305 laps

Me and my surgically screwed together upper leg/hip are pretty much done with conventional road races – you know, 5ks, 10ks, half marathons and the like, at least for the time being if not indefinitely. But there is still room for my partially broken down body to do unique events like Saturday’s Sweltering Summer Ultra in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. This is an 8-hour event on a dirt “track” – really, a well-worn and not so pretty walking path at Clapp Park in Pittsfield (see surreal photo from the 7 a.m. start; if you look closely, I’m the shuffling schmoe by that stack of big cones). Here’s how one entrant described it in a Facebook post afterwards: “Mentally, that might have been one of the toughest races I've done. Running in circles for 8 hours is borderline torture.’’

Yeah. Well. Fortunately, I thrive on such tedium, and this was the third year in a row I’ve done this race – having done each year’s event, organized by the awesome and enthusiastic Benn Griffin. For obvious reasons, this year I didn’t get as far as I did in the previous two versions – in 2013, it was a 6-hour and in 2014 and 2015, it was an 8-hour. I was just happy to make it there, able to awkwardly ambulate for 80 laps of the .3553746428 of a mile “track” before calling it quits a little after six hours, leaving about 100 minutes of so on the table. Hey man. Considering I needed a walker to go to the bathroom just a few months ago, I’ll take the partial completion; my pre-race goal was 74 laps

anyway. I’ll also take this cool 100-mile medallion earned for having covered more than 100 miles on the Clapp track over the course of the three-year race history.

For those keeping score at home (and really, who isn’t?), I covered 100 laps in 2013, 125 laps in 2014 and 80 laps in 2015 – 305 laps, for a grand total of 108.389266054 mind-numbing miles over the course of three sweltering summers. After being on crutches for the better part of two months this spring, and barely resuming regular jogging (if you can call it that) since then, it’s all good. Maybe next year, I’ll be able to keep moving for the entire 8 hours. For now and for always, I’m thankful for any and all forward progress.