Kulla-Mader Award for Craziness

After running 14 miles at 5:30 a.m. yesterday with Crystal, I spent the rest of my day assured that I had won Friday's Kulla-Mader Award for Craziness. I was mistaken. My achievement is minor in comparison to that of my parents who finally made it off of the Inca Trail yesterday. Here is a brief excerpt of their email to announce to our friends and family that they are alive, but not necessarily well:

We made it through today and now are in a border town having just soaked in a mineral bath to get off 5 days of grime.  It was much more grueling and technically difficult than we imagined.  We think we were the youngest by at least 10 years on the trail (and that doesn´t mean that we´re so well-conditioned, just rather dumb).  Imagine 10-hour days walking almost totally uphill on very uneven stone stairs, followed by days of walking totally downhill on similar oddly shaped stones.  Stones so high you needed to literally climb up them.  All of this at around 14,000 feet so altitude effects were limiting our lung capacity.

It gets worse:

I kept telling myself, "Kathy, there´s no way out..helicopters can´t even land because of the altitude and terrain, so just keep putting one foot in front of the other and listen to Beatles on your IPOD so the hours will pass").  By the end, dad and two others had either altitude sickness or food poisoning.  One day for 10 hours dad was walked along by two magnificent Inca porters who stood holding him under his arms and sliding him down the stones...My problems were mostly muscular-skeletal. I pretty much can´t walk-can´t go up or down without agony today.  My lovely porter who carried my day pack the last day let me go, pack and all, once we reached Machu Piccu and I promptly fell down a few feet of stairs on my butt which adds to my general soreness.

On our run, Crystal and I talked about how funny it is that we are now considered "endurance athletes." An endurance athlete is someone who participates in a sport that involves intense effort over 2 or more hours. Apparently, the need to push yourself a little further than most people think is possible is a genetic condition. This is the only explanation I can find for why I would be excited to wake up at 4:45 am to run and why my parents would decide to celebrate all of their children graduating high school with a trek down the perilous Inca Trail.