"Seems to me that I have in the past few years been so nibbled and pushed by light minds and troubled by tiny things that I have been constantly off balance. Large things I can stand up to. I think most people can — I believe that men are destroyed by little things—so little that they can’t be got at or even identified—the nibbling of ducks.

A large demand may stimulate—a thousand small ones only confuse and erode."

John Steinbeck (in a 1952 letter to a friend, from “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”)

I’m no Steinbeck, but his letters resonate with me. Especially, at the moment, this one. The universe served it up for me on Sunday morning (via my Readwise highlights feed), as if on cue.

Because like Steinbeck, I’ve felt those thousand nibbles. Incomplete projects, distractions masquerading as entertainment, an endless flow of low-level obligations — they’ve left me off balance, drifting.

I have ideas (a lifetime supply) but I capture them and stop. I write but don’t publish. I run, but without enthusiasm, and just enough to keep my streaks. I read, but it’s short and shallow, articles instead of books. It’s been a months long low-grade malaise, with no change in sight.

But… “a large demand may stimulate” and I was just given one of those.

On Saturday, after 9 years of wanting and working and waiting, it finally happened: my name was drawn in the Hardrock Hundred lottery. I wasn’t even watching at the time (my odds were only about 15%, and I guess I was bracing for yet another rejection), so when messages from friends started coming, I was skeptical, held my breath in disbelief until I confirmed it. But it was true — in July, I have a spot in the toughest race of my life.

In the hours after the draw, I was giddy, an overexcited child on Christmas morning with the gift of their dreams. I wanted to tell everyone (but introvert me also wanted to sneak away and hide). Hedonic me wanted to celebrate with an evening of beer and food. Military me wanted to make lists, start phasing the operation. We were all a bit overwhelmed.

So I did what I always do — I went for a run, and that brought me back to ground level, snow-and-dirt level. Out there on trail in the dark (it’s rifle deer season here) the grandiosity of it faded into the rough-but-lovely reality of all the miles of grinding between here and there.

And of course, that’s exactly what I need, exactly what’s been missing lately — a large thing to stand up to, a task with enough difficulty to demand my full effort and attention.

It’s already working.

My runs this week feel purposeful — I’m not just going through the motions anymore. I’ve started reading a promising new book and I’m publishing here for the first time since August. Hardrock is already doing its work on me, and this is only the beginning. Let’s see where the next 30 weeks worth of miles take us.

For some background on Hardrock and why I’ve wanted it for so long, check this post from a few years ago:

Not fare well,

But fare forward, voyagers.

—T.S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

I waited to make this post, to let the emotions of race weekend settle and to absorb the reality that a cancelled 100-mile race is not much in the larger scheme of things. There are far, far worse things happening in the world.

It felt tragic in the moment, but we will all be just fine.

In the moment, at 4:30 Saturday morning as we arrived at the relocated start line and heard the news, it felt like a cruel joke and an impossibility.

Sadly it was quite real, and nothing — not the extraordinary efforts of the race team to find a way to make the race happen, and not the collective will (or wishful thinking) of the hundreds of ardent individuals involved — could change the reality that the water was still rising.

The race team continued the pattern I described in my last post (a challenge arises, that challenge is addressed, and the race moves forward). But through Friday night into Saturday morning, the rate of challenge accelerated — more submerged aid stations, more road closures, bridges out, local communities evacuating... and the creeks had not yet crested.

When the early-morning disaster declarations came in, there were no more options. The first responders were needed elsewhere, and there was no responsible way to continue this race.

The emotions were intense. A 100-mile race is not something you just do, and an event like this one is not something that just happens. For runners it’s the culmination of months, sometimes years, of focus. For organizers, and their devoted army of volunteers, it’s a full year’s worth of labor focused on a single weekend. For all, it’s an immense and intensive investment of time and energy and emotion.

So yes, big emotions… bewilderment, disappointment, frustration, sadness. I saw some tears. What I didn’t see was anger, or acrimony, or anything remotely defeatist. People lingered at the start line drinking coffee, chatting softly, laughing nervously, coming to terms with this new reality. And drawing solace from the crowd — this was absolutely not what anyone wanted, but they were together in the experience of it.

Acceptance was not easy, but it was quick, and as the sun rose, emotions changed. “Ok, this is how it is now…” And as is our way, we emerged into positive action, into forward movement. Aid station supplies were diverted to evacuation sites, assistance was offered, new plans were made.

Saturday was a paradox. The creeks were still rising, the chocolate-brown water of the flood was spreading. But out in the mountains, the runs that feed the creeks were already returning to normal. The post-storm weather was prime for running, and many of us ventured out on smaller, consolation adventures.

Running with friends on these pristine trails under clear blue skies on this mild and bright day was a bittersweet tease, a glimpse of what might have been. But it was also a celebration of an elemental part of our sport that is always there, race or no race. The camaraderie of exploration and shared challenge is more important than any formal event.

So resilience became the theme of the weekend.

Saturday evening there was a picnic, and some of the natural leaders within the group helped turn the melancholy into something joyful. And Sunday night we walked up to the Little Pine dam, out onto the breastwork overlooking the muddy water and floating debris. We sat on blankets in the grass and looked up into the moonless darkness, watching for the Perseids against the backdrop of constellations and the misty faintness of the Milky Way.

As the occasional meteor streaked across the sky, as satellites cut their long smooth arcs of light, as the dew settled around us, I realized that there was no place I’d rather have been just then, no other people I’d rather have been there with. And while this was clearly not what we’d made this trip for, in a broader sense, it was exactly why we’d come — for connection: with ourselves, with each other, with nature and the wider world, and with our sense of both purpose and wonder within that world.

Forward, voyagers!

So today, a guest post, from… teen-age me!

It’s about climbing a mountain…

1979, all things considered, was pretty much an average year, but for at least one group of boys, it was the year of an adventure to be remembered for a lifetime.  Eleven Boy Scouts, most of us around fifteen years old, made the cross-country trip from Pennsylvania to the Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico, to backpack the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a southern range of the Rockies.  This range contains a spectacular array of sceneries and is the home of several magnificent peaks, including Baldy Mountain.  Baldy is the highest peak on the large Philmont Ranch, and is one of the highest in the Sangre de Cristos.  The trip was the source of countless stories and memorable adventures, but the clear high point of our 100-mile hike was the climbing of this mountain.

We first sighted Baldy from a considerable distance.  It was not an immediately magnificent mountain, but nevertheless, it drew and held our attention from the first moment we saw it.  Although the hike so far had been anything but monotonous, we were beginning to feel the effects of the New Mexico heat, the seemingly endless miles, and the diet of dehydrated food, so our expectations of this mountain in the distance served to distract us from these physical technicalities.

Of all the stories we had heard from Philmont veterans at home, the “Baldy climb” was told with the most reverence, and this reverence had transferred to us.  Indeed, as we continued down the trail, the purple-brown rock and patches of snow on the steep east slope became more defined, and the outline of the peak against the deep blue sky progressively became the dominant feature on the horizon.  Though we were then two days distance from Baldy, our anticipation grew.

It must be said here that, although we did view the upcoming climb with reverence, we had also accepted the stories we heard about the experience with some of the reservation any high-adventure story is accepted with.  However, by the time we descended the mountain the morning after the climb, none of this reservation remained, and we had reached an almost euphoric state of mind.

Our first real taste of this came as we dragged ourselves from our base camp tents at 9:00 the night of the climb, shouldered our packs, and headed toward the base.  It was a cool night, quite a relief from the heat of the day’s hiking.  A bright full moon cast the landscape in shades of grey and silver, and even under the trees we hiked without lights.  Except for a slight breeze rustling the aspens, the muffled grind of our feet on the trail was the only sound.

It was a good two-mile hike before we would break tree line.  At first we walked without speaking as we came to full wakefulness and absorbed the magical atmosphere we were walking through.  Gradually, we drifted into whispered conversation — old hunting stories, the habits of the male cougar, the possibility of seeing a bear tonight — the sort of talk that naturally arises at times such as this.

Conversation died as we crossed tree line and looked up at the now huge bulk of Baldy.  The first 100 yards above tree line was a rather steep bank of granular snow (somewhat an anomaly for Allegheny-bred hikers in July).  We increased our spacing to accommodate this, and slowly traversed the bank, digging our feet deep into the snow to prevent a fall.  Beyond the snow the mountain was bare.  The solid surface was covered by layers of rubble, rocks ranging from a foot up to a yard or more in diameter, lying like very large pieces of gravel on a pile.  As we moved higher, the air cooled and the wind picked up.  We reached the summit around midnight, exhausted and acutely cold.  The actual temperature was around 45F, but 40 to 50 mile-per-hour winds made it feel much colder.  We bedded down on the rocks behind a small wind break someone had pushed together from the rocks, and tried to sleep.

Early in the morning, we awoke and prepared for the spectacle of sunrise.  In the predawn grayness, with no bright moon in the sky, the mountain had assumed a bleak, desolate appearance.  The triumph we had felt last night was fading, worn down by a rough bed and the cold wind.  Then, almost instantaneously our despondency was gone, as a flash of yellow-orange light spread across a section of the eastern horizon, and a small orb of deeper color appeared in the center.

The sun rose higher, and the rays of color shot out in all directions.  Even the light coming straight to us was ray-like and brilliantly crystalline.  Several lakes to our right gleamed like giant mirrors, and smaller mountains to the left cast odd minglings of shadow and reflection.  As the sun climbed higher, the bright color faded into a clear, uniform blue.

We stood there staring for several minutes, not talking, not feeling the cold, just sharing the quiet grandeur, overwhelmed and humbled by it.

Then, a boy standing nearby began singing, and through the gusts of wind we caught a certain easily recognizable fragment of lyric: “Rocky Mountain High…”.

The rest of the story (from present-day me)

My school report ended with the sunrise, but of course there was more to this adventure…

Getting down off of Baldy was just as exciting as going up. After that sunrise, we descended a scree field on the north-east side of the mountain, a 1,000-foot shuffle-slide that was like nothing I’d done before.

Actually, the whole adventure was one “never before” after another: climbing a mountain over 12,000 feet high, panning for gold, climbing a tree with rope and spikes, building a trail… and more broadly, experiencing the Rocky Mountains for the first time, living in them, moving through them, getting to know them.

Indeed, by the time we traversed Tooth of Time Ridge and descended to the plain on our last day of hiking, we did feel at home there. And while we were glad to get back to Pennsylvania, and while I’ll always consider the Alleghenies to be “my” mountains, this first taste of the Rockies was strong medicine that has stayed with me, and it has pulled me back for many western adventures (hopefully there are more to come).

The throughline

Fundamentally, that Philmont expedition was my first extended time in the outdoors, and my introduction to the idea of purposeful, distance-oriented cross-country movement (along with the various physical competencies and problem-solving skills that go with that). This is a throughline that connects 14-yr-old me with 23-yr-old cavalry-officer me and with (much older now) ultra-runner me, here in 2024.

The army connection is easy to see — the small-unit teamwork and camaraderie of a crew (that looks and functions a lot like a squad), the uniforms... But believe it or not, the running connection is there, too. My first contact with the world of trailrunning and ultras came during that summer of 1979.

To prepare for Philmont, we hiked the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, covering its full 70.1 miles in a series of five weekend hikes.

It was on one of those hikes, on a hot and humid June day, and I can still see it clearly…

There we are, a group of boys in our heavy leather hiking boots, collapsed on the banks of a creek for a short breather, still wearing our 40-pound packs, panting in the heat. Suddenly —magically — there’s a man there amongst us, and he’s… running? He’s shirtless and unencumbered, Tarzan-like in his tiny shorts and bandanna. He smiles and says hello, pauses at the creek for a quick sip, wets his bandanna, and then disappears down the trail. It happened so quickly we weren’t sure we’d really seen what we’d just seen. I’m sure it hadn’t occurred to us that you could even do that.

But of course you can do that, and it turns out that 1979 was the year that Joe and Paul Butchko started exploring the recently completed long-distance trail we were on (it seems likely it was one of them we saw). At some point that summer, the brothers and some friends made their first attempt at through-running the trail. They only made it 57 miles in 1979, but one year later, in the first official running of the Laurel Highlands Ultra, four runners made it to the finish. And 34 years later, in the same race, I made my own long-ultra debut (and scored my first and only DNF, getting to the same 57-mile point as those trailblazers did on their first attempt). I returned in 2015, finished the race, and later that summer I ran my first hundred-miler.

Would I be an ultra-runner today without those formative backcountry experiences from the summer of ‘79? Would I have become a soldier if I hadn’t been a Boy Scout? Both are possible, and surely they’re all three (scout, soldier, ultra-runner) different manifestations of some underlying aspect of my being. But it does appear that my trajectory was set that year.

I’m happy with how it has turned out.

Some other relics

Journaling

My journal entries were shorter back then…

Buckling

For better or worse, this was where I learned the concept of earning awards for distance-based accomplishment (and I suppose also the idea of telling people about it, with simple humble-brags, or otherwise).

Miscellaneous

Curious what’s on a packing list from the 1970’s?

On Wednesday morning, I woke into a familiar post-ultra stillness.

The trip was over. My crew, the people I’d just spent so much time with, were back to their day jobs. The emotional highs of the run and the finish line had faded from my mind, just as the minor post-race aches had faded from my body. I was back in this other, “normal” world where no one really cares how far or how fast you ran (or how bountiful the wildflowers were, how steep and rubbled the trails were, or how deep the mud was). Other than my shiny new belt buckle, the only evidence I had that I’d even done the thing was a duffle full of jumbled gear, laundry, and leftover supplies.

It was quiet, and it felt completely, blessedly still.

That stillness is already fading, but here in its final shade, I’m thinking about this cycle of intensity and repose, and how it fits into the larger flow of our lives, nourishing our spirit and preparing us for the next round.

(This isn't just a running thing. Replace “race” with game or match or meet, fight or climb, speech or drill — any endeavor or adventure that has demanded your intensity, the earnest focus and application of your full capacity… if you have put the best of yourself out there in worthy engagement, I think you’ll recognize these stillnesses and the role they can play in our lives.)

There are actually two distinct periods of stillness after an ultra…

The first stillness

The first stillness begins when you've stepped away from the finish line, when the cheers (for you) have faded and the focus has shifted to the next finisher. After all those hours you finally sit (or lie) down, and the most immediate pain of the effort slips away.

This is where Afterglow lives (reason 6 from my Why Run Ultras? post), and the only thing required of you is to sit with it and feel it, allow it to emerge from your overheated core. During these fleeting precious moments, it’s possible that your senses may heighten, and you may see more sharply, hear more clearly. Your emotions (wherever they fall on the spectrum between triumph and regret) are likely to be mellow and accepting of themselves. And above all of it, there’s a deep sense of relief for the fact that, in clear conscience, you can just sit — no more forward motion is demanded for right now.

Savor this first stillness for its shortness and intensity, because it is brief. You can try to hold on to the essence of it, but soon (in minutes, perhaps hours if you’re lucky) it will fade into the pressures of hunger, gear-gathering, the ride home.

The second stillness

At some point after the race, you’ll wake up like I did on Wednesday, into a different stillness. If you're lucky, it will include some soothing silence and stillness, but it’s likely there will also be a vague sense of disorientation and melancholy. Finally released from months of obligation to a disciplined train-up, you might feel a bit adrift.

This is fine, a natural — even critical — part of the process. Just as you strengthen your body through deliberate cycles of overload and recovery, so too you can strengthen the spirit of your greater running self with some intentional indulgence during this second stillness.

That probably means allowing some laziness, and perhaps some minor gluttony. It means your runs can have a different tone, with less intensity, easier routes, more freedom to explore (and if you need to take a short break from running, that’s fine too). It’s a chance to shift some of your training time to other pursuits, or to just sitting quietly on your deck, watching the world go by.

Give this period the time it deserves. But also, be patient and watch, because eventually, the inevitable question at the heart of it all will arise: “What’s next?”

What’s next?

I’ve learned to approach this question in three parts: I analyze the past, I consider the future, and then I return to the grind, hopefully with enthusiasm and a renewed sense of purpose.

Analyzing the past means taking a conscientious look at your recent performance, the training that went into it, and the value of the experience.

For me, this starts with an initial download of raw impressions to freeflow notes about what I saw, how I felt, and what I did. The emphasis is on “raw” — I try to do it as soon as I’m reasonably coherent, and I try to capture everything I remember, anything that made an impression. This is not analysis, it is capture, and the longer I wait to do it, the less value it has.

Analysis comes later, and without urgency. I include objective facts like split times, paces, training miles, ascent totals (all those numbers…), along with my subjective evaluation of things like mental preparation and mindset, decision-making, race strategy and tactics… all the things that can help me do better the next time.

And finally, the most important (and most subjective) analysis of all: did I get at least as much out of this endeavor as I put into it? Was the whole thing worthwhile? Is it worth doing this, or something like this, again?

Considering the future begins with the answer to that question, and so far in my running career, it has always been at least “yes” (or sometimes “yes, and…” with some escalation of either difficulty or expectations).

Once I’ve established that there will be a next time, the rest is a technicality of personal and family choices around schedules, opportunities, bucket lists…. eventually leading to a decision, or at least a decision tree (if I don’t get into Hardrock, I’ll do this instead…).

Either way, the result is a new target, something to focus upon for the ongoing grind.

Returning to that grind is the only non-negotiable part of the whole thing. Regardless of what your game is, if you’re going to keep playing it, you’ll have to return to the grind.

And you’d best find a way to love that grind. Choosing a next thing can help motivate you and focus your efforts, but it’s your consistency and dedication to the grind itself that will get you there. If it isn’t elevating you and making you a better human, then you’re probably playing the wrong game. If it is, it will carry you naturally into the next challenge, and the next.

And that’s it: intensity begets stillness, and from that stillness comes the next intensity, and the cycle ebbs and flows just like that…

Maybe for the rest of your life.

