[Book Reviews] [Sociology] More on "out there"

[thewronghands]

I recently finished Frozen Ed Furtaw's "Tales From Out There: The Barkley Marathons, The World's Toughest Trail Race", and near the end there was a description of a sleep-deprived ultrarunner who had an experience that I howled my way through... I suspect that many folks who have similarly pushed their limits and experienced that state of "

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[etcet]

It usually takes about fifteen shots of booze to get there for me. but, you know, i am doing two INCREDIBLY ARDUOUS AND STUPID THINGS in the next few weeks as charity fundraisers (sufferfest's 'knights of sufferlandria' on 3.19 and an 82km trail run on 5.1)

[thewronghands]

82 km? Holy shit! That's a lot of ultra! How are you training for it? Good luck, of course. Have you read "Relentless Forward Progress"? I just finished... I thought about talking about that here, but how-to fitness books get their own post, heh.

[etcet]

i'm... er, not

[artan_eter]

I don't think I was that bad, but I also wasn't trained for anything at the time and was probably in the worst physical condition of my life but decided to do a long walk for personal-perspective purposes. Poor planning led to significant blistering within 10-15% of the trip. It was also one of those things where once it was started stopping would have been more detrimental to long term wellbeing.

Poor planning and poor training are never a good combination, but that kind of described my life overall at the time.

The last bit of it I think was a mile in an hour on feet that had more blistered and missing skin than not with occasional points of near-collapse (and possibly actual collapse).

I have an old writeup of the experience on my journal.

I've done the sleep deprivation to near hallucination at other points, but thankfully that wasn't mixed with significant physical exertion.

[rhiannonstone]

It's happened to me a few times, and the most hilarious-to-me and easy-to-tell was this one: I biked up a very challenging hill outside of Berkeley on a hot summer day, and did not drink enough water (and honestly probably shouldn't have done the ride at all because it was way outside my skill and fitness level at the time but fuck yeah I did it and I'm still proud). The ride back into Berkeley (it was a loop and not an out-and-back) was literally a 12-mile downhill and I have zero recollection of how I did that without dying because it's downhill but it's also twisty and busy. For some reason I passed home and rode another couple miles to the farmer's market, where (I found out later) I kept stumbling up to stalls dragging my bike behind me, pointing at things, and handing them my wallet to take the required cash out for payment. Someone made me sit in the shade and drink the juice fugue-me had had the sense to buy, and once I'd recovered a bit, I realized I'd bought about 10 pounds of fruit I didn't even like. After I'd had more

[randomdreams]

The last 20 miles of the 2013 denver century, where I was experiencing heat stroke, were close to that, although I was at least making valid "I can/can't keep going" decisions on a regular basis. I had pretty much lost track of WHY I was making those decisions, though. Glad I had someone riding with me

[rachelmanija]

I have but not that extreme. I used to work in TV/film production, where 12-18 hour workdays were common. There were several occasions when I got so sleep-deprived that I forgot where I lived, and drove around and around the block in frustrated circles until I finally recognized my apartment