 minutes sounds like a long distance, and it is, but when you havent seen another runner in literally hours such a gap seems short. needless to say, we held our places to finish 7th together. steve came barreling through the finish about 15 minutes later, trailing another englishman to take 10th for the stage.
so, all up, it's been a pretty successful running event for these 3 wrestlers. who'dathunkit? these types of events come down to mental toughness as much as anything--pushing through when your legs are screaming or your feet are melting or your body just starts shutting down and/or doing crazy things. it was probably that, and not any sort of running skill, that allowed the three of us to do well. we pushed hard when we needed to.
most of my thoughts now are on the glorious food that will be all mine after this race is over. all that remains in my food supply now aside from some tea and coffee are dehydrated meals and electrolyte/carbohydrate mixes--neither of which i have any appetite for whatsoever. i detest freeze-dried food today, which i imagine could only be made less appetizing by slathering mayo atop it.
...we're getting prodded now to get off the computers so others can blog, so i'm going to have to cut this off for now. i dont think i'll have another chance to blog again until i'm back settled in sydney late next week (after a couple days in beijing decompressing), so i'd like to thank everyone once again for reading and for your support of all kinds of team kuma.
that's all for now,
shawn
p.s. "i dont know yet" is the answer... to the question, "do you plan on doing another one of these?"... |
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| Closing in on 80 |
17-Jun-2009 09:29:38 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
It's 8pm here, the sun is high in the sky. Today's camp sits on what i'm told was once a cemetary/earthquake site. we're surrounded by pastures set against some gorgeous mountains. some cows and goats are close enough that i could hit one with a baseball (maybe not the goats--they're smaller and quicker and my arm's not loose). and everything else has settled into its usual routine. i guess after 4 days of running marathons through mountains, sand, rock, farmland (who knew?), heat, and altitude; sleeping in the same tent with the same group of people; and eating the same rubbish food... one establishes something of a routine.
i'm blogging a bit later in the day today, have eaten a full meal (rehydrated beef teryaki, yum, followed by a couple oreos), and am feeling pretty relaxed. today was a pretty hellish day for most people, and we're guessing there will be a handful of walkers who come in after 10pm. they wont be too happy when they find out about tomorrow: at 6:45am we load onto a bus (our first time doing this since we were originally dropped at our first campsite) and will ride about 2 hrs (i hear) to the start of our next stage...which is somewhere around 80km.
i'm told also that the top 25 or 30 competitors may have their start time delayed by 2 hours. i dont fully understand the rationale---something about it being really cool to pass everyone, have a full day in the heat, and, if we're slow enough, run in the dark. might not be true, but even if it is it adds 2 valuable hours of recovery time, if nothing else... which are likely to be negated by the busride anyway!
today was a pretty serious challenge, but rewardingly so. we opened with a serious climb basically to the top of a 10,000 foot mountain--to heaven's gate, the arch i wrote about yesterday. from the top was an amazing view, which i enjoyed for (literally) approximately 2 seconds. it's pretty well ingrained in my memory though, and i'm sure there's someone out there willing to sell me a picture of it. the altitude really gripped many of us on the way up. i felt it mostly in my lungs, and just tried to power through it, knowing that we'd be back down to a more manageable level soon enough.
the course actually got a lot harder from there, with even more serious climbing as we scaled around 10 ridges before descending into a magnificent canyon. i found today particularly rocky--your feet and ankles take a pretty serious beating on this terrain, and i think the accumulated effect of the last several days started to show. tonight i re-drilled the original toenail, as well as the one i had to drill last night, and (ta-daaaaah) a third one. marvelous. i also took a needle to 7 or so small blisters. will need to get up even earlier tomorrow to tape it all up properly--an art form that i'm learning by doing.
it seems that the field widened a bit today, although the top guys were reasonably clustered. pat and i came in together at an even 6 hours (7th and 8th), and to our pleasant surprise steve came chugging around the corner five minutes later to take 9th place for the stage--a great effort for the big guy. we've kicked ourselves a bit for disbanding as a team (we'd be crushing the team race), but in the end we did each want to run our own races and get out of this experience everything that we can. it's a great feeling to have all three of us doing well (touch wood) heading into the long day, as we call it.
