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My Fragile Ego, Running in the Dark, and No Excuses
How a 200-Mile Adventure Brought Me Back
This is what I envision myself looking like. Victorious, atop a high peak, celebrating a joyous, invigorating trail run. It’s glorious!
This is the image I held in my head (and heart) when I agreed to join a group of seven other people, only two of whom I’d actually met, to run Ragnar New Jersey.
For the uninitiated, Ragnar races are 200-ish miles of either road or trail racing that take place over two days and one night of continuous running in relay fashion. Eight suckers…I mean, runners, band together to cover the distance in sets of three legs of varying distances mapped out as a green, yellow, and red distance and run green, yellow, red, in order 24 times until they’ve all run each of the three colors and the total is 200 miles…ish. The road races are a point-to-point, using a van to catch some sleep along the way, while the trail races involve camping in communal tents during the non-running hours.
Either way, it’s kind of nuts.
The timing of the race necessitates that everyone will wind up running some portion of it in the dark. In my case, I netted quite a few miles in total darkness, running from 3:15 AM to roughly 4:30. In the woods. In northern New Jersey. In October. On single-track trail. Give yourself…
