By 2018 Niwot Spirit Animal: Wolf
The Niwot’s Challenge is the self-proclaimed “Barkley of the West.” It takes place every April in the rugged foothills west of Denver. Participants must find all 16 Books along a roughly 45-mile course within the 30-hour cut-off to be considered an official finisher. No one has made it further than 9 books (29.5 Miles) on the current course. This is one Nitwit’s thoughts from 2018, post race, and deeply rooted within. Pictures were taken with an old school disposable camera.
-Week of Niwot
It was nightmares most nights, sometimes intense. People running off cliffs, totally abandoned to the pursuit of finishing the challenge. We were all getting hopelessly lost, just praying that we had what it takes. Blood gushing from wounds as scrub oak and thorns tangle and twist us back into earth. And all while asking, “What the fuck am I doing this for? I mean, really, why?” And this merely the beginning of pondering that question, for this was only the subconscious processing the existential fret of it all. All those questions on our existence and if we are worth, well.. anything.
Why have we chosen this path to meaning? After all, we have our careers, our pleasures, our families, our nature, the forest, we even have our sports – our physical passions. We have the greatest love relationships. Hell, we are in love! This is the greatest of all experience. So why take our sport and push it over the edge? Isn’t it fun, challenging, inspiring, and provocative enough? I guess that’s what I want to find out.
What is the wild allure to our interactions with a nature that doesn’t feel but invokes feeling. I could just cry watching this river, because it so beautiful, and it could drown me and never shed a tear. Scrub oak has no feelings; so what am I so worked up about? The difference, of course, that I do have feelings, and thank God I am not a scrub oak. However, this fact of existence does lead me to the conclusion that we humans, especially I, take things far too seriously. After all, this is running/hiking/enduring/chosen suffering, and I am doing it for the fun of it.. I am playing because it makes me feel good. The learning feels good.
“We cannot outrun our demons; we can only chose to live above them.” That’s what this is about. It’s about living so light-heartedly that you float. Think of gravity. It holds our bodies down. It creates a connection to a planet that our spirit may not otherwise be aware of. Our light-heartedness can allow our spirits to leave the weight that comes from some of this gravity. Escapism it may be, though only to a point. There is much value in being able to identify meaning and what is not. It is a self-loving and beneficial thing to latch onto things that provide meaning and the “escape” from those that do not. If there is no meaning to something, let it die; run away and let it die. It cannot serve me.
It is extremely difficult to answer the “why” many times, especially in the thick of the suffering, nay, the pain. (We must remember that suffering is an illusion, and pain is a measurement of severity.) The Chair enters Brain Right.
– April 28th
Burn, at almost 13 miles, is complete in 3:47. This beautiful, burnt section of forest goes swimmingly with barely a hiccup. Team Wolf, Wolf, Timer Wolf, Coyote, later joined by Bear for a bit.
Suffer takes 8 hours. That’s almost 10 miles in 8 hours. Coyote has a dark moment or twenty on the way up to Suffer Book 1. Upon reaching the turn towards Suffer Book #3, things are going smooth enough. It is taking longer than anticipated, but things will be easier on the return we assure each other. We then go through a full mile of the thickest scrub oak available on the market. It’s pure brutal. We reach the summit of Book 3, and a just as painful return leads back to the old FS road.
Upon beginning the climbs back across the valleys back towards Suffer Book 1, all hell breaks lose on my leg muscles. Full on cramping spasms seize my abductors, hamstrings, calves, and feet. Even my fingers start locking up. “I need salt.” The Wolf Miguel has salt sticks. “Breathe deeper than you need to and imagine the oxygen going into the muscle,” he says. This works and things calm down though never really stop.
Wolf Miguel starts to tank on energy and calls for a small break and snack, at which point I take advantage of the prone position, lie down on patch of red vine thorns, and prop my feet on a log. “I told me wife I was going out for a milk,” Wolf Miguel says. We all laugh. “I didn’t tell her where I was going to get it.”
There is a community built out here in these shrubs and thorns. We are mostly strangers of each other aside from the few course viewing/book setting/training opportunities we have collaborated on. And aside from that, we are all animals looking for the same edge. I am reminded in these moments that love ties everything together with meaning.
This is the most special part of this experience. I didn’t fully realize it until Kate pointed it out. Here we all are, these animals, striving for something together with strangers. Something that would inevitably strip us bare and lay us out vulnerable and broken for all to witness. On some level, we knew this when we signed up. That some sort of death awaited, and the pain of that death would be witnessed by strangers that we don’t want leaving our side.
I have never experienced community like this. A wild pack of family dogs, of animals. Bound together by the notion that being alive is about testing your possibleness. And being together makes things much more possible, not to mention, often more enjoyable. It is a sad thing when the community abruptly stops being all around you. You must return to reflect, to become more aware, more present and capable for the next attempt.
At the end of Suffer, I sat down at the aid station surrounded by even more of the people that make this community the loving, challenging environment that only true limit tests can create. And some of these folks had only come down to be involved in this powerful moment of reckoning. To watch it occur in other people and to egg it on in various forms of encouragement. Thank God that I sat down with these people because sometimes your brain quits working correctly. Sometimes your brain tells you how worthless and incapable you are. And in those moments, the ones where you are ready to quit, you need these people. It’s these people that are here to help show who you are, the pieces of you that can be realized. There is no “you” to be found, only to be realized.