we're all looking forward to our first real meal, our first real shower and toilet and shave in nearly a week. people have already started planning their meals (my first will be pizza--a popular choice). a lot of ground to cover between now and then though. i think tomorrow will be particularly tough after today's stage, which was easily the week's toughest--the times probably tell the whole story, with most of the top competitors coming in a full hour more than what we've done previously.
all three of us are slowly clawing our way back up the leaderboard after the penalty, which to be entirely honest we're not all that pleased about. but hey--coming in we didnt expect to be thinking much at all about our individual rankings anyway, so it''s a matter of perspective. at the very least it has given all three of us a bit of a spark. for pat and me, the 6 guys ahead of us on a given day are machines, guys we realistically cant hang with on a 40k stage. there was a seventh, but unfortunately he's been hit with what sounds like a stress fracture in his foot. he still plans on walking and finishing though, so good on him if he can gut it out. steve meanwhile seems to have gotten stronger each day--doesnt seem impossible that he'll be waiting for pat and me at the finish tomorrow. anything can happen on this long stage, so it will be exciting to see how the dust settles.
i didnt expect to be writing about the rankings so much. i should probably spend more time writing about the dead goat that we saw, or my lost waterbottle, or the spill that i took today (ouch), or the various animals we've seen (goats, cows, camels, sheep), or the plants (the villages are surrounded by poplars, there's a spiny bush that has shredded my forearms and shins), or the dozens of interesting people i've met, or even about whether or not i'll enter another one of these crazy events at some point. another day, perhaps.
i hope youre all well, and thank you once again for all the messages of support both via the blog comments and the messages through the site. they're a nice shot in the arm each day after the race.
signing out,
cinqo tres |
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| Swelling under the toenail? |
16-Jun-2009 07:52:36 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
Shortly after I sent my blog yesterday I paid a visit to the medical tent to get some advice on my toes. My second toe is longer than my first, and it spent yesterday's rocky stage slamming against the front of my shoe, creating something of a blister, with pressure under my toenail...the solution? why, drill a hole in the toenail of course! so using a beveled needle i released said pressure. it was pretty sweet.
a bit of controversy with today's stage, and i'm curious to see what, if anything, they do to resolve it. the short of it is that at a point a bit after halfway through the stage someone sabotaged the course, moving several of the flag markers that guide us, sending people up a nasty climb into a barren plateau. it basically caught everyone in the top 15 or so, and will create a bit of a shuffle in the standings. i lost about a half hour (i think) due to the detour and time spent searching for the next flag. when we finally descended the ridge several other runners were making their way up to where we were--a bit of a psychological punch in the stomach. pat and i barreled up the hill from that point, upset and determined to claw back some ground. from the final checkpoint, we had a long, slow 400m climb over 8.5km. the altitude really began to take hold (i believe we went from about 2100m to 2500m) and i (like many others) flagged a fair bit. pat is a demon on hills, and i think was still seething from the earlier detour, and took off up the rocky trail to finish the stage, about 7 minutes ahead of me.
the buzz among the competitors is all about the detour, and several of the top runners are rightfully upset. while the atmosphere is very collegial, with eveyrone making fast friends, just about everyone has a sense of where they're ranked and who's around them. i guess we'll see what happens. otherwise, it appears in the official standings that team kuma has now been docked our one hour for splitting up (per my previous blog), so the three of us will have some work to do if we're going to climb the ladder. the next two days are going to be pretty brutal---several climbs over ridges tomorrow with substantial elevation change, followed by our 80km day. i'd expect to see a lot of shuffling in the leaderboard.
physically i'm feeling pretty well. my legs are a bit shot today after all the climbing, and i expect to be sore tomorrow for the first time this week. will do a lot of stretching and work on getting some of the lactic acid out. i'm coping with the altitude a bit better now (now that i'm not running, i suppose.) it's about 4:30pm so we still have plenty of time to recover before morning. everyone is running a pretty significant calorie deficit right now---i'm eating around 2900/day, but burning around 5000 on the runs alone. i've overbudgeted calories for tomorrow and thursday, so may move a bit of that forward to tonight to re-energize a bit for tomorrow's hard day. it's amazing how delicious something as simple as honey cashews become. (thanks, will---i truly owe you for that one.)
tonight we're camped out somewhere below shipton's arch (also called heaven's gate) which is (i believe) the largest natural arch in the world. apparently this arch was discovered decades ago, then lost, and was only rediscovered around 2002. pretty wild---gives a sense as to the middle-of-nowhere feel out here. tomorrow we ascend to the arch--should make for stunning views. as an aside, running through small villages today and being greeted by smiling faces of all ages got me to thinking. (surprise surprise.) i'm pretty fortunate to be in a position to engage in such frivolities as running across a desert, "for fun".
oh, forgot to mention--the weather turned today, to overcast and cool, a welcome change. we'll see what the desert throws at us tomorrow...
