Outside Magazine

Colin O’Brady was fully aware of the flow. For years he’d felt it on long runs and grueling rides, but usually it was only after the trance had passed that he recognized he’d been in it at all. During those moments of extreme exertion, the pain disappeared and time became less of a river, more of an ocean. How wonderful it was now to be in it and aware of it, too. He could hold the sensation and study it like a piece of sea glass plucked from the sand.

For hours—or had it been days?—scenes from his life scrolled by to the rhythmic, scratchy hiss of his skis on ice. He was a kid at a swim meet, his mom holding an orange towel on the far side of the blocks. He was on one knee in Ecuador, asking his girlfriend to marry him. He was on his back in a grimy Thai clinic, a cat crawling around his purple, gooey legs, which he’d just burned to a crisp in a freak accident.