Returning home from his third successful running of the Hardrock Hundred, Joel collapsed and died on Tuesday, July 14, 1998, from complications arising from a cerebral hemorrhage. A runner who loved spending time on the trails with his dogs, Congo and Bob, he was an inspiration to all ultrarunners and an example that one can be a winner regardless of finishing place. He will continue to serve as an example that a real winner is someone willing to attempt something really difficult, and sometimes succeed through hard work and dedication. Joel will be missed.

As I sit here the week after the 1998 HRH, I am finding my race report very difficult to write.  The last few days have been filled with mixed emotions stemming from the race.  First, the tears of joy in my triumph over my innermost fears and struggles; later the tears of sadness in Joel Zucker's untimely retreat from the world of the living.  I'm struggling hard with Joel's death, because he was my friend, but also because in his passing I have learned more about the true risk we 100 mile runners take in attempting such feats of human endurance.  Our sport borders on the true limits of human physiologic ability, and when that border is breached, we are unable to restore ourselves to homeostasis; we enter the downward spiral of failing health and are faced with the body's total rejection of everything we know to be human, of life itself.

I'm writing this report with Joel in my memory, because he will always be a part of this race for me.  He is intrinsically tied to the event in such ways that whenever I think of my personal victory over the trials I faced out there on the trails of the San Juan Mountains, I will think of my time climbing Kendall Mountain with him.  I will think of the conversations we had about his dogs.  I will think of the man who, at only 5-foot, 3-inches tall, had a big heart and a great love for the mountains that eventually would contribute to his death.

Through his death, Joel has taught me about my own mortality.  I choose to run the 100 mile distance because I have always considered it much safer than any of the other "extreme" sports in which I could participate.  Running has kept me off of dangerous mountain crags and away from wind-swept deserts.  But it has also, I have learned, made me face the most dangerous freak of nature ever created: It has made me face myself, my inner desire to succeed in whatever I start, my personal drive to never, ever quit.  I never considered, before this week, that the sport I love so much could contribute to my death in a way so close as it has done to Joel.  I never considered that a side effect of the effort I exert on the trail in a weekend would trigger the downward spiral of decay, culminating in a lack of a pulse, the absence of a breath, a void of life.  I never considered that what I do could be so dangerous . . . .

This race report, and the pictures attached to it, are here in memory of Joel, a man who loved the Hardrock more than any other race, a man who considered running with his dogs the only thing he had in this world that he could truly call his own.

Joel, may you rest on the wings of angels.  May you see God's handiwork from above, as you enjoyed it from the top of the world down here. Oh, yes, "and Oscar's will always be Oscar's."