Ultra Friends

A year ago, I knew of no one in the FM area who was training for an ultra. Now I have a half dozen friends that have completed at least one and are working on their next. An ultra, or ultra marathon, is a running event with a distance of anything over the standard marathon of 26.2 miles. It was nice to head out to the hills of Rollag on Saturday for a few miles with some of these ultra friends. We met up and headed out of town together a 8 a.m., were running by 9 and finished around 12:30. The weather was decent and all were prepared appropriately. There was no complaining of the cold, only resolution to better figure out how to deal with it. No one really cared how far we were going or how long we would be out there. We just took of and figured it out as we went. Our pace was relaxed and conversational the whole time except when we were trudging through some deeper snow, which was difficult, and woke up some muscles I hadn't used in while. Again, no complaining from anyone, just resolve not to let Joel pick our route again. Most of us are not as hard core as Joel though he is a great leader.

When you put the time and miles in that us runners do with each other, under self inflicted stressful conditions, the shell slowly gets stripped off and your true self starts to emerge for all to see. Not always good, though true. We share a common interest in running. Stripping the phoniness off makes it that much easier to become real, true friends. Ultra friends.