NEW year, NEW adventures. Clean slate.
Not all goals are insta- attainable. Didn’t sub-4 last year, several times close but didn’t happen. Still, believer in the process. Yesterday’s post: ‘Alaska-Hawaii-Africa-Brazil‘ NEVER would’ve happened 10 years ago. Something ‘bout calling out the action – voice to the universe, ‘out loud’ – breaks the goal down, compartmentalizes specifics, makes impossibles possible. Enough folks out there will tell ya what you can’t do.
Back away – dude’s a DREAMER.
BIGGEST LIFE GOAL kicks in 10 days: ANTARCTICA. Wanna freak out & imagine what you can’t do? Read the pre-flight instructions. Winter tenting, solo travel/foreign flights, ultra-distance racing. Bottom of the frickin’ world. Head: WTH Heart: YES YES YES!
BIGHORN (June). Third time lucky? Sure hope so. 2nd time marathoning all 50 States & the journey ends here – a 32-mile high-altitude trail where I’ve missed twice before. Challenge met. Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, South Dakota, BIGHORN (Wyoming).
FIFTY MILES. Not once, but twice. Pistol Ultra in March; Tunnel Hill next November. Done running fake ultras (50k) – time to step up & run real distance. 100 mile attempt in 2020? Maaaaaybe, 50 first.
2 weeks/14 separate, 10K training runs, 90 degree heat. Cold weather runner meets HOT SUMMER HEAT. Gotta start somewhere, equinox happens every year. Makin’ peace with da heat.
4th of July HIKE goal. Aspen to Crested Butte. 3-day overnight. Up, over, summit – and repeat. Struggled to stay on trail 2 years ago, then hit a wall of unexpected snow in July. Packing heavier, trekking faster, starting earlier. Gonna/hafta/MUST DO HIKE. Mark this as a WIN.
Canada Quest: Saskatchewan & Quebec. On track to marathon all Provinces by 2020.
*2019 WILDCARD HOPE* Osaka Japan. After Antarctica, only Asia left.
Registration April, lottery May, race Thanksgiving weekend. Fingers crossed. Thrice unlucky with run lotteries then unexpectedly, Marine Corps last October. Bullet train Tokyo to Osaka? It could happen 🙂
DREAM & dream HUGE. Live a GREAT STORY.
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- new year, clean slate
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- no mo’ Cone 🙂
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- end of year FEAST
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- only Asia left, Osaka 2019?
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” – Muhammed Ali
2018, another HUGE year. My SEVENTH YEAR blogging – who would’ve thought. Alaska, Hawaii, EVERY state along the East Coast (Maine to South Carolina).
End of year reflection, time to give thanks.
Biggest year of marathoning. Topped 2015’s race tally. Went Maniac Platinum a second time. Ended 2018 only 5 states short of a second trip ‘round the USA. Added two Canadian provinces (Newfoundland, my new Maple Leaf fave). Marathon’d Brazil in April, South Africa July – CONTINENT total now FIVE. Learned elephants DO snore.
Longest distance covered EVER – 34 miles at Bighorn. Mud, altitude, 10 hour on-course DNF (timed out)…still my longest run to date. Third time lucky, 2019 I’ll be back.
Surpassed 2000 miles again (2016/17/18). Run thermometer still climbing (138 finishes) AND maintained ‘the Streak’, now 61 consecutive months marathoning. Never envisioned feeding ‘the crazy’ 5 years on. Life’d so many memories.
Driving-on-the-left mishap in Africa. Kayak’d Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau Alaska.
Phoenix, Nashville & HAWAII – MEMORABLE laughs with Sis. Hilo to Volcano (an all UPHILL ultra). 7+ hours without a porta-potty (nope, didn’t stop Sis). Card games, luau fun, beach runs & an evening LAVA trek never to be repeated. Spot literally BLEW UP 4 months later. No joke, yikes! 🌋
3 Christmases, 2 New Year’s, ended 2018 in K* fashion – celebrated ‘cross 4 states, 3 time zones.
Never set limits. Absolutely ANYTHING is possible 😎
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- no regret life
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- LOVE my Colorado life ❤️
#yearinSport
For those of us crazy goal-oriented – it’s that time again.
With every annual ball drop, we start anew. Sit still or hike on. Excited what 2019 holds.
Saw this tweet couple times over the past month. Louisville is by no means the size of San Francisco – but challenge taken Rickey Gates (full inspiring article posted below).
Over the next year gonna run EVERY SINGLE STREET in my Colorado hometown. Big streets, neighborhood dead-ends, subdivision circles. EVERY SINGLE STREET in Louisville Colorado. Total miles, NO idea.
Downloaded a city planning map – gonna tackle this in quarters. Me, my Garmin Forerunner (to keep it official) & a new Petzl headlamp (going Bindi this year, it’s rechargeable/no landfill batteries).
If ya see me out early morn next year, I’ve gone LOCAL.
Give a honk/a wave/a smile, tag along for a mile. Explore our beautiful little town.
Snow’s topping the Flatirons, no beating our mile-high view 🗻 🙂
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- challenge met, EVERY STREET in my Colorado hometown
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- tackling goal in quarters
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- rechargeable headlamp
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- thanks Dawn ❤️
EVERY SINGLE STREET by Rickey Gates
San Francisco…………..November 1 to December 15, 2018…………..40 days and nights……………..1200+ miles
From a patio in the Berkeley Hills, I scanned the horizon, south to north, trying to take in the immensity of the population below me. Thousands of vehicles traversed the Bay Bridge, big jet planes came and went from SFO and OAK, a cargo ship passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
Just out of site, Ocean Beach met the Pacific Ocean, where only days earlier I had completed a five month, self-supported run across America.
The depths of my muscles and joints still ached immensely.
Five months earlier I had set off on foot from Folly Beach, South Carolina with a 12-pound back pack, a five-month time-frame, a modest budget and an open mind. 3657-miles later I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, tired and gaunt. My open mind had been spilled, emptied, refilled, dried up and rehydrated many times over.
To walk across a place is to observe and participate in a vast, intricate and complex web of infrastructure. It is to experience the history of that place in a very real and personal way. It is to have a better understanding of what that place is. Where that place is. Who that place is. Why that place is.
To walk across a place is to truly know a place.
Following my run, I spent a lot of time on that patio enjoying the stillness while watching the traffic flow along the 580, the 880 and the 24. I traced the BART trains coming and going, fog pouring over the hills and ravens playing above it all. Having experienced a thin thread across this complicated canvas we call the United States, I now felt the desire to experience the immensity of a single pixel on the global map.
To experience a city on this level is, in a way, to experience all cities. There are certain universalities found in clusters of people around the globe. There are places to eat, work and sleep. There are means of moving people around. There are places for entertainment. There are places for contemplation.
But still… why walk? Why run? There is a mantra in the shuffle and a prayer in the suffering. I know what that does for me, but what does that do for you? And everybody else?
The 2500-year-old legend of Pheidippides tells us about a common Athenian soldier who ran from the fennel fields of Marathon to the Acropolis in Athens to announce victory over the Persians. Upon arrival he delivered his message, only to perish from exhaustion moments later.
And perhaps that is why. Because the runner is messenger and his suffering must be witnessed.
