click on photos to enlarge your chi hit...my race report from The 43rd Annual La Luz Trail Race...may this benefit your own Practice:
a big Sacred mountain...
and...
a humble WF yogi...
just getting to the Start Line...
just toeing the Start Line among hundreds of sport-specific runners, many of whom are wearing "Hardrock 100 Mile" t-shirts and speaking in cavalier terms of coming off 90-mile-per-week running volumes can be, i admit, downright scary for us WF athlete warriors who refuse to specialize for the sake of wholeness.
350 runners gathered. we've got 2 miles of 12% uphill pavement until we hit the La Luz singletrack; a sinewy snake of an ancient footpath that takes as direct a possible line up the gut of Sandia Peak to the Finish Line on the summit rim; elevation 10, 678'.
The Start Gun fires.
"There is no self-mastery without discipline," the Simone Weil quote comes to mind as i start my chronograph watch in sync with the "BOOM" of the Gun. i take third row, knowing from my feeble running volumes this summer that i only have a quality 1 hour and 45 minutes of steep uphill running in me.
after an hour and a half?
unknown territory. it'll be a tight squeeze for my run fitness. the winner in my Age Group is gonna crack 1:45. there are 35 in my Age Group. the average age of racers in this classic race is 42 years old. Simon Guiterrez who has won this thing 9 times in the past 12 years is precisely 42. he'll win again this year in another remarkable time of 1:22. dat's right; 1:22. he'll soar up and over the 9 mile, 4,680', 6 -climate zone, single track course covering each horrendously steep mile in 9 minutes and 11 seconds. Ananda figured i could capably run 15-minute miles. i figured she was about right.
ilg just wonders if Guiterrez bleeds red. would love to put him in a Downdog, see what his flexibility is like. wonder what he can Bench? how many pull ups can he crank? then again, that's just ilg...a die-hard Wholeness Professional. i respect sport-specific athletes. i do not, however, worship them. here is what ilg worships: Wholeness, versatility, balance, symmetry.
my Sacred Duty today, being a La Luz virgin is to gun it for what i know i can do; an hour and 45 minutes of uphill suffering, then, hang on. i figure my gas will run out close to the summit where, since everyone is hurting anyway, i can rely on my mountaineering experience and just speed walk the rest and limit damage.
"There is no greater source of discipline than the effort demanded in overcoming obstacles," wrote Weil. As i hit the singletrack in the top 75 of the 350 peleton, i thought; okay; i've got myself my obstacle; 7 more miles of single track up a Sacred Peak. let's party!
my new running shoes:
Nitrus Trail Running Shoe
are gripping the Lower Sonoran singetrack like crazy good. this trail is something like Vishnu Himself created while being intoxicated on whatever it is that the Deities get off on...this thing switchbacks so many times in her first three miles that i was getting nauseous. and high...airplane high. the canvas of the Rio Grande Valley was dropping like a granite boulder away from my flying feet. passing slower runners was an exercise of dynamic and dangerous yoga...
"On your left!" i would huff at my next victim in front of me and then accelerate, shrug my right shoulder and torso past him like an alpine skier brushing past a slalom gate. if misstep? the plunge straight off the narrow path and down the cholla cacti covered slope would be brutal.
back to Discipline.
the word itself means to be a Disciple.
so, i make myself a Disciple of La Luz..."the Light".
to be Disciplined...to be a Disciple requires no wisdom. no talent, nor intelligence. Discipline requires not strength, beauty, or bravery.
to be a Disciple requires but one shining quality...
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the La Luz Race will run it's 44th annual race next august. be there. only 350 runners are allowed to compete in this race which Trail Runner Magazine ranked as one of the top 12 Most Brutal Races In America. website:
La Luz Trail Run