Here’s what I wrote about it back then (quotes are from my journal, April 10, 2009):

I had a great run last evening.  It started the same as last Thursday – dropped Lucas at soccer practice near Boalsburg, parked on the edge of Rothrock [State Forest] at Galbraith Gap, and headed out on the forest roads.

Since I’m in good shape for mileage this week, and so didn't have to worry about getting a certain distance in, I felt freer to wander… At one of the big bends in the road, I left the road onto a trail… then took the next turn and headed straight up the mountain.

I’d found Spruce Gap Trail, a rugged path that mainly follows the fall line (perpendicular to the contours, no switchbacks) for 1 mile and 1,000 feet of ascent, straight up the mouth of the gap to the top of the ridge. It turns out that it’s fairly typical of the steep and rocky single-track that abounds here in central Pennsylvania, but for me on this first encounter, it was novel and it felt remote and extreme.

I had only an hour, and though I did make it to the top of the climb before turning, there was an important feeling of incompleteness, a sense of to-be-continued that might be the most important part of the whole little adventure:

I really would have liked to go farther, because I was still not across the top to a point where I could see out to the other side.

I guess that will have to wait until next time…

Those are the facts and circumstances of it…

* that I was out there in the first place, running

* that I was tuned-in enough to notice the impulse pointing me towards something new

* that I had enough slack in my system to feel free to follow that impulse

* that the adventure was not quite finished, that it ended with “until next time”

But none of that explains the impulse itself.

My post-run analysis makes it clear this was not as random or whimsical as it seemed at the time. At some fundamental level I knew I needed something new…

I am quite pleased with myself over this experience.  For the run itself, yes, but also for the fact that I’m energized by it, that I could feel myself coming alive as I pushed myself up that mountain and as I scrambled back down.  I like that feeling, but even more I like the knowledge and the reassurance that I can still get that feeling, that it hasn’t been extinguished and that I’ve not grown out of it.

Because I guess I begin to doubt myself, doubt my own hardiness and my own sense of adventure.  I start to feel that I’m getting old and sedentary sometimes.  I notice how hard it is to get myself out the door for a run, and how I don't always feel so inspired by the running, how it doesn't seem to have the same power or draw for me that it once did.

But when I was out there last night, and for an hour afterward, I really did feel good and alive and rugged, and it was not because I was trying to feel that way or went looking for it — it just came to me naturally, honestly, and that is the thing that I find so reassuring.

I have this image of myself, or the way I would like to be, but I’m never quite sure if that is really how I am.  But a thing like this gives me the evidence I need, convinces me that I am that person on at least some level.

And I really like that person.

So I should make more of an effort to operate on that level.  I should look at that experience and figure out what was different about it compared to my normal runs.  And the answer (or at least part of the answer) is obvious — it was hard.

But mainly there is that strong feeling of capability, of knowing that I am functional on that terrain, that I can move my body across it and keep up a pace and make my body work for me and be mobile and flexible and capable and competent.  That’s really the heart of the matter.

That run, and the period of transition that it triggered (from roadrunning to trailrunning, and from marathons to ultras), marks the current halfway point in my running career. More significantly, it was the entry point to a new community, a fresh set of challenges, and a more expansive way of looking at the world and moving through it.

I’m thankful for it as one of the great blessings of my life.

So of course if I’d not made that turn that evening, I’d surely have made it some other evening on some other run, right?

Yes, of course, probably… At least I’d like to think so — that something so significant, a part of my very identity, would have found its way through, regardless of my response to that particular cue on a random Thursday-night run in April.

But there’s really no way to be sure of that, is there?

It’s a fact that small and apparently inconsequential decisions-in-the-moment can have outsized impacts on the course of our lives. That these events seem to arrive exactly on schedule to bump us onto the path we are “meant” to follow is a different thing, a matter of belief rather than fact.

Whether it’s a truth or a metaphoric illusion, that sense of “meant to be” is powerful. My pragmatism tells me to use it as a tool for navigating life with a sense of purpose.

The same instinct tells me to honor the possibility of each moment, to be open to and watching for the next signal, and to have enough slack in my system that I can follow it when it comes.

Pay attention…

Related Posts

Spruce Gap is central to the trail system around the Galbraith Gap portal to Rothrock State Forest (and my “home” mountains), so it’s part of some of my oldest and dearest routes (my ceremonial 15th-anniversary run last month was my 196th time up Spruce Gap Trail).

So it’s no surprise that it shows up in some of my other essays. It was one of the main places I had in mind when I wrote Intimate Places:

…and it has a central role in What is it you plan? (a story about Carl Undercofler, the “Godfather” of trailrunning in central PA):

Also…

My transition into trailrunning was a specific example of the rewilding I talk about here:

…and the premature turn-around at the top of Spruce Gap on that first trail run (“…I really would have liked to go farther, because I was still not across the top…”) is the kind of concession I explored here:

[Quotes are from my journal, photos were not part of the original letter.]

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you are all well, and I wish you happy holidays.

It’s a most unusual season for me, the conclusion of a long and challenging year. My unit, the 304th Civil Affairs Brigade, is mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom. I left home in January, spent April to September doing tactical CMO (civil-military operations) in support of British forces in southern Iraq (Umm Qasr, Safwan, Az Zubair), and I’ve been working in Ar Ramadi as the 82nd Airborne Division’s CMO Plans Officer since October. We expect to be home sometime in late spring.

You may not find the usual levity in this year’s letter — it just doesn’t feel appropriate right now. But maybe I can bring it around to something positive by the end.

Please bear with me — the theme is paradox.

11 Dec 03: “This afternoon, as we sat in the main HQ of the 82nd in Ar Ramadi planning a jobs initiative to get 12,000 local Iraqis back to work, a car-bomb went off inside our perimeter. The driver — and the young soldier in the cab escorting him — were killed instantly, vaporized in a blast that left a 5-foot deep crater in the paved road, and blew out all the windows in the palace where we work, ~100m away…”

Jobs programs and suicide bombers — it’s the kind of extreme paradox that has become commonplace here. There is progress and terror and hope and hatred on both sides. US deaths in the hundreds, Iraqi deaths in the thousands, dollars in the billions… We plan and build and mentor, and we barely flinch at the explosions, or when the mortar rounds land around us.

15 Dec 03: “A convoy of ours was ambushed this morning on the way to Baghdad [304th Civil Affairs soldiers, 5 vehicles]. They were hit near Fallujah, first by a couple IEDs, and then by about 20 attackers with AK-47s and RPGs. They attacked from 150 meters and were spread out over about 600 meters. We had no casualties, and we killed at least 2 of the attackers, wounded an unknown number…”

Peacekeepers as killers, lives risked and taken on a trip to coordinate developmental projects with CPA… and the projects are slowly but surely being started. The electricity is getting more reliable and the people have food and water and health care. Schools are in session and we’ve started a women’s organization and a human rights group, and we are training police, coaching city councils on the functional nuts and bolts of democracy… but the natives are still restless here in the Sunni Triangle.

15 Dec 03: “… a quiet night last night, no more gunfire than usual, nothing to indicate they even noticed the Saddam capture. But around 1600 today the gunfire really picked up. High rates of fire from many weapons all around us, sustained for about 1½ hrs. Nearly continuous machine-gun fire… Also several rather large explosions, lots and lots of honking horns, people shouting and singing. Some of it was just random or celebratory, some of it directed at our towers, and some of it was an attack on the police stations downtown. At first we thought maybe they’d just gotten the news about the capture, but the real reason was an Al Jazeera report saying that the US had actually captured a body-double, that Saddam is still free…”

There is a cynical explanation making the rounds here for the state of things (in Iraq and at home): “People get the government they deserve”. Let’s hope it isn’t so, because some of the most deeply disturbing paradoxes are coming from home. We talk of freedom and democracy in the Middle East, while we voluntarily relinquish our own freedoms in the name of safety (and doublespeak it as “patriotism”). Benjamin Franklin said if you’re willing to do that, you deserve neither freedom nor safety.

There is hope here, though. Regardless of how or why we got into this situation, we’ve done a good and noble thing. There may be ignorance, arrogance, and ineptitude at the top, making the price in lives and dollars much higher than it could have been, but there are also thousands of dedicated people at all levels working hard to make a difference and help Iraq capitalize on its new liberty, and its potential. We can still succeed here, if we stay the course. But we must be strong enough to be truthful, to not falsely portray early success in the interest of winning an election or justifying defense policy. We have years of hard work ahead of us if we want genuine success, and we owe that to those who have died here.

Enough of that, though, because life goes on at home and I need to mention that, too. Whatever my situation has been, Renee has had the tougher challenge, and she’s managed to keep home and business going (even growing) through the whole thing. She has effectively been a single, working mother now for 22 of the last 24 months, with more ahead. But she is an exceptionally strong and resourceful person, and she’s had indispensable support from a steadfast network of friends, family, and clients. Thanks to all of those people (and to those who have sent letters and care-packages to me). It is deeply appreciated.

Lucas is now in first grade at Nittany Valley Charter School. He’s a great reader and swimmer and soccer player, and he’s learning to speak Spanish. We have a lot of catching up to do when I get home. We have a cat now, too — a Sphinx named Angelica. (And we’ll have a dog again, soon after I get home.)

I did get 2 weeks of leave in Nov. We spent the time in Baltimore, and Harrisonburg, VA — a pure vacation visit. We went to the aquarium and ships and submarine in Baltimore, and spent our mountain time doing a lot of swimming and biking and climbing and eating at nice restaurants, and trying our best to stretch out the visit. (I managed to run a personal-best marathon in Richmond while I was there, too.) We look forward to a lot more catch-up time when I get home next year.

I‘ll close with a plug for a couple of country music singers. I’d never heard of them, and it’s not my kind of music, but please — go out and buy Craig Morgan’s album, and Jolie Edward’s, too. I’ve always been cynical about USO-type tours — never saw them going to the front where I was. But on Christmas evening they were here with us, and they didn’t need to be. He has a top-10 hit (“Almost Home”), she has a new record contract, and they would have been just fine at home with their families for Christmas. But instead, they were here in Ar Ramadi, playing to 100 soldiers in the back of an army mess hall, risking their lives to fly in and back out. They were (to quote Joni Mitchell, I think) “just playing real good for free”, and from the looks (and some tears) on the faces of the soldiers, probably making a greater impact than they’ll make again for a long time.

They ended the show with a wonderful rendition of Silent Night. I walked outside and it was clear and cold, and the sky was full of stars. For at least that moment, it really was “calm and bright” and in spite of everything, that’s how I will remember the end of 2003. We wish the same for you.

The Calverts

And here, now, in 2023, I wish the same for all of you.

When I left off, we were nearing the end of a long, hot summer in southern Iraq, redeployment was imminent, and the Philadelphia Marathon was on tap for November. Then:

Here’s the rest of the story…

A redirect: Richmond

Now, instead of going home, our brigade would have a couple weeks to regroup and reconfigure at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, then we’d move back into Iraq in support of the 82nd Airborne in Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

In other words, there would be no celebratory group running of the Philadelphia Marathon.

But there was one bit of conciliatory good news to go with this change of mission: a leave program, the promise of 15 days state-side. Immediately, my runner-with-a-streak-to-protect wheels were turning, and as the leave situation solidified, I settled on a new target.

Here’s the latest on my leave... I should leave Ramadi in time to get to Baltimore on about 3 Nov, if all goes right.  I’ll have 15 days from whenever I get to Baltimore.

Unless you think it will be too much of a distraction, I was thinking of running a marathon while I’m home.  It just so happens that the Richmond Marathon is 15 Nov, and that is generally in the area we had talked about going to, so maybe we can work that in…

—from my letter to Renee, September 24, 2003 (Wednesday)

Champion Base

A great idea, and she agreed. In the meantime, we moved on to our next mission, in Ar Ramadi. Here’s how I described things there (in letters to Renee)…

October 2, 2003: I’m at my new worksite now, in the G3 Plans section of the Div TOC.  The trip here was long (3 days), but uneventful.  Champion Base is easily the nicest location we’ve been to so far.  The Div TOC is in a Saddam palace, and we live in a small compound on the palace grounds…

October 5, 2003: …there are lots of large trees — Mimosa, Eucalyptus, etc. — and 1/2–acre orchard with pear and pomegranate trees, and lots of date palms and even some grass.  The temperatures are only in the 90s now, and it really feels like fall — the same kind of clear blue sky and crispness that we have at home.

October 7, 2003: Still very busy, and that is just how it is going to be.  It is 2330 now and I just finished briefing the Chief of Staff and revising a product according to his responses… …I've been in the office like this from 0800 to at least 2300 almost every day, minus a 2–hour break in the evening when I do PT and eat.  Last night I was on the walkway behind the building we sleep in a little past midnight, having a bucket-bath in the moonlight, when a mortar barrage came down near the camp right across the river from us.  Not just a few rounds as is normal, but about 10 rounds in a period of 30 seconds — a coordinated effort...

Anyway, it is already the 7th, and time is just flying by.

So, long hours and busy, busy days, but there were those PT breaks, and I tried to make the most of them. The base was more than a half-mile from end to end, so my loops were larger than they’d been in our Umm Qasr compound. And there were the trees, the orchard… it was a garden spot compared to the south. I managed over 150 pre-marathon training miles there that October, and between that and those hot summer miles on the port, I was in pretty good shape.

Some of those miles were also pulling me into philosophy…

From my journal…

October 25, 2003: I have my last big run tomorrow — I ate the midnight meal tonight to try to carbo-load a little bit, and I think I’ll be fine for it.  The biggest obstacle is just the course — so many little circles. Just getting out there and doing it without thinking of the boredom of it is rough.  But, I’ll do it, with the help of my MP3 player and the anticipation of going home so shortly, and it will be fine.

October 27, 2003: Some thoughts about myself and my motivations and the quality of my soul…  As I was grinding out mile after mile last night in the dark, on the hard pavement, with my feet hurting and thirsty and hungry, I realized that it was going to hurt, that it was dark, that no one on Earth would know if I stopped early, and no one on Earth would really care one way or the other, and that even with those facts, I was going to keep on running and do the whole 20 miles.  And I asked myself why I would do that.  And I asked myself if such self-discipline and such […] integrity to myself when no one is looking does anything to counter the other times when no one is looking and I do things that are much less honorable.  I don’t know if it works that way at all, if there is a ledger that weighs good against bad like a scales and decides whether, on whole, you are “good” or “bad”.  I think that it probably doesn’t work that way. But I think it does speak to my qualities that I am capable of both extremes…

My run last night went well.  19.6 miles, and I did it at a considerably lower heart rate and faster pace than the 18.2-miler I did 2 weeks ago. And I’m not excessively sore, and everything seems to be working right and I’m in good shape.  This all bodes well for a good run in Richmond, and I’m looking forward to it.

The race

Getting out of Iraq was both an ordeal and a relief. It also provided a reminder that nothing is a given…

A piece of news (from Fallujah, of course)… Yesterday morning a Chinook was shot down — the same flight that we took a day earlier.  One dead, ten injured, and that’s all I know about it, but it’s one of those close calls that really make you wonder about things and say “what if”.

— from my journal, November 2, 2003 (Sunday)

Of course I did make it to the states, and we had our blessed tease of a temporary reunion, and towards the end of that time, almost as an afterthought, I ran the Richmond Marathon.

I didn’t record much about the race itself (and I remember even less). About all I have is a paragraph in my journal from before…

November 13, 2003: This has without a doubt been the most low-key buildup to a marathon for me so far.  I have done very little micro-analysis of it, very little detailed preparation.  I did the runs, and I’m doing the calorie/carbo loading now, but beyond that, not much.  Maybe that is the best approach, especially this year.  Or maybe it is just a defense mechanism — I don’t know, and I’m not going to fret over it.  What I am going to do is get the food I need tomorrow, relax a lot, prepare myself logistically, try to get to bed early and get a good night’s sleep tomorrow, and then go into the race on Saturday morning to do the best I can, and accept whatever that is.

…and one from after..

November 15, 2003: The marathon went well — in fact it is the best I’ve ever done, and I broke the 4-hour barrier finally.  On top of that, it was by far the easiest […] I’ve done — mentally and physically.  I still feel pretty beat-up, but it just wasn’t as brutal as the other ones I remember.  So, that validates a lot of things and makes me feel very good, and makes (helps to make) the whole effort worthwhile.

(and a finish-line photo)

But later, after the good-bys, on my way back to Iraq, I put more thought into it and considered the larger context of my running, and training, and racing:

I felt good in this one — truly.  I had some moments of “highness”, and I had some moments like that while I was training.  There were some points during my long runs on Champion Base, in the dark, in the warm evening air under the stars and the silhouettes of large eucalyptus trees, when I could feel myself moving upward mentally, when that phrase from Chariots of Fire (”when I run, I feel His pleasure”) felt real to me, and when I was running through my physical fatigue with an honest smile on my face, my head up, my mouth open, my eyes wide in the dark.  I had similar moments during the marathon, and at those points I sometimes caught my breath, and had to fight back emotional tears.

Granted, this was an emotion-laden season, but I don’t think that is the full explanation.  I think it’s a product of my continued running, and my increased ability and my increased understanding of myself and my running, and its link to the basic elements of my nature.

— from my journal, November 23, 2003 (Sunday)

I think this was the moment of epiphany when I realized that this concept of running as a throughline was no longer just a romantic idea or a useful tactic for coping, but a lived physical fact that was becoming a core part of my being. I could remember it in both the distant and near past, and I could see it clearly in the future.

Having that, I could view my current situation as transient, just another thing that came and would go.

Portents of future adventures in distance

I was still many months away from the end of this tour of duty, and I was still many years away from my first ultra. But here’s more from that November 23rd journal entry:

“I found myself on a website this morning that advertised a magazine for marathoners and ultra-marathoners, and that got me thinking again about longer runs, about new challenges…

…I’m going to subscribe, and do some reading and exploring about ultras, … about what it would really take...”

Yes, the anchors were set, the throughline was there for me to follow.

I’m still following it today.

