I’d scribbled it on my desktop calendar long before the accident: Houston Trail Runners Extreme, 7 a.m.

They gather once a week to run long distances through the woods. The friendly meet-up draws some of Houston’s top outdoor athletes, yet they leave no one behind and the atmosphere is chattily casual. Despite the early hour, I was excited to join them.

My headlights cut the predawn stillness on Memorial Drive, and I couldn’t help but think of Big Wray.

After our circle of friends back home parted ways to venture clumsily into adult life, Wray Landon evolved into one of those outsized outdoor figures that everyone seems to know out West. He fought forest fires during the summer, skied backcountry in the winter and eventually built a life as a conservationist in Jackson, Wyoming. During the years I’d disappeared into the flatter regions of the U.S., he was climbing mountains and scrambling the leader board at endurance races filled with lithe competitors who didn't quite know what to make of the 6-foot-6, 200 pound guy passing them.

He was the only person I’d ever met who could jog up the 13,770-foot Grand Teton in the evening and make the summit before sunset. He’d often scale local peaks or take grueling runs in the morning before work, earning him the nickname “Twice-a-Day Wray.”

On Feb. 21 an avalanche swept Wray from the face of the South Teton. There’s not a lot to say when a 30-year-old dies.

Some things just aren’t supposed to make sense, and all I could do from here in the days that followed was watch the shock and the admiration of those who knew him ripple across the Internet. The announcement of a ski-hill foot race in Wray’s honor caught my eye. It said there’s “no better way to celebrate his life and legacy than to run up hill as fast as you can,” and I realized a long run, even on the coastal plains of Houston, might make a worthy tribute.

Not just another 10K

I found the Houston trail runners stretching at the new Memorial Park foot bridge just before the sun breached the horizon. Among them I met the kind of people who’ve always impressed and secretly intimidated me.

These are the athletes who don’t stop training when they finish their first marathon. They move on to 50 and 100-mile endurance races through forests and across the spines of mountain ranges. At least one member trains for the altitude by running up the stairs of a skyscraper downtown.

Yet for folks who make a 10K look like a walk to the mail box, they couldn’t have been more accommodating.

We spent the first hour running loops within the trail system east of Memorial. I settled into the slower of two groups as endurance competitor and HTREX co-founder Mariela Botella led the way and kept tabs on everybody, despite a mild hangover from her book club the night before. We bounded over roots, through gullies, into puddles and over downed trees. By the time I got home, the mud had seeped through into my socks and under my toenails.

Road runners who give trail running a try “either love it or they hate it. There’s not much in between,” Botella tells me. The terrain makes falling easier and the dirt doesn’t pound joints into mush the way running on pavement can. Because you’re constantly staring at the terrain, the time flies by, and it seemed like barely 20 minutes had passed when we rendezvoused with more runners after an hour.

Fueled by a meager breakfast of two espressos and a banana, I managed to keep up, enjoying their tales of giant spiders, epic blisters and sudden downpours along the way. It’s easier to keep going in a group. My legs soon began to notice that I’d been running farther than my usual three or four miles, but the pleasant company made it easier to stick it out.

Including a few breaks and some intermittent walking, we made it back to the cars after nine miles – farther than I’d ever run before.

I’ve long held a special respect for those who push themselves as hard as they can against nature, knowing full well that she’ll push back even harder. I doubt that I’ll cover as many miles in my entire life as Wray packed into his short tenure on earth. He was the rare man who lived exactly how he wanted, never letting circumstance, or distance, or pain or gravity get in the way.

For awhile, at least, it felt good live up to his example.