Pros & Cons of Spur-of-the-moment race sign up

Dispatched from Livingston, MT

Pro: You’ve trained most of the summer for an extreme mountain ascent, and completed that ascent one week ago.

Con: Most of that training involved steep, weighted treadmill climbs and a handful of trail runs…at sea level, in Norfolk, Virginia.

Pro: Cardio-wise you’re in the best shape of your life at thirty-six.

Con: The most flexed muscle is your hubris:  (if I can ascend and then descend 7,000 feet, including 1,300 feet of technical rock climbing in one day, a half marathon is nothing. I’ve run a dozen of those. And two marathons, now that I’m thinking about it.)

Pro: You’re fully rested and mostly healed from the one-day Grand Teton Climb. Your toes resemble ground beef, and you’ve worn nothing but flip-flops, but the Frisbee-sized blisters on your heels have improved.

Con: Instead of running or hiking or even ambling any significant distance, you’ve been playing Tenzi with your kids, riding horses, and fly-fishing for a week.

Pro: You’ve been regularly carbo-loading since your descent.

Con: Those carbs have been consumed in liquid form—Bitterroot Beer and Katabatick Brewery IPA.

Pro: At registration, the night before the race, the man behind the table gestured at the dwindling t-shirt piles behind him. “We have plenty of larges and extra large t-shirts left,” he said. “No mediums or smalls.” Initially, relief. You’ve slid back into a large from a medium over the last year, your first as a divorcee, and you collect race t-shirts like some people collect wine corks.

Con: Shit. All of the smalls and mediums are spoken for by people running this race? You’ve never fit in with the willowy folks who look like runners. How athletic is this town?

Pro: This race pulled you out of bed early enough to watch clouds thick as paste swallow a red-hot poker sun.

Con: You get lost on the way to the starting line. “Across the railroad tracks and turn left,” didn’t deliver you so simply as the lady at sign up promised. Ignoring this omen, you proceed.

Pro: There’s no humidity in Livingston, MT.

Con: It’s 38 degrees at the start. And it’s August 22nd.

Pro: The locals say the cold will keep the snakes slow.

Con: There are snakes?

Pro: You’ll warm up as soon as you get started. You always do.

Con: There are snakes, enough snakes to remain a point of conversation.

Pro: You’ll be breathing so heavily from the hilly course that you run no risk of sneaking up on or startling any wildlife.

Con: The most recent bear sighting on the trail was almost a week ago. Are the snakes venomous?

Pro: Most of them aren’t. (Most?)

Con: The word “trail” can be used and applied widely. In Virginia, trails are densely sandy or packed dirt with the odd tree root or stump to step over. The Western translation differs. Apparently it can mean “gravel ranch road.” Thirteen-point-one miles of sharp rocks, long rocks, nasty, round rocks. The balls of your feet would flip you the bird if they could.

Pro: No pre-race line for the toilet. It’s so human, dignified, even, compared to the typical stanchion of plastic johns, with creaky doors wafting urinal cake. And it’s no porta-potty. It’s National Parks style with a lock and toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

Con: You only see 40 people at the start, and they are fit. As. Hell. That’s where all of those small and medium shirts went.

Pro: The scene at the start is chill. No corrals. No talk of the last race. No local politicos. No gaggles of gym-goers in coordinating outfits. One of the organizers, a cutie wearing a summer weight puffy and distressed jeans draws the starting line by dragging his heel in the dust.

Con: Everyone at the start knows each other, except you.

Pro: A statuesque beauty with a cherry blossom twisting up her thigh and a stud in her nose that matches your own taps your shoulder as they announce one minute until race time: “Have a great race,” she says. No irony in her hot spring blue eyes.

Con: You envy the ear buds in her ears, play lists shuffling. You were not planning to run on this trip and have no music.

Pro: Running up, up hill and around the water tower three miles in, you capture your first glimpse of the Crazy Mountains since you’ve been in town, almost a week. They are snowy and serrated beautiful, strutting just above the tree line.

Con: They’ve been hidden behind a noxious blanket of smoke from the 100 wildfires burning across the West. Three smoke jumpers died just yesterday.

Con: Only keeping pace with the leaders for the first half a mile, you’re passed on another uphill stretch by two women casually conversing, their voices spunky, breathing easy. You may run a personal worst, a 21-minute personal worst.

Pro: You have two strong legs and a healthy set of lungs. The legs are shorter than you’d like, thicker than you’d like. They’re dimpled and veined. You’ve gone to great lengths to tone and hide them. But they will carry you. They have carried you, up and over and through more times than you can count.

Con: There’s a real chance of you losing this race, like dead last losing.

Pro: The mean ranch dogs near mile ten snarl and lunge, bare teeth but don’t bite you. You don’t stop.

Con: You finish seventh from last.

Pro: Your daughters clap and cheer, waving the bananas and bagels they nicked from the finishers table, and run toward you, splashing Gatorade, as eager to run you in as any time you’ve placed though you’re 42 minutes behind your PR. The clock has to be broken, but you know it isn’t. You aren’t, either. And you know you’ll seek the beauty of this particular torture, this satisfying humility for as long as your two legs will move you. You’re big and small at once. A runner.