How to Grow a Runner

Running with Jessy- She is stubborn and sensitive.   Quirky and at times, quick to anger. I have been berated in no certain terms and to varying degrees due to crossing a street incorrectly, the location of a mudpuddle, the volume of eating pita chips, and once, breathing.   She is also kind and giving and incredibly intelligent. The way she sees the world challenges me to widen my own views. Since the day we met, I have laughed harder, worked smarter, felt a fire of passion for myself reignite. I have also loved more deeply, empathized more fully, and grown more complete.   We are very different. But we share a love and passion for something that allows us to continue to grow and bond on a much deeper level. That shared passion is for running. And I love running with Jessy. We ran together for the first time after we had been dating for a while. We met at a trail race and walked a lap with some of her friends. We planned to run on our first ...

This weekend I will not be running 100 miles. I was going to. I was trained to.   But the year brought rain and environmental hardship an in lieu of runners taking 6 trips around a 16.67 miles loop, with two river crossings, there will be park rescue crews watching overflowed banks, exposed roots, broken trail and mud. The race was postponed. My feet will not traverse those steps. Instead, I will run the streets around my home. I will jump rope to condition my ankles, lift weights to strengthen muscles and stretch hips that always seem a little too tight. I will continue a training cycle that was to have waned by now. I will try to push myself, despite my planned pushes being all pushed out. Training for a race is hard. Training for a race that is postponed is a bit like torture. Taking the bandaide off, ever more slowly. It is anxiety waves, ridden for weeks, only to crest too early and catch tide again. It is rearranging gear bags, packed weeks ago. ...

27 minutes with Annie and Bruce:  This was from the final moments of the Grand Mesas Ultra. The full story to come on mine and Jessy's shared blog. Mesa, Trees, Mesa, Trees.... Leaving flowing point to begin the final leg of the 100 miler felt amazing. We breezed through the aide station knowing we were still racing the clock, but felt good about the time we had. The cheers from the volunteers was amazing as in the final gasps of race verses Jessy, everyone was celebrating the victory coming to play. But the mesa had one card left to play, and it laid its final hand with a cruel sneer. Our feet were away from the aide station by 1:05 pm and our race chart stated all we had left was 7 miles. But the mesas cruel sneer lay within the lightly printed asterisk by that figure.  *aide station distances are estimates And so for the next hour and a half we roam through trees and then the trail would break away into meadows and then back into trees and then toward the...

I am currently seeking shelter under a tree before the Fort Worth Tri- Half Ironman. It is about to be cancelled due to weather, but I don’t know that yet. I am thinking about Jessy. Did you do any writing today?   What race report are you up too?   When will you finish Rocky? Jessy has been waiting patiently (or more accurately, impatiently) for my race report of Rocky Raccoon. I had to be ready. Fully processed and able impart some meaning for what I put my mind and body through, and I had not yet found that. I needed what happened out there in those woods to mean more than the belt buckle and cool medal. I wanted more from that race than a few more stories for my collection. A lot has happened since then. I got ultra sounds on my heels and feet, revealing the mystery of why everything hurt. I travelled solo in mine and Jessy’s new truck to North Carolina and ran a 50k on a cool island. The whole family camped and Jessy did her first triathlon. We g...

In February of last year, I ran my first trail race, the Cross Timber Trail Run Marathon distance. I had a fantastic experience, ran into issues and fought my way over 26 miles of climbing, descent, rocks, roots and sand.   I trained hard over the summer and ran several other races, particularly focusing on the 50k distance. These runs took me to Colorado, all over Oklahoma, and became shared experiences with my partner, Jessy.   Come September, I embarked over a new adventure, the 40 mile distance at the Rough Creek Trail Run. This included a very strenuous hike over a portion called the Rusty Crown due to a series of incredibly steep, hand over hand climbing, followed by almost immediate decent, outlining a crown shape.   This was a big race for me because it was a new distance, a new vertical challenge, and it also took place a couple weeks before I left for Africa. Jessy and I were struggling to navigate our new life as co-parents, partners...

This story is three months late. It took some self reflection to truly process the experience and will be joined by some companion pieces on other races soon. Why do I Run: Pumpkin Hollar Hundred We were fresh from an international flight after spending four days in Paris. She met me there as I was coming in from my two week trip volunteering in Togo, Africa. We had not seen one another for two weeks and were enraptured being together, being in a new country, and we did it all on foot, walking on average 14-16 miles a day. We arrived home Thursday and on Friday left again. So, we spent four days days walking around a foreign city we didn’t know, came home, unpacked one suit case only to load up four others: for myself, Jessy, and the two kids. We loaded everything into our small Ranger truck and drove four hours north into Oklahoma. We dropped the kids off with a close friend and babysitter and continued North to Talequah to the race site. Here, we climbed in th...