The big 5-0

As my 50th birthday approached (earlier this month), I contemplated my recent upswing in fitness (from “deeply dreadful” up to “moderately dreadful”) and wondered what I might do as a celebratory birthday run.

My first idea was what the ultrarunning community would consider to be the obvious option. How about a 50-miler, i.e., one mile for each year? It seemed feasible in theory; I could cover 50 miles in a day if I gave myself long breaks of walking or complete rest. Still, I doubted that I’d enjoy the last 20 miles. Perhaps a voluntary self-prescribed birthday ritual should have less joyless slogging than that?

If 50 miles was too much, how about 50 kilometers, i.e., one kilometer per year? This seemed like a much more palatable distance, probably doable as one continuous run. Still, it would require a huge chunk of a weekend day — probably at least 4 hours to do the run, then another hour to shower and eat, then a couple more hours to nap away some of the exhaustion…

My third idea was even less stupid. What if I celebrated with a pure run commute all the way from my North Seattle home to my Everett workplace, some 20-plus miles north of home? (I had done this commute 10 or 20 times on a bike, but never on foot.) My birthday would fall on a Wednesday, when I didn’t have to teach until 12:20pm, so if I started early enough I could finish at 9am or so (with a carefully contrived attitude of casualness: “Yeah, I just run-commuted from Seattle — NBD…”), enjoy a leisurely Starbucks breakfast next to campus, and let the day unfold from there. And carbo-loading could be accomplished at a birthday dinner of homemade pasta the night before.

As the pieces fell into place, I asked my one semi-regular running companion, Uli, if he’d be willing to join me. Like me, Uli is well past his prime as a competitive athlete; he turned 50 last year. (My present to him was a WHITE RIVER 50 shirt modified to say “the WHITE RIVER guy is 50,” as seen in the pictures below. The back of the shirt lists a bunch of fake sponsors such as Cologuard, Geritol, Viagra, and Old Balance.) Nevertheless he is still fit enough to easily handle any birthday challenge I could dream up. He said yes.

The final logistical issue was the planning of a specific route. Uli determined that if we used Highway 99 extensively, we could cut the total run distance down to 21 miles, but he preferred a somewhat more picturesque route of about 22.5 miles. Since he was giving up several hours of his day to accompany me, I was happy to let him make this decision.

After all of the planning, the run itself was fairly straightforward. Our legs held up fine, maintaining a comfortable pace of about 8 minutes per mile aside from hills and stops; Uli’s navigational skills kept us on track; we chatted about our usual topics (glory days, marriage, kids/dogs, ADA-compliant curb ramps…); and my wife and youngest son gave us a bagels-and-water aid station about two thirds of the way through.

We arrived more or less on schedule at Shuksan Hall, where we posed with some evolutionary forerunners.

Then I changed and headed over to Starbucks, while Uli ran to the bus station to catch the 512 back to Seattle.

It was a nice run with just the right amount of joyless slogging, which is to say none at all.