Polar Reflections

I've been back from the North Pole for exactly 10 days and have had a lot of time (10 days to be exact) to reflect on the experience.. It may sound corny and a little cliche', but my time at the Pole was definitely life-changing and is something I will carry with me always.

What did it for me was not the marathon and definitely not that crazy bike race. What made the trip special was the 24+ hours I spent at the Pole after all the athletic nonsense. For me, the trip really began when my bloodshot eyes opened on Sunday "morning" and my hangover was immediately cured by the heater in our tent cutting out at 4am. The temperature dropped from somewhere near freezing to something substantially below that within minutes.

Since I want to stay on topic, I'm not going to write pages and pages about all of the non-running stuff I did after the marathon - but let me mention a couple of things that were truly special to me.

The first epiphany came when we flew 20 miles from Camp Barneo to the geographic North Pole on Sunday afternoon. I was the first one to get in the helicopter; making sure to secure a seat right next to the door so I could be the first one out when we landed at 90 North. Total flying time from Barneo to the Pole was about 10 minutes.

Standing at the top of the world is a feeling like no other. Everything from the hollow crunching sound of the ice under my feet to the complete absense of anything living (besides me and my cohorts) was truly humbling. It was an environment that made me feel both small and insignificant while at the same time giving me this amazing sense of fulfillment and - (get ready for the corny part) - "enlightenment". I was truly at peace.

I think the second "really neat" thing about the experience was the feeling of being reduced to the lowest common denominator of myself. Even though we were only at the Pole for a little more than 48 hours, it was those two days of living that cleansed my spirit in such a way that I'm still feeling the impact of it two weeks later. With no "daytime" or "nighttime", we pretty much slept when we were tired, ate when we were hungry, and did "other things" when we felt the urge. Gone were schedules - "I need to be here at such and such o'clock...", "lunch must be eaten at noon", "must be in bed by 10"... total hogwash!! The most sleep I got in any one stretch was probably the two to three hours between the marathon and the bike race and it was probably the best I've felt in years! Seriously... years!! Unfortunatly my employer probably wouldn't look too kindly on me "sleeping when I feel sleepy" and with small kids, dinner kind of has to be eaten around 6ish. That said, I truly feel we place too much emphasis on time and schedules and I've seen first hand how amazing it can be when they get tossed by the wayside.. This isn't to say that I'm going to start missing meetings because I can't be bothered, but a little less emphasis on when things should be done and more on when they can be done could do us all a lot of good.

In closing (and then I'll get back to talking about running - I promise!), my hope is that the entire experience stays with me for a long long time (if not forever). It truly has forced me to re-evaluate my priorities and has given me a sense of well-being that I honestly didn't have three weeks ago. To Brad and everyone at YourRunning - I thank you all!

~Bobby

P.S. I hope everyone enjoyed reading my Blog (because you're all in for a LOT more!)