Mr Trail Safety Speaks!

I can see clearly now. Sooner or later, your ultra-romance ends. What started off so fresh has now crashed. All those races, buckles, t-shirts mock you. And maybe a hot hook-up too. You might even have had that finish line marriage proposal, where you said “yes, yes, a thousand times yes”, not realizing it was a fateful ambush in front of total strangers. Or a social-media stunt. It was a simpler time.  The day when a Running Vacation was the shit is also gone. You are hearing, or saying, that ultras suck too much out of whatever life you have, and you/they want to do other things. Its never a fun discussion. Or your health. My health ultra-path [or Journey®™] was: Sept 1989: First ultra, Baldy Peaks 50k. Man, I thought I was truly gonna get laid. Oct 1991. First 100. Man, I thought I was truly gonna get laid. April 1999: Chronic Fatigue-Adjacent. Whatever it was, I was knee-capped, and my first ultra golden age was over. It was a hard quasi-recovery. Buckling becomes remote. Who a...

Yes, this is Christmas, but it adequately conveys the pathos of the time. (I'm going to give trails and running a break. Check this nugget from 1989. I remember giving up a decent run for it. Maybe it was worth it, after all). In spring 1989 I got dragged to an Est-seminar by my then-girlfriend, who was big on sincere self-help stuff. Her best friend E. was there, and she's a pleasant personality. There are other hilarious details in this grotesque breakfast clusterfuck that occurred at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but they'll have to wait for another time. The featured attraction to this soggy fuckery was a couple who were pimping their self-help book, something titled "Marriage Work Out" or similar. He was a tall, angular, pleat-fronted, smartass New York Jew. She was a curvy blonde All-American cheerleader betty—blonde, blue eyed, shiksa to the core. So this intellectual jackass stood up on the platform, jingling the change in his pockets, telling us ...