On Reaching the 672nd Step

I read last week that The Dipsea Demon, Jack Kirk, died at the end of January at the age of 100. While we're speaking of what humans can do (and I was, just below, in that time warp of blogging where things stand still until you move them along again) The Dipsea Demon was one of those amazing humans.

Jack is one of my heros. He ran The Dipsea Race, from Mill Valley, over Mt. Tamalpais and down to Stinson Beach 67 times, winning it twice. "Old Dipsea Runners never die, they just reach the 672nd step," his most famous comment about the race, is based on the collection of 671 stone steps that runners have to take on at the beginning of the run from Mill Valley. It's a grueling little start and one of the many things that makes running The Dipsea so unusual and so incredibly fun. Jack's comment is a sentiment that most Dipsea runners take to heart and it reflects the weird and wacky commitment that people of all ages, shapes and sizes bring to the race. Once you run The Dipsea (the oldest cross country footrace in the U.S.) you really are a part of a strange band.

Jack continued to run the race until he was 96, when he didn't finish, but he made it all the way to the top of Mt. Tam anyway. It was the very next year, 2004, that I first ran the race and on that day he started with the first group, but was then sped around to the finish to meet the runners as they came home. Watching him at the start of this race that begins in the bucolic little suburb of Mill Valley, heads up through the redwoods on Mt. Tam, over roots, rocks and mud puddles only to then let gravity take over as the course hurtles down the other side toward the Pacific Ocean and Stinson Beach, was a stunning experience. At 50, I was in no real shape to run the race - I had certainly not adequately trained for it - and while I stood there trembling in my red running shorts and ankle socks, the vision of Jack, nearly twice my age, slowly moving toward the line to begin the tortured trudge up and over that hill I've lived with for thirty years and that Jack had covered so many times... Well, it's why I keep running.


I had the chance to meet and talk with Jack in 2005, the one hundredth anniversary of the race, when he put in an appearance as an honorary runner and where dozens of runners, all connected to Jack in some way, wore shirts that read "Family of The Dipsea Demon." He was friendly, engaging, inquisitive and delightful and his simple presence moved me to keep running this one of a kind footrace over the mountain.

Ever since that day, I've had the audacity to imagine that I was sort of taking up the mantel of The Demon, looking to a date many years from now (when I'm 65 actually) when I too will win this race (it's a handicapped race and so with another 12 years of preparation that's not exactly as impossible as it sounds). Jack of course has plenty of other people willing to pick up his crown and run on (and I should probably point out that Jack was a lifelong vegetarian), but you can definitely count me among the contenders.