Miscellaneous…

I made my first appearance on a podcast last month — thanks to Dean Banko at Only Eye Athletics for the opportunity. We talk about a lot of things… Eastern States, the Eastern States Trail-Endurance Alliance, UTMB, my experience at Western States, volunteering, how my running experiences and military experiences relate to each other, and more… it was a good conversation that I enjoyed. You can listen on Spotify, or watch it on You Tube.

There were a lot of you — thanks!

That post drew more attention than anything I’ve published here before, and I’m heartened by the fact that so many people shared concern about the situation and were willing to speak up about it. In the interest of fairness, I want to acknowledge that UTMB gave a prompt and professional reply to our organization’s request to have our race (Eastern States 100) removed as an Index Race, and they sent this link to their “Open Letter to the Trail Running Community”. I’m not personally swayed by this, and our response was not based on the technicalities of the situation, but I appreciate that they at least acknowledge the issue.

Now, on to today’s topic…

Throughlines

In the first of my 20-years-ago posts about my second tour of duty in Iraq (Change of Mission (Iraq, 2003)), I said that running can be a test in itself, an elective “hard thing”, but it can also be a way to get through hard things — an anchor, or a refuge, a consistency that’s there regardless of pressures and chaos and deprivation.

That’s true, but there can be more to it. The real power, the thing that takes you beyond just temporary refuge, is continuity, the fact of a throughline that is solidly anchored in your past, and that you can see leading clearly into your future, (even if that line is the only thing you can see). The strength of it depends on the strength of the anchors, and how tightly you grab hold of that line and follow it.

I think it was during this deployment that I first thought of it this way. Here’s a journal entry from June 29, 2003:

There really are these two things that ground me, that have been pieces of constancy and relative stability through the past several years — writing and running.  For the past 5–6 years, I’ve been steadily doing both, regardless of what else is happening [and there was a lot happening], where I’m living, what I’m doing, what the external factors are.

Looking back now at my running (and writing) through those days, I can see how much I needed that, how preserving — and formative — it was. In particular, I can see that my commitment to a nascent marathon streak helped set my anchors in stone and gave me the throughline that, decades later, I still grasp tightly.

Finally on mission

After months of mobilization training, we finally arrived in southern Iraq in April, 2003 (30 days after the start of the war).

Our mission was tactical civil-military operations and support to civil administration in southern Basrah Province, specifically in the towns of Umm Qasr, Safwan, and Khor Zubayr, and at the Port of Umm Qasr (which is also where we lived, on a British logistics base located on the port).

There are many stories to tell about the work we did there, but those are for a different post (or maybe a book).

This one is about running…

When we arrived to Umm Qasr, we didn’t know how long we’d be there. The optimistic scenarios had us home by autumn, but other versions said we’d be there until sometime in 2004.

At this point, my running was only a tenuous throughline, but I was already starting to identify as “a runner”, and in 2002 I’d managed my 5th marathon in as many years despite being mobilized then, too. (That one was easier to manage — I was deployed to Germany for work in the Balkans, and I lived in Stuttgart.)

So, from the start of this deployment I was scheming about how to get my 2003 marathon in — either by getting home in time to run it in the fall, or by doing one here (soldiers were already staging marathons in Afghanistan… surely we could do the same in Iraq or Kuwait).

So I embraced the heat, I did my job, and while off-duty, I ran.

A long, hot summer (and lots of loops)

Initially, the threat level was low, and the entire port facility (over a mile and half end-to-end) was guarded and secure, so there was room for relatively large loops and lots of exploring.

The weather was warm from the beginning, and by May it was consistently over 100F in the daytime, but it didn’t get really hot until June. A sampling of journal entries tell the tale (both the good and the bad) of heat acclimation:

June 1, 2003: I can’t believe how low my heart rate is staying lately when I’m running.  It is weird, and I thought maybe the machine was misreading it, but I’ve done spot checks and it is accurate — and my heart rate is 5 or 10 beats lower than I would expect it to be.  Maybe it’s a short-term fluke, or maybe I just all of the sudden got healthier — from the fresh Iraqi air or something...

June 8, 2003: I would like to think that today was just one of those periodic flukes of a bad day for me for running, and that well may be the case.  But it also might be the case that I got cocky about my abilities and didn’t give proper respect to the high temperature.  I’ve been doing fine lately with my afternoon/evening runs at ~105°F, and so I wanted to challenge myself, so I decided to do a double lap, which would have been 7.4 miles, and I waited for the hottest part of the day to do it.  It was at least 113°F, and maybe warmer, and it was full sun, and I wore my 100-ounce Camelback which weighs several pounds (for the first time) and I set out with good intentions.  But it quickly became evident that it would be a struggle.  My heart rate shot up and stayed up early on, and I couldn’t keep it in the zone for anything without walking — which I eventually did.

… Was it the extra 5 degrees?  The extra weight?  Maybe just a bad day?  I don’t know for sure, and it is probably a combination of all of that.  I just have to take it in stride and learn from it and not be so cocky about hot-weather running, and most of all continue to be careful, without taking the easy way out.

June 10, 2003: Well, I feel better about myself now.  I went out and ran today when it was at least 112F, and I ran 5.6 miles, and it was fine.  So it makes it seem more and more like the bad run on Sunday was just a bad day.  I didn’t set any records, but I did finish strong, and my heart rate stayed down, and I felt fine.  And I will do a good week of running — shoot for maybe 27 miles total.  I think that level will be very sustainable. … Then I can start to add a long run each week once I have a date in mind for a marathon.

By mid-June, the days of free-ranging the port were pretty much over. Much of the port had been opened, the security situation was beginning to fray, and the only consistently “safe” running was within the confines of the logistics compound we lived in — a set of five large warehouses within a perimeter wall of shipping containers topped with barbed wire. I was reduced to endless looping in the space between the buildings and the wall: less than 0.8 miles per lap, four loops for a 5k.

If you’re curious, here’s that route today on Strava: UQ compound loop

Of course there was no Strava back then, and I didn’t get my first GPS watch until later in the tour, so knowing precise distances involved careful map measurement and a systematic approach…

I logged hundreds of laps of that nasty little compound, the broken vehicles and oil-soaked sand, and I kind of hated it. But in another way the hypnotic sameness of it, over and over, was soothing. As the temperature climbed and the mission dragged on, it helped keep me sane.

It also made me stronger.

Two months later…

I hate to brag, but… Wednesday was the hottest day we’ve had so far, and I waited until mid-afternoon when it peaked to go for my run.  I already had a run at 120F, but now I’ve logged mileage at 123F — how many people can say they’ve done that?

We were in Umm Qasr yesterday and sat down on the porch of a building in the market to talk with some people.  LTC Williams and I sat there for about 20 minutes, and when we got up, the people were laughing — the plastic chairs we’d been sitting on were soaked, and there was a 1.5-foot diameter puddle of sweat on the floor underneath each of our chairs, just like we had pissed ourselves.  Another very humid day, and in full battle gear, it gets hot.  (The vest itself weighs 23 pounds with the new ceramic plates loaded in it.)

—from my letter to Renee, August 10, 2003 (Sunday)

EOM date, and a plan: Philadelphia

By mid-August, we finally had a solid date for End of Mission: August 31, and it looked like we were on track to be home by October. So I did my research, picked the perfect welcome home marathon (our unit was from Philadelphia), and I started recruiting other runners. Here’s the “press release” I sent to the brigade:

PRESS RELEASE

22 August 2003

---For Immediate Release and Widest Dissemination to 304th Civil Affairs Brigade---

2/304th (PROV) leads the way (again)

The first in, last out, Fatwa-be-damned soldiers of TF Eagle are once again leading the 304th Civil Affairs Brigade into battle. This time the stakes are lower, but the intensity of the challenge is not. The battlefield is 26.2 miles of Philadelphia asphalt — the 10th annual running of the Philadelphia Marathon on Sunday, 23 Nov 03.

The list of participants is a leadership Who’s Who for the unit:

* Eagle 6 – LTC Nick “Maverick” Roper

* Eagle Red 6 – LTC Pete “Darwin” Goebel

* Eagle White 6 – LTC Jeff “Jesus” Williams

* Eagle Blue 6 – LTC Jules “The Count” Oroszvary

* Eagle 5 – MAJ Jeff “Duke” Calvert

* Eagle 7 – SFC Albert “Pandemonium” Pando

A Challenge Issued

These intrepid soldiers enthusiastically invite (and challenge) the leadership of the Brigade’s various other sub-elements to join them in this endeavor. They point out that as yet, there is no representation from the enlisted ranks, and there are no company-grade officers. They also note a preponderance of former Armor Officers in the group (not unexpected), and point out that no females or infantrymen have signed on. Hopefully someone will step forward to carry the torch for these forgotten groups.

Embrace the heat — it will make you strong

Members of 2/304th CA have proven this concept, at work and at play. In fact, they assert that if you haven’t logged at least a 3-miler at above 120F (dry-bulb, in the shade temp) you’re a wussy. (And that air-conditioners are a crutch.) But they are quick to caution that you must be well hydrated, you must start out slow, you should never increase your weekly mileage by more than 15% per week, and you must listen to your body (it will talk to you).

Perfect Timing

Fitness experts confirm the health risks of redeployment. According to one such expert, “We see it all the time — soldiers redeploy with these sleek, desert-hardened, heat-tempered bodies, but then they crash. They get back to Ft. Bragg and they binge on huge, juicy steaks and all-you-can-eat Thai buffets and glass after tall, frosted, icy-cold glass of Yuengling, and all that hard-won hardness is gone. But if they have a clear goal, something to keep them focused through the redeployment, something like a marathon a month or so after they’re home, they can beat it.” (Not to mention that a marathoner-in-training burns enough calories to eat and drink whatever-the-hell he wants.)

It just so happens that the Philadelphia Marathon is scheduled for a month or so after the unit’s projected return. In fact, a soldier starting a marathon train-up right now would be hitting the long mileage about the time they arrive back to the cool, lush hills and trails of North Carolina, and would finish training back in PA during the crisp, clear days of Autumn.

Were we light-hearted in our naivety, a bit giddy at the prospect of going home?

Clearly.

But why not…. our mission in Basrah Province was to end 9 days later. By September 7th we were scuba diving off the coast of Kuwait.

And a day after that, on September 8, 2003, we got our Change of Mission.

Redeployment is all fun-and-games, until you find out you’ll be spending your fall/winter/spring in the Sunni Triangle instead of Pennsylvania (and there will be no Philly Marathon for you...).

To Be Continued… (next week: Part 2)

The very short version of things is that a well-respected and beloved 100-mile race in the mountains of British Columbia (Whistler Alpine Meadows), directed by widely respected and beloved trailrunner Gary Robbins, has been displaced by a new race, through some apparently nefarious actions by a combination of the UTMB/Ironman organization and Vail Resorts (the owners of the resort on which the race occurs). (By the way, Gary was one of the spotlight characters in the Barkley article I photographed several years ago – see Barkley 2016)

Some background

For those who aren’t familiar with ultra-distance trailrunning… the modern version of our sport emerged in the 1970s, grew slowly for three decades, then exponentially over the past 10-15 years. From the beginning, it has been mainly a grassroots phenomenon, driven by passionate – and independent – individuals and small organizations, united by a general ethos, but with almost no formal structure or standardization. Exploding popularity has of course attracted corporate interest (which is not necessarily either good or bad).

One of the biggest of those corporate players is UTMB, which once was just the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, a 105-mile race around the Mont Blanc massif that starts and ends in Chamonix, France. Now UTMB has expanded to include a worldwide array of “by UTMB” branded races, and recently joined forces with the Ironman organization. That expansion is the context for the current drama. In this particular edition of that drama, Gary and his race are the small bookstore trampled by Amazon, the local mom-and-pop displaced by Walmart.

And those of us involved with other races like Gary’s can’t help but imagine that, if it could happen to him, it could happen to any of us.

So when members of the nonprofit board I’m part of (Eastern States Trail-Endurance Alliance – the caretaker organization for the Eastern States 100 in Pennsylvania) heard what had happened, we took notice. We are not generally a reactionary bunch, but we decided this situation was compelling enough to warrant a response.

More background:

What Really Went Down in Whistler (Gary Robbins)

Andy Jones Wilkins speaking about this situation

Our response

We spent Saturday morning drafting this statement:

I added my own comment to that statement from the board:

On a personal note, if you're familiar with our organization you'll know that among current and past board members we have multiple UTMB and Ironman finishes, spectacular experiences. We mean it when we say "with sadness and disappointment". The thing is, no matter how good your events are, you can't just do what you want, can't be a bully without repercussions.

You may realize that one of those UTMB finishes is mine (see My UTMB), and it was an overwhelmingly positive experience, a highlight of my running career... so I’m feeling that sadness and disappointment directly.

Redirect (this is an Intervention)

Which is why I’d like to try to slightly redirect the large (and favorable) response our statement has drawn (and I want to be clear that this is my own opinion, that I’m not speaking for our board when I write this).

I’m heartened by the broad support and strong emotions I see in the responses, both to our statement and to things that others have published, but I am not comfortable with the level of hostility that I see in some of those reactions.

I see this as an intervention, something you do for a loved one who has gone astray. Saying that “UTMB has lost its way” implies that it might find its way back.

I want this be much less “we hate you and everything you touch” and much more “we love you, man, but what you’re doing right now is not acceptable”.

My (perhaps naive) hope is that there are still some trailrunners within their organization, some people who still believe in the old ethos that led them to start their race in the first place, and that by calling them out loudly and publicly, with a united front, we might get enough of their attention that they ask some questions: Is this how we want to be? Is this the way we want to conduct ourselves? Is this what we want to be known for?

I’d like us to help New UTMB remember what Old UTMB was like, and help them find their way back to that. Because I liked Old UTMB.

Old UTMB and New UTMB

When I first learned about UTMB (circa 2016) my impression was that it was big, and it was different in its presentation – distinctively Euro, with more in-your-face commercialism, more spandex and more logos and more hype than North American trailrunners are used to. But it still felt like it was fundamentally the same sport, devoted to the same ethic — and it was an epic race, well worth working to get into.

It was also an innovator (in a good way). Some examples:

* an objective rating system for races — yes, we already had Ultrarunning Magazine’s system, but this was more comprehensive

* an objective rating system for runners — yes, we already had UltraSignup’s system, but this was more comprehensive and potentially more accurate

* uniform high standards for race management, for logistics and aid stations and runner safety, etc.

* cutting edge runner tracking and race coverage

All good things, I think — good for them, but also good for runners and good for the sport.

But now we get to the turn…

There is a huge demand for entry in UTMB’s main race in Chamonix, so like other popular races, they have a lottery for those spots, and to enter that lottery you have to accumulate points at other races.

When I earned my way into the Old UTMB lottery in 2016, there was a wide array of races to choose from, with points based on difficulty, and you just had to collect them (I got mine by running Black Canyon 100k, Manitou’s Revenge, and the Mogollon Monster 100-miler).

For New UTMB, the system is more complex, but its main feature is that you have to run at least one of those other “by UTMB” branded races to get access to the original UTMB.

So they have taken what was a relatively fair and accessible system that arguably helped the entire sport and produced a de facto world championship, and they’ve turned it into a closed system that allows them to monopolize that world championship. And now they are apparently using bully tactics to take out small players like Gary Robbins.

A way out?

I’m certain there is a way out. I’m not nearly as certain that they will find it and follow it.

But that brings me back to my hope, that this incident — and our response to it — might be a wake-up call, both for us as a sport and a community, and for whatever is left of Old UTMB within New UTMB.

I believe there is room for everyone in this sport. I believe there is room for different models, for the path my organization has taken as a non-profit, for independent for-profit race directors, and for large corporate interests. I believe it is possible to be big and commercial and to make a lot of money while still being ethical, responsible members of what is now a worldwide community.

And I believe there is still time for the trailrunners within New UTMB to realize they are off course, take back control of their situation, and return to their place as responsible leaders in our sport.

It’s amazing how your life can change from one minute to the next.  Yesterday morning we were gathered in the office talking about going home, thinking that we were weeks away from it, fully expecting to be completely home by mid-October at the latest.  I had firm plans for a marathon in November, and football tickets, and just being in Pennsylvania for the fall.

Five minutes later, we are not even halfway through the deployment.

We have been pulled from the mouth of redeployment, and are being sent instead to work with the 82nd Airborne west of Baghdad.  We will have a few weeks at Camp Arifjan to refit and reconfigure, and then we head back out for another 6 or 7 months.  There are not words to describe how it feels to hear that when we were so close to home…

— from my journal, September 9, 2003 (Tuesday)

Some context…

My Army Reserve unit (the 304th Civil Affairs Brigade) was 7 months into an Iraq mobilization. My subset of the unit, a provisional battalion task-organized for tactical civil affairs missions, had spent a long, hot summer working in Basrah Province in southern Iraq (I was the Executive Officer). A week earlier, we’d reached End of Mission and officially handed things off to the British unit responsible for the area. We were waiting in place for orders to return to Kuwait, expecting to be home soon, when we got the news.

I explained it in more detail to Renee…

What I said 30 minutes ago about being back to Kuwait by Thursday is still accurate.  Everything after that has just changed dramatically.  COL R-B just called and the Brigade has been given a new mission.  We go to Arifjan to refit and reconfigure, and then we go to Baghdad (west of) in support of the 82nd Airborne.  All CA tours have been extended to 365 days “in the box”.  That means we are probably in Iraq until April 04, and home by May or June.

Sorry to hit you with that so bluntly, but no easy way to say it.  LTC Williams, LTC Goebel, MAJ R-B and I were all sitting here in our TOC talking about getting home when the call came.  It was like the wind was completely knocked out of everyone, like we had all been gut-punched.  We have a meeting with the soldiers in a few minutes, and I can picture the reactions...

No details beyond that — we don’t know what exactly the mission is, or if we will stay together as a battalion or reconfigure into our old functional specialty teams or what.  All that we will learn back at Arifjan.  Don’t know how long we will be there before we go north, either.

