running it back

the Midsouth Double

Mar 21, 2024

Spring is forcing its way through; outside the constant rush of water, sun-washed mornings, and for me, a reluctant return to the perpetual motions of pack, leave, race, return, repeat— never fully un-packing, never fully planted. I spend all winter wondering if it’s time to leave the mountains, start some rumors of heading abroad, and then I leave and then I come home and things have shifted, there is an entirely new and divine smell to the air, the creeks burst out of seemingly nothing, the forest wakes up and the thought of coming back to anywhere else is unfathomable— something about the mountains and how they reject the routine, it’s irresistible to me. I remain in love and maybe it’s the 5 days in Oklahoma that are giving me these eyes but then it will be Spain, again, and then Emporia and then Kenya and then the trails will melt out and how could I possibly leave then? True, I miss flat whites and the occasional bar and carefully selecting fits to go anywhere out in the world but trading those for good dirt and the particular way the sun hits, here, up high, well it still seems worth it.

I know it’s been ages, some of you have left and a surprising amount of you have stayed. I’m still getting the occasional confirmation in real life that you like these updates and every time that happens I feel a rush of validation followed swiftly by a pang of guilt, misplaced guilt; just as my body needs a break in the winter so too does my public person, and this space, while without doubt the most honest of those spaces, is still out There. I keep writing, just in little notebooks, train-of-thought and very little punctuation and mostly just lists of all my insecurities, all my dead-end questions. Racing is back and with it, all the obvious subjects, the recaps and rushes of physical effort, play-by-play— much easier to stomach than the thought of inviting you in to my inner, winter existence.

Last Friday I ran a 50k and then last Saturday I rode 100 miles, and somehow the two together were easier than the two apart, bullshit I can hear all of you thinking but I swear. It’s a bit of a dangerous game for me, the dabbling in running again, the charm of its simplicity and the humility of it, no mechanicals or questions of tactics or geometry, no laundry list of reasons why you are slow, just you, and maybe you are slow today. And what a wonderful thing it is to be slow, to sit with all the things we lose in the wind. To accept the landscape as it creeps towards you, to see the individual blades of the weeds and feel every small rock beneath your feet and to suffer so immediately, so consistently, a whole-body commitment to the burden of forward progress. I run well, fly to mile 15 with little effort, and then begins the inevitable crumbling, stomach pains and the build from a murmur to a scream of muscle fibers tearing in two, maybe that’s dramatic, but it’s true, the burn. No choice but to live here, the bargaining starts, if we make it to Aid 4 we’re two thirds there and then it’s just 5 miles until there’s only 5 more, so if you just make it to there we’re good. Three hundred some runners out on course and yet it seems we’re all, for the most part, alone, Maude rushes by at some point like I expected her to and it must be for an hour at least I can see her red backpack getting smaller and smaller in the distance and instead of being discouraging like I might have thought before it is almost a comfort, two little dots in space heading to the same final dot.

Eight years since the last time I ran this far and it’s forever, ages, a lifetime ago, a separate existence, and yet may as well have been no time at all. It’s funny to be faced with the truth that life changes, place changes, hopes and goals and perceptions and all that become unrecognizable in time and somehow the person running, the person moving through it is very much the same. I’m still her and I’m not even so sure I’m older. I cross the line and if Bobby weren’t hugging me so hard I wouldn’t be standing anymore. A haze rushes in, it’s over, and I’m kind of sad it is. Ten minutes later I’m wondering if I could have gone harder.

iykyk. Pretty sure we all go faster for this guy. photo @gwilliees

The worst of it was Saturday morning, by a long shot. I remember getting up to pee around 2am, swinging legs carefully over the edge of the bed, don’t wake Caro, and I’m genuinely not sure I can stand, my quads finished, not even pain per se just nothing there, stumble to the bathroom and my mouth is dry and my brain is pressing on the inside of my skull. We get ready around 6, the bike racing prep familiar enough that I can do it half-present, too tired to even be that nervous. Swing a leg over and spin to the start and relief, riding is so much easier than walking, the weight of my body supported by the frame and I think, what a neat invention, the bicycle. Race starts, usual chaos, and I’m like an exaggerated version of my typical self. All the things I struggle with, the intensity of the first hour, on then off then on, the drives to stick a group, all of that is a joke. I settle in and as the body warms up, I find I can go actually pretty hard, and start to move up. This is where it gets good. Maybe I’m still buzzed off the running endorphins, maybe in a sense I’ve lifted the pressure to be in the mix, maybe it’s simply a good day. I’m bridging groups, rallying them to work, two guys then six then they all explode then I find the next group, a woman here and there, nobody I recognize so I must be pretty far back but I feel like I could ride this pace for a very long time and 100 miles is nothing. The hours and k’s tick on, I’m begging all these old guys to Do Something, I’m putting in 50% of the work in groups of twelve, but this is a race for time and I’m gonna fucking get there, wheel suckers or no. I haven’t felt a motivation like this since Traka; it’s not always so obvious to me to keep trying, but there is this undeniable will to get it done and I lean into it, brain off in another dimension writing poetry of the mundane, red dirt as far as the eye can see, no seriously, and I’m having fun for maybe the first time ever on this stupid course.

The finish, the series of hugs, the stumble through the corral, it’s done. I sit on the pavement with Jamie and just exist for a while. Caro does some math and she’s pretty sure the three of us, her me Maude, we’ve swept the Double podium and ha really that’s cool but I could care less, this was about being empty and I’m empty, at last, it takes so much these days. Caro’s smashed it and Maude’s smashed it and me, I’m not sure, so hard to be happy for myself. Was it enough and all that. Maybe it’s the fatigue talking, but even here, in the sun in the window in my house in the morning, I’m unsure. But the uncertainty itself is familiar, at least more so than sureness. Was it enough and did I give it my best and do I want to stay here or run off to somewhere else and Am I Ready and Is There More. Maybe it’s just the rest week allowing room for too much thinking. Two things of which I am sure: I want to keep running and there is a piece of me, sometimes small, sometimes my entire person, that wants to be here, and for now that is enough.

The Amity Villager

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