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| 2 Stages Down, 4 to Go |
15-Jun-2009 08:14:08 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
I should start by thanking everyone for the messages. i apologize for not being able to respond to you directly. i have the right to compose a grand total of 6 blogs/emails this week, and the blog is the more efficient way to reach everyone, especially if i want to write everyday. (mom and dad, thanks especially for your messages--they count the most.)
today was a much better day than yeseterday on pretty much all fronts. i think it all started with my resolution of the smartube issue---turned out to be a gross (and nearly costly) user error. oops. issue resolved. my hydration was fine all day today. a couple of small blisters developed, but i treated the potentially problematic one quite early. pat and i started out with the primary goal of going out strong and getting as far as we could before the heat really kicked in. (it turns out that my watch was dead-on yesterday--temps were over 35, and i hear they topped out over 40. today we were about 3/4 through the stage when the temp ticked up from 29 to 35, and then reached 39 as we made our way through an amazing sandy canyon. we finished before temps rose further, and plenty of people continue to comment on the poor souls walking who will spend all day in the sun.
my legs are feeling pretty strong, and in general we've done a good job of holding back, keeping something in the tank for the rest of the long week ahead. it all comes down to feet and hydration in my view, and management of both.
the atmosphere has grown increasingly fun as everyone gets to know each other a bit more. as i type, bryan adams is blasting on the speakers, people are lounging around drinking tea and protein drinks, walking gingerly in sandals and sunnies, the irish girls have hung a flag out their tent, and spirits are generally pretty high. a few people have pulled out of the race so far, victims of hydration issues, i believe. one was actually quite an experienced racer, who just couldn't keep anything down--might have been the altitude, i haven't heard the full report.
i neglected to mention yesterday that we stayed overnight in a small rural village--yet another warm welcome, once again with smiling faces, music and dancing. local children crossed the finish line to a banging drum with every racer. we were spoiled a bit in that we got to sleep on a floor indoors... although i think i prefer our current camp, a straw covered field.
i don't know if information on the various stages has been posted on the 4deserts website--i've heard that they've posted some videos and photos, which will do better justice in sharing the view than my dearth of adjectives. today was highlighted by a run through dunes of red clay--believe the stage was called Mars on Gobi. we finished by running through an inferno of a canyon. we were lucky enough to have a breeze for much of the day--which was particularly nice as we made our way across some of the rockiest, undulating terrain we've had.
i have about 5 people standing behind me eagerly awaiting a turn at a computer, so i'm going to close out for now. thanks again for all the support---the messages sent through the website have served as a great boost, so please do keep them coming. they really mean a lot.
Until next time,
shawn |
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| Rules We Knew We Were Breaking |
14-Jun-2009 08:10:42 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
so stage 1 is down, 5 remain. i didnt get a chance to post last night before the race. plenty of builldup--equipment checks, a 3hr bus ride, and a delightful welcome ceremony in a local village, replete with singing, dancing, and that awesome game with men on horseback and a dead goat from Rambo III (or something akin to it anyway--none of us understood the rules). events like this give great perspective--i had never have pondered the unique and wonderful cultures we've encountered here, and the welcome we received was tremendous and flattering. i cant put it into proper words right now--regretfully i'm a bit lacking on creativity post-run.
day one itself went reasonably well, with one bit of negative news. pat, steve, and i entered as a team, team kuma. the rules of the race dictate that teams must stay together throughout the event. if you split up, you're out of the team race. unfortunately, that's what we did. we knew coming in that it was a possibility, but we figured that we'd give it a crack and see what happened. it was a tough decision, but pat and i pulled ahead of steve around the 25km mark. we'll each get penalties on our individual time now, but realistically none of us is in the running for the individual title anyway. :) (sorry smalone, if youre reading)
otherwise, i managed my hydration a bit poorly today. i took a risk by trying out a new hydration system (a smartube) which was a miserable failure. water was sloshing out. i'm not sure if it wasnt on right or if the design doesnt lend itself well to running, but i quickly threw it into my bag and reverted to bottles-only... i carried way too much water at one point, and way too little at another, and did a poor job of steadily hydrating. electrolytes were fine though. lesson learned (early, fortunately).
