Roots to Run Upon.

If you told 15-year-old Me that I would run a marathon some day I wouldn't believe you (even if you had a functional flux-capacitor in your vehicle).  Then if you said I'd even run races longer than marathons in the mountains, I'd probably scoff & go home to a family-sized bag of Doritos Cooler Ranch & a 2-liter Mountain Dew.  At that age I had just given up on playing junior-varsity lacrosse since I was such a lousy runner.  Attending practice & not getting play-time in games wore away at my self-esteem & felt like a waste of time.  I preferred hiding in my parents' basement to scarf down snacks & delve into level after level of computer strategy games like Warcraft II & Alpha Centauri.  So what changed 15 years later to make me so enthralled with trail-running that my day-to-day life would begin to revolve around it - to make me feel complete, even?

The initial spark (and I'm sure what grabs & hooks most runners) was my first time experiencing a "runner's high."  I am perhaps 23 or 24 years old & running loops around the Centerville Elementary / Middle School campus near my parents' house in Lancaster, PA.  The terrain around these schools is soft & grassy, with gradual hills that are common in this Piedmont Region.  I have headphones plugged into an ipod with Soul Coughing's El Oso album playing at about an hour into the run when I feel ELATED all of the sudden.  It is a new sensation & I want more!  I actually DESIRE to keep going & milking the exercise for whatever ecstasy can be obtained.  In the past running was always a chore, a pain, something forced on me. . . something to be avoided at all costs.  I don't realize at the time, but the combination of environmental factors involved at this moment is what I would forever seek in my runs: elevation gain & loss, earthy surface (as opposed to asphalt / track), cooler temperature (it was night time on this run though I can't remember what season), and rhythm-heavy music in the earbuds.

Fast-forward to me at age 29 & I've just moved to Salida, CO after tramping around for a few years working in various resort / tourist areas (In those "tramping years" I would run at times but never had made it a regular habit or competitive sport.  In Yellowstone I often ran from Mammoth Hot Springs to Gardiner, MT on Old Gardiner Road {saw a badger once on that trail}.  In New Orleans I remember running down St. Charles Ave. when Mardi Gras was just over & gazing bedazzled at all of the shining beads that had tangled into the trees' branches & twigs.)  My roommate plays an audio recording for me in which Joe Rogan tells a story about a vision he saw whilst in the grips of an ibogaine trip, and I realize that running might be as close as we get to godliness (more on this in another blog entry).  I begin finding the joy of longer runs among Salida's trails in the "S Mountain" and "Methodist Mountain" systems.  Where I once used to eat too many snacks & spend too much time at computer games, in these days I find myself imbibing too much alcohol at too many nights spent at the bars for too many hours.  While trail-running doesn't cure this problem all at once, it beings to give me something else to spend my time on.  It provides a new neurotransmitter reward source besides coffee, beer, & nicotine.   And you get to be out in the mountains, pumping the heart, listening to music, while watching the horizon transform at each bend of single-track & each hour that ticks towards twilight. 

I read a book by Dean Karnazes about "ultra running."  It begins to show the potential of human endurance.  I run more days & stay out longer when I do.  I read a book by Christopher McDougal.  I run my first marathon.  I read a books by Charlie Engle & Kilian Jornet.  The authors motivate more & more as well as entertain with the heroic stories that runners grow through.  Many are narratives of personal victory, while others are studies of how running relates to us anthropologically or physiologically.  Nothing is better fuel for understanding what I am capable of in my own pursuits as a now trail-race competitor.  I'm Peter Panic (AKA Pete Brewer AKA Peer Broozer) and in homage to these writers (and with a push from my brother)  I begin this runner's blog.