February 2025

 Belated musings | 10.27.2024

10ish years ago, I toyed with the idea of running a distance beyond a marathon. I can't recall the sequence of events that caused me to jump from 26.2 to 50 miles, but I do remember being excited and nervous about attempting it. I set a goal to finish a 50 mile race in fall of 2015. 

Prior to 2014 I'd run 6 marathons. To a normal person, that still is a pretty big number. But time and perspective changes everything and a decade later, I look back and think about how inexperienced I was. 

Naivety can be a wonderful thing. Trying something new can feel exhilarating and with running, there is a strong sense of personal accomplishment when PRing a new distance. 

During training for my first 50 miler, I ran the marathon distance on my own one day. Mentally, it was tough to get through the miles on my own and without any sort of finish line reward. 

Or so I thought. Something clicked that day in that I realized that the reward was the run. Yes, there was purpose beyond that day in the run, but something was shifting in my gears.

I loved racing and competing though and often used races to train for longer events. In 2016 and 2017, I raced a marathon or longer distance every month. And rarely did I let off the gas. I've always been a more is more is more type and even with a coach and wisdom, still find it hard to turn off the faucet. 

It's no surprise that after a few years of steady running, I was rewarded with peak fitness. But with the faucet always on, the water eventually ran out. Like most endurance athletes, I ignored the pain, I bargained with it, and eventually, faced the music. 

So I spent much of 2018 on the bench. A total of about 14 weeks between 2 injuries, but with setbacks and rebuilds, it felt even longer. It took a long time to trust my body again. I feared I'd never get back to where I was. 

I had big plans for 2019, including a very expensive and long trip to Nepal to run the Everest marathon. Oh, and a 70 mile race with 3 times the amount of vert I'd ever run before. With the Boston Marathon in between those two events. 

So I hired a coach because I knew that left to my own devices, I'd go too hard and end up either a DNF or a DNS at one or more of these races. I trusted the plan and was honest with my setbacks along the way and everything worked out that spring.

Over Covid, I still had my coach, but with no events happening, the purpose of my training shifted. Late that summer and early fall, I joined a group of runners on a few adventure runs. Ultra distances that were self-supported in beautiful places. 

By the time I was doing these, I had a lot more marathons under my belt, a few tough ultras, and even some 100 mile finishes. But these self-supported adventures were their own unique challenge. There was no physical reward at the end. No medal or buckle. No aid station to drop at. No aid station to resupply food or water (though sometimes I've been lucky to have friends help with this). 

You leave your car with everything you might need for running X number of miles and trust yourself that you can make it back. The further and more remote the run, the higher the stakes. Every once in a while on these runs, I think about how crazy it is that I'm so far from my car with a backpack full of gas station food, trusting my legs and mind to get me back to civilization.

So why do it? Why the risk if there's seemingly so little reward? 

It's a question with many answers, depending on the day. Yesterday, it was to see some incredible fall colors on trails that I'd never been on. Adam had the day off of work so he could be home with the dogs. The weather looked great. And mostly, I had been thinking about it for weeks and time was running out for this season. I couldn't shake the idea all week and I've become more attune to answering those calls when I can.

I'd been trying to let my body and angry toe take a bit of a break after my IMTUF DNF. I did not run for 2 weeks after the race and slept 9-10 hours a night. My toe was more or less as angry as it had been. I finally saw a podiatrist and while not a model patient with my running, became a model of wearing corrective devices. Maybe it's helping? I'll be the first to admit that a cold stop is warranted to become truly healed. But since that's not what the doctor said I had to do, I continue to manage it. I realize that I'll have to do some time for it, but much like the events of 2018, I'll postpone it as long as I can. 

There's a part of me that is cautious and patient and makes the connection between actions and future consequences. There's another part of me that says we're never promised tomorrow so enjoy what you can, while you can. 

Loving and living with someone who has a progressive physical disease is a juxtaposition in this grab life by the horns convention. I probably squeeze a little too much life out at times, knowing just how fleeting it can be. The fear of missing out feels omnipresent when I think back to just a short time ago that I felt like someone started to pour gasoline on this fire. I cans turned into I can'ts in a timeline that feels all too unfair, which is rich coming from the person who is merely the observer. 

Anyway, in regards to yesterday, if I was driving 3 hours to a trailhead with a 3:30 am wakeup call, I needed to make the most bang for my buck. The prudent thing would have been to stick to my training schedule and run 20 miles on the Greenway. However, I have zero regrets about spending a sun up to sun down day in the mountains in the fall. Despite my rolled ankle, angry toe joint, and some rather sketchy sections of trail, I needed this day. 

I say that I run so far so I don't have to face my feelings sometimes. If I wear myself down physically, I have no room for my brain to worry about anything other than survival basics. There's probably a sliver of truth there, but I also know that it's far more complicated than that. Moving through the woods with my own power feels both cathartic and fortifying. It's often as simple as being in awe of the visual spectacle of the changing seasons. It's about challenging myself with route finding and the ongoing puzzle of fuel and hydration. 

It's no different than navigating the regular days of life. Some are handled with grace and ease. Some are handled with tears and shouts. Sometimes there are no right answers. But we choose a path, shine a light on it, and move forward.