the heat hasnt been too bad. my watch showed that it hovered around 35c, reaching 39 or so. i think the readings may be a bit high due to the direct sun exposure. the sites/terrain are amazing--on a more creative day i'll hopefully do it more justice. the gobi is not a sandy desert (around here anyway--i hear it does contain the world's tallest dunes in another area), but it is a rocky one. much of today was on rocky paths and a few roads--a bit hard on the feet at points. today was one of the 'easier' days we'll have--if a marathon is ever easy. one of the great things about this race is that your pack gets lighter everyday as you eat your food. i started at around 10kg--22lbs--(half of it food, roughly) before water, of which i've carried about 2 liters (2kg, 4.4lbs) at any given point. i'm not counting on speeds increasing much from here though!
happy to report zero blisters thus far, which is good considering we had a few river crossings right off the bat--wet feet increase your odds of blistering. it's about 430pm here as i type. will spend the rest of the afternoon and evening here rehydrating and enjoying my first rehydrated meal of the trip. yum. it's pretty wild here in that the sun doesnt set until around 11pm or so. like the rest of china, this area runs on beijing time. gotta wonder if that changes at some point.
otherwise, the atmosphere here is amazing---we've met a lot of interesting people doing a lot of really cool things---i've had fun trying to get inside the heads of the folks who have done several of these events. a lot of expats it seems---very few people seem to have always lived in their home countries. no real surprise, i guess, but inte.resting nonetheless. i think somewhere north of 20 countriees are represented in the field of around 130. it was actually tough to go to bed last night because several of us were hanging out around a campfire exchanging stories. the altitude, slight jetlag, rocky ground, and general lack of sleep leading up to the event (including the 24-hr sojourn to kashgar) have made sleeping difficult for all... not to mention the snoring, and constant shuffling of people getting up to urinate---which happens to all of us after a few liters of water in the evening!
we have a great group of tentmates, who've warmed quite nicely to team kuma''s antics--always a risk on that front. in true extreme fashion, one girl is making us all look bad by having signed up only 2 wks ago. another guy arrived with zero, i repeat zero, gear after an airline snaffu. fortunately he's received a lot of donations... unfortunately those donations dont include a sleeping bag. he's an easygoing bloke though, and he'll gut it out just fine.
ive rambled on a lot of stuff, and i'm sure i havent adequately described this all. but it is truly a great experience (thus far--ask me on the 80km day). i havent been this focused on the present in quite awhile, which is a darn good feeling, rivaled only by that of not having my blackberry.
pat (diaz) is sitting next to me right now working on his own blog post, which you should check out. hopefully he's giving a bit more color than this guy. i'm off to drink some tea and put my feet up (literally--fighting the lactic acid buildup). will try to update each night after the run, but no guarantees.
be well,
shawn |
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| Team Kuma: A Primer |
09-Jun-2009 11:51:53 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
The excitement grows, the anxiety abates.
The anxiety grows, the excitement abates.
Did you ever have one of those little wave machine things that sits on your shelf and goes baaaaack and forrrrrth, baaaaack and forrrrth? That's me right now. (If the manic posts, re-posts, addenda, etc. weren't evidence enough...)
I realized that Steve, Pat and I have disparate groups of friends/family who will be reading our respective posts, so I thought it might be good to give a bit of background on who we are. Pat (Diaz) claims he'll be launching his blog from the desert, and I think Steve (Kodish) might also, so if you read mine then you should definitely read theirs. The three of us thrive off poking fun at one another, so if one of us embarrasses himself on the run next week then the other two are bound to tell a good story about it.
The quick summary: Pat and Steve are good buddies from school. (Aussi translation: Pat and Steve are good mates from uni.) Both had itchy feet and ended up in foreign lands--Steve in Tokyo, Pat in Sydney. I, meanwhile, have lived a nomadic life of my own--after uni I lived in Switzerland, then London, before moving to Sydney. It turned out that Pat and I live a few blocks apart, and have led oddly parallel lives--both wrestlers from Michigan who ended up working in finance and living in Bondi Beach. That's a pretty small sample set.
