This Is How the Crazy Talk Starts

I’ve decided that crazy people don’t know that they’re crazy. They believe that their behavior is perfectly normal. If a crazy person walks in circles talking to nobody in particular and all of his friends do the same thing, he could only conclude that his behavior is perfectly acceptable. To some extent, certain behaviors can be socialized across a group, introducing ideas that were previously considered ridiculous or unattainable. The same thing occurs with endurance athletes and adventure junkies. Somebody says ” I’m thinking of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro” and before you can engage the part of the brain that controls rational thought, your mouth forms the words “me too”.

Your friends do events with titles like Death Ride and you start to wonder… maybe. This should not be considered normal behavior in any population, yet we accept it, embrace it, and even turn it into a badge of honor. The insane in a constant struggle to out-crazy themselves. The latest example of this came after volunteering at the Western States Endurance Run, a 100 mile trail run in the California Sierra Nevada mountains. This is a race, where runners have 30 hours to run the course, which includes 18,000 feet of ascent and 22,000 feet of descent. The runners use pacers who accompany them for 20-30 miles at a time to provide safety and motivation. The course is pitch black at night, lit only by each runner’s headlamp. The trails are very narrow and the runners’ instructions warns of trail hazards including bears, mountain lions, and rattlesnakes. Runners are told to watch where they place their feet and hands. If you complete the race within the time limit, you get a big belt buckle. Silver for finishing under 24 hours, bronze for sub-30 hours. Unless you’re very fast, you will be running for two sunrises. Before the big day, night, and another day of running, you train for months, running 50 mile qualifying trail runs. You enter a lottery and hope that 1 in 10 odds work in your favor. If you hit the race entry lottery, you pay a large registration fee. Then you train more. You convince friends to pace you for a marathon distance in the dark woods with bears, cougars, and rattlesnakes. Once you’ve found enough stupid loyal friends to serve as pacers, you train more. You pay a bazillion dollars to a chiropractor and a massage therapist to keep you injury-free. All for a belt buckle with huge bragging rights.

Our primary reasons for volunteering were to give back to our running community and to check out the race. We’d heard about it for so long and I had even met someone who’d completed it a few years ago. We were intrigued by it. Upon arriving in late afternoon, we pitched in to help with assembling the aid station, located at the Auburn Hills Trail area, 85 miles from the start line.

All runners began at 5:00am and the first male runner arrived at our station at 6:07pm. He had been on the trail for just over 13 hours and looked better than I do after a five mile run. I should also mention that his name is Kilian Jornet and that he broke the record for running up and down Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,540′) in Africa last year. He did it in 7 hours and 14 minutes. It will take us eight days. Check out Kilian Jornet’s Kilimanjaro Run on YouTube. Those who knew the story of Kilian Jornet were a little star-struck when the Spaniard came running into our aid station. He was completely relaxed and very engaging with all of the volunteers. At that point, he held a four minute lead over the second place runner, the exact gap between them at the finish line 15 miles later.

The majority of runners arrived in the middle of the night after they’d already been running for 20+ hours. We witnessed runners in various states of physical distress but we were prepared for all of them, even though it meant staying up all night.

A normal person would have taken all of this in and wondered why in the world anybody would ever voluntarily put their body through such an ordeal. I can tell you why. Crazy people hang out with crazy people and none of them know that they’re crazy. They all think that paying a race organizer for the privilege of inflicting pain on your body is a perfectly normal thing to do. Proof? The conversation on the drive home went like this. “I would love to do that”. “Me too”. This is how the crazy talk starts.