Not good news to wake up to on a Monday morning, and I’m sorry.  But we will make it through somehow and eventually it will all be over.  I will talk to you again soon — have to go tell the soldiers now.

— from my email to Renee, September 8, 2003 (Monday)

And a couple days later, a brigade reunion, and some more information…

We all made it to Camp Arifjan yesterday with no trouble.  The rest of the brigade (minus a few people) is here now too.  It is an interesting reunion.  Not every team has worked out as well as ours did.  There is also an undercurrent of competition going on, like who had it hardest, who got shelled with mortars, who got stoned and mobbed and RPG'd and who had to eat T-rations and who had air conditioning and showers, etc. etc.  A little bit of that is fine, and the legitimate telling of stories is fine, but I have a feeling that it will be a difficult task to get these 4 separate groups (Umm Qasr/Safwan, Al Hillah, Karbala, and the rear detachment at Camp Arifjan and Camp Doha) functioning as a single unit again.

COL Beard briefed us this morning on what he knows of the mission (which isn't much, and will be more complete when he returns from the recon he just left on).  I said the 82nd Airborne before, but it is really an 82nd HQ with a brigade from the 82nd, the 82nd DIVARTY, and the 3rd ACR.  And the area is huge, from just west of Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders.  It includes Fallujah (where soldiers fired into the crowd back in May) and Ramadi.  Basically it is a portion of the Sunni Triangle, plus the western desert.

— from my email to Renee, September 11, 2003 (Monday)

In the grand scheme of things, an additional 6 months away from home is nothing. But when you've already been away for 8 months (or in my case, away for 19 of the past 21 months) and when you have a 6-yr old son at home, it can feel huge in the moment.

Yes, I’m starting in the middle of things with this post — I intended to start writing about my second visit to Iraq much earlier in the year. There have been many fine 20th-anniversary dates I could have used as a trigger:

* December 27, 2002: alert (“I called COL Fuoco last night in response to 3 urgent messages he left on our voice mail at home, and he informed me that I’ve been selected as part of a 36-man Advance Party, and we have a briefing Monday night at 1900 at the Reserve Center to learn more.  He did say that it is for possible deployment in 1-3 weeks...”)

* February 14, 2003: unit farewell, movement from Philadelphia to Ft. Bragg (“This morning was a little rushed and hectic, but I still managed to get that last 20 minutes of time with just them [Renee and Lucas] — in my office, and then a tearful goodbye with everyone leaving the building to load the buses, and then a good clean break as we pulled away (into a snowstorm).  I think it is the best way it could happen…”)

* March 19, 2003: start of the war (“The war started tonight and here I sit in the Holiday Inn [overflow housing at Ft. Bragg] and feeling very out of it all.  I’m busy until now (0140) doing equipment spreadsheets and other things…”)

* April 11, 2003: movement to Green Ramp at Pope AFB, on-deck for movement from Ft. Bragg to Kuwait (“Back to the wonderful world of Air Mobility Command flights — we left the motel last night at 0130.  We palletized our baggage, got weighed, etc. and we were to the terminal in the waiting/holding area by about 0330 or 0400.  It is now 1320 and we are still here — in a different building, but still here waiting.  We are now supposed to be on a flight at 1830.  Whether it happens that way remains to be seen — flexibility, hurry-up-and-wait, all of those clichés apply here in full measure…”)

* April 22, 2003: movement into Iraq (“Well, I'm here in south-eastern Iraq, convoyed here yesterday without incident, and we are now getting established.  I'm setting up our operations center, and we have teams out on three different missions in our area…”)

There were and will be others, but here we are in September, and I’ve published nothing about it so far. So I decided this change-of-mission anniversary was as good an opportunity as any to introduce the topic.

This is not something I think about much, or talk about, and it’s been years since I looked back at this period. I haven’t intentionally pushed it away or avoided it, but it was a long time ago and my life has moved on. Even so, it is also always there in the background, just beyond the edge of my awareness. And when I start looking at my photos and reading my journal, there are moments when it is yesterday (or tomorrow), and the feeling of it becomes real and immediate.

I’ve also known from the beginning that I’d eventually write about this war, and even though it still feels politically and emotionally charged, I’m hopeful that I have enough distance from it now to look back at my experiences objectively, and perhaps find some lessons in them. If nothing else, I’m interested in how this period shaped the longer narrative threads of my life as they passed through it.

Running is one of those long-term threads (and a justification for including this topic in this venue, alongside race reports and ultrarunner musings). Before this deployment, I was already firmly settled into my identity as a runner (and already five years and five marathons into the oldest of the many running streaks that are still with me today), and running is one of the main things that got me through.

Running can be a test in itself, an elective “hard thing”. But as I discovered, it can also be a way to get through hard things. It can be an anchor, or a refuge, a consistency that is there regardless of pressures and chaos and deprivation. This is what it became for me then, and it remains so today.

I’m hoping that it can also be a point of entry, or a good lens for this look back — my particular experience of war, from my perspective as a runner. I have a lot of notes — a treasure trove of journal entries and emails and letters and photographs, nearly 400,000 words of contemporaneous material. It feels immense, and I'm not quite sure how to approach it, so I’ll probably just jump in and go exploring.

I’ll try to bring you with me with some updates from time to time — maybe we can find something worthwhile along the way…

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So back in 2017, I ran the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc. UTMB is a 105-mile race around the Mont Blanc massif. It starts in Chamonix, France and goes counter-clockwise around the mountain through Italy, into Switzerland, and back to Chamonix. It’s mainly single-track trail, and it has about 30,000 feet of climbing.

I’m writing this account in August of 2021 (4 years after the fact), so it skips a lot of details (my trail amnesia is notorious), and relies mainly on the notes I took back then. Thankfully, UTMB also publishes detailed tracking data for every runner, which is how I know my arrival times, my position in the field, and other details.

My Facebook post on the day of the race is probably a good way to begin. Here it is:

Under 5 hours to the start of UTMB 2017, and I’m feeling incredibly privileged to be here, thankful for family and friends here with me, touched by all the messages of support from afar, and mainly very eager to get underway.  I’m feeling all-systems-go: well-rested, physically/mechanically sound, gear and nutrition packed-up and ready (final pack weight 12.8 lbs.), race plan (and charts, of course) in place.

There’s some dramatic weather (that’s the best kind) in store (message from the race this morning: “ATTENTION snow >2000m and temperature felt -9C”), and lots of climbing in some tough and beautiful mountains.  I intend to savor every moment of it, and do my best to represent our PA trailrunning culture and community in a worthy fashion — I am both overwhelmed and inspired at the thought of that responsibility. Thank you all.

The Start

It was exhilarating, the crush of so many runners in such a small space, the nerves and the cheering and all that crowd energy — I’ve not been part of a start like that in any other ultra, nor in any race since maybe the Chicago Marathon back in the 90s. This is truly the closest I’ll ever get to the Olympics.

In a start like this, you have almost no autonomy, no option other than to go with the flow of the people around you, no faster or slower. And you’d best balance your desire to take in the spectacle of it all with some concentration on the surface at your feet, especially as the road gets rougher on the outskirts of town. If you fall here, you’ll be trampled.

First Night: Crowds, a collision, allez-allez, and finally some peace in the very early morning

The first night is a blur. I have a few clear images in my mind, but not much context for them other than “first night” — no real sense of where exactly I was. The images mainly involve the dreadful crowd, the endless conga line that is unavoidable in the early stages of a race with over 2500 people.

Patience in a crowd is easier on the climbs. You know you should go slowly anyway, and the crowd helps with that. You pass every so often when an opportunity presents, but mainly you just slog along with everyone else.

But the downs… these early descents were maddening. They were easy, and they should have been fast. They were slick, yes (from heavy dew and mud and maybe some rain), but I train for that (and I was wearing my Altra Kings), and I wanted to go. But the crowd, that slow, hesitant, maddening crowd…

Some people were frustrated enough to take risks. We were on a long grassy down, a giant sloped pasture laced with a meandering web of interlocking cattle paths. These multiple paths allowed for a large speed differential between the confident and the hesitant, but there were some tight turns. One overeager young speedster in front of me lost control on one of those turns, and smashed into another runner at full speed in a brutal collision that left them both lying in the grass.

Patience, patience.

The first town, Saint-Gervais, was a welcome introduction to how it would be in villages for the rest of the journey — Tour de France-style crowds lining the entire route through town. Cheering and waving, high-fiving kids…

…and that perfect French cheer “Allez Allez” that rolls off the tongue so smoothly and hits your ear and your mind so perfectly. It holds no judgment or false hope, only an insistent “go”, and it’s so much better than our own weak “nice work” and “you’re looking good”.

The only other notable thing from that night was some time I spent with friend Lee Connor. We had leapfrogged a couple times through the night, but somewhere past Les Chapieux (mile 31) we started running together. The field was beginning to string out by then and we settled into a smooth and chill late-night cruise, with maybe 10 miles of good running and good conversation, through the final couple hours before dawn.

It was a slow start, but through the first night I moved up steadily and by morning I was solidly into the mid-pack.

Second Sunrise

Second sunrise is a special time, and it usually means you’re nearing the end. But in a race like this, you’re just getting started. Which means you have to fight to maintain intensity.

I might not have done that.

The first rays of the rising sun caught the south face of Mont Blanc as I climbed from Lac Combal (mile 41) towards Arete du Mont Favre. It was the most striking and beautiful second sunrise I’ve ever experienced.

I don’t regret pausing for that photo. But it wasn’t the only one.

That’s how it goes for me, and it’s the reason I rarely do this in a race — taking pictures flips some subtle switch, and I drift into tourist mode. Racing and “just running” are two very different experiences and they give me different things, different views of a place. Both are valid and both are beautiful, but I enjoy them in different, non-interchangeable ways.

In tourist mode I lose my focus and I drift from my purpose. I drifted in many ways through this second day.

Day Two: Drifting, aid station lollygagging, and a magnificent blizzard

Maybe you can see it here as I’m leaving Col Checrouit (mile 47). The glory of that sunrise is past and I’m settling into the warmth of the day and the long miles still ahead. My mouth is full of food, my stride is relaxed, the look on my face is just a little too satisfied… it’s not bad, and it’s sustainable (which is important, since I’m not even halfway), but I’m clearly not pushing the way I did through the night. I’m in tourist mode, autopilot, just drifting through a beautiful day in the mountains.

By the time I got to Courmayeur (mile 49), that drift was taking its toll, and I was getting sleepy. Renee was delayed getting through the tunnel from France to Italy, and by the time she arrived, I was slipping into that stupor state of the sleep deprived. The rising heat of the day accentuated the effect.

Movement is the answer for that, and I finally did move on. And of course I cycled through the slump as I always do, kept on keeping on, but it was uninspired.

The most notable part of day two (other than sunrise) was the blizzard.

I’m not sure when the weather changed, but in this photo on the descent to Arnouvoz (mile 60) at about 1:45pm, it’s cloudy and I’ve got my hat and raincoat on. At Arnouvoz, no one could leave without donning rain pants. I was irritated — as long as it’s above 0F, I’m in shorts. I thought of trying my “it’s okay, I’m an American” line, but instead I just went along with the indignity of it and put the pants on.

An hour and a half later (and 2400 feet higher), I crossed from Italy into Switzerland over the fabled Gran Col Ferret in high wind and a horizontal snowstorm, baggy pants and all. It was one of the coolest, most magical and surreal things I’ve ever done.

Another hour and a half, and I was to La Fouly (mile 68), invigorated by the spectacle of the mountains and the storm, but also tired, and facing another full night of running. I stalled again.

I was there in that station, trying to get myself to move on, but instead getting yet another cup of strong black tea, when Elle Spacek arrived. We’d never met, but we both had an American flag on our race bibs. We chatted a bit, I mentioned I was having trouble leaving, and she asked if I wanted to join her for a while. I did, and it was a good choice.

Late Day Two: A critical alliance

We turned out to be a really good team.

We left La Fouly together, and through the next couple hours of evening, we got acquainted, told our trail stories. More importantly, we started to realize we were compatible. Elle was a powerful climber, just on the edge of my capability — she pulled me up the hills. I was stronger on the descents, maybe more practiced and confident with the technicality (and the mud) — I lead her down the hills. There was just enough difference to push us both, without blowing us up. I know for certain I was faster with her than I’d have been on my own, and I think the same was true for her.

By the time we got to Champex-Lac (mile 77) we realized it was worth extending this temporary union, and we agreed to leave the station together (and we set a time for that departure).

Night Two: Turning point at Champex-Lac, rabbit hunting, and a decision

We arrived at Champex-Lac as night was falling, and we left in darkness.

It was a brief but powerful stop, the turning point of my race. Up to that point I’d had some good moments, and even with that day-two fade, I was still towards the front of the mid-pack. But it still felt mediocre, and something had to change.

It might have been seeing both Renee and Lucas, and knowing I had someone to leave here with (and an appointed time to meet her for departure, fast approaching). Or it might just have been time for it to happen. Either way, the sense of urgency returned, and I started to remember how I’d felt late in the race at Manitou’s Revenge (in the Catskills) earlier in the year. I realized that I wanted that feeling again — I wanted to pass people, to wear them down and knock them off one by one in the late miles. It’s a powerful feeling, addictive, and it’s hard to get to, but it’s also what I was really here for.

As we left that station, I got on that track, and through the remaining 28 miles of this race, I was the best runner I’ve ever been.

The details of it are hazy. Elle led the climbs, I led the descents, and we passed people. Over and over again we passed people, and it was incredibly fun. The fatigue faded, the miles went by, and soon we were at Col des Montets, less than 10 miles from the finish.

Our teamwork had been paying off: the race record shows that at that point we’d passed 162 people since leaving Champex-Lac. In just the short climb from Vallorcine to Col des Montets, we passed 17 people, and there were many more ahead, ripe for the plucking. I was in rabbit-hunting mode, feeling the surge. But now Elle was fading — she was so sleepy, after going so hard for so long.

I had a decision to make.

Before we seriously joined forces, I asked Elle to agree that if I couldn’t keep up, she wouldn’t let me hold her back. That was clearly the most likely scenario — she had just caught me, she was strong and I’d been fading, and it was the right deal to make. I figured I’d manage to hang with her for a little while, get a temporary boost for a few miles, and then I’d watch her pull away on a climb.

But that hadn’t happened, and now it was me about to pull away. I hesitated, thought about waiting, but then I thought about watching them go by, all those people we’d just worked so hard to pass on the last climb. It was too much — my inner good-teammate/protector yielded to my inner animal (“first, be a good animal”), and I pushed on.

I’m not particularly proud of that moment or that decision, but I am proud of the rest of the race.

Early Morning, Third Sunrise, and the Finish

The high route from Montets to the final aid station at La Flegere was closed by the weather, and the course shifted to a route that stuck to the side of the mountain below tree-line. It was rougher and rockier, not quite as extreme as Manitou’s, but similar. It fit my mood, and it was like an answer to the feeling that had started at Champex-Lac, and my memory of that race. This was my kind of trail and my kind of running — late race, tired-but-strong technical running, and it felt so good.

I was cruising, passing runner after runner, but a rising fog started to slow me down. I pulled out my backup headlamp (a Black Diamond Spot), opened the head strap as wide as it goes, stepped through, and pulled it up to my waist. The low-angle light cut through the fog and let me keep on moving on, let me pass people like they were standing still.

The final climb to La Flegere felt endless, but the sun was rising again, as was the sense that this was almost done. I passed another 58 people between Col Des Montets and La Flegere, and I got a solid dose of that rush I was seeking.

The last 5 miles, a long and twisting descent on gravel roads and rooty, washed-out trails, went by quickly. At the bottom, back in Chamonix, it was just past 8am, too early for the big crowds. It was still loud, still more people than are likely to ever be cheering for me at a finish again. You wind your way through town, the crowd gets louder, and then you’re in that finish chute and 37 hours and 52 minutes after you started, it’s over, just like that.

It wasn’t long until Elle came in, too, recovered enough to finish strong and smooth — a good ending.

Post Race

I don’t think I can say it better now than I did back then with my Facebook post from the day after the race:

So, that’s that.  UTMB was an amazing race — the hardest I’ve ever run.  Going in, I was thinking that a finish would be success, that this was probably a 40-hour race for me, and that if I had a really good weekend where everything went right, I had a shot at 38 hours.  Well everything did not go right (does it ever?), but some things did, and it was enough to get me in at just under 38 hours.  I can look back at things I’d change (I spent far too much time in aid stations, for example), but I also made some very good choices along the way, and I can say without hesitation that in the final 25 miles of this race, I was the best I’ve been so far as a runner.  In that span I went from having visions of a death-march struggle against cut-offs, to feeling strong and smooth and getting stronger with each climb and each person I passed.

This was not all me.  I’m deeply indebted to a lot of people — especially Elle (who I met and teamed-up with on the trail — thank you!) and my family (crewing this race was probably more of an ordeal than running it).  And also to those of you following from a distance — I don’t generally make my racing so public, but I felt a different level of responsibility with this one, and I wanted help in holding myself accountable for a full effort.  Carrying the GPS unit that let you track my progress, knowing you were watching and “with me” — it really did make a difference, and I thank you for that.

If you’ve been with me here for long, you know that the only thing I’ve been writing about lately is my preparation for Western States, the iconic 100-mile trail race I finally made it into this year.  You’ll also realize that the race was 3 weeks ago and I haven’t yet published a final capstone report about it.

The fact is, I’ve been slumping since the race, mired in more than the normal amount of post-race malaise, caught in anticlimax, feeling ambivalent about running and under-enthused for writing about it.

No, I haven’t stopped running. My array of streaks acts as a pilot light — they’ve taken on a life of their own, and it would take something much more catastrophic than a little post-race malaise to break them. But the runs have less zest, like I’m just going through the motions, and there’s more questioning: why am I still doing this?

And yes, I say all the right things about the race (it truly was a powerful experience). People say “how was Western States? It must have been great!” and I say yes, it was great! It lived up to the hype. It was amazing. You should definitely keep punching your ticket, keep entering that miserable lottery, because the experience is everything you’ve heard and more!