While our friend Will (the Englishman from an earlier post, enjoys mayonnaise; still following?) planted the seed about doing a race like this, it was Steve who convinced us to enter the Gobi March. And thus Team Kuma was born. While Kodish and I have only met once in person (on a legendary night out on one of his Sydney visits) and communicate mostly via email, we share two very important bonds: 1) the Gobi March, and 2) making fun of Patrick Diaz.
While Pat and I have had the luxury of training together for the past several months, Kodish has been stuck in Tokyo running on a giant hamster wheel and inhaling car exhaust. I do believe that city might be the least conducive in the world to training for an extreme endurance event, especially when Geronimo's is open.
If the stars align, the three of us will arrive Friday morning in Beijing on separate flights from Tokyo, LA, and Sydney, and meet to begin our journey to Kashgar and beyond. We plan on making Kodish carry our packs (he's the biggest) while Diaz and I shop for our mandatory equipment in duty-free. (What are electrolytes? Where can I get them? ...kidding---lame endurance humor.)
So far we haven't had too many issues... except for the fact that Pat mangled his shoes with epoxy yesterday and I had to buy him a new pair because they'd discontinued the line in the US, where he's visiting family before the race. (Sorry, buddy, they doubled the price since your last pair.) But he likes challenges, which is why I won't give him his new shoes to try to break in until he trades me his Expedition Spaghetti Bolognaise for my Backpacker's Pantry Kung Pao Chicken. That stuff's the gift that keeps on giving, Clark... |
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| Can. Worms. Opened. |
09-Jun-2009 05:15:01 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
Someone once told me that your first thought is the purest. It contains the most truth, is the least dressed up. So when you write anything, goal number one should be to get the first thought onto the page. Everything from there is support and editing. I don't know if that's true, but it sounds like a nice theory.
I've never written anything so public before. Sure, this little community is fairly well contained, with many of the people bound by a common experience, but the doors have flung open of late. Perhaps it was a bad time to be honest.
I received a couple "WTF?" emails from people close to me about my post on the 'why' (which was actually titled Dr. StrangeVent, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the 'Why'--title got shortened by the website; if you don't get it, don't worry.) I figured that I should clarify.
My first thought got lost in the mix somewhere, and has been misidentified. The point of the 'Why' blog entry was to try to express how frustrating it is repeatedly trying to articulate a very complex idea in just a few words that often seem to fall on deaf ears. (That's why I thought Nick's Dawson's Creek comparison was so apt, even if his reasons for saying that were entirely different.) It (the entry) categorically was not about comparing my experience to anyone else's. In a certain sense I was imploring people a) to listen to me fully in trying to understand the 'why' (i.e. ascertain it yourself rather than swallow a soundbyte) and b) to think more critically about their own 'whys'. To me the driving force of the post was the analogy to the guy with the broken foot--that is what caused me to write in the first place. At no point did I intend to compare the Gobi March to anything anyone else has undertaken.
I seriously considered pulling the post, but I figured that in the spirit of intellectual honesty, and of preserving the integrity of this experience (warts and all), I'll keep it up there. I hope I didn't offend and/or sound like an arrogant jerk. Because I am one and I try to hide that.
So that's two posts, two apologies now, and a lot more philosophical mumbojumbo than I intended. As an aside, the mayonnaise furor grows. Who knew people were so passionate about a condiment? |
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| On a Lighter Note |
08-Jun-2009 11:56:48 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
...I deeply offended a friend/Englishman recently with my mayonnaise comments. I thought for awhile about how I could apologize without actually having to apologize, but couldn't come up with anything. So, to all the mayonnaise lovers out there, who may or may not happen to be English, I apologise. (See, I even spelled it right... Oops, spelt it right.)
It's not your fault that you're addicted to that hideous goo.
In other news, my 'taper' has more closely resembled a 'stop'. I've taken "listening to my body" to a whole new level by a) drinking a bottle of red wine with dinner, twice in the last week, b) eating an entire Sara Lee Bavarian chocolate pie last night, just because, and c) opting not to go running on several days because I "don't want to do too much". The good news: I feel pretty darn good, and I'm genuinely excited to arrive in Kashgar, meet everyone, and get this event underway. (Even if Kodish succeeds in convincing me to leave early, re-route through Tokyo, and have a big send-off in Roppongi...)
