Josh Cox: Miracles 50 and A Boy Named Sue
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry 8)
Welcome to the official blog of U.S. marathon runner Josh Cox. Every other Wednesday visit http://joshcox.thefinalsprint.com for Cox's latest blog entry and for more information, also please visit: www.joshcox.com
"I believe in miracles.
I believe in a better world for me and you.
Oh, I believe in miracles.
I believe in a better world for me and you."
-The Ramones,
I Believe in Miracles
"Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I know I wouldn't be there to help you along.
So I give ya that name and I said good-bye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's that name that helped to make you strong."
- A Boy Named Sue
(A song written by Shel Silverstein made famous by Johnny Cash. A song about a dad who names his son Sue and leaves - the son vows to exact his revenge for his awful name. He finds his dad, fights him, his dad gets up, smiles, and explains why he named him Sue. )
"The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for."
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian literary giant & Casino fiend
Somewhere around 41 miles, in the high hills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains the race came undone. I could no longer run; a humbling experience for a self-assured 22-year-old college senior who, several hours earlier, had thought running a 50-mile race was a good idea. For the first time in my life I wished I were jogging – oh the horror – anything but the "J-word." But alas, I was doing the S-word. Shuffling. Shuffling is what we runner's do, we bypass the jog and enter straight into the shuffle. It's part of the unwritten code – run slow, shuffle, but never, ever jog.
It was strange, I prayed about this race, I had this peace, I was certain it was something I was supposed to do. Finishing, much less winning, seemed unlikely. I shuffled along; my stride barely cleared the floor.
Almost to the aid station, I thought. Just keep moving, you're still in second place.
A stride later my foot caught the edge of a rock and down I went. The heels of my palms and the front of my knees caught the brunt. There I was, on all fours, staring down at the trail.
I'll never finish. I'm dehydrated. My legs are shot. I've never raced farther than 13 miles; this was a colossal mistake. Why do I do these things? I'm so stupid. I could just stay here. Yes… that's the answer. I'll roll onto my back, stare at the sky, other runners will come, some will offer to help, others will pass without saying a word – it will be a modern day Good Samaritan story, except when they offer to carry me I'll refuse, I'll explain that I'd rather stay and lay than call my mom and tell her that I couldn't finish the only race I ever dedicated to her. Soon, the ants will come; they'll crawl over me, I won't flinch because I just won't care…
Wait, I guess I'm getting ahead of myself here. Allow me to back up; you see it all started when I met this guy Horton… On second thought, let's go back a little further. This is the where we'll begin…
It was early Fall 1997. I was in my fifth year at Virginia's Liberty U. Being a former high school soccer player whose weekly mileage topped out at 35; I had been slow to ramp up the miles in college. But over time I worked up to the occasional 80-mile week and this fall had even broken the century mark once. The previous spring I ran and won my first track 10k down at Florida State. The farther I went, the better I felt. I liked running far.
That fall I was student teaching at the elementary and high school levels. My 4 years of NCAA Cross Country eligibility had been exhausted and with no races on the docket I managed steady training and quality workouts with my speedy Kenyan and Canadian training partners.
Fall break was fast approaching, a weekend when Liberty's own, Dr. David Horton puts on the best trail run in the East, The Mountain Masochist 50 miler. Each December, Dr. Horton, a man with a viper's wit and the look of a weathered cowboy, would take a handful of us cross-country guys up to the hills for 20 "Horton miles." (Rule of thumb – if Horton says you ran 10, it was probably 11. 20 = 22 30 = 33 and so on and so forth.) During these 20 milers he would mention his race, "You know, the race course is just like this trail here." He would allude to it in class, "Josh ran well this past weekend, maybe soon he'll try a MAN'S race." Or when he'd see us running around town, "Betcha can't do that for 50!" The guy was always baiting me. Playing to the ego. I wasn't falling for it. It's not that I couldn't do it, I just didn't want to. 50 miles? Lunacy.
Many of my readers are not hardcore runners so I think I may have lost them back when I mentioned "50" and "miler" in the same sentence. Let's lay some groundwork.
Foundation 1: Despite all whimpering, wailing, and weeping, in spite of my many prayers, pleas, and petitions, God has seen fit to continue developing my patience by having men and women alike ask the asinine question, "How far is your next marathon?"
Ladies and Gentlemen, the marathon is 26 miles, 385 yards – always has been, always will be. There are no 6.2 mile marathons – those are called 10ks.
I feel better. Here's to hoping the previous provocation permeates into the public and resolves the problem.
Ultra: prefix
1. beyond; on the other side of
2. extreme; to an extreme degree
noun - an extremist.
Foundation 2: An ultra-marathon is any distance over the traditional 42.195 Kilometers. (I give equal time to metric distances – my international readers can thank me in the comments.)
Before becoming one of Jerry's kids and heading to the home on the hill in the bright lights of Lynchburg I didn't know a thing about these races. During my college years I had never raced farther than the half marathon; my longest trail run had been the Horton 20. (My 35 miler mentioned in the first installment of Miracles notwithstanding – running, walking, stopping and drinking mud puddles isn't a run, it's a disaster.)
Most people don't know these ultrarunner people exist, when I learned of them I felt like Lucy when she met Mr. Tumnus holding his gifts in the snow, "You're a… faun?"
My first exposure to the marathon subspecies was the aforementioned Horton. Doc Horton is a brilliant man, a systematic, autocratic, automatic running machine, a man who was my favorite professor during my stint at Liberty. This despite him ignoring my pleas to round up my 89.5 in Exercise Physiology - he told me some story about a baseball umpire having to call his son out if there was ever a bang-bang play at the plate, he then informed me that he didn't give grades, students earned them. We were friends, and honestly I didn't care much about the grade one way or the other but like Bob Larsen said, "It doesn't hurt to ask."
I mentioned Horton's brilliance but haven't mentioned his vice. Horton is a masochist, a sadist, a freak, a wacko, a crazy, a nut-job. He's a guy whose summer "breaks" have included setting a world record – by 10 days - on the 2,144 mile Appalachian Trail, running the third fastest time in the Trans-America Race from Los Angeles to New York, and a guy, following my graduation, who roped me into pacing him for the final 46 miles of the Hard Rock Hundred Miler (We ran from 8pm – Noon the next day), I'm fairly certain this is the planet's toughest 100 miler.
(I broke his finger during that race - still feel bad about that one.)
This is the same guy who stayed at Casa de Cox a few years back before setting a world record on the Pacific Crest Trail – a trail that runs from Mexico to Canada. If Scott Jurek is the ultra-marathoner, David Horton is the ultra-ultra-marathoner. The craziest of the crazies, the head associate at the asylum. Check out the trailer of his PCT record below:
..
This particular autumn, because I wasn't competing, his 50-mile race was a real possibility. When I told Horton I was toying with the idea, he grinned like Alice's Cheshire.
CONTINUE READING HERE! :)
As always, thanks for reading. I appreciate the comments, questions and feedback - even when I can't get back to answer them! I've been doing most of my correspondance over at The Final Sprint. If you ask a question there I promise to address it!
Click here to SUBSCRIBE to this blog!