APOCALYPSE WOW & HEARTS OF DARKNESS

Boston, MA -- Only weeks prior to the infamous R.R.A. Marathon. One time Olympic Trials Qualifier and 10Km great Martin Speed ponders alone in the Marriot Hotel...

" I’m here a week now, waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker, and every minute the idiots run through the woods they get stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter...."

Images overwhelm of Kung Fu in a G-string, flames bursting around busted glass drunken with sin spinning ceiling fans and the same old Doors song blaring away non-stop in the background.

"...Everyone gets everything he wants...I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one, brought it up to me like room service..."

Two lean sub 30 minute 10km types from the Road Running Alliance pound on the door, pulling Speed out of this misery called non-running. They gave it too him full strength...

"You’re going to the worst place in the world and don’t even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles down a river and over mountains that snake through the passes like a main circuit cable, plugged straight into TRN."

An amber beverage was poured from a rusty brown bottle with Savoy Trail Ale ground into the label.

"I don’t know how you feel about home-brew, but if you’ll drink this you’ll never have to prove your courage again!"

Then the question Speed had been waiting for...

"You’ve heard of TRN?"

"The operations and special forces division out of the RRA monitored this out of the Berkshires, specifically a lost forsaken place called Savoy, and this has been verified as the voice of one called "Farmer", .TRN’s misfit self appointed head ram-rod."

And Speed heard for the first time the ramblings of this one time pseudo legend of trail running / writing...

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor, and I became that snail. Then the ridges of the Metacomet Range became the razor...that’s my dream...that’s my nightmare...crawling, slithering - along the edge of a straight razor - and surviving!!"

"The TRN group were some of the most outstanding trailrunners this area ever produced. They were brilliant, outstanding, in every way. Occasional top ten finishes, hard to the core, blasted up hills like they were running down. They began a newsletter though.... and soon after that their ideas, their methods, became...unsound."

"Now they have crossed into CT, an army of like-minded misfits. This bunch is bad for running, and for trail running in particular. They are all mixed up, their priorities are confused... the worse a run is, the more they enjoy it. They seem to take a perverted pleasure in running events where only a few others show up, and then spew on and on in their lame piece of dung newsletter about how fantastic it all was as they plodded along in swamps and glare ice at 20 minute per mile pace. They don’t even look like runners. One guy in particular, Old Goat, wears shorts in sub freezing temperatures and makes such a mockery out of distance running...he drives two or three hours to an event only to run the 5km race, where he goes out like a rabbit only to walk the center parts. Others write about flying moose, discovering water falls and boulders, women’s toenails, why they couldn’t complete a race or trilogy, post race food quality and quantity.... this can’t be healthy for running!! Where is the age old adage of win at all cost and any expense? These idiots could care less about winning, it will destroy running as we know it!!"

"In this sport, things get confused. Power, ideals, morality. But out there with these followers - it must be a temptation because there is a conflict in every human heart between the rational and irrational, between good and evil.

Every man has got a breaking point, you and I have them. TRN has reached their’s, it’s very obvious they’ve gone insane."

"Your mission is to travel to Western Mass, along the Mohawk Trail. Then proceed down river along the Metacomet Range, pick up the path in CT, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find them, infiltrate TRN by whatever means available and terminate the command."

"Terminate?" said Speed.

"They are out there operating without any decent restraint totally beyond the realm of any acceptable human conduct and they are still in the fields writing stories. Terminate with extreme prejudice. You understand that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist."

to be continued.....

{04/01/98}