– The call to challenge
Noah said, “The adversity started when you signed up for this thing.”
It’s easy to think of training as merely the training and separate it from the goal task, which is where we often place the adversity’s existence. However, within the training is a world of mental, emotional, and existential adversity. I have chosen this adversity. I have brought it on myself. I want to endure. And why? That question can be answered hundreds of ways.
Throughout much of the pursuit in training for Niwot, I was searching for my why. The goal of completing Niwot was to help provide the answer. A spiral of questioning meaning, purpose, and any reason to do something – especially something THIS difficult. “You have to redefine what hard is to you.” Does this mean I can make “hard” “easy”? No, you can’t do that. You can make “hard” “enjoyable”. You can make “hard” possible. You cannot make “hard” easy or then you aren’t even working hard. You can approach your hard with a mindset of eternal optimism. All Nitwits have this.
I would dare say that most of the people, save genetic phenoms maybe, who have chosen to endure a marathon or more – for multiple times – are eternal optimists. I would also think that the percentage of those people goes up as the distance, elevation profile, and general ruggedness increases. I love living in this version of hard, and that is not to say that I don’t often fall sharply away from the general optimism that will eternally haunt me.
The brain can forget how to use positive self-talk to overcome, and it will turn on your heart. This is where the adversity really begins. Training the brain to align with the heart is the pinnacle of all training for the all of life. If I can train the brain to push my being to do my heart’s desire and love, I am limitless.
– And what now?
There is a release that enduring physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc. produces. It is overcoming that causes a letting go. Things aren’t that serious. I don’t need all these crutches of life to hold onto. The question again, “Does it provide or produce meaning in my life?” If not, it can die. With Niwot’s over, I have felt lighter only the second day after. I know that life’s feelings ebb and flow, and it is a nice reminder that we can feel how we need to and it’s acceptable. I am sad and that’s fine.
I feel relieved of some sort of existential angst I was living. I believe I was wrapped up in a concern of not being worthy. I pursued. I gave up. I pursued again. I turned around to fail. I hiked four miles to fail. You aren’t able or allowed to fail if you stay were you are; you’ve given yourself nothing to fail at. Failure is a gift, and I know that I could have failed harder. I didn’t give up when the idea came to me. I almost did, but I had a community made from love around me. There was a community around me asking me to define success and failure, not a literal question but moving me into that place. I still eventually quit, which is fine, but I know I had a bit more to give. Jamie said, “Just give a little bit more. You know you’ve got it. Just give it a bit more.”
– It doesn’t end.
The Chair is a fabled taker of the runner’s drive, desire, passion, pursuit onward, and soul. I sat my happy ass down after Suffer in that Chair. I can’t remember the color of said chair because it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t even see. I let my cramping muscles (which still showed no sign of leaving) shut down my brain and belief in my possibility. All I saw was that things hurt, and my brain was growing darker. I expressed this as “I can’t even find a ‘why’ right now.” I realize this was dramatic due to the despair with which I expressed it. Also from the look I got from Chief Wrong Way and a few others, including my wife. “It’s just fucking running, man.”
I answered my own questioning in that moment of lamentation. It’s just because. Because it’s there. Because it makes you feel alive. It’s because it’s your edge. Because it’s just plain fun.
I deliberated.
Chief Falls in Many Rivers explained that cramps are a passing thing and that I would be fine if I just got up and started moving. I was re-nourished and had been sitting for close to an hour. After a few more moments of pondering sadness, Jamie pushed me with the encouragement to give just a little bit more and reminded me that I knew that I had that. That’s a powerful realization. To know that you have a bit more to give. Then to get up and give it. I know in that moment that if it wasn’t for the eternal optimism of those in camp, of my wife, of the Gazelle and Feral Loris, of all my fellow Nitwits, I would have let that Chair steal my soul.
The Gazelle, Feral Loris, and I had done almost the entire course together in training. I was honored to have the opportunity to take on the Chiefs section and to eventually quit with these last two animals by my side. And I tried to quit for the next 4+ miles. I tried hard, but both pushed me onward through not quitting until we made the next book. It was dark by this time, and we had passed our book by about a mile and an hour. We turned back, confused by the possible error we had made.
We finally decided to head back North on a “trail” we had not considered initially, and Loris recognized the book placement. Upon collecting this page, I decided that I truly was done, and this time I was resolved to dropping. I had determined that I would rather take a night of sleep, than a night out and miss the cut off for a finish.
Gazelle and Loris continued on, and Gazelle expressed the ultimate eternally optimistic mentality of finishing regardless of when that occurred the next day. I informed both of them of their hero status in my heart. To push on just to finish the task regardless of the “official” outcome is a high form of optimism and soulfulness. And to do it all with a JanSport “turtle shell” backpack is even grittier. I wished them safety and luck and trotted the 4 miles of seemingly endless switchbacks to camp.
This race report/journal/musing/existential waxing obviously must end with a “moral of the story is…” However, it doesn’t end. Nothing ends, for we aren’t trying to get to anywhere. There is no closure, no ultimate victory, just a moment where we reside. Each moment will look a bit different, and we get the opportunity to fill each one with as much love, passion, and community as possible. I am ever grateful for all of the moments that I get to spend in this community of people equally as impassioned and loving, a community of Nitwits.
Registration for the April 2019 edition of Niwot’s Challenge opens on Monday, January 21st.
CLICK HERE for more info.