All of that is absolutely true and accurate, and all the good things I write about the race (when I finally write about the race) will also be true and accurate. There are things from this race I’ll remember for the rest of my life — the crowd at the top of the first climb, that marvelous snow on Red Star Ridge, the genuine enthusiasm of the people in the halfway towns, seeing my family in Foresthill, those middle-of-the-night miles with my son, having my wife run the final miles into that indescribable finish line… yes, a whole lot of goodness.

I intentionally leave out the malaise part. And if I mention that I was disappointed with my performance, I try to downplay that. After all, this was a life-list race, an experience that so many people dream of — how greedy and ungrateful must I be to even think about something so petty as my finish time, right?

Well, no, I don’t really believe that. I know that it’s possible to both deeply appreciate the experience and also be less than satisfied with my performance.

But the truth is that nobody other than me really cares (or even notices) that part, so I try not to talk too much about my results and how I feel about them.

Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still feel: disappointed with my performance; slightly embarrassed at the apparent delusional hubris of my publicly declared goal; and guilty about all of that (because how greedy and ungrateful must I be…)

Thus the malaise.

Recovery

Hardrock was last weekend.

If you’re unfamiliar, Hardrock is another iconic life-list hundred miler with a rich history and a long-shot lottery for entry. (Background links: I wrote about Hardrock in Lottery Day, and Sarah Lavender Smith has a good orientation in Hardrock’s Draw.)

I tuned-in to the Hardrock livestream on Saturday morning, waiting (along with several thousand of my closest friends) to see (among other things) Courtney Dauwalter’s finish. Hosts (and veteran Hardrockers) Maggie Guterl and Andy Jones-Wilkins were discussing various aspects of the race and the route and the runners, and sharing footage of runners from around the course. It was riveting coverage, and it led me to some important insights that have me on the mend.

1st insight: A concrete problem to solve

My revival began when the topic turned to faltering runners who weren’t having the race they’d hoped for — what are they thinking, how do they go on? Of course the answer lies in the importance of tiered goals (what I call a hierarchy of goals) and having the flexibility to accept it when you have to give up one tier and drop to the next.

As they talked about their own experiences with mid-race goal adjustment and expectation management, it occurred to me that, though I’ve sometimes done well with this, that was not the case at Western States. In fact, it seemed that my abiding feeling of disappointment was the result of a dysfunctional hierarchy of goals, not my performance itself.

As always, I’d thought about (and this time published) my hierarchy, but this particular time I hadn’t truly embraced it. Instead, I’d let my reach goal become my only goal, and when that slipped out of reach, somewhere around mile 70, I was adrift (and remained adrift weeks later).

Recognizing this helped change my vague and amorphous feeling of regret into a concrete problem to solve — something I can fix in my next race. And for an ultrarunner, having concrete problems to solve (and a next race) is a major step towards recovery.

2nd insight: There’s still time (older, faster, stronger)

Another realization… three of the first eight Hardrock finishers were at least 48 years old (including Javier Dominguez, who passed Courtney in the final 2 miles for third place), and ten of the 111 finishers were older than me. And this, a week after my friend Mary Kowalski (only a little younger than me) won Pennsylvania’s brutal Ironstone 100k for the second year in a row, (breaking her own course record in the process).

It’s not all about age, but age is certainly a factor, so it’s nice to have these reminders that there can be more good running ahead, if I want it. (Coincidentally, Sarah also wrote a valuable piece on this topic recently.)

And oh, by the way, I’ll have 32 tickets in the next Hardrock lottery…

3rd insight: The spirit of our sport (and that pass!)

Yes, that pass, and with it, we can seal the deal, complete the renaissance.

We’re in the final couple miles of the race. Courtney is in third place and running strong, but Javier (who has run the entire race without crew or pacer or even drop bags) is closing on her, also running strong, and no matter how much you love Courtney, you can’t help but cheer for Javier, too.

The coverage is perfect, with a camera on each runner, and in a moment they are side by side, and they run together. That moment, their side-by-side strides, their smiles, the general grace of their exchange, is a perfect encapsulation of the spirit of our sport.

Competitive, yes — but there was (and is) so much more to it. I still want to be a part of that.

Now what?

There were many more moments of electricity and emotion before and after that, but that’s the one that really broke my spell. Put that with those other insights, and it has me feeling excited again, able to look forward towards the next adventure with renewed enthusiasm and optimism.

I may not have a specific answer to “Now what?” quite yet, but I am asking the question with a very different tone of voice now.

Thank you for that, Hardrock.

Tapering (phase 3)

The purpose of the taper is recovery — both mental and physical — from the hard training of the past 4 months or so. It’s a period to lock in gains and prepare for race day.

From part 1:

Tapering is an act of faith, and this is a time when wisdom must overcome ambition. There will be a strong urge to get in just one more big week, just one more big climbing day, but at this point, the potential benefits of more hard training are tiny, and the potential for harm is high. A good phase-III mantra? “Don’t do anything dumb”

Nothing dumb

That means: nothing to compromise the hard work that got me this far. No cramming, no crafty new speed workouts, no heroics. As tempting as it may be (I’m at peak fitness), this is not the time for PR segments, not the time for running fast on the rocks, not the time for anything that doesn’t center on caution and patience and restraint.

It’s also not the time to give in to dietary urges and splurges, or to slack off on the stretching routine or to get bad sleep, or to be sloppy with the tick checks (doxycycline is not a PED).

It’s a time to withdraw, to become monk-like and limit exposures — to stressors and distractions, to crowded spaces and diseased air, to anything that might cause me to break focus (tapering is NOT a vacation).

It’s been a good flight so far — now it’s time to land this thing.

Focus and prepare

To maintain focus, it helps to have some specific tasks and targets. I group these into four piles:

1. Physical Refinement

The guiding principle for physical training during the taper is “decrease volume, maintain intensity” — the high-mileage, big-climb weeks are over. A wise move is to redirect that running time towards your stretching (the same old routine, but slower, deeper, more relaxed, more luxuriant) and proprioception drills.

If you’re racing somewhere that’s potentially warm (I am) this is also the time for intensive heat training. For me, this is a 10-day period when nearly every run is IOD (intentionally overdressed: many layers, winter hats and hoods, etc.), at the warmest time of day, and followed by sauna time. It is a glorious sweat-fest that triggers your body to sweat well, retain electrolytes, and teaches it to love (or at least tolerate) the heat.

[As I was starting my heat training, I had a long conversation with ChatGPT about it. She was verbose and disclamatory, but also helpful (and it has jokes and haikus!)… you can read our discussion here.]

This is also a good time to work in some NRA “runs”: No Running Allowed… unless you’re elite (and probably even then), walking is a vital — but likely undervalued and undertrained — part of 100-mile success. And there’s a big difference (like 2 or 3 minutes/mile) between just walking and Walking-With-a-Purpose. It’s worth practicing.

2. Tactical Planning

For me, tactical planning is one of the best parts of this game. I talked in detail about how I do that here:

Quoting from that article:

A hundred miles is too much for me to comprehend as a whole. To take it on, I have to simplify it, create a metaphorical representation of it that specifically leaves out many details, while drawing out other details that I might not otherwise see.

3. Logistical Preparation

This part is pretty straightforward, but the details count. Choose your gear and supplies, make sure you have it all on-hand (inventory and order well ahead of time), make sure it all works and everything is charged, decide where it goes (on your body, in your pack, or in a drop bag or crew bag), and then pack it all up.

Simple is better, lighter is faster, but consider contingencies and worst-case scenarios.

And then check it, and double check it, and check it again.

4. Mental Readiness

Working the details of those first three — the physical, the tactical, and the logistical — and knowing that I have them right, is the biggest key to mental readiness for me. But I augment that with a couple things…

I make it feel epic

This is an act of positive self-deception. The upcoming challenge and the hardships are voluntary, and there’s almost always a safe and easy way out — you just have to stop. But deep in our sheltered modern souls we want that not to be so. We crave true tests and epic situations, and one of the main reasons we run these races is to simulate that for ourselves.

But for that to work, we must nurture the illusion. So now is not the time to equivocate, to say to ourselves that this doesn’t really matter. Of course it doesn’t matter, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t very, very, important.

I add music

Loading my (mental) jukebox is one way I keep it epic. I build a playlist of epic-feeling music (music that helps put me in touch with “the rush of it all”). I listen to it while I do those long stretch sessions, while I pack my bags, while I’m on that flight. I lodge it firmly in my mind, and then, at key moments, I can turn it on to help me up that climb, or to magnify the impact of the view from the top.

If you’re curious, here’s my WSER 2023 playlist.

Get There (phase 4)

Race Week is also Transcontinental Travel Week, with all the stress and joy that comes with that.

Best be ready ahead of time, leave some margins, some cushion. And then — just go with the flow.

This is where I’m at now…. and somehow I’ve managed to get everything ready and packed. In fact, other than one more little trot through the gamelands, this post is all I have left to do. Tomorrow morning we enter the air travel system, and hopefully it will spit us out in Reno tomorrow afternoon, and then it’s on to Olympic Valley and Western States.

Race Day (phase 5)

24 hours of patient, focused intensity, as the culmination of 25 weeks of focused effort, after 25 years of sustained practice…

Yes, of course it’s about the journey, and it’s about the practice, and of course that is more important than this or any particular race, and the results of this race will not make or break anything about those 25 years (or what follows).

But…

…for at least one day it is about this race. It’s about submerging into the single-minded focus of the race, dealing with whatever may happen, solving problems, pushing, getting the very best from myself.

So I’ll focus. I’ll start slow and be steady and take the long view, I’ll trust my crew and my pacers and my fellow runners, I’ll enjoy the mountains and the day (but as a partner, not as a tourist), I’ll follow my Simple Rules…

…and soon enough, we’ll see how it goes.

Some Simple Rules for Ultras - You planned your race, now race your plan (but also: flexibility is the key) - Go fast, but never hurry - Mind the transitions (never run from a standing start, never stop abruptly, careful at all crossings and peaks and bottoms) - Drink to thirst (but do it every 20 minutes) - Patience (it's a long race) - Most of all: Pay Attention!

To follow the action on race day, try one of these links (I’m #389):

Live broadcast (YouTube) from the Western States folks

Live splits/results from Ultralive

iRunFar’s Western States coverage

Need to catch up? Here are parts 1-3 of my Western States adventure:

But not without a plan…

Begin with the end in mind

I have goals for this race (a finish, a 100-mile PR, a sub-24-hour finish) but those aren’t particularly helpful for building a training plan. So let’s restate: to go sub-24, I need to cut 27 minutes from my prior best. I need to be 16 or 17 seconds faster in an average mile, drop my average pace from 14 minutes and 40 seconds per mile, down to 14:24.

That’s a small change on the margin (less than 2%). It does not demand radical reinvention of my training approach, it calls for marginal improvement — a bit more focus, a bit more work. So I will base this train-up on my best prior train-ups, and I’ll improve upon them by increasing both consistency and volume.

In broad terms, this means a 14 or 15-week train-up, starting at my 50-mile/5,000-foot base week and building steadily to a peak of 70+ miles per week, then a 2 or 3-week taper with reduced volume before the race.

More specifically…

Volume targets

Volume is not everything, but it’s a lot (especially for long ultras). It’s easy to measure, it’s objective, and it yields the most reliable gains in both fitness and confidence. It also makes for a good game — look at the old numbers (from prior train-ups) and beat them.

Of course there’s a caveat to that… as volume goes up, the potential for injury grows and the potential benefits get smaller. For me, pushing much beyond 70 miles per week (or doing individual runs much longer than a marathon) takes me to a risk/reward line I’ve learned I don’t want to cross.

With that in mind, beyond just staying ahead of prior years, I have some specific targets:

- At least 4 miles every day, with a proper warm-up and stretching routine before every run.

- At least 50 miles every week, with at least 5,000 feet of ascent.

- At least 3 weeks with over 70 total miles.

- At least 3 weeks with over 10,000 total feet of ascent.

- At least 3 weeks with back-to-back runs that total 30 miles or more.

- At least 3 runs longer than 20 miles.

- At least 3 runs with more than 4,000 feet of ascent.

Other considerations

Again, volume isn’t everything. Here are some of the other things I want to pay attention to:

Intensity. I want almost all of my training to be aerobic (below my metabolic efficiency point — the crossover point where my body is getting more fuel from carbs than fat)1. I use a heart rate monitor as an electronic conscience to enforce that speed limit, and help me get the most from my training.

Specificity. Western States is notorious for the kind of long, runnable descents that are hard on the quadriceps. It’s hard to find trails like that in PA (ours are generally too rocky to go fast enough to get the same effect), but our forest roads are a reasonable match, and that’s what I focused on. My standard long-run pattern was a steep, rocky climb, straight up a fall-line trail, and then a pounding descent on forest roads — over and over.

Heat adaptation. Western States is also known for potentially high temperatures (sometimes over 110F), and I see this as the main wildcard I face there. My plan is to gain some initial adaptation during the train-up by seeking out the heat when we get it, but I’ll mainly rely on an intensive heat training program during the taper.

Fat adaptation. I’ve been working on this for several years now, and I’m pretty solid with it, able to perform well on about 100 carb calories (one gel) per hour during a race. But to keep that edge, I did a fairly strict 4-week ketogenic reset early in the train-up, and I regularly do fasted long runs.

Physical competence. Those non-running things like flexibility, proprioception, and strength contribute directly to running performance, but they are harder to measure, and easy to neglect. Good intentions are not enough —I have to actually do the drills. The more consistent I am with this, the fewer injuries I’ll have and the stronger, better runner I will be.Related to this, a Western States quirk… for whatever reason, they don’t allow trekking poles. I’ve come to rely on poles, not for propulsion, but to keep myself from falling when I become stumbly. So weaning myself from them is a priority (and those smooth western trails are no consolation — easy trails are where I seem to fall the most).

What about speed work? Well, maybe, if I’m meeting or exceeding the other targets and still feel mechanically sound. But cautiously, in small doses, never more than once per week. My goal for speed work is not speed per se, but to improve baseline cruising speed, the pace I naturally settle into and can comfortably maintain for hours. There is no scenario where having a faster finishing kick is anything but performative for me (if I can manage anything more than a steady finish, I should have rationed out that extra energy over the final 30 miles instead). But shaving seconds off that baseline pace could shave minutes off the finish time.

So, how did it go?

It went well.

From the standpoint of volume and consistency, I beat my best prior train-ups by more than 130 miles and 21,000 feet of ascent, and I met my volume targets. Here’s the chart (Pinhoti is my current 100-mile PR, and the Bear 100 was another race I felt well-prepared for and was on record pace at — until I was derailed by some unfriendly weather):

So, the numbers look good, but it’s always good to validate ground truth with a benchmark run. For this, I used a trail-proofing assignment at the Worlds End 100k, a 22-mile run with about 4,400 feet of ascent that I’ve done on the same day the past two years. The results were good: with similar conditions, I was 30 minutes faster than my prior best, with an average heart rate 10 bpm lower.

It’s not definitive, but I’ll take it as a good sign.

And I’ll head into the taper feeling satisfied with the train-up, and optimistic about this race.

Some Highlights from the Train-up

Most of my miles were solo, and I like it that way. But every so often, it’s nice to have company — it can make a long run feel both shorter and more significant.

This time I got out with Mary on the Mid State Trail, Kayla on the Standing Stone Trail…

…and Leon on the Loyalsock Trail (his first visit to Worlds End(!))

And for pre-race inspiration (and a reminder of what is possible), could there have been anything better than crewing for Renee at Massanutten 100, and being part of her heroic performance there?

It sets a tone…

By the way… I’m officially in (!)

The poetic nature of my experience with this race continues…

I knew it would come (my invitation to move from the wait list into the race), but I didn’t think it would come so soon. I was waiting for Renee at a Massanutten aid station (one of the few with a cell signal), when I got it — on my birthday, no less. And it was the kind of epic day when this was only my second-best birthday present, behind Renee’s race finish.

That sets a tone, too...

If you’ve been following along, you’ll realize I’m behind, that the train-up is over and I’m now tapering (and that the race is only 12 days away 😲). Apparently I tend to get caught-up in doing the work, and I put off writing about it… Please bear with me — part 4 will be out soon, with some commentary about the taper.

Fallowing. The first phase of my preparation for the Western States Endurance Run — 7 weeks of “restful regeneration” and intentional restraint, in deference to the power of processes I don’t fully understand, but choose to trust anyway. And trusting them enough to resist the reflexive urge to work harder, the deep temptation to push. Seven weeks of patience.

That phase is long since over, and I’m deep into my train-up now. As I sit here in the midst of April showers, nesting birds, and blooming plum trees, those cold weeks of gentle, dark, fallow plodding feel like another life in a different world. But before those memories fade, I want to look back and capture some impressions from that period of ritual humility and pragmatic utility.

Bear Meadows photo: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbfec1aed-4d37-44d4-9f5d-e286bd641291_1500x1000.jpeg

Deep winter is a fallow time by its nature — most of the action is happening beneath the frozen surface. And as with the natural world, so it was with my mentality. With the clarity of a simple weekly allowance of distance and elevation, the freedom of having no time goals, and with no pressure to escalate anything, I was able to relax into the spirit of the fallow.

And since I do most of my winter running in darkness, that fallow spirit helped me tune in to that darkness (which is seldom truly dark) and feel the flow of the night.

It’s a good, peaceful and powerful, restorative flow.

Ritual humility

At core, fallowing is an act of humility.

We are rational and scientific and we seek to control the variables and work the levers and guide the processes that effect our lives. But (if we are wise) we recognize the element of hubris in this, and we can choose, for a period of time, to cede a portion of our control. We can step away from the controls and let natural processes that we don’t fully understand do their work.

In doing that, we acknowledge that there are things our body can do for itself better than we can do with our deliberate actions.

This is an important and potentially beautiful understanding. It’s a conscious act of humility that signals our trust in natural processes, and it implies a native optimism and a broader trust in the universe.

