I began the holiday break by climbing a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado with Coach Maxwell and Pole Vault John. If that wasn’t challenging enough, I decided to end the break with the St. Croix 40 mile Ultra. The St. Croix race is designed as a winter survival race and requires gear for self-rescue: cold weather sleeping equipment, stove, water, and food. My goal was to nordic ski the 40 mile race. The lack of snow removed that option and I needed to travel by foot instead. Thankfully, it was only the coldest day of the winter so far with sub-zero temps and windchill between -20 and -30 degrees. For an extra level of difficulty, the race started at 6:00pm and went through the night.
In my experience, the race went moderately well for my first attempt at something this long. Remember, at heart I’m a sprinter, my furthest race distance prior to this was a 5k road race. Since only 60% of this year’s participants finished the race, I’ll take my finishing as a success. There were some struggles: early blisters that I couldn’t fix in the cold, trying to eat while moving and staying warm, and controlling negative thoughts that creep up on you when you’re in the dark and walking with no one in sight for hours.
Forty miles in the dark and virtually alone (I saw no one during the 2nd half), leaves a lot of time with your thoughts. Some thoughts centered on logistics and paying attention to fueling and pace, some thoughts about the suckiness of the situation, and actively trying to get a terrible repetitive song out of my head. But mostly my thoughts kept returning to “Why?”
Why climb a mountain? Why train all year for a 0.1 second improvement in the 100 meter dash or an extra couple of centimeters in a field event? Or worse, why train only to have something go wrong? Maybe you get injured, maybe you don’t see an improvement, or maybe you don’t accomplish your goal. Why do hard things?
The answer that I settled on: What else are we going to do?
If I truly believe that sport is a valuable pursuit, then it should continue to be important at all stages of life. By embarking on these wild challenges, I hope I’m showing athletes, students, and my own children that physical challenges should be a lifelong pursuit.
Having these internal debates throughout long hikes is common for me (maybe you, too?) and it gets brought up every season with the track team or in my coaching class. Why should you continue with sports? Why not simply play video games all day?
A person doesn’t have to learn that you can cover 40 miles during a cold Minnesota night, but it is valuable to learn that you can set a goal, and do some hard work to achieve it. And whether you meet the goal or not, you should be able to make adjustments towards future attempts, set new goals, and overcome a perceived failure. At least that’s my perspective, and I think some of you maintain that ideology, too.
Speaking of challenging yourself, our annual Alumni Meet is coming up on Saturday, January 27th. Come and compete! Or just come for the camaraderie and to watch the old guys take on
the next generation (or several generations younger). We have a new video board that will play some highlights. If you have any SJU T&F trivia or pictures that we could put up there, don’t hesitate to pass them along.
Meet details and event sign-up: https://connect.csbsju.edu/register/2024AlumTrackandFieldMeet
See you in Collegeville,
Jeremy