Road to Sparta #1

11:30 PM here in Jackson, TN, and some news to share. It's sad about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett today, but seeing their

achievements on television helped inspire me especially to take as good of care of my health as possible. Because the two should definitely have lived a great deal longer and been

allowed to contribute so much more to the world.

My stepdad seemed especially hard hit by the death of these two people, since he remembers seeing Michael Jackson on TV for the first time 40 years go. But unlike him, I felt

that you cannot feel too sorry for a person that has lived so fully. The worse thing is the legions of people that die without ever having lived, or been happy.

So I don't want that to happen to me. In my life I've visited 20% of the countries in the world, joined the Peace Corps twice and I sponsor four children through Children International. I've even met one of them, in Barranquilla, Colombia.

I even was a teenage Ironman triathlete, and in 2002 I convinced my family that it was worth the extra money to buy a Honda Hybrid, long before people knew what that was.

But this good streak ended as soon as it began, and in 2005 I tried to do a Double Ironman. Didn't get it, after swimming 4.8 miles and then biking 135. I tried again a year later and did worse. I even went to Bolivia and that

didn't work out. The low point came last year when after running for 30 seconds down the hill at the start of a workout, my back felt a sharp pain, and I spent six months doing nothing more than walking.

Now it's July and I'm looking out towards a brand-new life that is awaiting me this fall in Morocco. Unlike going to the Spanish-speaking world, this will be very new in nearly every way. The one time I was in Morocco I competed in and finished the Marathon des Sables, back in 2005 when everything still seemed effortless and possible.

The experience of going there for a week and charging through the desert for 155 miles, self-sustained except for water, remains the highest mark in my personal achievement.

So this summer is special in that I feel like I have the momentum to do the American self reinvention that I repeatedly attempt. The new goal to help direct my efforts? To complete the Spartathlon, that is twenty miles longer than the Badwater 135 and has half the time limit, even if it doens't have the hills of the other.

Can I do it? That is not the right question. I'm still entangled in the unfulfilled ambition of the past. I'm fat, and my back has bad moments still. But the less important thing is whether it is possible, and the more important one is whether I will try. People do it all the time, they have had 1000 finishers in 25 years. The odds are better than swimming the English Channel.

The only thing stopping me is my ambivilance to extreme things. That doesn't mean I do them, though my philosophy is not geared that way to chase the limits of human potential. I desire to do so, but it takes the personality type more of my father to actually force oneself into the strict discipline and find the unforgiving propulsion forward that is needed. I desire it? I did Ironman twice and the MdS.

But was my training ever of the steady and demanding caliber that is required? No. I relied more on youth and race day adrenaline than anything. And I felt shamed during the MdS that I wasn't able to dig as deeply as the others. My feet had no blisters because I ran so little, compared to the zombie corpse feet I witnessed by the more dedicated runners.

Even though I conceived of doing the Spartathlon the same week that I joined Peace Corps Morocco I suppose today is the official start. The idea is that I want the preparation for the Spartathlon to give me the conceptual framework for my whole service. To demonstrate the rewards, risks and hope of attempting such a thing that I hope to share as a youth development worker.

But these are the reasons why today is the official start, rather than in January:

1) It took six months for me to realize that it is exericse that will help cure my back, not the abstention from it that I believed would help me. Though my back pain was caused by running, I've never felt as good as in the last 3 weeks where I've began running again. Now I can comfortably do one mile at a time and the day after I feel like everything is normal.

2) Seeing Fawcett and Jackson die today helps to show the personal side of why I need a healthier change in my lifestyle. While I have the knowledge of what must be done, I have more often than not given in and become an overeater since I came home.

3) The ongoing health care debate is coming to a head, and I see more clearly how I want to do everything possible to stay out of a hospital.

4) This year we ordered the E2 Engine Two Firefigher's diet book. It's wholly plant-based, it's a lifestyle rather than a diet, and it frequently alludes to the China Study, which my parents also ordered at the same time as the other book.

But it was only today that I opened the China Study to read it, and though I'm already a vegetarian, seeing the fact-based research helped enlighten me and give me the inspiration to try the E2 diet one day. And so I again skimmed through the E2 book, and I thought: Hey, this is a 28-day program (sort of like drug rehab).

