The Long Run Book Review
This is a naked story about Matt Long’s horrible but courageous experiences going through his frustrating days after a near fatal accident. His extraordinary stories have had a lot of media coverage inside and outside running community, so you might know his stories already. I read his story in Runner’s World Magazine and again in the book I recently read Going Long. In The Long Run, he details and exposes his honest feelings about everything he went through; about his family, friends, girl friends, his various physical states, NYFD, recovery, desperation, rages, hopes, etc..
In summary, he was run over a bus and went through a number of surgeries to get his body reconstructed, during which he received 61 units of blood. After three years later, he ran New York City Marathon and then an Ironman in Lake Placid the following year. I am not trying to discount the severity of his accident, his iron will, or his monumental efforts to recover. What he went through was too grave and I don’t have enough space to write about here. Also, I want you to read the book. =)
As a runner or a human being, I would have gone through the same depression and despair as he did, if I were in the same situation. The prospect of not able to run or to enjoy what I do for the rest of my life would destroy me and give up any hopes of a recovery. But he has such a strong will and conviction that got him through the tough times. I also think he is a lucky man: He could not have recovered the way he did without his support system, including his family and friends, medical and training teams, and financial situation, which his irresistible personality and good values created over the years. His tenacious nature helped greatly but his compassionate and devoting personality laid the foundation to exercise his tenacity when he needed. Great read.
I used to watch Ekiden, long distance relay races very popular in Japan, and ran some when I was in high school. 30 years (!) later, I ran another with fellow San Francisco Track and Field team members (Pictured from left to right – Andy Bundy, Chris Hastings, Aaron Castillo and me). It was a fun and friendly race under the cold and cloudy December sky at Lake Merced in San Francisco. Each leg took the runner around the lake – 4.5 miles of mostly flat paved trail, popular among local runners, joggers, walkers, dogs and such. There were about 300 teams, mostly from Northern California. Some of the teams were serious about this, while others took it very casual dressing themselves in all sorts of seasonal fun attire. We took the spirit of the holiday by each wearing a red Santa hat with the team uniform, and knee-high compression socks. Frontrunners San Francisco sent impressive 18 teams, a few of which ran very fast times.
After Chris took off, I went into a queue for the potty which was very long an it took me about 20 minutes to get to a potty. While in the queue, the first team came in after 22 minutes or so. Fast! It’s 5 minutes/mile pace. Well, I knew about the fast teams’ pace from the last year’s results. After done with my business, I went to the exchange area and looked for Chris to come in. He came in after 29 minutes. Then, Andy took off. I asked Chris if there were any surprises on the course and he said it was pretty straight forward and no surprises. He did mention that he did not seen mile marks except for one. Andy came in after about 30 minutes. After Aaron took off, I started to warm up by jogging for about five minutes and doing a few strides. Aaron took about 36 minutes. While I was waiting for Aaron, I saw a few Frontrunners go by. I wanted to catch up at least some of them.
This year’s race attracted about 7,800 runners. Richard Ervais and Erik Lee of San Francisco Front Runners and Bettie Quan ran the race. The course had more up hills than I remembered but they were not as significant as other hills that I’ve run before. I felt that crowd support was a bit spotty, but I understood it considering the low temperature. But it was a beautiful morning.
