He’d just smashed a man’s face on national TV, and why? To be great in someone else’s eyes? Tobe a performer whose achievements were only measured by someone else’s affection? He wasn’tstupid; he could connect the dots between the nervous boy with the Great Santini dad and thelonely, love-hungry drifter he’d become. Was he a great fighter, in other words, or just a needyone?
Soon after, Karate magazine called. The year-end rankings were about to come out, the reportersaid, and the Gypsy Cowboy’s upset had made him the fifth-ranked light-heavyweight kickboxerin America. The Cowboy’s career was ; once Karate hit the stands and the offersstarted pouring in, he’d have plenty of big-money opportunities to find out whether he truly lovedfighting, or was fighting to be loved.
“Excuse me,” Micah told the reporter. “But I just decided to retire.”
Making the Gypsy Cowboy disappear was even simpler than dispensing with Mike Hickman.
Everything Micah couldn’t carry on his back was discarded. The phone was disconnected, theapartment abandoned. Home became a ’69 Chevy pickup. By night, he slept in a sleeping bag inthe back. By day, he hired himself out to mow lawns and move furniture. Every hour in between,he ran. If he couldn’t have Melinda, he’d settle for exhaustion. “I’d get up at four-thirty in themorning, run twenty miles, and it would be a beautiful thing,” Micah said. “Then I’d work all dayand want to feel that way again. So I’d go home, drink a beer, eat some beans, and run somemore.”
He had no idea if he was fast or slow, talented or terrible, until one summer weekend in 1986 whenhe drove up to Laramie, Wyoming, to take a stab at the Rocky Mountain Double Marathon. Hesurprised even himself by winning in six hours and twelve minutes, knocking off back-to-back trailmarathons in a scratch over three hours each. Racing ultras, he discovered, was even tougher thanprizefighting. In the ring, the other fighter determines how hard you’re hit, but on the trail, yourpunishment is in your own hands. For a guy looking to beat himself into numbness, extremerunning could be an awfully attractive sport.
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