And it's 30 days until Serena comes..... so! An idea grew that I'd become as serious as I've ever been about my health for the next 30 days and follow the book very strictly. The time frame works, and so instead of fixing a bowl of ravioli with olive oil for my 10 PM snack, I

instead made half of a peanut-butter sandwich on whole grain bread. Being nearly vegan already, the challenges will be smaller, but no less important: stop the refined sugar as much as possible.

5) If anything, I expect that July will be the best sex of my life, the best love-making, and so I want to be serious for the next month just so that I have the stamina and strength to enable my Piccolina consumption to the fullest extent.

6) I dreamed of one day going with Serena to the Spartathlon, and having her entire Italian family there to crew me as we made the 155 mile journey together. They are so close, it's only a few hours on a boat between Lecce and Greece. That would be an amazing experience to share.

7) I hope to make VACA- Vegetarians Against Climate Atrophy- a serious campaign, and the three or four year fight to the Spartathlon will be my vehicle for that.

8) I've done ultra races, but always haphazardly. It is my desire, for the first time in my life to have a strong, concentrated effort doing everything right and leading to a big climax. It's so different and better that way.

9) The experiences of the past have led me and taught me how to do this. But it'd be bad to have gone through those hard experiences in preparation for something even more, then never capitalize on that past effort.

So today is the first day on the march to Sparta, as well as the first half-day on the E2 Engine Two plant-based diet. I had a vigorous session today exercising, though the best part was the people I did it with. Walking to USJ, I was floored when I saw an extremely gorgeous black girl. I came into the USJ track area

and I motioned to her exercise equipment saying how : "Looks like you are about to get very serious with that." She said; "Yes, I am a sprinter." And sure enough, she wrapped her waist and shoulders in a nylon cord, and with her muscles flaring and her arms driving across the width of the football field, she ran as fast as possible, pulling a runner's sled containing a thirty-five pound

barbell weight saddled on it. I wanted to say how Jamaica is the place to be for a serious-minded sprinter to train, but I chose not to. It inspired me strongly, and I tried to glimpse her as she trained each time I ran by. She had two people coaching her, who were equally well-built and strong, and two hours before the sunset,

the day was beautiful and I was happy to be there running, pushing my body, my faith placed in the idea that the exercise would heal my back. Soon I came home and then I accompanied Mama on a twenty-minute walk before

I went upstairs to watch Larry King for ten minutes (about MJ, and showing his body loaded onto an ambulance on the rooftop from a helipad). Then I did two sets of dumbell curls and the twenty-minute Joel Olsteen workout video.

It was a great day, the most exercise I've done all year **except for the 24 mile bike ride Sara and I did two days ago around Trinity school**. But after doing all of these things, I went to check my weight on the scale and I discovered for the first time in my life that I weigh

more than 200 pounds. So I have a long way to go. And it won't be easy. But to be outside, alive, running around the field, musing on the beautiful girl training there, but even more upon Serena and her impending visit, I felt like I was seizing the day.

Today was especially good because I felt stimulated, from my conversation with Serena--where she repeatedly told me Bravo for my Italian, which surprised her (thanks Kindle and the Kindle edition of the Corriere della Sera)-- and I watched two courses online from Yale which were good, one about France history and the other, surprise, ancient Greek history.

Life seems to have a spontaneity and possibility that I stopped feeling for some time. The only bad thing for me is that I have to choose between accompanying Beth and Logan to Chattanooga for a weekend camping, or going to see Lily Afshar's concert on Sunday.

So it looks like tomorrow I will be going to the store to buy groceries!

This is a poem printed on the Spartathlon website:

An Ode To Pheidippides

In 1879 the English poet Robert Browning wrote the stirring poemPheidepeides. It is said that the poem so inspired Baron Pierre de Coubertin and other founders of the modern Olympic Games that they were prompted to create a foot race of 42 km which would be named theMarathon.

Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return!

See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that speaks!

Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you,

"Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid!

Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed,

Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which a fire runs through,

Was the space between city and city: two days, two nights did I burn

Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks.

This is a good video in Italian:

And the best one online of the race:

SO ONE DAY, I hope that I'll be here, ready to compete and get across the finish line in Athens before the 36 hour time limit expires, Serena waiting there for me. It's a whopper of a race As big a change as it will be in those long miles, I will have changed more between now and then if you find me there.