October 2023

 I already miss this summer. Not the heat, humidity, spiderwebs, horseflies, dried up creek beds, chafing, or overgrown trails. Not the jar that exploded glass shrapnel into my foot, nor the yellow jacket swarm that sent me into anaphylaxis. 

But I will miss feeling excited and ready to build after a pretty incredible spring. A marathon PR at 41? A trail 100 PR? It was hard to comprehend that I could still do these things after a few years of not feeling confident. 

Training was unusual as usual, but I put in some nice, big days before Frankenfoot. Pacing Cruel Jewel, an epic day in the Smokies, a much better Rim to Rim to Rim experience than last year, and Merrill’s Mile. All left me feeling happily exhausted. Thanks to Frankenfoot, I had to cancel a big run at Mt. Mitchell and the weekend after. But I got back to it without losing fitness and had big runs at Blood Mountain, Brasstown Bald, and Tray Mountain. 

Were they enough? Likely not, but with limited climbs in the terrain I have to work with and the hiccups in training, they'll have to do.

The good news is that I felt differently happy when I finished these runs than I ever have while training. Maybe I'm better at eating more real food and ingesting more calories in general. Maybe I'm going at slower paces. Maybe I'm just more mentally acclimated for the big days. In any case, I didn't feel gutted after these efforts. Sure, I was tired and ready to be done when I got back to the car, but I never felt destroyed in the way that I had previously. Well, maybe Merrill’s destroyed me.

But I didn’t feel like I was edging on depletion with every run. The only time I felt truly spent was after the 2 hour road run I did the day after Brasstown. But I ran a 2 hour half marathon in 90° the day after a 50k with 8,000’ feet of gain. Feeling gutted was not a surprise.

The thing is, as much as I love to race and to have these ebbs and flows in training cycles, I love being in the thick of it the most. The dish rack full of bottles, the Friday evening laundry and grocery shopping session to have my favorite outfit and fresh snacks. The 5am alarm to get to the trailhead at first light and the long drive home, devouring a family-sized bag of chips.

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I’ve biked down Haleakalā, ridden in a Jeep along the coastline of Portugal, swam with dolphins off the shores of Honduras, and gone scuba-diving among the flora and fauna in the Belize Barrier Reef. I’ve run across the Grand Canyon twice, around Mont-Blanc once, and trekked to Everest Base Camp. I’ve taken a boat ride in the dark in the Amazon jungle and drank pisco sours after an afternoon of ayahuasca. I’ve kissed under the Eiffel Tower, ridden in a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park, and shared cones of gelato in the streets of Rome. I’ve haggled in Marrakech and wandered the booths of a souk in Doha. I've awed at the opulence of Catherine’s Palace and swatted away monkeys on the Rock of Gibraltar. I've eaten fire-grilled salmon next to the Taku River and drank a liter of Hefeweizen in a Munich biergarten. I've visited a monastery tucked high in the Himalayas and done brass rubbings at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. I’ve attended a service in a 13th century Latvian church and marveled at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I've sipped apple cider in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery in mid-October and watched Fourth of July fireworks from Times Square. I've skied a black diamond in West Virginia, parasailed in the Pacific, and ridden one of the oldest wooden roller coasters in Copenhagen. I've clapped along to When The Saints Come Marching In at Preservation Hall and sang Sweet Caroline at Fenway. I've gambled in Monte Carlo, shot tequila on a Cancun beach, and drank Bushwackers in St. Thomas. 

And yet, there are days that I feel hollow. That these things are meaningless in the present moment. They read pretentious and full of all the privileges that they are. 

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I seek those days that I feel reckless and strong, pushing my body to places that I know will leave me in a heap when I finally come to a stop. Most of the time, I muddle along, shuffling through an easy run, a long run, even a workout. My mind and body push back and I settle for average at times because at least it's not awful. Those awful ones can stretch for weeks on end, shredding my spirit into a thousand little pieces. 

