Ultrarunning Dreams

If you thought I was alluding to my hopes and aspirations in the realm of Ultrarunning, you are mistaken.

For last night, after some 30 years in the sport, I had my first dream about Ultrarunning.  Well, the first dream I remembered after I awakened.

I was running an Ultra in the fall, as the leaves were down but it was still fairly mild, no snow.  My overall color impression was browns and grays.  I was running downhill on a decent trail, trying vainly to keep up with a runner about 50 yards ahead.  Suddenly he made a turn and was lost to sight.

I, too, came up to the turn, which was strangely unmarked, and kept on running.  The other runner was now gone.  After a short distance, I came up to another trail junction, this one a bit trickier, which was also unmarked.  I thought to myself, "Man, this race has some shi**y course markings!"

I was trying to assess the correct way to go when a bunch of runners appeared coming from the other direction.  I knew--in this dream--that the course was an out-n-back, but for some reason I did not know the distance.  So I turned up the way that the other runners were coming from.  As I passed the string, lo and behold I see our son running in the middle of that mini-pack.

I wave, he waves, and we go on our separate ways.  I knew that I had been running slowly (my normal speed these days!), but the fact that encountering of the pack of runners on their way back happened so early in my run indicated that my speed was glacial and I may as well drop.

That was the conclusion of this stupid dream, so I never found out the distance, results, etc.

Here's hoping for a more satisfying dream next time.