Pragmatic utility

It is not magic, though, and beyond that ritual acknowledgement of powers and processes we don’t understand, there is a basic and practical truth: I don’t know precisely how this works, but I don’t need to — I know that it works, and I can use it as a tool.

It is complex, and the action is below the surface. In a fallowed field it’s nutrient cycles and microbial actors and an immense cast of living and non-living agents, all working in the undisturbed soil, repairing the damage that’s been done by our extractive interventions.

In our bodies, it’s much the same, as the various competing forces of building and breaking down do their work within our physiology, renewing muscles, joints, connective tissue, restoring us.

Hopefully something similar happens with our psychology.

So, how did it go?

My base standard for the several weeks of this phase was moderate, a steady diet of 50-mile, 5,000-foot weeks. I wanted my body to adapt to that level of effort and accept it as a starting point, a zero-level. Mission accomplished — I hit those marks, and my body felt healthy, mechanically sound, ready for training.

I also wanted to bore myself, induce a hunger for more challenging workouts, more aggressive and focused running. My results on that are not as clear. It turns out I like the low pressure and unstructured nature of the fallow. It suits me, and I could imagine eventually giving myself over completely to it.

At the same time, there is something more, a spark of ambition and expectation, an excitement for what’s next. I will nurture that spark, and as I apply pressure, as I begin to run harder and longer, I predict it will flare to life (as it has done so many times before).

Next up? Train-up (Phase II — “14 weeks of serious training”). Please stay tuned…

For context, read about my upcoming hundred-mile Western States adventure and my framework for it here: https://rushofitall.substack.com/p/jubilee

Twenty-five years ago today, Renee and I made a pivotal life decision. On that day, January 18th, 1998, we decided that we were (or would become) long-distance runners.

My only record of it is this little note in my datebook from that year:

* Berlin: visited w/ Larry, Sandy, Mom, Dad, Bryan, Brad, Angie & kids, Grandma Shober, Bertha, Susan, Stacey — at Shober’s

* Talked to Susan and Stacey about San Diego Marathon and Leukemia Team in Training

I don’t remember why we had a mid-January family gathering, and I don’t know why Susan and Stacey were looking at races. But I do know that for some reason we were receptive, and 2 weeks later we signed up for our first marathon.

We trained, we did our fundraising, and on June 21st, on our first-ever trip to California, we ran our first marathon (all four of us finished, with Lucas and our parents cheering from the sidelines).

(And here’s a side note, another bit of poetic and serendipitous synchrony to go with the developing theme of this post… my datebook had a third bullet for that same day: “Lucas walked”. So today is also the 25th anniversary of those auspicious first steps.)

So, this is all interesting, but it’s only nostalgia, right?

But what if it there’s more to it than that? What if I’ve managed to stumble my way from that long ago event into something with near-term, hands-on relevance, something that hints at a cosmic alignment of fairly epic proportions?

Well…

After 8 years, my name was finally drawn in the lottery for this year’s Western States Endurance Run. So on June 24th, on the 25th anniversary of that first marathon (plus 3 days), I’ll be running for a second time in California, this time in the oldest and most celebrated of our modern hundred-mile races.

I couldn’t have planned it this way. Of the hundreds of 100-milers we have to choose from now, this one is the mandatory touchstone, the symbolic “pilgrimage to the source”, and I’ve been trying to get in since 2015. Of over 7,000 runners who entered this year, only 5% of us were selected.

I’m not superstitious. These patterns are coincidence, they have no power of their own. But I still watch for them, seek them out, because I know that I can give them symbolic power. And when it comes to motivation, power is power, and a symbol-seeker like me can hang a lot on a 25th anniversary like this one.

My Framework

So, how do I get from here to there?

I’ll start by setting the objective, then I’ll add some structure to the time (I see this as a 5-phase operation).

In the coming weeks, I’ll be taking a closer look at each of these phases, examining and refining my ideas about them, adjusting the details of my plan (and maybe expanding on them here). But here’s what I have so far.

The Objective

Here’s my standard hierarchy of goals for races:

* “Yes” as the answer to this question: Did I do the best I could with this mind and body, on this course, under these conditions, on this day? (If that’s not my baseline, why am I even here?)

* A finish. (In any long and difficult ultra, “a finish is a win”.)

* A 100-mile PR. (For that, I must finish in under 24 hours and 27 minutes.)

* A “reach-goal” — the goal at the outer edge of possibility, the one that inspires the hard training, the one I’ll go to sleep with every night for the next 5 months. Choose wisely. But also, remember the power of symbols… they give a silver buckle for running this 100 miles in a single 24-hour day.

Perfect. An objective worthy of a silver jubilee: I’m running Western States for a silver buckle, on the silver anniversary of my first marathon.

Phase I: Fallowing

(T-25 to T-19: 7 weeks of restful regeneration to set the stage for hard training)

It’s currently week T-23 (as in “target minus 23 weeks”), and I’m 2 weeks into this fallowing period.

I still run every day, and I’ve set a base-line standard of 50 miles and 5,000 feet of climbing per week. But my runs are easy — no pressure, no pushing. The important work in this phase is happening underground: my body is healing and regenerating (and learning to accept “50 & 5,000” as the new normal).

If I do this well, if I can contain my enthusiasm and let the fallowing do its work, I’ll arrive at the start of the next phase feeling fresh and strong and eager to get to work.

Phase II: Train-up

(T-18 to T-5: 14 weeks of serious training, peaking in T-5)

For that first marathon, I learned a standard 18-week training format: a steady week-to-week increase in mileage and difficulty that builds to a peak 4 or 5 weeks out from the race, then a 3 or 4 week taper to race day.

I’ve become much less formal about the content of my train-ups through the years, but I still follow that basic format. It makes sense to me both physically and psychologically, and it gives me an objective way of comparing my efforts from race to race and year to year.

For this race, I want to tighten things up a bit, be less ad hoc with my runs. It won’t be a strict daily schedule (I’ve learned the importance of flexibility), but it will at least take me in that direction. I’m still working on the details, but it will incorporate everything I’ve learned through the years about myself and my response to training.

Phase III: Taper

(T-4 to T-2: a 3-week taper that ends with our trip to California)

Tapering is an act of faith, and this is a time when wisdom must overcome ambition. There will be a strong urge to get in just one more big week, just one more big climbing day, but at this point, the potential benefits of more hard training are tiny, and the potential for harm is high. A good phase-III mantra? “Don’t do anything dumb”.

Phase IV: Race Week

(T-1: get there with all my stuff, and regroup for the final push)

Race Week is also Transcontinental Travel Week, with all the stress and joy that comes with that. Packing, airports and connecting flights, rentals and time zones. Also final gear configurations, and drop bag decisions, and fine-tuning the crew plan. And just enough running to keep a fine edge on my blade.

Phase V: Race Day

(24 hours of patient, focused intensity, as the culmination of 25 weeks of focused effort, after 25 years of sustained practice)

So, 25 weeks of training, and a lifetime of experience, all for this one day, when anything can happen… that’s quite a heavy load for a single day.

Except that sentence is wrong — it is not “all for this one day”. Yes, this day provides a point of focus, and in some ways the outcome of this race will be a measure of all that preceded it. But as anyone who has been doing this for a while knows, what it’s really “all for” is the journey itself. The journey is long, this day will be just a blip, and the journey will continue.

That said, I’m still going to do my very best to make it a beautiful silver blip…

Related

Yes, I’ve written about Western States before.

Here: Lottery Day

And here: Western and Eastern

Moon shadows!

These delightful wonders aren’t that rare if you’re watching for them, but they’re especially magical on the coldest of cold winter nights, when a thick and reflective ultra-white crust buries the details of the forest floor, and a low-and-bright Wolf Moon sends out those long, deep and distinct shadows.  They’re a highlight of the season (and there’s no headlamp needed on a night like that).

By myself…

Solitude is good whenever and wherever I can find it, but it’s deeper and easier at night.  The later it is, the less likely I’ll be disturbed by any kind of encounter with another person (and sometimes, that’s the point).

That’s particularly true during hunting season. There are good hunters (I respect them and don’t want to disturb their hunt), and bad (I fear them and don’t want to be anywhere near them). In either case, it’s their woods, too. But I still own the night, and I retreat into darkness to give them their time in the sun.

…but not alone 

All the best animals come out at night…

Owls and woodcocks and whippoorwills, porcupines and possums, amphibians(!), even some reptiles…

Just be quiet, and pay attention.

Magnification

Darkness magnifies adversity, both real and imagined.  It heightens and intensifies the drama of an adventure… and the stories that flow from it.  The rain is colder and wetter, the wind is icier, the rocks are slicker, the water is deeper, the fatigue has more power… and continued movement in the face of it all feels more heroic (we all deserve some epic moments in our lives).

The illusion of speed

When I feel the need for speed, I can at least feel like I’m fast by running trails at night.  Any given pace feels significantly faster in the dark, and especially on-trail, I can reach the limits of my technical abilities without reaching my aerobic limit.  The speed may be an illusion, but it’s a deeply satisfying one.

It makes me a better runner

Darkness is a skill-builder. The terrain is the same, but it’s harder to see it. It forces concentration, it develops proprioception, and eventually it can take you to a next level of reliable body-sense. The only way to become good at running on rocks is to run on rocks. To become really good at it, practice at night.

Because I’m still afraid of the dark

Sometimes, just a little bit, only when I think about it, but yes… I can turn my imagination up and let my guard down, and there it is, native and dark, slipping past my knowledge and logic, reaching an older and deeper place, revealing the possibilities of all those unknown unknowns.

It’s both a thrill and a weakness to fix.

(And this is where I need to acknowledge that for some of you, this is not a fun feature of the night, and that there can be real reasons for genuine fear.  If this is your situation, I hope you can find practical solutions that allow you to safely and confidently venture out into the night.)

It changes my physical perspective

On a dark night, a headlamp both collapses and expands your view — it takes out the middle ground, leaving only the small cone of light in your immediate vicinity, and the far distances of the moon and stars (and sometimes a town in the valley below).

Or, turn off the light on a starry starry night and dissolve all distance.  Move among the stars instead of under them, like John Grady and Rawlins heading south across the high prairie towards Mexico, early in All the Pretty Horses:

They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

Cormac McCarthy

It changes my emotional and spiritual perspective

Running can be a mind cleanse at any time, but at night that comes more easily, and it can be more profound.  The smoothness and simplicity of it is more intense.  It requires more focus, but that focus is easier to find.  The mindfulness that I have to fight for during the day is almost effortless, especially late at night.

My daylight runs always include a bit of leaning forward towards what’s next — supper, a meeting, a place to go or a thing to do.  But there’s a threshold in the night beyond which those things no longer matter.  Supper is long past.  Anyone I might have socialized with has gone to bed.  My chance at a long sleep tonight has passed. 

Before crossing that threshold, there was a dilemma, a pending choice, an open loop, the tempting pull of comfort and familiarity against the cold and darkness.

On this side of that threshold, that’s all gone.  Those possibilities have slipped away, leaving this other path, this particular place and time, this holy now.

And so I slip past midnight with clarity, knowing there is absolutely nothing but this run, and that this run is effectively open-ended.  There’s no need to think about an ending, no need to think about anything other than this moment, in this tiny sphere of light, and the rhythm of my body as I move through it.  It’s the most mindful thing I can do, the most mindful place I can be.

A long race is a sanctioned version of this.  Here, this simulated “answering of the call” is expected and enforced. You cross the threshold when you cross the starting line.  The passage through the night is not something you’re stealing, not a forbidden aberration, but an accepted part of the event.

It might be that the most valuable thing you purchase when you enter a long race is a guilt-free all-night run.

So that’s nine reasons. It’s certainly not all of them, but it’s where I’ll stop for now. If you’re a fellow night-runner, I’d love to hear some of your reasons in the comment section below.

More…

As I worked on this, I was curious about my night-running history, so I tracked things back and discovered that my first one was on 5 January 2012, and I found the journal entry I made about it the next day. You can read it on my website, here: My First Nighttime Trail Run (Rough #6)

This 25-year-old rant is from another time and place (it’s NOT about my current neighbors), but it still feels fresh and true to me. I was reminded of it this week as I was admiring the trees on my current little lot, the ones that were here before me and the ones I’ve planted, noticing how big some of them have become, and loving the way they glow when the sun hits them right.

Not everyone sees them as I do.

Circa 1997, while we lived in Fairmont, WV (transcribed from my handwritten notes)

My neighbor mutilates his trees.

A once beautiful little honey locust that he planted in his yard when we moved here — mercilessly topped each year, and now an 8-inch diameter trunk and only 8 feet tall. It valiantly comes back with a burst of beautiful branches each spring (though slower now, I think), and each fall he cuts them off again.

The same thing with a pair of pitiful birch trees next to his house. He told me about them once, about how things haven’t lasted as he wanted, that they are sickly and almost didn’t make it through the winter a couple years back, and how he treated them with some chemical that kept them going. Of course they’re trying to endure the same abuse the honey locust gets.

And there was the sassafras tree that was somehow unscathed for the first couple years we lived here. I had the naïve thought that it might escape butchery, because it’s out at the corner of his lot, next to mine, behind a little toolshed where he can’t really see the offending free-growing branches. It was becoming an admirable little tree. But I was wrong, of course. Last year, off goes the top.

Seek first to understand...

But it’s beyond me to understand this man or his kind (he is by no means unique). This is how he wants things. He sees no ugliness in what he does. He didn’t shudder at the thought of trimming the row of beautiful rhododendrons against the side of his house just as they were beginning to truly flourish (and hide some of the white vinyl siding). Instead he happily chopped and chopped until he had a neat little hedge. I wanted to cry; he proudly pointed to his work and said “they was getting a little high.”

It’s ignorance, it’s ugliness, this dominance of nature mentality, the manicured lawn ideal, where a tree or a bush is nothing more than an ornament on a chemically maintained monoculture yard — a bit more work than a plastic ornament, but a bit prettier, and with no more value to the owner.

I do penance and mitigation for my neighbor’s sins. There was one tree on our ¼-acre lot when we came here. I planted and planted, and now I have some nice-sized, healthy trees across from his mutilated ones. But I can still see them over there, like the sociopathic neighbor boy Sid and his mutant toys in Toy Story.

I’m a libertarian, basically. But I can’t look over there without thinking that no one should be allowed to do such deeds. Perhaps if you cannot be responsible with land, and aesthetic in some way, you shouldn’t be permitted to own it.

I hope I’ve become more serene since I wrote that, a better Stoic. I think the actions of other people are more likely to make me sad now than angry. But I’m still doing penance and mitigation, still planting trees, still trying to model a better path. A lot of us are, and sometimes it feels futile, but we persist. And I feel the balance is shifting, that as the years go by there might be more of us and fewer of him.

Running fixes things. 

It’s a simple statement that can apply to our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.  It’s also a broad philosophy that I could take in many directions, literal and metaphoric.

Today, though, I’m thinking of it as a physical truth and a problem-solving approach to physical ailments.

To illustrate…

Two weekends ago, I ran a hundred-mile trail race in the rugged mountains of the Salmon River range in west-central Idaho.  I started the race with two persistent injuries that had been with me for over two months — a sore foot from a twisted, pinched landing between rocks that strained a metatarsal, and a flare-up of knee tendinitis.  In an attempt to be ready for this race despite these issues, I modified my training, lowered my mileage, chose easier surfaces, less climbing, gentler running… all in the interest of giving these injuries a chance to heal.  But none of that seemed to help much, and going into the race, I didn’t know if my foot or my knee would hold up.

They did.

And even though the race wasn’t one my best performances (that modified training plan left me under-prepared for a race with over 20,000 feet of ascent on fairly technical terrain), I ran well and neither of those nagging injuries hobbled me.

In fact, in the days after the race, when I should have been limping around as a result of the abuse I’d just given myself, I found that both injuries had disappeared.  Not just lessened, not slowly fading from notice — they were gone.  Healed, fixed.  I was healthier, and more mechanically sound the day after the race than the day before it.

It doesn’t make sense — I know that.  But this is not the first time, and my inability to explain it doesn’t make it less real.

So I go back to my opening statement: running fixes things.

My theory is that what I just called “abuse” was actually “use” — the kind of hard and heavy use we’re designed for.  Maybe my poor pampered foot needed to be banged around a bit, called into full service.  Maybe my knee needed to know that I still trust and depend upon it. 

And it could be this is just another illustration of the fact that much of our modern weakness and fragility is acquired, that we are born with the potential for much greater durability and range than we allow to develop in our sheltered modern lives, that pampering and pain avoidance and pleasure seeking is not a good long-term cure for anything.

Biking probably fixes things, too.  And walking, and swimming, and climbing, and paddling… it might be that it isn’t the specific modality that brings forth the magic, it might that any kind of active physical engagement with the world does it.  Or it might be the underlying principle that given the option, it is almost always better to keep moving forward into a challenge, rather than avoiding it or surrendering to it.

This is not medical or moral advice.

At most, I guess it might be lifestyle advice, but mainly it’s just my personal observation of my own experiment of one.  And of course running doesn’t fix everything.  It has at least the potential to make a lot of things better, and it’s a pretty good default setting, but I suggest that you should still probably listen to your doctor (though skeptically) and you should still listen closely to your body — tune in to it, consider making accommodations for it.

But I also suggest: don’t forget who’s in charge here.

It is definitely not your doctor, and it probably shouldn’t be your body, or at least not your perception of how your body is feeling in any particular moment.  Our bodies have brought us far, helped us earn our spot as apex predators, but it is our minds and our will that make us fully human.

It was Thursday — Writing the Rush day — and all I had were a couple mildly interesting (to me) snippets from the past two weeks, and they weren’t coming together into a post.

The first was about earnest effort and engagement.  After an intense (and highly successful) race weekend that capped nearly a year of planning and hard work, it would have been completely appropriate for the Eastern States race committee to take some time off from the topic.  But when our race director made a couple entries to the “Notes for 2023” Slack channel the day after we all got home, it brought a spontaneous and exuberant outpouring from the rest of the team (well over a hundred constructive individual notes, proposals large and small).  We were not worn down as expected, we were full of ideas and energy and excitement, full of “how do we make this good thing even better?”  It was deeply gratifying — the engagement, the earnest enthusiasm of these people I get to work with.

