RUNNING ON WATER

My name is Coach Ilg. It gives me deep honor, as a 25-year long ambassador, coach, and competitor of sport snowshoeing, to share with you a body/mind/spiritual training approach into the multidimensional and transpersonal beauty of our beloved activity of Sport Snowshoeing! Oh, you better dang well trust your traverse cleat that I will hammer you with training and performance insights, unprecedented programs, unique exercises, and intriguing philosophies...all which have been proven throughout the years to accelerate your fitness on and off the snow! Along with this goal of training you, I will also bring to you inner tools that will immediately amplify your enjoyment of what I consider, should be, our Nation's Winter Sport!

You know, before I get around to kicking your arse, what I think I better do, is to introduce my softer side through a story from one of my World Snowshoe Championships. I think this will give you a great feel for the Sacred Sweat from which I will deliver to you this column.

The dimming of my day began as a wind-shipped sun struggled over the Mosquito Range. When I speak of dimming, I speak of psychological gloom, for physically the day was radiant. By 8 a.m., a large group of snowshoe racers huddled around Race Director Bill Perkins. Tethered to a cell phone, Bill was speaking to the leader of the summit aid station crew. These experienced mountaineers were supposed to be atop our turn-around pylon, the 14,433-foot summit of Mount Elbert. They lay instead like sardines in their tent at timberline. Tow-thousand feet remained between them and the cap of the mighty peak. They wouldn't go up. Nor would the racers. Too much wind.

"I'm a two-time finisher of this race." As Bill began his pre-race speech, his pensive expression was evident. "And I now must enforce a decision that 's breaking my heart. We can't race to the summit. Our primary responsibility in this race is safety. Based on the summit crew's opinion, you'd die up there racing to the summit. We'll use the alternate course, which is longer but stays below timberline. See you all on the Start Line in half an hour and good luck!"

That was that. My year-long preparation for racing to the top of Colorado's highest peak on snowshoes was wiped away in a flicker of a moment. Like a Presta valve gone bad, my race psychology deflated. Suddenly, the skittish charm of suffering for four hours through deep snow was no longer appealing.

Mere minutes remained before the start of one of the biggest races of my life, and I was psychologically flatter than a cheese omelet at high noon. This loss of psyche was unexplored spiritual territory. Hauling myself to the Start Line, I wondered if I had enough psyche to complete - let alone race - the grueling eighteen miles of high-altitude, world-class singletrack. I had come face to face with a big ol' nasty ass dragon, lickin' his chops and ready to chew me up and spit me out. It would've been so easy not to toe that Start Line.

I returned to my breath and posture. I began paying attention to the moment. As the start gun fractured the morning air, I began to run. My immediate goal? Nothing more glamorous than to attend to my running. Let futurity shift for itself. The universe had arranged another great opportunity to practice a prinipel that I preach: Remain present with what is happening winstead of wasting enregy on what you'd prefer to have happen.

The wind is gentle, almost balmy. I've already been to timberline, the substitute turnaround point. On my snowshoes, I was skiing, lunging, and leaping down a powdery flank or Mount Elbert. The track through the fir trees was sinuous, as though left by a an inebriated snow serpent. Far below, the thin brilliance of the Arkansas River headwaters cloaked in winter apparel helped sustain my pace. Ahead of me were twenty racers. behind me, fifty more. As one endless mile bled slowly into the next, my fight for the top twenty began. Endurance athletes willingly placed themselves into a world were security is fleeting. As the finish line draws near, our performance exists, as Irving Townsend said, "...within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps , we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan."

At the finish line, Mount Elbert seemed to smile without disdain upon my blistered, beaten body. The summit would have to wait for another day. And wait, I'm sure, it would. Today however, I met my dragon. And not only did I calm him, I took the sucker for a run through the deep, seductive snow."

- Reprinted from THE WINTER ATHLETE by Steve Ilg (Johnson Books, 1999)

RUNNING ON WATER: THE SNOWSHOE WARRIOR Archive

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RUNNING ON WATER: THE SNOWSHOE WARRIOR! Edition 1
	A NEW USSA COLUMN by COACH STEVE ILG, ryt/uscf/nhca Click Here for Steve's Bio