But on those rarefied days that the world seems to tilt in my favor, those are the ones I keep chasing after. Where my legs seem to be free from my body, hurtling along with power that seems like it belongs to someone else. 

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I'm using a sliver of lavender soap left from our honeymoon 15 years ago. I found it at a market in Corsica, amid booths of local cheeses and flowers on a warm October day. A consumable souvenir that has slowly eroded from a singular large hunk over the last few years.

It's next to milk soap bought in a shop in Copenhagen on the morning we began our journey back home from the Baltics. The trip that draws the line in the sand of what was once physically possible and now what must be different. It was a crisp May morning and I'd gone out shopping alone, no real plan in place other than to wander the cobblestone streets one last time in a city that captured my heart. 

There are two teddy bear soaps sitting on the window sill, tokens of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel from the northern tip of Yellowstone. There was only a sink in our room and the bathrooms were down the hall. A small desk fanned whirred all night, doing little to combat the late August heat. 

A yak milk soap rests in the back of the pile, one of many purchases made in Namche Bazaar on my return from Everest Base Camp. It says it's made by Nepali women, but who knows how much of this is true. I found myself experiencing in the moment joy so often during the trek that it seemed like an eternal dream.

And the latest addition is a brown paper wrapped soap plucked high above Chamonix in the Aiguille du Midi shop. My entire body was wrecked from exhaustion, but it was masked by my own personal triumph. I had plenty of unused soaps at home, why another one for the collection? 

Maybe one day, it'll be just a sliver and the memories of last month will be whittled into just a few vivid moments. 

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When you're a kid, adulthood seems like some transformation with very set rules. It's hard to imagine that you'll just be an older version of you. I think I believed I'd have it all figured out by now. Surely by the time the crow's feet start appearing, I'd be just some boring evolved person who knew how to move through mundane tasks of a developed world with ease. 

And parts of that are true. I muddle through a 40 hour work week, changing the oil in my car every 5,000 miles, making dentist appointments every 6 months, and prefer to be in bed by 10 pm. 

I distinctly remember both my parents turning 40. We kids thought it was funny to decorate with over the hill banners and black balloons. Their birthday meant that it was a celebration, but there was a layer of sadness that seemed to hover over this next step. 

Of course, I had no idea that 40 was actually still so young. But everyone seems old when you’re young. And no one seems to mention that while your body starts to need oil changes and tire rotations, your brain is often just as youthful as it ever was. Poop is still really funny. 

I guess I just thought that at some point I’d feel like I had arrived. That the journey wasn’t necessarily over, but that I was settled deeply into adulthood. Maybe parts of me are, but there is so much I never would have predicted. Sometimes that feels a little sad, like I’ve missed out on what I thought my life would be like. But a part of me feels excited that as much as I try to predict how the next 10, 20, 30+ years will go, I won’t actually know until I’m there. 

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I imagine your autumn days are also idyllic. That as the sun rises later and sun sets earlier, you embrace all the changes that the season brings. The kids are back in school and everyone has fallen back into their routines. There are soccer games on Saturday mornings and football on the TV in the afternoons. Rakes replace lawn mowers and open windows replace air conditioners.

The younger kids are changing their minds about Halloween costumes and the older ones are changing their minds about college majors. A pot of chili sits simmering on the stove from a recipe passed down for generations. 

You take trips to the apple orchard, snapping perfect photos on the bluebird day. Everyone feels a little crabby after the corn maze, but spirits are lifted after a round of gooey caramel apples. A dozen cider donuts don't last on the ride home, their sugar coating flannel shirts and well-worn jeans.

False holly emits its sweet aroma on your evening dog walks. The weeks you can detect its scent are short, but the smell is discerning and full of memories of seasons past. 

You wear sweaters in the morning and tank tops in the afternoon. But every day, you exclaim how perfect the weather is after a long, hot summer. There are pumpkin carving parties and s'mores around the fire pit and you'll want these nights to never end, despite time constantly marching forward.