The second was about that classic battle between our wild selves and our domesticated selves.  It came this time in the form of a text message from a friend.  He sent me some wonderful river photos from his morning float, along with the comment that he’d wished he didn’t have obligations that required him to come back to shore.  I don’t know that he meant to be metaphorical, but that’s how I received it, and I replied: “That’s the heart of it right there — obligations that require us to come back to shore — I’ve been feeling that conflict a lot lately.”

In truth, I’ve been feeling it for at least the past 45 years, and I’m not sure I’m any closer to resolving it for myself now than I was the first time I remember feeling it… as a teenager, standing in the snow on a back-pasture hill on a wintery evening, looking at the glowing windows of the distant farmhouse, knowing that I very much wanted to join the holiday gathering, to be in there with those people and in that comfort, but also that I very much wanted to turn away from it, to walk off into the darkness of the woods.

I was looking for a way to unite these two threads, but I wasn’t seeing it, and I was leaning towards giving up and taking a break from the newsletter.  In fact, I decided it just wasn’t that important, and I went to the lake instead.

But the ideas followed me there.

I paddled around a bit, took some photos, but mainly I just floated.  And sure enough, when it was time to go home, I felt that feeling, that strong urge to paddle away from shore instead.  But as with my friend, obligations required me to do otherwise.

On the way home, I thought about the vast complexity of those obligations, and about one small subset of that: our obligation to the earnest efforts of others.

I knew I’d written about earnestness before, so I went looking in my journal for it, and I found this entry, which was not meant to be about any of that.  It was just an admiring observation of the powerful writing of one of my favorite authors, Cormac McCarthy.  The fact that I included my first two highlights from the book I was reading, and that they happen to fit today’s discussion (and that I stumbled onto this 7 years later) is pure serendipity.

From my journal: 21 May 2015 (Thursday)

I just started reading All the Pretty Horses and so far the story itself has not grabbed me, nor have the characters.  But the language, the use of words and the images they create and the feelings they evoke — it is so powerful.  And the thing is, it doesn’t really follow any of the ‘rules’ of good usage or construction or whatever.  It just flows and rolls and goes on with its own rhythm and its own pace and it is not bound so much by traditional sentence structure or any of the things that you might have learned in English composition.  There are incomplete sentences with no verbs.  There is dialogue without quotes.  And there are these fabulous long sentences that run on and on the way you actually experience things, without the punctuation and without the staccato interruption of periods.  …. I had to open the book on my Kindle to confirm that it’s Cormac, not Cormack… and while I was there, I checked to see what I have highlighted so far.

Not much, but here is this one:

He crossed the old trace again and he must turn the pony up onto the plain and homeward but the warriors would ride on in that darkness they’d become, rattling past with their stone-age tools of war in default of all substance and singing softly in blood and longing south across the plains to Mexico.

And this one: 

What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran in them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenthearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise.

So right there, in the span of a couple pages, in the musings of a kid out on his horse on the family ranch, he has captured two of my deep and recurring themes — that combination of fear and longing at the idea of someday not turning back but following the warriors, and that idea about what I really respect in people, what I have inadequately called earnestness and that he makes the word “ardenthearted” for.

The pull is strong — in both directions, and we make a decision each day.  We hear the call, and then we willingly submit to our various obligations.  Sometimes, we make concessions to the beast within us — that’s what those floats on the river are, what a long-distance run is. They are small episodes of “singing softly in blood and longing” and they are enough to sate us for a while longer.

But implied in the necessity for decision is the possibility that someday we might choose differently, might be done with concessions, might stay on the old trace, might decide to keep on paddling.

Most ultra-runners are also philosophers, and one of the fundamental questions of our sport is…

Why?

I have no definitive answer, but I did start a list a while back [originally published here: My running whys (Pandemic Diary - day 249)]. It’s a draft, and incomplete, but for me it feels like a good and honest start.

1. Good Animal

First be a good animal. There are other interpretations of Emerson’s directive, but I like mine the best…

To be a good human, you must first be a good animal. You must experience and exercise your animal potential, and you must incorporate that into your human existence. And our animal potential, our genetic and spiritual heritage, is first and foremost that of the persistence predator: long distance pursuit, patience through the long-distance grind, regardless of terrain or weather, the optimism that you can outlast your prey, and the possibility that at the end of the pursuit, if you are steadfast, you will feast, and you and your offspring will survive.

(This idea of being a good animal is the heart of my last post: Something Fierce.)

2. Second Sunrise

I want to know who I am at second sunrise.

The symbolism of this arrival — the fact that you’ve been in constant motion through an entire day, an entire night, and into the next day — is powerful, and the results of that journey, the response you get when you say “good morning” to yourself can tell you a lot about that self. [See my post The “second sunrise” why.]

3. Second Sunrise (part two)

Second Sunrise is a good reason, but it only works for the first couple ultras. By now, I’ve been to many second sunrises (and a third sunrise) — I already know who I am there. Maybe I need reassurance that I’m still that person, but I think it’s more likely that I like that person and I want to spend more time with him, get to know him better.

4. Smiling Through

How do I react to a 3-in-the-morning thunderstorm? Do I smile and go out to dance with it — glad for the challenge, or do I break?

This is a variation on the second-sunrise reason, but it’s potentially more intense, and therefore potentially more enlightening. I wrote more about this in Smiling Through at Mile 80 (Eastern States):

The crux of the whole thing is there in that moment, the torrential rain at 3am moment. How do you react, how do you handle yourself, what kind of runner — what kind of human — are you? As I watched, I knew I needed to answer that for myself.

5. Is that all?

Is that all you’ve got? That’s me addressing the mountain, the course, the challenge I’ve just completed.

It’s mainly about finding limits, learning where your personal edges are. It has shades of defiance, like “Shoot me again, I ain’t dead yet,” but there’s also a cautionary side of “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” It’s hard to find the edge without the risk of falling past it.

6. Afterglow

Do you see it? Can you feel it? It’s the best high-on-life you can get, and the only path I’ve found to it is through the adversity of the extended physical and mental effort that gets you through a hundred miles. It comes from going long.

So that’s my list so far. It doesn’t account for everything, and it’s subject to change, but it accounts for a lot. And it was a good exercise, a valuable and important thing to think about.

What are you passionate about? (I hope there’s something, and I hope you think about why.)

Today, another favorite short piece revisited (with audio). I was about to call the “piece” an “essay”, but that’s probably a stretch… it feels more like maybe a prose poem (I’m not clear on these categories). Whatever it is, I’m happy with it, I think it says what I wanted to say, in the spirit I wanted to say it, and looking back at it now, I don’t think I’d change anything about it. It was originally published in Volume 6 of Eat Clean, Run Dirty Magazine. I’ve added my own photos for this version (and of course the audio is new).

Something Fierce

I learned it first from Jack London and his “dominant primordial beast.” Then I found Walt Whitman’s speculation: “I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth…”

Neither of them named it (perhaps it has no name). London saw it in dogs, as a proxy for what he saw in man. Whitman saw it in the Earth and felt it within himself.

I suspect it of you.

I think you already know it’s there. I think you’ve felt it (I think I’ve seen it on your face).

Maybe it was in some depleted moment in the woods, wet-cold-tired and miles from sanctuary, when the wind gusted sleet into the numb rawness of your face, and instead of misery it brought you… something powerful that you couldn’t name, something that gripped you and moved you forward and let you feel truly alive for the first time in months, maybe years.

Or maybe it was late in some long and hard race: final miles, final climbs, exhausted, every part of you hurting and wanting only to stop. Until something happened, some spark landed within you and flared into a flame and you accelerated. The pain, the miles, your goals — all of it slipped away, and you were fast and strong and smooth again. It wasn’t that those other things were gone, only that they no longer mattered, and for some period you were unencumbered by anything but the feeling of your body moving well across the land.

Maybe at the end of some adventure, you looked back at the mountain and asked (of the mountain, not of yourself, and with no conscious hubris) “Is that all you’ve got?”

It doesn’t come from the gel you just ate. It’s not the music in your head or the thought of meeting some arbitrary time goal. It’s not even your competitive nature reacting to the sight of the runner ahead of you (the one you will now catch and pass). It’s not a thought at all, and it’s not motivated by any kind of thought-based calculus you might try to apply to it (or use to access it). It is some weird blending of anger and joy and strength and pain, and it’s none of those things, exactly, but it has all of their various properties and powers.

Does a hawk revel in its hawkishness as it plunges, sky to grass, to fill its talons with the living flesh of a dying rabbit? It has no conscious goals, it’s mainly stimulus and response. If it feels pleasure in its actions, it’s only the pleasure of inhabiting its hawk body with its hawk nature, the “pleasure” of being a proper hawk.

But pleasure is the wrong word, isn’t it? If it feels anything that we could recognize, I think it must feel “rightness.” And I guess we’re mainly stimulus and response, too, and maybe “right” is as close as we’ll get to describing the way we feel when this “unnamable fierce something” bursts forth and carries us along.

Maybe I’m wrong (about you already knowing). Maybe you don’t suspect your own fierce something, haven’t met it yet.

Maybe it’s nascent, an embryo yet to be birthed. Maybe it’s just undiscovered. Maybe it is a fierceness suppressed (consciously or not), or a fierceness denied (maybe you must be dragged kicking and screaming into the light of your own wild nature).

Regardless, I believe it is eligible within you, within everyone. I think you are eligible.

I think it’s a gift, a precious, primal relic from our animal past and an elemental fire of the soul. I doubt we can understand it (we can’t even name it), and I’m pretty sure we can’t summon it at will. But we can learn to recognize it, we can intentionally enter its realm, seek it out and be open to it.

And when we find it, in those brief moments of clarity and animal glory: honor it, embrace it, and ride it for all it’s worth.

I’m feeling nostalgic today, so I’m revisiting an essay I wrote for Runner’s World way back in 1999. They didn’t publish it, but I still like it (maybe more now than I did then — I think it’s aged well). I hope you will, too.

A Running Start

Written March 22, 1999.

I crave the solitude of running alone, the private battles and private joy. But two years ago I became a father, and solitude became scarce. It also became less important, because my son is now my running partner.

Lucas was three months old on our first run, a two-miler on the local rail-trail. He was so small, engulfed by the generous seat of the jogging stroller. But he grabbed the side-bars and pulled himself forward so he could see out beyond the purple nylon. That first day, I knew he was hooked. We both were, and after hundreds of miles together, we still are.

When we run, he's not just “looking at,” he's "moving through". And our trail is a good place to move through. It's nature-rich, with steep, wooded banks, lots of boulders and laurel, a wide rocky river at the side, and wildlife. This is where he saw his first deer and wild turkeys, where he flushed his first grouse. When a train roars by on the other side of the river, he twists himself around to watch until it's completely gone around the bend. He points out the butterflies and songbirds to me, and he waves to the cows on the farm we pass.

He embraces the weather — all of it. If the sun is bright, he pulls the brim of his little blue hat down. He giggles when it rains. He tries to catch snowflakes in his hand. He turns his head and squints his eyes and smiles when the wind turns the stroller into a sail. On a misty-black night run, he's completely silent.

Sometimes I talk to him, or sing. Sometimes he talks and sings back. Occasionally he gets bored with the whole thing, and he reaches his hand out to touch the spinning tires, or gives voice to the discomfort that we're both feeling. I point out new things, or I grab a leaf from an overhanging branch or a goldenrod or daisy for him to hold. Mostly we're very quiet, though. The beat of my feet on the soft trail and the faint crunchy sound of the tires on cinder and sand is hypnotic. Sometimes he sleeps, lulled by those rhythms, and the monotonous beauty of it all. But usually he just sits there and takes it all in, watching the world go by, working on the most sublime look of contentment.

"Someday he'll be pushing me around like this."

That's my standard line for people who comment when we pass. I'm joking — I hope to be self-mobile forever. But the "someday" part is true. Someday I hope he'll be running beside me, or better, out in front, faster than I've ever gone. Someday when he's older, I hope he'll still have the same look of wonderment on his face from time to time. And someday I hope he'll introduce his own child to the world, in his own way.

That's my gift to him. Not the running itself — that's just a means to an end — but the desire to be out in the world, really in it.

And I get a gift, too.

Sometimes after running, we walk through the woods to the edge of the river, and climb out onto the long, low boulders that jut into the flow. On a perfect day, the air is cool, the sun has heated the rocks, and I can lean my tired body against them and soak up the warmth. Lucas splashes in a shallow pool next to me, or plays with driftwood sticks. Or I help him climb down to the current and we watch trout swimming in the deep shadows, or water beetles whirling on the surface.

My gift from him is that curiosity, that embrace of everything. It's that attitude of grabbing the side-bars and pulling yourself forward into the wind so you can see out. I think that's what I chase after every time I run. And he shows me a vision of it and reminds me of a difference I'm trying to remedy: I move by force of will, he moves by force of wonder.

Afterword…

In case you’re curious, the setting for most of that essay is a stretch of the Great Allegheny Passage rail-trail along the Casselman River, between Rockwood and Meyersdale, PA.

By the time we quit these outings (before that, actually), Lucas was quite able to run on his own. Eventually, he beat me in a race (Prowl the Sproul 10k in 2015) and he’s surely much faster than me now (although… my marathon PR is still better than his, and he has yet to run farther than a 50k).

And I’m still fully self-mobile, by the way (no need to be wheeled around yet).

But the main point is that he’s still out there exploring.

As am I.

…and some statistics

(Yes, of course I kept records)

* First stroller run: July 29, 1997 (2.2 rail-trail miles)

* Total miles: 242.1

* 24 runs on the rail-trail near our home in Fairmont, WV

* 24 runs on the Great Allegheny Passage rail-trail in Somerset County, PA

* 1 beach run in Ocean City, MD

* 1 street run in Berlin, PA

* 9 runs here in State College, in the Toftrees gamelands

* Last stroller run: July 28, 2001 (the standard 3-mile loop through the gamelands behind our townhouse in Toftrees)

* He was much larger by then.

Intimate Places

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Familiarity…

It’s subtle, this knowing, and it sneaks in.  You settle into a local park or forest that you chose not for its spectacular nature, but for convenience — it fits into the spaces of your life and lets you log your miles while you dream of other places, big-name races and better runs in faraway lands.  Days pass, then years, and at some point between dreams, you notice that you’ve come to rely on this place.

And you know some things about it.

You know the huckleberries on Tussey Mountain are usually ready to eat by the third weekend of June, but it’s mid-August and they’re still not ripe.  And you’ve never seen Sinking Creek stop flowing before (a statement that only has significance if you’ve been watching for at least a decade).

You remember that year when you startled the same bear every time you traversed the side-hill cut on the Tussey descent, and that other year when you saw the mama bear with four (or was it five) cubs over in the Barrens.  You know where the deer will be on a misty fall morning, and this particular trail junction will always be “Porcupine Flats” because it's where you saw your first wild porcupine (it was climbing the — much taller now — white pine that marks the turn).

You learn some of the place’s secrets (and some of its secret places).  You found that mossy spring that’s hidden by rhododendrons (it’s well off the trail, beyond the big hemlock stump, next to the boulder that looks like a bear) and sometimes you go there to hide.

And you know that if you hit that second bend in the trail near the north-east edge of Patton Woods within a half-hour of sunset, the trees will be glowing and it will feel holy.

These seasons and cycles and the flows of the place have become familiar, the growing and blooming and dying.  And more than that — you’ve begun to feel them within yourself.

…Sparks Affection…

Anthropomorphizing terrain is silly, but you do it anyway.  It used to be just another obscure trail.  Now it’s your trail, and you’ve given it a pet name to match its distinctive personality, something like Bugs Bunny or Sledgehammer or Molehill.

Because you really like this place.

A distressing mix of parental pride and protectiveness emerges.  Torn between a generosity that wants to share with the world, and the fear that sharing it will ruin it, you worry: Will they love and respect it the way I do?  (Know that if I invite you into one of “my” places, I’ve judged you worthy and decided to trust you, because you “get it” and are likely to get this place.)

Perhaps there’s misplaced possessiveness, too, as you suffer through pandemic tourists and day-tripping deer hunters out for their once-a-year visit to the woods.  All these intruders, tromping through your home!

(But you still own the night — you’ll always own the night.)

You might pick up a superstition or two.  Maybe you require a ceremonial running of a specific local route before you head off to one of those destination races, or a welcome-home loop when you return (victorious or defeated).  Maybe you carry a physical fragment of your place as a talisman when you venture out into the wider world.

Because it’s no longer just a place, it’s become a symbol and an anchor against all the turbulence.

…Becomes Intimacy

It’s different for each person and each location, but there will come a time when affection progresses to intimacy.  This is no longer just your place, and it’s more than a symbol.

It’s a trusted friend.

You’ve seen its best and its worst, the freshness of its springtime, the sweltering and pestilent heat of its summer, its sunsets and icy darknesses, the glory of its edge times.

Likewise, it's seen you at your best (and you might imagine it shared your joy or exhilaration), and your worst (it was there to console you when no one else was, to help you through some period of tragedy or heartbreak as one bit of comfort and reliability in a chaotic world).

And not only have you seen each other, you’ve moved through this time together.

It’s a gift, and a mystery that requires imagination, to love a place and feel that it loves you back the way a dog might.  You speak different languages, and there are things you’ll never be capable of understanding about each other.  Yet there’s some undeniable reciprocation of feelings, a secret, sacred empathy between you and this piece of land.

If you’re like me, you might come to realize that you can’t imagine a better exit from this world than during a run (someday, in the distant future) here in this place you know so well.  Maybe it’s near the summit of your favorite climb, familiar trees standing guard, your heart pounding, legs aching, sweat (and maybe a spiderweb) in your eyes, a smile on your face (and in your soul).

