Anyone who’s ever run a trail race while listening to an MP3 player on shuffle mode probably knows the feeling of hoping that a Rocky-esque song infused with deep meaning will start to play in the final stretch toward a summit. The last thing you want to hear as you push to the top is a saccharine duet by Zac Ephron and Vanessa Hudgens. My preteen daughter’s pop tunes tend to wind up in my music library, so that experience — the audio equivalent of having a nice walk ruined by stepping in dog poop — happens to me from time to time.

Thankfully, this is not about one of those times.

It’s about a different song, one in my husband’s iTunes library that I avoid because I listened to it endlessly back in the Dark Ages of 1986, the year I graduated from high school and transitioned to college. It was  a rather dark, tumultuous year of my life, and probably the most drug-addled, and I had a hunch that song would kick down a locked mental door and sharpen hazy memories of nights I didn’t really want to relive, such as my first-ever college party in which I woke up on a stranger’s futon and stared at a distorted, foggy image of my face and slowly realized that somebody was holding a mirror to my mouth to see if I was still breathing.

I tripped across that song title last Sunday morning while hurriedly getting my gear together to head to a 50K race on Mount Diablo. Rushing to transfer some new music to my iPod, I scanned the list, saw that song, thought “what the hell” and copied it over. Then I drove to the starting line with a blast from the past haunting my playlist. The particular song is almost beside the point — it could be any angry anthem — but for the record it’s “Rise” by Public Image Ltd., the post-punk band fronted by Johnny Rotten after the Sex Pistols’ breakup. It goes on for an intense and hypnotic six minutes.

Mount Diablo panoramic by Falcorian, courtesy of Wikimedia (click to enlarge). The 50K course took us to the tippy-top peak on the right, twice.

So there I was approaching the Mount Diablo summit for the final time. I was running in a very low-key event put on by Coastal Trail Runs, and only 10 of us were attempting the 50K course, which has 8000 feet of elevation gain and goes up and down the mountain twice. (The other participants ran distances ranging from 4 to 26 miles.) I was out in front all by myself, nobody and nothing pushing me but my watch and a desire hatched after mile 20 to try to break 5 hours, 30 minutes. The approach to the summit seemed five times longer and harder the second time around.

The sky-scraping radio towers marking the summit loomed at least a half mile ahead at the pinnacle of a steep, rocky single-track stretch. Fatigue washed over me as I leaned into the hill and willed my burning calves to keep the steady pace. If ever I needed an inspirational song to push me on, this was the time.

And right then and there, that distinctive drum beat circa 1986 started pulsating through my ear buds, the signature riff from the guitar joined in, and I instantly recognized the searing song I hadn’t heard since that much earlier, much different phase of life. Oh God, why must it come on now? Would it push me up or drag me down? I felt goosebumps prickle on my arms, which could have been a sign of dehydration, but I knew the tiny hairs were rising and tingling on my skin from pure emotion.

I let that mental door to the past open to flashbacks while keeping my focus on the mountaintop and the swath of Northern California that skirted it, surveying the eastern foothills rolling out and flattening to the valley floor that stretched all the way to the Sierra. Look how far I’ve come, I told myself. Never thought I’d end up here.

In those six minutes as the song played and I ran all the way to the top and began to fly down the descent, I mentally ran through more than two decades of pivotal choices, the kinds of turning points where things could have just as easily gone badly as turned out well — and the things that did go badly but ended up okay in the long run. I was reminded that life’s low points have silver linings, the high points are tinged with sacrifice or regret, and there’s no telling how the chapters will end and transition to the next.

The song also reminded me of this parable:

One day, a farmer discovers his horse has escaped and run away, and the farmer’s neighbor says to him, “Oh, that’s terrible news.” The farmer shrugs, “Good, bad, who knows?” The next day, his horse returns to the farm at feeding time, and at his side is a wild horse that the farmer keeps to train and use. “Oh, that’s great news,” says the neighbor. “Good, bad, who knows?” repeats the farmer. The next day, the farmer’s son mounts the wild horse to train him, but the horse bucks him off and breaks the son’s leg. “Oh, that’s terrible news,” says the neighbor. (You can guess what the farmer replies.) Finally, the following day, soldiers unexpectedly arrive at the farm. The army is drafting all able-bodied young men into service, and they want to conscript the farmer’s son until they see his broken leg and let him stay on the farm. “Oh, that’s great news,” says the neighbor, to which the farmer once again says, “Good, bad, who knows?”

The alchemy of the trail mixed with the music made me more accepting of the past and present, and more optimistic of the future regardless of how events unfold.

The experience also calmed my nerves about the fast-approaching 50 mile race. I have invested a good deal of time and effort to train for it, and I successfully reached the peak in the training cycle and am ready to taper. Now whatever happens, happens. If something about the event causes me to worry or, conversely, bolsters my confidence, I’ll think, “Good, bad, who knows?” and try to make the best of the race, come what may.

***

Here’s a recap of the past two training weeks (if you’re wondering what the following is about, see the Week 1 post). I managed to run my Longest Distance Ever on Saturday, September 10: 40 miles!

Week 14:

Mileage: 50.5

# of days and time spent running: Only 3 days, 9 hours. I ran hardly at all this week — except for the ultra-long run — because my daughter was at the hospital recovering from knee surgery, which consumed all my attention; then, after the long run Friday, I needed two days to recover.

Longest run: 40 in 7 hrs., 30 min, covering 80 percent of the DCFT50 course. It went as well as I could have hoped, though the slow time is sobering (I kept my watch running during breaks and realized how many minutes are lost in a run of this length to refueling and bathroom breaks).

Speed workout? Nope.

Cross training? Yes, three different workouts, most involving arms, core and PT but also one 30-min session on the stationary bike.

Week 15:

Mileage: 64

# of days and time spent running: 5 days, 10.5 hours

Longest run: 31 miles at Diablo 50K in 5:31 (I finished 1st overall! Disclaimer: only 9 other competitors.)

Speed workout? Just tempo pickups during a midweek run and then really pushed the speed on the last 4 miles of the 50K.

Cross training? Yes, two gym workouts with emphasis on core/balance/PT/arms and one half-hour bike workout.

What I did to prevent injury these weeks: Several rest days book-ending the long runs, and lots of quality time with the foam roller to speed muscle recovery.

Finishing first in the Mount Diablo 50K, just missing my goal of 5:30 but thinking, "Close enough!" (photo courtesy Coastal Trail Runs)

Tags: 50K, Coastal Trail Runs, Diablo 50K, dick collins firetrails 50, Firetrails 50, Mount Diablo, Public Image Ltd. "Rise", Running, trail running, Ultrarunning

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.