Unbreakable is free on YouTube; I watched some of it last night and will watch the entire thing this weekend. Maybe--probably--by coincidence, iRunfar published a "where are they now" on Nick Clark, and Treeline talked about an Anton comeback.
It felt like sitting several desks ago, a couple positions back, listening to podcasts and reading blogs. These are things one can still do, of course, though there are fewer blogs and probably more podcasts (the hosts of which mostly trade one another as guests, so far as I can tell).
Both Nick and Anton's blogs were some of the most trafficked--owing to the detail with which they described their training, and probably no little projection. That is, if I could only train that much, in those environs, maybe I could... well, the mind can only wander so far into fantasy. But "so far", often enough, is pretty far. Far enough to get you out the door, down the street, a mile or so from the trailhead, at which point you're liable to keep going, and maybe even enjoy yourself--or if not that, at least derive some satisfaction from the rocks passing underfoot, the trees going back, the roots feeding deeply as you imagine, maybe, increased capillary density is doing the same in your legs.
Well.
In Unbreakable, you get to see both of them running. There are shoes that no longer exist, a company that no longer makes running gear altogether (RIPPI, maybe?), and Ian Sharman, briefly, wearing too much black and a funny hat. (There still is Ian, of course. And Kilian, who I did not remember ever looking so young.)
There was also Geoff Roes, making pasta, and winning. He also had a very good blog. I couldn't remember the name, but when I started to type "Geoff Roes b-", Google autofilled "burnout" first, and then "blog".
That is, one might say, what it is. And that was, after a fashion, the angle on both of the aforementioned articles: Does Nick still run? And does Anton still train? (And, if so, what will he do with it?)
The latter--and the article frames the questions as such--is a meme, at this point. Or rather, is still a meme, and has been for years. I have run ultras, do so in flimsy shoes, and have long hair. And though I would argue the former are simply stupidity and preference intertwined, and the latter a result of really liking Ride the Lighting in 6th grade, we're all imperfect self-evaluators. So maybe I'm a part of that; maybe this is a part of that; I don't know.
Maybe putting three semi-colons in once sentence is an indicator of something, or many things, related to all of this or none of it or some fraction in between.
But. About Nick, I'd heard very little. It does seem he's good, which is good. He used to be really fast--maybe the best top-end resume at Western States to never win it--and now he's not, but that doesn't seem to matter to him, or bother anyone else.
Which, also, is good.
It is trite to point out that good things are always good, maybe especially when other things are not--though other things are always not good, if we're being honest. Still, running. It's good to want other people to have what they want, and to pursue what we want in the meanwhile. Maybe there will be races soon, or something that approximates soon. I'd like to do a specific 50k, but who knows, and maybe big fall thing, but it all feels silly to plan, and even sillier to point it out.
