JFK 50 Miler Thoughts

This year's JFK 50 Miler runners will commence their trek some 48 hours from this posting. Although I've started and completed 5 JFKs, I won't be among the runners this year--I opted instead to spend more time with the family.

I sound like a disgraced politician who just resigned before a scandal broke, hoping that the real truth would somehow not see the light of day. But the truth is that I burned up a lot of family goodwill in training for the Umstead 100 Mile Endurance Run earlier this year (March 2010). I strove mightily to minimize the time spent in running, and tried to render training time invisible by running those brutal 0-dark-thirty 35 milers last winter.

However, the fact remains that ultrarunning is necessarily a time-consuming endeavor. Not a wrong endeavor, but just of long duration. 35 mile training runs take half a day or better. Arguably, doing ultras is somewhat selfish, but on the other hand. we all need and deserve our personal space.

The bride is supportive of my running, but only to a point. That gray zone where fitness activities cross over into a quest--which is what a 100 miler is--is tougher for her to swallow.  So I decided to scale back the running for the rest of 2010, which include passing up the JFK.  Besides, with increasing demand for the race, race organizers upped the grandfather rule for automatic entry consideration from 5 finishes to 10...so I would have had to go thru whatever hoops the open field has to go thru for entry.

So, instead of running on Saturday, we are taking Mister Tristan (the human being, not the blog) to the Greencastle Christmas parade at 9:21 am (the sponsor is a radio station with that FM slot). He should really enjoy it, as we will.

Oh, and good luck to the JFK runners--I will be thinking about you.