harder faster better stronger

Comrades, you are in my sights.

THE DAYS FOLLOWING YOUR FIRST RACE are their own brand of happy insanity. Like doing a run for the feeling you get hours later, you do your first race for the feeling you get in the days that follow. It doesn't matter the distance or how fast or slow you went. Cross your first finish line, and you'll have weeks of unexplained strength, unreasonable optimism, unbridled genius, and the hail of really good ideas around every corner. Within hours of finishing comes your first eureka: Can. Run. Ultra. That afternoon, you attempt a handstand push-up against the living room wall and seriously consider a second career as a world class circus performer. By the evening, you want to call the White House and see if anyone wants to come over for beer and poker. And of course, you want to run. More. Further. Longer. Faster.

In the weeks following my first race, my exaggerated enthusiasm for life in general expressed itself mainly in the form of mileage. I ran like crazy. Finishing a marathon race with more than 20,000 other participants in the nation's capital got me excited about running in a way I never was before. After a forced 18 hours of recovery, I leapt out the door, returning to the roads and fields again to visit my new favorite activity. My usual 6 miler with the occasional weekend 15 miler became my usual 10 miler with the regular weekend 20 miler. I began to keep track of 7 day totals — something I'd attributed previously to only fitness freaks and geeks. I ran twice in one day. I went as fast as I could. I began vigorous hill training. I ran like a giant child, happily sprinting across miles of dirt and pavement without a single dark thought. Final stretch sprints became mandatory.

During the latter half of my runs, I constantly recall the pivotal scene from the movie Gattaca, where the loser asks the winner of an extreme ocean swimming race: "How did you do it? How did you have the energy to make it back to shore?" and the winner responds calmly: "I never thought about making it back." Right On.

— liberally adapted from an article by Marc Parent,

Runners World, November 2010