Wild Miles

My next running adventure is going to be the Wild Miles relay race at the end of April. I've been recruiting a team since the beginning of the year, but it's been hard since most people's brains shut off immediately once they hear"170 miles". No matter how quickly and clearly i explain that the race has 30 legs and that each runner only has to run 3 legs, the damage is already done.

In fact i think that the hard part of the race won't be the mileage. I've done more mileage than the total of my 3 or 4 legs on numerous weekends. The big difference on those occasions was that i got to sleep in between my runs. The difficulty with this race is that i have to run, keep up with the progress of the race, and stay semi-alert except for random catnaps. On the plus side, i get to run at night, which i love to do.

So far i've got 8 runners including myself, all of whom are fairly strong, most with marathon experience. Two were complete strangers to me until this last weekend when we did a group run at Mission Bay. So far, only 1 is female, but i'm hoping that at least 1 of my last 2 recruits will be another lady.

I'm not quite sure what motivated me to do this. Running has always been a solitary activity for me, and i'm not inclined to organize or lead. I don't even particularly like to lead the group i allegedly lead at my job. My only hypothesis at the moment is that i feel a need to bond with other people to whom i don't have to explain my strange compulsion to run. There's something vaguely military in the recruiting and planning, which sometimes appeals to me and sometimes repels me. I like the idea of pulling off a complicated plan, but i'm also resistant to the concept that any human endeavor can be made predictable.