there was a big huge earthquake in Chile but it meant nothing to me and it still doesn't.

i got lost while I was running.

I purposefully picked some trails i'd never been on, in a part of the park I'd never explored, just to get a little variety (this is a recurring theme you'll notice). But it was really muddy and wet and I was having a hard time focusing on my feet and the signs and so about 5 miles in I took a wrong turn. It didn't feel like a really big deal at the time - I'd run around a little bit, find a familiar trail and then be on my happy way, except it didn't happen like that.

None of this is really the point.

By the time I'd gotten back on track and headed towards Skyline Gate I was muddy up to my knees, pretty frustrated and about 4 miles more tired than i'd meant to be. Running is not usually a stressful thing for me, in fact its very much the opposite.

At the base of the last hill, i started to feel sick - a certain sickness that most distance runners are probably familiar with - i hadn't eaten in a long time, no more than a mouthful of water, and the edges of the trees started to turn white. This is what I want to talk about; the point.

There is a line which your body does not want to cross. It starts sending you all these signals: a little dizziness of the head, a sinking sickness in the stomach, legs as heavy as lead - your whole body is very aware of itself and swelling, but at the same time far away. Children are sexually abused by their parents, people in Africa don't have clean water to drink, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on a city full of bus drivers and school teachers and record store cashiers. None of this matters. It would never even occur to you. In the fuzzy white light of your weakening body these things are so far out of context as to not be real.

So tired. Insurmountable fatigue. There is a way to push past it, but it means to surrender everything about you and your reality and just push. Fucking push yourself forwards.

I watched Ilya Pinsky run the last 13 miles of a 50 mile race last fall. I was there to hold his water bottle, to keep him on pace, to grind encouragements in his ear when he started to slow but then it was also like I wasn't even there. I watched him dig. You hear that term in sports alot but I'd never seen it so tangible as that - every muscle in his legs was cramping, his shoulders seized up, his face poured sweat that was thin and depleted and he kept running. He didn't stop running.

There is such thing as manufacturing intensity. You can grind and gruel and crush through anything - it happens in your head.

now I don't know whats the point, the digging the whiteness the earthquakes, but you've got a little bit of my disjointed thought, so think about it.