006: A Beautiful Abnormality
Just getting back from a few weeks on the road for CrossFit, a trip that began with a couple days down in Key West with Carl and Brian as they put on a Cert for some guys in the Special Forces. Had a chance to do a little filming at the Boston Marathon before leaving, and want to thank Mel from CrossFit Boston and Darrell from Alamo CrossFit for taking some time out of their weekends to talk with me.
Walking around the city in the days leading up to the marathon, I realized something. Somewhere between getting to know Brian and Carl, researching endurance events and training and prepping for this film, the notion of a 100-mile race started seeming like something less epic than it is. It started seeming normal. Like something people do everyday.
But walking around that weekend, down streets runners would soon parade down, through the endless maze of running shoes and recovery drinks that overwhelmed the senses at the Health and Fitness Expo that lures racers in every year, the reality of it all hit me in the way it hit me the first time I heard Brian talk about 100 mile races.
They’ll be running the approximate distance between Boston and Hartford. Between New York City and Philadelphia. San Diego to Newport Beach.
There’s nothing normal about it.
Yet when you talk to them, when you talk to Brian or Carl or any of those marathoners, it’s almost as if you were the abnormal one. Why wouldn’t you want to run 26.2 miles? 100 miles? Why wouldn’t you want to test the limits of your body against the limits of your mind?
And you start asking yourself the same questions. You start thinking about running a marathon. You mention it to somebody. You hear it out loud and recall the last time mile repeats came up and the two hour nap they required afterwards. You start thinking about running a 5k. You don’t mention it to anybody…yet.
It may not be normal, this desire to challenge legs and lungs and mind, but it’s a beautiful abnormality. It’s the kind of abnormality that makes you think about your own capacity, which in turns opens you to the possibility that it’s greater than you once imagined. And I suppose that’s a helluva first step.
Photo of Jessica Piecuch Thompson of CrossFit Boston, who PR’d Boston with a time of 3:31 using CF + CFE.
so proud of Jessica! Now when Neal starts his season that’s when I will be truly impressed with Jessica. The wife inspires husband to start running… This guy showed up to the first Cert up in Topsfield with knee wraps and sh$%… It was awesome. Love you all in Beantown! Although, the dude down in Key West who rented us the golf cart was a shady, ginger, Irish son of a Bi#$h! Right Pat! Oh, there is nothing normal about running 100 miles. Everything seems to be right in my life though.
Excellent little article. And that picture is taken right after Heartbreak Hill, right at Boston College. Going into my senior year at BC and though I’m far from a runner I’m hoping to run the marathon in the spring of 2010…