Appreciative Urgency
Resting in peace. Strictly temporary. Bob Becker July 2021.
Issue #4
I'm still thinking about aging as an athlete. That Coach Lisa had a stroke last week, hit hard. We finally solve for sustainability, and it gets yanked away anyway. It is the part nobody warns you about. You can do everything right, train smart, eat well, rest when your body asks, and the ground can still shift under you without warning.
I discussed this with my good friend Bob Becker, who also trains with Lisa.
Last July, at 80, Bob became the oldest person ever to finish the Badwater 135 Ultramarathon, 135 brutal miles across Death Valley in July, when it's hot enough to fry an egg on a rock. He came in 3 hours under the 48-hour deadline! Read about it here in the Los Angeles Times.
What most people don't know is that three years earlier, at 77, Bob came up agonizingly short at Badwater. His back gave out at mile 100 and he missed the cutoff by 17 minutes. But he didn't quit. He crawled the last few miles on his hands and knees. It's worth watching.
How does one come back from that?
Turns out, Bob creates his own urgency.
He appreciates every day he can still toe a start line. Gratitude is his driver. Not ego. Only the simple wish to relish every moment he can still participate in a sport he loves. Every race is a gift he refuses to take for granted.
I call this Appreciative Urgency. It's the controlled side of urgency — the opposite of what happened to Lisa. Lisa's urgency was imposed from the outside, sudden and cruel. Bob's urgency is something he cultivates from within, something he tends to daily like a garden. It doesn't panic him. It focuses him.
A few months ago, Bob and I ran the Mt. Gaoligong Ultra in China, where he chose the 77-mile race over the 104, so that he could stop for every photo with villagers who treated the runners like family. Connection mattered more than distance. That is Appreciative Urgency in motion. He did not rush past the moment to reach the finish. He slowed down because the moment was the point.
Bob ran three days with me on my run across America. July 2021.
This weekend, at 81, Bob toes the line again at the Denali 135 Race, 135 miles of gravel highway under one of the tallest mountains in North America. Not once has he said he is going to crush it, or mentioned cutoffs or records.
What I heard is only that Bob cannot wait to soak up every second in Alaska, where he'll run as the official 2026 Race Ambassador.
Who knows, he always reminds me, how many more chances he'll get.
None of us do. Lisa's week made that plain again. Bob figured this out long ago. I am still working on it. That is exactly why there is urgency to appreciate the now, not someday, not after the next finish line, but today, while the start line is still in front of you.
Hope to see you on the road.
Cheers,
David.
For more on Bob at Denali: Denali 135 Ultramarathon
