I - Cover Your Burns,

“We’ve been through

Some things together 

With trunks of memories

Still to come

We found things to do

in stormy weather

Long may you run"

-Neil Young, "Long May You Run"

God has definitely turned up the gravity levels. I feel it. I feel heavy all the time and all I want to do is crash on my acceleration couch and keep the blood from pooling in my feet or bursting the capillaries in my eyes. I need one of them OTC, Alter-G treadmills just to be normal. And that's the life I live now. Why it has to be this way is an entirely different story.

According to all results, both official and unofficial, as well as all spectators, I covered 3200 meters in nine minutes and twenty three seconds on May 30th, 2009. During these nine minutes and twenty three seconds (besides running fast) I did two things. The first was to make everything - coming back from an injury which the doctor said would likely preclude competitive running for the rest of my life, banging my head against the wall in training, banging my head against the wall in racing, making sacrifices so I could chase my stupid dream - all worth it; an affirmation that I was not laboring in vain. And the second thing I did, well, that's a little more complicated.

...but first let's back up a bit...

The best stories are the ones that feel like lies. When you tell them, you feel like you're getting away with lying, even though they are completely true. Sometimes, you don't even feel like they actually happened, like the universe itself is lying. I have one of those "the universe is lying" stories. Even I don't believe it happened.

That number, 9:23, it's got some significance to it. Before I even started running, that number was in my head. I was introduced to the sport by Mr. Colby Pines, my friend, neighbor, and frequent navigator aboard Spaceship Earth, who's brother Justin run 9:23 in high school. When I heard that number, my middle school brain could not fathom that it was possible. Later, I would hear from my coach freshman year the story of how during his senior season, when everything seemed to be falling apart for whatever reason, he made a comeback by doing everything right, including sleep, even making his goal time of 9:23 his bedtime. Whenever I could, that was the time I would try to at least by getting ready for bed by, just because I had heard that number, and it had worked. At the beginning of my senior season, when I opened with a sub-par 4:41.5 mile, my coach told me that if things went right, I would be running that same pace for two miles at the end of the season. (For all of you keeping score at home, a 9:23 is a 4:41.5 mile run twice). And in what could have been my last race ever, when I finally stopped caring about any numbers except place, I ran 9:23. As I was taking the train home from the meet, my dad looked up the results from the race where Justin ran 9:23. It was the same meet six years prior, and we were both in similar situations, wherein the way the race unfolded tactically put us out of position for qualifying for the state meet. My dad told me that I had beat his time by one tenth of a second. And even now, I feel like I'm telling a lie.

The night before that race, as I was trying to relax, I wrote this:

What I have done was meaningful, in some way, even if it didn't turn out the way I planned. It will end, and I will maybe have a good story to tell. I've got a state [cross country] medal, a team that I can call family, and some well scuplted calves.

And an adventure. I've had an adventure.

Now it seems stupid, but reading over this again, I realize that I genuinely thought that the next day, I would probably run my last race ever. It was this race that opened up the doors, that convinced me I could run collegiately and that I had so much farther to go, based on where I had been a year before, or even months before.

But now I wonder if I am doing the right thing.

Am I wasting my time trying to replicate something that maybe should have happened only once? I know that running 9:23 justified all the sacrifices I made to get there, but does it justify all the sacrifices I made and will make afterwards, in order to try and accomplish similar feats on a greater level of magnitude?

I don't know if I can get there, and I can't guarantee that anything I have done or will do post-9:23 will be justified. But I know that running is part addiction, part virus, and part stigma, and that you can never walk away from it, however hard you try. I used to think it was stupid but it's true: runs end, but being a runner never does. Add to that my personal caveat, where if I do something, I have to do it as best as I possibly can.

I have come to the conclusion that because of the structure and workings of the Universe, nothing is a waste of time; everything you do prepares you for the next thing you do.