Guadajuko

Though everything about my training is inspired by and devoted to 'the big city,' motivation to run only comes from the supernatural lives of those like Caballo Blanco. Everyone probably has a tribute to him on their training blogs and they should. Born to Run, the 5/20 NYT piece and the April 12 Outside magazine tribute all beautifully document his life and death.

But the stories leave me thinking that running actually allowed him to defy the boundaries of both.

This image of him and his dog/best buddy, Guadajuko, makes me very happy. They’re separate but together. They each have some feet on the ground and some in the air. There’s no obstacle ahead and who knows where they came from? I’m such a complete amateur, but I still know that running everyday can start to mess with your concept of the passage of time. My ritual is to touch a particular street sign pole to signify the end of a run. Do that enough times, after enough sunny lakeside runs, and you are deep in Groundhog Day. But it teaches me that maybe the run was the only moment of the day that was kind of... infinite. I think about Caballo Blanco’s death/transition as just that. It’s too beautiful a story to signify an end. And maybe that’s one way to look at a marathon for an overwhelmed person like me— when it starts I start and when it ends...things aren’t really that materially different.

The reader comments following the NYT article indicate that hundreds of people left the house or office immediately to run, upon reading about the passage of Caballo. And I don’t think it was because we feared or courted death. Instead, inspired by his legacy, we sought out the invisible spaces in between. I hope I learn 1) how to run and 2) how to live this year and I presume the two lessons will be the same.