+001_The Memento Mori Half Marathon, the Backyard Ultra, and Patsy's.

13.1 miles to death and rebirth and partial transfiguration. The next morning we witnesses men and women die to themselves 10 fold. Patsy's. A happy death.

1. Standing in a dark parking lot. 6:00am

There are 4 men, standing around in the dark parking lot of the SOMC Life Center, not yet come to life. It gym doesn’t open until 7 on Saturday.

We aren’t here for the gym.

These 4 men have left warm home and bed and cars and now stand in the 30 degree darkness to prepare for the 13 miles ahead of them. None of them have run this distance before.

It was B’s idea. To run a half marathon just because. He’s already lost like 100 pounds. B has changed everything about himself and become a man of action, a physically rigorous man, a devoted one.

And he asked us only about a week ago if we wanted to see if we could go 13.1 miles. If we wanted to just see if we could do it.

How could we say no? He’d run it anyway, alone, basically in my backyard, and C’s backyard for that matter, while we slept. We couldn’t let him do that.

So here we are.

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2.Opening Ceremonies and Course Overview.

The Mememto Mori Man himself gives a little blurb about it. He said the stoics used it, and the Christian’s used it, and it’s a latin phrase that means, “Remember death”

And that today we’re going to remember death by going from life to death.

From the SOMC Life Center parking lot, around the 13 mile loop nicely marked out, that has a couple bridges in it, that goes through all of town, that travels up 52 east some, and loops back around Grandview to Coles to Sunrise.

And when we finish over the famed Sunrise hill, the monolith of a hill, we will rename it on that 13th mile, SUNSET. And we will reach our final resting place on the other side in Green Lawn Cemetery.

The Life Center is right next to a graveyard…

The perfect cycle for us. The perfect evolution. The perfect way to die.

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3. A pure experience.

We’re running around around Coles for the first times, and E is with us, he’s come this morning just to get in 3 miles, a 5K, that he’s never even run before. He’s been pulled in. He heard what we were doing and he got excited and wanted to indulge what he could.

It was the fastest 5k I’ve ever felt. Our point of reference was totally different now, we had to go 13, we couldn’t necessarily be thinking about the 3. We were looking ahead, not in a daunted way, but after that 3, things were firing in the legs fine, and we were running south on 23, dropped E off in a parking lot where his car was staged up on the right side of us, as planned.

Those early miles felt like nothing. 3 miles? Why not 30?

We drop E off and he wishes us luck.

Everyone is feeling optimistic.

Over the bridge by the movie theatre and bdubs. We find a sprite zero that hasn’t been opened yet. Perhaps it’s a sign?

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4. The Hero Myth.

We’re running through the Tim Hortons parking lot, trying to get south again on 23, and it kind of comes up that what we’re doing isn’t really running. Of course it’s the physical act, but what we’re really doing is going forthrightly into the unknown and trying to find the dragon to slay, and should we succeed, we’re gonna bring that gold back to the community.

It’s not a party unless I mention Peterson in the first 30 minutes that I’m anywhere at all.

C seems to respond to that, he likes the idea of it. We’re running south on 23 now and thinking and talking and riffing on Goggins as I hear some homeless guys mumbling in the park.

Brothers, today we venture into the unknown.