From Team Type 1 SANOFI's Run Across America: The Importance of Team


The Importance of Team by Marcus Grimm

Run across the country for two weeks and you figure, a man could change. Things that maybe seemed impossible before might be entirely possible now.

In conversations I’d had with Matt Patrick, who won a 100k (62.5 mile) race earlier this year, he’d often told me that he thought guys like Jon Obst and Ryan Jones, who compete regularly at 100 miles, were crazy. That there was “no way” he’d do something like that.

And so it seemed like a logical question to ask him how he felt about such races now; now that he alone has traveled nearly 300 miles in two weeks, on slight sleep, through mountains, snow, ice and rain. Truth be told, the writer in me was looking for a story about a man being transformed.

“After a couple days of doing this, I was sore,” reflected Patrick. “But strangely, the soreness went away. Your body adapts and things don’t always get worse. So, physically, I think, ‘Yeah, probably my body could do that.’”

“But then again,” he said, “I really feel like so much of my energy is coming from these guys around me. It’s impossible to not be motivated by every one of them, and I’m not sure I could do one of those races without that sort of inspiration around me.”

“So yeah, if they were with me, I think I could do it.” Patrick scanned the RV, looking at his exhausted teammates, icing injuries and desperately trying to replace thousands of calories of lost nutrition. “But good luck convincing them.”

Somehow one gets the feeling it wouldn’t be that hard to do.

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