More is Different

A Review of Peter Nabokov,   Indian Running, Native American History & Tradition .  Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 1981. For better or worse, Chris McDougall’s Born To Run has ensured that the Tarahumara will never again enjoy the status of a “secret” tribe of running prodigies hidden in the canyons of Mexico.   Some twenty-five years before McDougall’s bestseller, Peter Nabokov also wrote about the Tarahumara’s running prowess. He presents them not as freakish extremes, but as part of a continuum, one expression of a long tradition of Indian running that extended across two continents. Nabokov invites us to imagine North and South America before the arrival of Europeans as a New World of runners.  From the Arctic to what is now Argentina, the landscape is networked by countless thousands of trails, paths, and roads.  The network extends through the deciduous forests of the Northeast, across the great plains of North America, through the mountains and ...

This mid-section of the mid-Atlantic state in which I live serves as a vast drainage area, sloping from the Blue Ridge and Appalacian areas in the west to the flat coastal plains in the east.  A map of the MoCo (Montgomery County) watershed looks like the capillarized cross-section of some vital organ.  As I suppose it is. Today's planned 6-hour run begins in a dense early morning fog at the small parking area in front the ruins of Black Rock Mill.  I am here, not the trailhead at Riley's Lock, where Seneca Creek flows into the Potomac, because with the soggy past week we've had and warm, almost spring-like January day, parts of the lower lying portion of the Seneca Greenway Trail will likely have turned to bog.   For the first half hour, I move slowly, warming up the legs and picking my way carefully along the muddy track.  River and forest are wreathed in fog.  The air is damp, cool but not cold--not a typical day for January.  Along t...

This low-key trail race takes place early every January in the northeast corner of Maryland, just miles from the border with Delaware and Pennsylvania.  It meant an early start and a 1 and 1/2 hour drive from Silver Spring.  Not so bad.  Since the race begins at a leisurely 9AM, I had time to eat and digest a good breakfast, get a quick shot up an unusually empty 95 North, and enjoy the sunrise while crossing the Susquehanna.   I was one of the first to arrive.  I dropped off my canned goods for the food drive, handed over my contribution for the aid tables, and did a little early exploring of the trails. Elkton and Fair Hill NMRA sit at the head of the upper eastern shore of the Chesapeake, but the terrain in this area is not part of the flat sandy coastal plains area of Maryland.  The twisty, hilly, stream-crossed forests and fields of Fair Hill NMRA are part of the same Piedmont Plateau region that includes the trails in my own backyard--Seneca Creek, ...

With March's  Graveyard 100  casting a lengthy backwards shadow over my winter training, I've been seeking out extended flat runs to ready myself for this test along the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Dead-level running hour after repetitive hour poses special challenges, mental and physical.  I am fortunate to live close to the perfect venue for this sort of exercise: the C & O Canal Towpath, 184 magnificent miles along the Potomac, from Georgetown to Cumberland, MD. Last Saturday's plan was to sample 36 of those miles, starting at the Dickerson Conservation Park, a little north of my usual starting point at Riley's Lock or Carderock.  My hope was to keep above the snow/sleet line that tends to snake unpredictably across the middle of our state, and so avoid any hypothermia-inducing cold rain.   There was also the excitement of a running a portion of the path I haven't seen before. Pulling out of Dickerson, I am slapped first by a hissing sleet. ...

A week away from the winter solstice, I set out on a 5-hour run, up and down the white-, yellow-, blue-, and purple-blazed trails of Sugarloaf Mountain.  Sugarloaf is a monadnock, a compact oasis of rock and tree surrounded by farmland.  Scarcely a mountain at 1282 feet, some of Sugarloaf's quartzite-littered climbs are as steep and rocky as you'll find anywhere--high enough to create a distinct microclimate with its own peculiar mix of flora and fauna (chestnut oaks among the former, rattlesnakes and copperheads among the latter). From where I live in Maryland, the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia are just a little too far to drive for an ordinary weekend long run.  So, at just 50 minutes from DC, and less than that from my home in Silver Spring, Sugarloaf has become my default mountain, the place where, for better or worse, I prepared for the rocks and the verticals of Grindstone. I love watching the mountain change through the seasons. My last time up ...

First night and first mistakes    Our preparations and planning finally complete, the tents pitched and the pre-race briefing over, we set out about an hour before sunset.  Most of us felt, I suppose, as I did: relieved to be moving at last, well-rested, maybe even a little giddy. Darkness came on swiftly.  For all its immense distances and elevation changes, the first twelve hours of this race are weirdly intimate.  Just you, the rocks underfoot, the dark trees, and your little bubble of light, bobbing after other little bubbles of light.  The first mountain, Eliot's Knob, brings a welcome if challenging break in routine: a steep open gravel road with wide views of stars blazing overhead and the far lights of Staunton twinkling down below. The miles passed.  Crawford Mountain, Dowell's Draft, and on towards Hankey Mountain, Lookout Mountain, Grindstone Mountain, and finally the endless climb from Chestnut Ridge to Little Bald Knob. ...

What do you do the week before a 100 miler in the mountains?  Not much.  Short runs.  More sleep.  Avoid stress. Try not to look too often at the extended weather forecast (looks good right now, but with a bizarre discrepancy between weather-underground and weather.com...stop!)  Find something to do with all that "extra" energy you would have used up in early morning runs or weekend long runs.  I was almost giddy with it this morning. Also important, if hard: don't second guess your training.  What has worked for me for the past 4 (injury free) years has been a 3-day/week schedule (the runs tend to be long).  I've done marathons, 50 milers, and 100s on that schedule.  And faster than than I was running the previous 5 years.  I recommend this to over-45 runners in particular.  But there's always that little voice, getting a bit louder before a major event like this, suggesting maybe a 4th or a 5th day would have helped.  May...