Maybe you’ve even found a final resting place.

Go out to spectacular destinations and do amazing, life-list things — we’re built for exploring.  But do come home from all that — I suspect that our places still have some lessons for us, and some secrets.

The accumulated intimacy of years in a place is priceless and irreplaceable, better than any buckle.  And you only earn it by spending quality time in a committed, long-term relationship with that place: bleed in it, laugh and cry with it, grow old with it.

By being there and paying attention, you become part of it and it becomes part of you.

If you’re interested in origins and want to see the difference between a raw idea and a finished product, you can see how this one started out here: Query [Pandemic Diary day 173].

I talked last time (There I was…) about the importance of telling stories. There are many ways to do that, but sometimes the very best stories have no words. Sometimes the best story is on the face of an athlete.

This excerpt is from an old photo essay I published back in 2010 when my son was deep into soccer:

Sometimes I need to restore my faith in the basic soundness of our species, because sometimes I see and hear too much that takes me in the opposite direction. So I watch for examples of our better nature. I look for displays of people at their best, in moments of earnest engagement when they are so involved in doing something they love that they forget to pose, when they lower their defenses and let go of their cynicism and sarcasm and pretension and become pure.

One place I can reliably find this is on the faces of athletes engaged in their sport. Since my son’s a soccer player, and since I’m not a very good spectator, I spend my time at his games target shooting for those moments with my camera. And regardless of the season or the age or whether it’s boys or girls, it’s a target-rich environment.

Out on the field, in head-to-head competition, those sparks of authenticity follow the ball back and forth across the field and flow with the tides of the game. But it’s not really about the game. The game, the score, the stats, winning and losing — it’s all just a vehicle (or an excuse) for getting to those moments of maximal effort when nothing’s held back.

It’s striking in its purity because in those moments at the peak of the action, in those brief seconds of total concentration and full engagement, there’s no room in the mind for anything else. That animal focus on a physical act of athleticism drowns out all the noise, the social anxiety and the complexities of life.

Something primal comes through — the look in the eye, the set of the body, the physicality and the energy — and you can’t help but feel you’re gazing upon something fundamental to our nature. And it’s something fundamentally powerful and good.

…

(The full essay with all the photos is here: The Rush of it All: Soccer Faces)

When I started shooting trail races, I saw exactly the same things.

Sometimes there is earnest focus…

…which is often accompanied by some pain.

Sometimes there are smiles…

… and sometimes the biggest story is on the faces of the crew…

It is all there on the faces: focus, struggle, pain, joy, pride… it’s universal and elemental. It is us at our best, unencumbered.

And it can make a really good story.

You can find more of my photos here:

* Running: TROIA Photos - Running

* Soccer: TROIA Photos - Team Sports

Post-race running stories fill me up.

They come in a frantic, exuberant flurry after a race — at the finish line, on the way home, on social media in the weeks afterward. The best of them stay with us for years.

They remind me of my own stories, or else they make me wonder what my story will be when I eventually face what they faced. And I love those moments of recognition when I know exactly what they are saying, because I’ve been there, felt exactly that.

This communal review and celebration of a race or a run is integral to the experience. We immerse ourselves in emotional retellings, strengthen our tribal bonds by revisiting shared hardships, shared victories and defeats. It fills me up in a way that nothing else can.

In the army we call these “there-I-was“ stories…

…as in: “There I was, [insert daunting challenge], and then I [insert heroic actions in the face of that challenge].”

The name is a mocking but affectionate recognition that there might be some melodrama involved. The story starts with a fact or a basic emotion, then adds narrative that highlights some elements and downplays others, all in the interest of making a point. It’s not journalism or fiction, and embellishment does not negate the story, it elevates it. At the core, it’s about communicating some truth beyond pure facts, perhaps something that touches the universal.

Each story is new, yet also very old, a contemporary illustration of ancient truths, fuel for the fire of our ever-evolving future mythologies.

Stories are only stories if you tell them.

So, stories are important, you probably have some you haven’t shared, and your story is part of our story. But we can only learn from it or be inspired or entertained by it if you put it out for us to see.

It’s a basic tenant I learned as a young scout platoon leader, the core of our cavalry mission: gain and maintain contact with the enemy, develop the situation, continue to report. Report! Tell the story, paint the picture — no matter what you’ve seen, it can’t help the rest of the squadron if they don’t know about it.

On my homepage I have the same idea told a different way by Mary Oliver: “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

So tell your story.

What are your there-I-was moments? Tell us a story.

It can be big or little, a sweeping epic of group struggle, or a small and personal battle, how you managed to make it to the top of that last climb, how clear the sky was and how perfect the sunset when you got there.

Tell it for the stranger who will stumble across it (they might become your friend).

Tell it for your great-great grandchildren (wouldn’t you be glad to have a similar relic from your own ancestors?).

Tell it because it might inspire someone or teach them, it might reinforce something they already know, or it might help them look at the world in a new way.

Use your own voice, or pretend you were someone else, change the names to protect the innocent (and “there I was” can be “there we were”). Tell us what you saw and did, or how you wish it had gone instead.

Tell it where you’re comfortable, or (maybe better) where you’re not so comfortable. Tell it to people you know will like it, or to the entire world. Post it on social media. Add it as a comment on someone else’s post. Write an email or an old-fashioned paper letter. Build a website, start a Substack newsletter (like this one), or start a blog and tell all the stories. Journal it, dear-diary it, draw pictures or add photos or make it a poem or a song. Write it in the trailhead logbook.

Or save it for just the right time, with just the right group of people around just the right campfire.

Tell it anyway.

Think your story has already been told? You’re probably right — we’re a storytelling species, and more than 100 billion of us have ridden this planet around the sun in the past 200 thousand years or so. Every story has already been told. But think of a favorite song… how many times have you listened to it, played it on repeat, sung along with it, pulled up the live version and the studio version and someone’s cover version?

The truth is we crave repetition, and we need to hear old things in new ways. A hundred billion of us or not, you are unique, your story is new to you, and even though it’s just another variation on a theme — tell it anyway.

Think it’s not enough? Think you’re not fast enough, you didn’t go far enough, or have some other “not enough” measure you come up short on? So what? Most of us are somewhere in the middle, and “enough” is both relative and subjective. Tell it anyway.

Think it’s too much? Don’t want to brag that you went so fast, or so far, hurt so much, acted so heroically? Then don’t brag — just tell your story. You worked hard, or you got lucky (probably both), and you did this thing. If your story offends the sensibilities of some, it will surely inspire others. Tell it anyway.

Think you don’t have the words for it? Think your grammar is poor or your creativity is lacking and you can’t come up with anything better than “awesome” or “pain cave”? So what? Stories are bigger than the words you use to tell them, and unless you’re going pro, nobody really cares. The story will come through — you will come through — and we’ll hear you and know what you’re trying to say. Tell it anyway.

Afraid no one will read or understand it? Or worse, think no one will care? You might be right. Your story is not going to change the world. At best you might get the brief attention of some tiny fragment of the world for a few seconds. And some small subset of that tiny fragment might remember some part of your story for a bit longer.

So what? Suppose you tell all of your stories, over and over again, and just once, a single person finds it at just the right moment, and it makes a difference. Do you really need to change the world? Maybe instead you are meant to reach that one particular person with your particular story at the one particular moment they need to hear what you have to say. Do you really need more than that?

Tell it anyway.

That’s it — just tell your story. We’ll read it or we won’t. It will reach us, teach us, inspire us, or it won’t. As Seth Godin says, “Our work is about throwing. The catching can take care of itself.” None of it really matters, and yet at the same time it matters deeply. Tell your story, fill us up.

Here’s a prompt:There I was…

Transitions

I’m interested in margins and frontiers, in boundaries, borders, transition zones and phases; the interface between here and there, before and after, old and new; the indistinct liminal spaces around edges and borders, and the gradual subtle changes that roll across the land and through our lives.

Those changes come in different flavors. Some are dramatic or even traumatic, they’re “the nexus of the crisis, and the origin of storms” (extra credit if you recognize that phrase from Astronomy by B.O.C.). Others are subtle, non-storm and without drama, just a slow drifting-away (that’s matched in the best case by a reciprocal drifting-towards).

They all draw my attention, at least partly because I want to understand my own liminal spaces, my own passages and margins, the ebb and flow of my interests, abilities, options, and obligations.

Because while some transitions are thrust upon you abruptly, often the signs of a coming change are there far ahead of time. And if you’re watching, you can recognize them and get ahead of them, so you can make conscious decisions around them, devise a strategy for them, make the transition on your own terms, so that what you are leaving behind and what you are moving towards can all be a coherent part of the body of work that is your life.

I’m thinking and writing about this now because I’m approaching a milestone and a transition in my running life. In 2011 I ran my first trail race, the Hyner Trail Challenge 25k. A year later, I ran my first ultra at the inaugural Hyner 50k. I’ve run it every year since, and it’s been a touchstone for my life through this period. So my decision that my tenth repetition (next month) will be my final Hyner, and probably my last short race of any sort, feels personally momentous.

I like the symbolism of ten, the feeling of it. But it’s a marker for a transition that has been happening for years. It’s a drifting-away, and I welcome it.

I’ve not lost my love of trailrunning — if anything, that feeling is deeper and more nuanced with each outing.

And I’m not finished with the long races. At some point I’ll probably move on from them in the same way, but for now they still intrigue me and challenge me in ways that I’m not done exploring.

It’s not about age, either. At not quite 57, I’m still on the upside of that curve in many ways, still in an “older, faster, stronger” phase, and my last two races (a 100k and a 100-miler) were both personal bests.

It’s more about having done this thing (the short races) long enough to be sated, about having nothing left to prove on this front. The image that comes to me as I write this is that misty scene from late in “The Return of the King” (from The Lord of the Rings) when the elves are leaving Middle Earth — their time (my time) was passing, and to stay longer would be to fade away.

Anyway, I’m working on a ten-year retrospective “adventure report” about my Hyner years that will have some details and remembrances (and maybe some lessons) from the race — you’ll be able to read that sometime next month on my website.

Boundaries

The other project I’m working on now is an article that’s closely related to that idea of transitions. I’m looking at the magazine’s theme of “Access” from the standpoint of boundaries, and the selective filters we use at the various physical and topical and temporal boundaries in our lives and our world.

I haven’t fully worked this out yet, but I’m intrigued by three aspects of it.

First, the concept of boundaries. An edge may look clear and sharply defined, a linear transition that happens precisely here. But move in for a closer look and you might see that what looked precise is actually hazy, that there is an emerging smudge of pixellated darkness that is faint at first but that gains density as you move towards the line, and perhaps lingers a bit on the other side of the line. We’re back into margins and liminality again.

Second, our boundary filters. How do we decide what (and who) to let through, and what (and who) to keep out?

We filter objects and physical passage (like: you aren’t allowed to run here, or you physically can’t run here, or you aren’t allowed to cross this border… access to a trail, access to a country, citizenship, ownership, rights of access and rights of exclusion)…

…and we filter activities and interests and desires and ambitions (like: the old plan you had for your life, and your new plan, the adjustments you’ve made on your trajectory, the phases of your life and the transitions from one to the next)…

And third, the contrasts. For there to be a boundary or a transition there must be a “this side” and a “that side.” The difference might be physical, like at this point the trail is too steep to go on, or there might be some cultural contrivance like a legal boundary or a convention that says that people like you just don’t (or can’t, or aren’t allowed to) go to a place like this.

But whether the difference is natural or invented, it’s the difference, the contrast, that draws our interest and attention — that’s where the story is, where the challenges occur and where the growth (or decline) happens.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten on that, but I’m still working, and I’ll share more of it when I’ve figured it out.

In the meantime, thanks for reading (and please stay tuned).

Jeff

When I heard about the Russian invasion of Ukraine this morning and started seeing photos of tanks and personnel carriers, it took me back more than three decades.

When I arrived in West Germany in 1988, my first task as a tank platoon leader was to learn our role in the NATO General Defense Plan. Our cavalry squadron was to defend the Hof Corridor, a potential avenue of approach for a Soviet-led invasion from the east. In a carefully-orchestrated defense in depth, to be fought in a series of engagement areas between the border and a final squadron engagement area 35 miles southwest, on the edge of the escarpment near our home station north of Bayreuth, we were to delay Warsaw Pact forces long enough for our tank divisions to prepare a counterattack.

That fall, we participated in Reforger (“Return of Forces to Germany”), a massive recurrent exercise designed to practice — and advertise — our ability and intent to support NATO against attack. This was the first time I was a part of a large armored formation maneuvering across extensive areas of countryside. For a 23-year-old soldier, it was a buzz — impressive and exciting. But it was also incredibly sobering to think of what it represented, the violent potential of it.

The threat was real, the enemy was strong, and we took it very seriously.

I’m not suggesting that this is that. It was a different time and place, and though closely related, a different enemy.

But that’s what I thought about this morning.

I thought about what a mass formations of tanks looks and feels like as it moves across European terrain, thought about one particular movement we did during that Reforger exercise, an entire cavalry troop on-line, assaulting at full speed across an open field, an irresistible force.

I thought about what tanking and soldiering during European winter can be like (it’s not pleasant, and I’m sure it’s a lot less pleasant when it’s an open-ended live conflict).

And I thought about more recent experiences. I remembered Ukrainian students in classes I was teaching many years later at the NATO school in Germany, about the bright young officers and the bright future they anticipated as they embraced the west, and I’m wondering if they are still in the Ukrainian army and what role they might be playing in this conflict.

And that song (Peter Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers”)… I’m not certain why it came to me, but it did, and I looked it up and played it and watched the video, and even though it’s cryptic and the references are obscure, it felt right, it captured my mood and gave me a title for this entry. Jeux Sans Frontières… “games without frontiers, war without tears”. (The Wikipedia entry has some interesting background information.)

I was going to end with that, but I realized that the Cold War duck-and-cover drills in the video tied to something else I’m working on. A friend recently sent me a post he wrote as an answer to a question about formative early memories (read it here: “What If? in El Cuervo Viejo). His formative memory was from the Cuban missile crisis, when he was ten, of being told when they left school that day that there might not be school the next day because “the world we knew may be no more”.

In searching for my own equivalent formative memory I realized that by the time I was the age he was for his memory, the Cold War had cooled down a bit. We were no longer doing the duck-and-cover drills, and my first memory of the Soviet Union is Apollo-Soyuz, the first crewed international space mission. It’s a symbolically bright memory that I suppose was probably formative for me in some important ways.

I’m not sure exactly how that relates to the events of today, and I don’t know what any of this means. I guess it might be that this is all confusing and frustrating and maddening and disappointing, and there will be violence and death and hardship for some people, merely angst for others, and the world will go on with it’s predictable mix of darkness and light.

And maybe we’re all just playing at games without frontiers.

The rhythm of my days, of my life, is much simpler now than it once was.

When I retired from the Army, I traded a rewarding but highly disruptive career for something much more stable and predictable. I’m still navigating that transition, but as time passes I’m settling into the kind of unfragmented pattern of living that I’ve craved for a very long time. Most of my days now follow a simple cycle that I love, and that is good for my soul: I read, I write, I run, and I repeat.

On the surface it’s a practical cycle of activity that concisely describes (and directs) how I spend my time.

At a deeper level, if I interpret more broadly and metaphorically, “Read, Write, Run, Repeat” is the how-to core of the philosophy I try to live by.

Let’s have a look.

Read

Reading is the intake phase. It’s about inputs, fuel.

Read written words (all those second-hand observations), yes. But also, read in a broader sense, get your own first-hand observations: actively seek input in all forms from the world around you. It’s active, not passive. Look with intent to see, see with intent to understand. Receive the messages and look for more.

Pay Attention!

Write

Writing is the output phase. It’s about digestion, synthesis, and creation.

Take all those inputs and play with them. Stir them, let them ferment/gestate/incubate. Change angles, ask questions, look for differences and connections. Reconfigure them into a form that is more comprehensible or that adds context and understanding.

Your primary product is personal insight and understanding, and you decide whether to keep that in your mind, or to capture it in words (on paper or screen or audio).

Do it for yourself first. But please consider sharing — your creative products become the next round of inputs, for yourself and for others.

Tell about it.

Run

Running is about being a good animal.

Body and mind are inseparable, and the health of each is integral to the health of the other. Physical movement through a physical environment under your own power exercises your body and mind in an animal way. It brings balance, enables broad-sense reading and writing, and brings you contact with the world.

Keep moving forward.

Repeat

Repetition is about the process and your decision to trust it.

Repetition acknowledges that we’re on a journey. It recognizes that, on this long trail without a finish line, the journey is the reward. It celebrates the products that flow from the cycles of that journey, the insights and the new questions.

Choose your process, make a conscious commitment to it, and trust the belief system behind it. And then ride that cycle as long and as well as you possibly can. If you do it right, it gets better with use, reinforces and improves itself, becomes second nature, becomes who you are and what you do.

I couldn’t ask for much more than that.

I want to pause in the woods on a cold night and stand at the edge of the darkness, sensing forward with my whole body. I want to see-hear-smell-taste-feel every nuance of the night, its mystery and promise.

(Can anything be more alive than a dog is in that moment?)

I want to run with her when this pregnant and sensing pause becomes an exuberant charge forward. No fear or questions, no careful pacing or holding back for later, no hierarchy of goals, no calculations or considerations or implications, no past or future or any awareness of time beyond the simple now.

Only the perfect bright clarity of movement.

I want to forget (just for a moment, only every so often), that we aren’t dogs, forget this blessing and curse of memory and imagination, of warranted fears and our constant need to plan and prepare and improve.

I want to lie down panting at the end of an outing, exhausted and content, and feel no urge to analyze this effort or contemplate the next.

I want my legs to twitch and my tail to wag as I sleep.

And when I waken back into my humanity, I want to be better for the sojourn — I want to bring some element of vital caninity back with me. I want lasting and useful connection with my native dog-heart.

I wish that for all of us.

Did you like the audio version? Was it a distraction? Should I do it again? Comment below to let me know — thanks.