What excellent timing.

Over the past week, two very inspiring stories have made their way to me. The first is about Sami Stoner, an Ohio cross-country runner who almost didn’t get to race. The second details the training regimen of Simon Wheatcroft, who’s preparing for his first ultra marathon.

Though these athletes, and their struggles, are unique, they’ve had to overcome the same handicap. Sami Stoner and Simon Wheatcroft are both blind.

To discover their stories now seems felicitous because tomorrow holds the Philadelphia chapter of Visionwalk. I’ll be walking with my own wife, a marathoner and year-round runner. Like Sami, she suffers from Stargardt’s, a juvenile form of macular degeneration.

Having watched Mrs. Turtlerunner adapt to her deteriorating vision, I felt personally affected by these stories; Simon and Sami, like my wife, refuse to let their handicap keep them from the sport they love. But the hope they’ve inspired isn’t just for those affected by vision disorders, or runners, or even athletes. When they run, they demonstrate an ability inherent in all of us.

They deny limitation.

(If you would like to help fight vision disorders, please consider donating to The Foundation Fighting Blindness)

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

This excerpt reminds me (as all things do) of running. More specifically, it reminds me of the line where I started my first 50 mile run. I didn’t know if I could split an 8-minute mile like I had planned. I didn’t know if I could run the entire thing. Hell, I didn’t even know if I could put one foot in front of the other that many times in one day. But I had to try.

Running is my arena, and probably yours too. It is where we go to struggle, to win, to fail, to dare greatly.

I am very proud of my runners. Wednesday I joined them for some uphill 400m repeats. It was a tough workout, and they did admirably. One story, which deserves special mention here, surrounds a kid we’ll call Connor.

First, let me introduce Connor the runner. Conner is a new entrant into the running fold. He used to be a wrestler, and he’s still built like one (or perhaps a tree stump). He has crippling asthma and carries an inhaler on our longer runs. The boy is SLOW. He does, however, get the distance in.

You can see why I’m moved by his struggles- struggles being the key word here.

On the day in question, Connor was struggling to keep his feet beneath him. We had done four out of the five reps, and an inhaler-less runner stood bent over on the road. He wheezed into the oversized shirt he was clasping to his mouth. Clouds of steam were rolling off his wide shoulders. I asked if he was okay for one more, and his head swiveled in the negative. I told him to jog back to school, that he should feel good about today’s workout. He watched us take the line for one last sprint, watched us get into position, watched my signal to start.

Then, with a glorious bellow of “FUUUUUUCK!”, Connor chased the group up the hill. He joined us for one last repeat, and completed the workout with the rest of the team.

As I peeled post-workout Connor off the asphalt, I asked him why he needed to do the last repeat. He squinted at me, as if the answer was obvious.

“No one quits with one left,” he said.

Connor may have some potential after all.

My blog is usually non-topical on purpose. I try not to cover the stuff that you read about in Runner’s World or the the things you hear on TV. This is because, well, you’ve already read/heard it.

However, I did feel the need to discuss a certain Chilean miner running a prominent marathon in America’s largest city.

Edison Pena competed in the New York Marathon, finishing in five hours, forty-one minutes (he could only train so much underground). Pena remarked on the warmth and hospitality of the sideline supporters; this is how we know they weren’t New Yorkers. These fans waved Chile flags for Pena’s sake, which he said pumped him up enough to kick the end of the race.

It’s easy to be cynical, to say that an obscure Chilean miner was trying to extend his fifteen minutes of fame. But reading what Pena had to say on the marathon, and on his training, I think that Pena’s tapped into the running spirit. One statement in particular stood out to me: He said running was his salvation — his way of proving how much he wanted to live.

It reminded me of similar stories told by famous athletes, such as Dean Karnazes or Philippe Croizon (“J’ai decide de vivre”). And of course the less dramatic examples. I think a lot of non-famous runners can identify with Pena’s sentiment. Though we never had such a literal death bearing down on us, we understand.

There’s another kind of death, one that happens to you when you spend day after day the same exact way, when you’re never challenged and never try. You give up on your dreams, and just kind of fade away. Running is for so many a way of staying one step ahead of mediocrity, ahead of stagnation. In other words, a way to live.

There are several questions that come up when someone hears that you’ve run an ultra marathon. Perhaps the most common one (after “are you nuts?”) is about motivation. How exactly does an ultrarunner get in the zone before such a long race?

This question usually bring me back to the day before the Lone Ranger Ultra, sitting in the movies and waiting for Toy Story 3 to start. A preview came on for Legend of The Guardians : The Owls of Ga Hoole. It’s a kid’s movie about owls. I’m not sure who decided that owls would be fitting protagonists for a Lord of the Rings rehash, but that’s not the point. The point is, this movie looks epic; take a moment to watch if you don’t believe me:

The song they used, Kings and Queens, gives me goosebumps every time I hear the ending, when the instrumentals fade and the chorus kicks in. Hearing it in the theater, with the giant 3D owl in flight before me, I wished that I could do something epic.

It took about a minute to realize that, in 24 hours, I would begin a 50-mile run.

So the next morning, when it came time to psych myself up, I turned to music. I don’t usually use music to prepare for a race; I run better given time alone in my head. But this song connected my upcoming race to the adventure I craved. This would be my chance to do something awesome. With that in mind, how could I wuss out?

After that I found this. I’m kind of a sucker for sappy stuff; it made me well up. The clip of Derek Redmond hit especially close to home. With this video looped in the background, I read articles on past greats– not Pre or Bolt but rather Terry Fox and Cliff Young. Inspirational figures who put my 50 miles into perspective. A heady dose of techno topped off the emotional overload.

And so it came to be that, as my brother drove me to the race (thanks again, Chris), I was already emotionally drained. But my spirit rose all the higher for it, unfettered by tangled emotion. My mind was sharp and my body energized. It was a new way to prepare for races. And a good one, I think. It got me through a challenge that was truly epic.