This blog has sat dormant for many months, but that does not reflect the state of my mind.
This summer has been one of the best of my entire life: it was the first time in 12 years that I was not either chasing late season track meets or training for a fall season. For the first time in my adult life, I threw training as the number one concern to the wind and took to mountains, forests, and the outdoors. I have long felt great passion for outdoor adventure—the draw of the personally unexplored—and I arrived at an intersection of my life where both the physical state in which I lived and mental state allowed me to spend virtually every weekend satiating this yearning unaccompanied by the guilt of inconsistent training. No priority given to a Saturday workout or Sunday long run? No problem.
Born out of my combined interest in skiing and type two fun, I took a couple spring backcountry ski trips, summiting Mt. Adams for a single 7000 foot run on the way down, rode my bike over the McKenzie Pass on 242 when it was closed to vehicles, ran up Spencer’s Butte to watch sunrise on the longest day of the year, backpacked through meadows in Yosemite, summited Half Dome at sunrise to watch the fiery colors of dawn wash over to the valley, chased tuna fifty miles out in the Pacific, rode my motorcycle up to the base of South Sister and ran to the top just to see what it was like, took camping trips where I strapped gear onto my motorcycle and ended my day when the sunset, hiked up a mountain with a group of friends to witness The Great American Eclipse in the center of the path of totality, went mountain hopping in the Wallowa Mountains, rode the rim of Crater Lake on my trusty (human powered) bike, and capped off summer a day late by summiting Mt. Bachelor and skiing ten inches of powder back down on the first day of fall.
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| Mt. Adams |
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| Biking 242 over McKenzie Pass |
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| Sunrise on the longest day of the year |
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| Meadows in Yosemite NP |
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| Summit of Half Dome at sunrise |
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| Summit of South Sister |
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| 2017 Great American Eclipse |
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| Mountain hopping in the Wallowas |
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| Mt. Bachelor on the first day of fall |
Yes. That was a run on sentence. But its grammatical structure reflects that of my life this summer: exhaustedly and excitedly running from one pursuit of adventure to the next; seemingly linked together, only punctured by a rewarding job developing biotech instruments.
I was still running most mornings before work mainly so I could justify eating the free donuts in the office. It also helped to have a basic level of fitness to support the future weekend adventures I was scheming. But when asked, quite frequently, “when’s your next race?” by teammates, friends, co-workers, and even my parents, I hemmed through, “I don’t know. I was laser focused on training and racing for so long….I’ve been enjoying other things. I’m really not sure. Maybe I’ll run a local race for fun sometime soon.” I wasn’t unhappy—quite the opposite—I didn’t have a desire to race. And that, in itself, felt foreign and left me at a loss to explain.
So it came as no surprise to me that when I took a visit up to Seattle over a long weekend to see my friends Michael and Jessica Eaton, Michael asked me the same question on a run together. I responded in my usual way, he politely listened, and it was quiet for a while. I don’t recall precisely what he said, but it was something close to, “Well, if you ever want to do it again, you definitely have the talent. And the drive. You’re a really good runner.”
It was quiet for a while again.
I mumbled out some response with the confidence of a foe taking her first steps, “Thanks. Yeah, I’m just not sure if I want that. Training is….hard. And now with working full time….” But Michael’s comment was like a shoe on the final few steps to a summit, my mind the rock knocked from rest, tumbling precariously down previously well-trodden paths, many bringing joy, others pain, and a few fear. His confident affirmation was a reminder of that which I loved about the sport—not the part where I failed to make the Olympic Trials, failed to advance any of my personal records on the track for years, failed to have fiscal balance while running in endless circles. I hardened my mind as a result of these failures to move on, encasing my love of racing along with it. But as my mind wandered, clips of joyous running flashed through my memory and created an opening in that case.
