Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc – An odyssey between Mercury and Pluto, an inner journey – Epilogue

Why do I run?

It's all in the imagination. None of this is real. Running 170 km in the mountains adds nothing to my destiny. It doesn’t change the order of things. I don’t create new universes, I don’t save humanity, I don’t achieve immortality. I remain immersed in the Human Condition. The Cosmos continues to be an improbable place, without justification or appeal. Particles and force fields continue to spring from the vacuum and interact just because. Species battle one another because it’s in their nature. This planet marches toward oblivion. My existence, our existence, is nothing more than a fleeting blink of an eye in an empty space-time.

There is no redemption, no salvation.

Yet an adventure like this gives me the strength to carry on for at least another year. To overcome the petty difficulties of daily life. The little irritations, the tedium of repetitive gestures. The inexorable path toward decay becomes gentler. The moments become richer, more colorful, and vivid.

While I’m here, I’ll keep fighting the inglorious fight, and my atoms, when they scatter to the wind, will at least know that I lived. They will bear my mark, just as they once bore the marks of Gilgamesh, Homer, Alexander, Hannibal Barca, Julius Caesar, Erik the Red, Roland, Zheng He, Ibn Battuta, Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Livingstone, Neil Armstrong.

I will be a tiny scratch on the Planck scale in the fabric of space-time.