I spent a fair portion of this weekend with my friend Will (an Englishman as well, enjoys mayonnaise) who ran the Marathon des Sables last year. It was nice to get his take on everything, to keep things in perspective while I obsessed over the 'honey cashews or regular cashews' issue for 10 minutes in Woolies on Sunday. I've finally realized that all of my last-minute planning is really just circle-running. The big pieces are in place. Whether I decide to bring an iPod or not (probably not), or if I bring both Body Glide and Hydropel (probably), or if my sunscreen is SPF 28 or SPF 30, will probably not have much bearing on how I finish the race. I will have gaiters on my shoes (velcro glued this Saturday, grrrrr). I will have plenty of food (thanks to Back Country, Oreos, High5). My patches will all be properly sewn on my shirts/jackets (grumble, grumble). The rest, just details.
In my head I keep coming back to the "chance favors the prepared mind and body" quote that I mentioned previously. For the most part I think I know what to expect in the Gobi. From here it's just a matter of reacting appropriately, executing. The next couple days will be spent working, relaxing, and reaching out to friends and family. I've mentioned elsewhere that the charity fundraising aspect of this event has taken on a bigger meaning than I could have expected, and I'm quite thankful for how personal this journey has become. It feels good to have taken part in helping raise awareness for an important issue.
So... it's finally here. Almost. Well, not yet. Close though. Is there still time to train harder?
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| Dr. StrangeVent, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying |
08-Jun-2009 06:14:44 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
My mom emailed yesterday and knocked me off the rails. "Don't comprehend quite why you are doing this, but this is your journey and you have to do what you have to do in your life." Thanks Mom, I think.
Nick Anderson said it best recently: "I wanted to write one blog about why I am doing the race and I am still a little undecided. Every time I try and write about it, it sounds a little like a script for an episode of Dawsons Creek."
That's where I am too. Maybe it's the anxiety associated with the management of the last few pre-race days (yep, my shoulder strap on my pack broke, I have no gaiters and am no longer friends with Australia Post, and I still haven't told half my friends that I've entered this race or hit my charity fundraising goals), but my replies to the 'why' question have become increasingly curt and borderline confrontational.
Part of me thinks that the answer lies in a bridge of understanding that is wrought by the experience. I suppose it's tautological to say that you can't comprehend why unless you're actually doing it, but truth lives in that statement. The counterargument might be that there had to be a reason that I entered the race in the first place. Fair point, but my response: There doesn't have to be a good, articulated, reasoned reason, however.
I don't think I'm alone in that feeling. I'm running the Gobi March because I want to, because I can, because it's a high enough bar that I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I have a relatively comfortable existence, and this is my way of pushing out of that to remind myself not to coast too much, to relocate the boundaries of my character, and to provide a new, unique perspective on my human experience. Maybe that's why I've grown sick, almost offended, of the 'why' question. Because welling in me each time I hear it now is the desire to snap, "Figure it out yourself!"
Or something like that. This isn't at all a jab at the people who pose the 'why' question. It's more akin to the guy who breaks his foot and is on crutches, and *everyone* asks him what happened. Sure, each person is concerned; they genuinely care for his wellbeing. But when everybody asks, the patience eventually wears thin. "Yes, I broke my godd*mn foot. Now will you please just hold the door for a second?" (Can you tell that I'm there?)
The question I ask myself is, "Why do people ask 'why'?" Would they really reflect on the real response, the Dawson's Creek one? Or are they just being polite? In a world of sound-bites and short attention spans, are they perhaps just looking for an answer like, "I'm on a reality television show," or "if I finish it I win $10,000 and I get to meet the Queen"?
Most of us have busy lives. I live thousands of miles from most of my closest friends, and I don't communicate with them anywhere near as much as I might like to. Many of them will not have read this blog. And all of them have asked me 'why'? My response, with all due respect and love, is to have the patience and fortitude to figure it out yourself, perhaps for yourself.
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| Exhibit A, Your Honor |
01-Jun-2009 04:28:36 AM [(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney]
Gobi March (China) 2009 |
Not a full update today, just this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601093&sid=adox.IK.9cFc&refer=home
(You'll need to have read the 'mayo' post.) |
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