Sometimes Running From Something Becomes Running To Something

You made his article about BASH retired track coach Joe McGlinchey our most read article of 2022 and you loved his fascinating article about ultrarunners. Now find out why Mike Strzelecki runs.

by Mike Strzelecki  

I still remember the day when I first decided to run 50 miles.

It was the day I learned my father was dying.

“It’s a tumor,” revealed my mother by telephone, her quivering voice hinting to its seriousness. Any further details she offered became lost into the vortex of emotions and tears into which I descended. My father, Paul Strzelecki, spent his entire career teaching physical education, health, and driver’s education at Boyertown Area Senior High School.

Right then, I inexplicably decided to honor my father by running a 50-mile trail race - an unusual concept being that I was not a runner. As a child, however, I obsessed over the miraculous feats of great explorers like Thor Heyerdahl and Colin Fletcher. And ABC’s coverage of the Western States 100-Mile trail run showed me that the newest wave of explorers was found on rugged mountain trails participating in extreme endurance events. The next phase of my life was set.

So there I was, nine months and 1,500 training miles later, pacing a fog-veiled parking lot on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Lynchburg, Virginia, battling nerves and 5-in-the-morning autumn chill, awaiting the start of the Mountain Masochist Trail Run. The race course traces a 50-mile scribble northward over high mountains and across narrow valleys, ending at a modest cluster of isolated buildings that calls itself Montebello.

It was some of the most remote wilderness on the east coast. Darkness cloaked the scene as runners made last-second preparations and received supportive hugs and encouragement from crew members. My father’s cheers would not be heard that day; he had passed away two months prior.

The race began and the cheetahs sprinted off into the darkness. I hung back, plodding with the mountain goats. The metronomic thumping of running shoes served as reminder that 100,000 foot strides lay ahead. “Go out easy,” admonished veteran ultrarunners. “Walk the uphills and run the downhills.” I nudged my way into a slipstream of other runners moving at an unhurried pace, and emulated their relaxed cadence. Running an ultramarathon requires reined-in patience, especially early in the race.  

My father taught me patience. 

When I was four, he took me on my first fishing trip to a pond in French Creek State Park crammed full of bluegills, where he knew I would fill my creel and get hooked on the sport. I left with a stringer full of panfish and a smile wider than the pond, anxious to return another day. The following week, a second fishing expedition ensued. This time, he purposely took me to a particularly unproductive, slow-moving stretch of water along Manatawny Creek where he knew I would have very little luck. As we sat watching the lifeless bobber, my father made a point of diverting my attention to birds flitting around the riparian area and mayflies drifting skyward. We skipped rocks across the water and identified trees. Eventually, a hefty smallmouth bass - a whale in my eyes - found its way to my worm, punctuating a wonderful afternoon. That day, my father taught me that patience not only pays rewards, but also opens up new channels of discovery.

Back on the trail, darkness soon broke, and scenic Appalachia opened up like a morning flower. From high vantages, mountains of deep gold and russet rolled to the horizon, like swells on the ocean. The Mountain Masochist course links one mountaintop to the next. Runners climb a lung-searing 8,040 vertical feet over the 50 miles, like sprinting up the Empire State Building five times.

The first significant climb came at mile six - up three miles of wide, deeply rutted trail strewn with fist-sized cobble. The exertion erased the morning chill, and the stones battered my feet. Other punishing climbs followed, assuaged by gentle downhills and lovely crossings of Otter and Cashew Creeks. The crucible climb began at mile 22, near the Lynchburg Reservoir. It was 14 miles of continuous uphill, weaving and winding to the top of Buck Mountain. The 3-hour ascent left my legs aquiver and my spirits squashed. The climb demanded exceptional strength and fortitude.  

My father instilled in me the importance of building a strong body and mind.

During my teen years, we passed summers working side by side along the sheer cliffs of a traprock quarry, in Sanatoga. Using 15-pound sledgehammers, we reduced giant slabs of hard blue rock into building stone. “Crack it along the grain,” he’d tell me, encouraging hard swings of the tool. We hand-loaded the broken chunks into the bucket of a front-end loader for weighing. On a good day, we would chop and hoist 10 tons of payload. The work was brutal and demanding and we often lost fingernails. It left us sweat-drenched and with achy backs. My father made sure I understood that hard work developed strength in body and character.

By mile 30, however, the distance was taking a toll on my body and character. Simple but vital functions became difficult. I forced myself to eat even when my stomach wrenched, and drink Gatorade even when it tasted like bile. I painfully changed socks when too sore to bend over. Forward locomotion was the immediate goal.

At mile 34, runners entered a challenging 5-mile loop of single track where the course became more muddy, primitive, and overgrown. I spent precious energy scrambling over rocks and fallen logs. I wore mud-splats from falls like Purple Hearts. But through it all, I felt an inextricable connection to the environment through which I was passing. A trail run combines and reduces runner and nature to its most intimate and immediate form. It requires from the runner an abiding respect and admiration for the enveloping natural world. 

My father instilled in me a profound love of nature and an unbridled urge to be outdoors.

 We spent 12 summers together fly fishing the gin-clear waters of Yellowstone National Park. On one particular sunny afternoon, we worked hand-tied flies through riffle water deep into a canyon carved by the Gardiner River. In the water, hefty cutthroat trout were gorging on thick orange salmonflies - a fly fisherman’s nirvana. High above us, however, a herd of sure-footed bighorn sheep clambered over a talus ledge, kicking scree down the cliffside. My father pulled me away from the feeding trout and led me high onto a nearby ledge where we could spy the maneuvering sheep performing their acrobatics. We passed the remainder of the day observing one of nature’s great theatrical performances. As a youth, I naively thought our quarry was the trout, but that day I realized it was not. It was nature.

Late in the race, my emotions vacillated like the terrain I crossed. I laughed with other runners, became agitated during spells of soreness and nausea, and sang high praise to the mountains in the midst of adrenaline surges. During the worst stretches, my thighs could conjure up no lift. I was reduced to a shuffle, stumbling over one rock after another. I prayed for steep hills, for they would call into action muscles that were fresh, ones that didn’t hurt as badly.

Yet the physical pain paled in comparison to the emotions surfacing. At mile 45, when I realized that I would complete the race, I broke down and cried.

The finish was simple and understated, some slaps on the back from friends and a handshake from the race director. A few runners milled about in various stages of angst and elation. There was no fanfare. It proved the perfect complement to such a profound and personal experience. I laid down in a field of cool grass to rest my withered legs and watched wispy clouds race by. I recalled my mother’s phone call nine months prior, the one that sideswiped my life and brought me to this lonely field for one last outdoor adventure with my dad.

And then I realized. I did not finish the run to honor my father; I finished it because of my father.

This essay was previously published in Running Through the Wall: Personal Encounters with the Ultramarathon (Breakaway Books, 2003)

Mike Strzelecki is a 1981 graduate of Boyertown Area Senior High School and a freelance travel and outdoors writer. He writes from his home in Baltimore, Maryland. He is author of Baltimore With Children and Urban Hikes in and Around Baltimore. His work has also appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore's Child, Running Times, Trail Runner, Ultrarunning, and Pennsylvania. He recently retired after a career as an analyst in energy regulation, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC.

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