As she ran by me at mile 18 of the McDonald Forest 50K she seemed pretty happy. I noticed a Chinese ideogram tattoo on her shoulder. I asked her what it meant. She smiled and said ‘father”, very quietly.

She turned and headed down the trail.

At the finish line I asked one of the volunteers why some people were finishing backwards. They told me the story of a man who had run a 5k backwards, who had died after crossing the finish line at Mac 10 years ago, who was being honored by those who remembered by their own finishing backwards. I finally put it together when I saw this at the finish.

Photo Credits

Photos are © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

Thinkin’ about Dennis Aslett, a former Marine I met in Idaho a year and a half ago and saw again last October. Before he ran the 100 miles in front of him, we talked long about how he rode a 50cal north of Danang and I rode the steel rail west to Vancouver, about how choices last a lifetime, about how we got it wrong, each in our own way, about how we got it right, about how the truth was that if you make peace not war then love will follow so long as you stay in, stay steady, stay alive.

Shooting a 50k in the woods come Saturday I’ll be keepin’ it real for myself and for those who are “out there”. I’ll be done when they are. All I can do is the best I’ve got and most days it seems to work out. People ask me why I stay all the way to the end, shoot images of every runner and I tell ‘em something like “it’s my job” or some other non-answer. I stay because until every one of them comes in “we” have people “out there” and we leave no one behind. It is not military or fake heroics; it is built into the fabric of ultra running. I’m privileged to be a part of it.

Photo Credits

Photos are © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

Said a friend when they saw this picture: “Well, Michael, she is indeed one of the prettiest women I know and she is an absolutely wonderful person and yes, she is a heck of a runner…”

I don’t know her. I took the picture because she was smiling at me from behind the espresso coffee machine and I had a camera in my hand. We were both working, so to speak. Who knew she could run like the wind?

Photo Credit

Photo © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

I pitched an idea to both Marathon and Beyond and iRunFar about following several runners as they ran four one hundred mile races over the period of sixteen weeks. When I am not writing Tarmac Meditations for Life as a Human I am a race photographer who loves to shoot ultras and a writer who likes to write about shooting images, photography and running; that is when I am not wandering around in a dream state about the Great American Novel. To my delight both entities thought I had a good idea-following these two non elite, middle of pack folks and telling their story.

So there it was. Commissioned article and photo stories and the year wasn’t two weeks old. That was too easy, way too easy. Ask any freelancer and they will agree. The catch? No travel expenses, no sponsorships for the pieces, nothing that might compromise the journalistic integrity of the work. Oh my. Sad face. But wait!

Kickstarter, the Internet crowd funding entity was a place to go with projects like this. Happy face. But no! You can’t really use articles and photographs for legitimate magazines as sales pieces, reward in Kickstarter lingo, without compromising the whole thing. For every one involved.

It didn’t take but a minute to realize that the stories for the magazines were the necessary motivation to look at the bigger picture. Just as many books are generated from magazine articles as way of expanding the scope of the story, a book could be built on the story of these several strangers attempting the 2013 Ultra Grand Slam an event begun in 1986 to encompass ALL of the one hundred miles races in existence at the time: Western States, The Vermont 100, The Leadville Trail 100 and The Wasatch Front 100. Without knowing each other they were already becoming a band of brothers/sisters in pursuit of something magical. A Facebook page emerged and the participants showed up one by one.

My little idea had suddenly become big enough to encompass writing a book. Back to Kickstarter. Photographs and books are great rewards for people who support the efforts of writers and photographers. It all made sense now. Raise the money to travel, research, photograph and produce a coffee table book and Bob’s your uncle. I don’t know who Bob is by the way but I take it to mean that all the pieces were in place.

Remember the image at the head of this piece? These are runners in the Javelina Jundred 2012. I caught them in the very early morning. A line of individuals, not talking to one another for the most part, concentrated fully on the task at hand. The back lighting darkens their faces and in so doing raises them above their individual personalities, creating archetypes, meta runners, representations of everyone who ever laced up and set out for something “over yonder”, someplace down the road, one peak too far. I kept looking at this image and recognized that it is a journey for the runners captured in the lens, and equally for the photographer behind the lens. Our lives have brought us to here and where we go from here will be, in part, the result of what happens this day and night.

My job is to bear witness, to tell the story, to paint their images on the walls of metaphorical caves(this generation’s social media)in much the same way as the cave painters of early humanity told the stories of the hunt and their glorious adventures scratched on the walls of real caves.

Come have a look at the Kickstarter proposal. There is an ad in the right hand column of this magazine. Check it out. Let your own dream factories go to work. Keep your eye the Grand Slam this year. There are some wonderful stories out there just waiting for the 24 runners and for me. I can’t wait. It’s gonna be a time for all of us to celebrate the most precious gift we have been given, our lives in this particular time. Let’s go get it.

Photo Credit

Photo is © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

I woke up groggy from yesterday’s migraine. I was going to meet the group at 5:30 for a run. Didn’t happen. Opened up my computer and began to wander and wonder and watch as the time went away. Came across an article in the Times that mentioned Kipling; checked out the whole poem and thought, okay I can use this to start writing. Copy and paste leads to my eye catching another quote, this one from LBJ ( Lyndon Baines Johnson to you Canadians-once my beloved President). His quote (below) made me wonder what the hell was going on, then and now. First thoughts are often a writers best friend in the early morning and often his worst enemy when the clear light of day shows up. Another copy and paste and there I was, nearly all dressed, sort of written out, still groggy, knowing that run needed to happen. Got the shoes, pulled on my not quite big-enough big boy pants and thought to go out the door. F..k it I said…and the rest is a little Tarmac after I returned, wet, tired, no longer groggy and totally present in my day’s work.

“…And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, / But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star…” ~ Rudyard Kipling “When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted”

The State of the Union is “free and restless, growing and full of hope.” ~ Lyndon B. Johnson 1965

LBJ????? I must have missed that part when I was goin’ down the road, feelin’ like cannon fodder.

F..k it! I’m all in…I said that this morning to no one in particular as I looked out at the rain and laced up my speedy go fasters.

Photo Credit

Photo is © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved