We’re Zooming this coming week! Please drop into the Zoom chat on Thursday, June 18, 5pm …

Read more

That all happened for me last week as I pushed pause on regular life to go back to Ojai, in Southern California, for my 40th high school reunion with the class of 1986. For me, it’s more than a high school reunion because I grew up there, on the campus of Thacher School, as a faculty kid and met my future husband there. My grandpa taught there for three decades, my dad was a student there and later worked there, my kids went there too, and I served on the board for nearly a decade in my forties. It connects our generations and holds my origin story.

For us, it became a family reunion too as my daughter celebrated her 10th reunion and her engagement party, and my son—who now works at the school—was on the job there, so I got to witness him in his role as a leader and guide. My big brother also showed up for his 50th reunion.

It’s fitting our hotel was called Su Nido (Spanish for “your nest”). The town, Ojai, traces its name back to the Native Chumash word for “nest,” and the oval-shaped east-west valley ringed by coastal mountains forms a giant amphitheater-like nest. Of course, I thought about how I had left the nest, and my kids had too, and now I am an “empty-nester.”

But I had no sense of loss or pangs of sadness about my kids’ independence and time’s passage, except when missing my dad, who was in the class of ‘51 and hence would’ve been there for his 75th reunion if he were still alive at 92. Instead, I felt fulfillment and ease, as if cradled in that nest, as if I’m finally settled.

If we’re lucky, we arrive at a certain mellowness in the later phase of midlife—once we’re past our kids’ pivotal adolescent and college years, past the pain and goodbyes involved with caregiving our aging parents, past the need to prove ourselves professionally, past the worry about financial stability—and we can exhale and think, “My job here is done,” and soak in the present. That’s how I felt. More than nostalgic, content.

We gathered on the first morning at the stables, the place I spent almost every early morning and after-school afternoon of my youth and practiced a homegrown form of equine therapy to cope with family conflict and peer pressures. The school has a horse program that has been its defining characteristic since its founding in 1889, and now my son is a key person in that program as a riding instructor and farrier.

The heady fragrance of horse manure, dust, and chaparral—the perfume of my youth—put me at ease, as did the sounds of horse hooves and the feel of every second-nature interaction with a horse. My daughter beamed as her fiancé—our new family member—held the reins and settled in his saddle with confidence, as if he had passed our family’s litmus test for acceptance. My son, on a palomino, guided us up a trail where I looked to one side to remember the night of October 5, 1984, when my husband and I had snuck off there to a clearing to look at the starlit nighttime valley and shared a first kiss. All that effort that we put in our relationship to get through low points and stay together as a couple had been worth it.

Looking at my son, whose 25th birthday we just celebrated, I thought how objectively strange yet in my mind reasonable it is that this reunion even shaped his birthday. Back in 2001, I had yearned to attend my 15th reunion in early June. I had felt intensely pulled to return to this place not only to see my classmates, but also my siblings and parents who would be there. I had just turned 32, was nine months pregnant and ready to pop, and feeling anxious about the transition to parenting two kids and figuring out whether and how I’d restart a shelved career. My homing instinct went into overdrive. I needed the getaway to Ojai to feel grounded and supported—I needed to return to the nest.

So, figuring I could handle a road trip with a toddler and newborn if I had at least a week to recover, I had our son induced on May 31 (a day past his due date). Then our foursome drove from our Bay Area home back to Ojai so we could attend reunion that year. Instead of being exhausted by postpartum travel, I felt energized.

The weekend reminded me that relationships form the foundation of happiness, and our schools and communities shape our character. In my teens, I rebelled strongly against the school and yearned to escape the small town. I spread my wings, intentionally distanced myself from my parents, and became a runner in part to run from my past. Then I circled back and was welcomed back. I try to honor the teachers, horses, and friends who gave me so much by giving back to the school as a dedicated alumna. I’m so fortunate to have a place—this nest—to call home.

Adventure in midlife and beyond

On Saturday, I was asked to participate on an alumni speaker panel about “adventure in midlife and beyond,” to talk to peers and younger alumni about how to stay active in the outdoors. In addition to the horse program, the school prioritizes outdoor education and organizes camping trips for students and faculty a couple of times a year. They wanted us to share how our upbringing at the school contributed to being outdoorsy and adventurous later in life.

I’m sharing some excerpts, especially from my childhood playmate and lifelong friend Carolyn (pictured in the video on my left) who was on the panel. She and her husband (also one of our classmates) just finished bike-packing for weeks across Morocco, having also bike-packed across Canada. When we were asked what adventure means to us, she said, “For me, adventure is being on the steepest part of the learning curve, and that’s my favorite place to be, whether it’s learning about a new culture or a new way to interact.”

I shared my view that adventure involves seizing opportunities to do new things even though you can’t plan for everything and can’t be certain of the outcome. We all talked about the satisfaction of getting to remote places self-powered.

Asked how our generation and upbringing had shaped our sense of adventure, Carolyn and I reflected on our youth, when we ran wild and unsupervised on the campus. I don’t think we ever played inside with dolls, because we always were outside, either in her tree house reading or on a ropes course literally hanging out and daring ourselves. In addition to riding horses, we rode big-wheels without helmets down a perilous steep road. Unlike kids today, Carolyn said, “we were unsupervised and un-entertained. We had to entertain ourselves and figure out our own limits.”

I added, “We grew up so playful as faculty kids and then as students. We’d just play and explore. When I became a student, I became an ultra-wanderer and would wander at night, sometimes well beyond campus. That kind of adolescent rebelliousness and desire to explore feeds in to what I do now as an ultrarunner.”

When asked why we approach senior years as a time to be active and adventurous, I answered, “Well, it beats the alternative. As we age, we become creatures of habit and routine, so however you are becomes self-perpetuating. For me, I do it because it enriches our lives and keeps me feeling young, and also, I like being a mentor in my sport. I remember being in my thirties and forties and looking up to women in their fifties, and now I want to provide that role modeling for younger women who want to do mountain running.”

We were asked, what would you say to someone who feels like adventure is something they used to do rather than something they still do?

“I would say, start small,” I said. “Do anything that feels challenging, whether it’s going on a one-mile hike or starting a new project. Sometimes an adventure can be volunteering for something. Just put yourself out there.”

Carolyn added, “Start small but also be audacious. If there’s something you want to do, don’t sell yourself short. If you get something big in your head, think, ‘maybe I can do this.’”

I shared some photos from the long weekend on my Instagram, if you’d like to see. Also, if you get to visit and run around Ojai, I encourage you to read my piece in the new UltraRunning about Ojai trails, which is an homage to hometown trails as well as a guide on where to run there. Gift link here.

Congrats

I know of three subscribers who finished ultras this weekend. Bridget Wilson aka Blue finished her first-ever ultra, the Dam Yeti 55K in Virginia. Erica Moore finished the 50-mile division of that race and wrote an excellent race report about what makes the Yeti events special and truly inclusive. And Suzanna Bon nailed the Scout Mountain 100 (a Hardrock qualifier) in a strong time, placing 11th, and became the first over-60 woman ever to finish Scout Mountain 100.

Who am I missing? Share the news in the comments of a race you ran this past weekend! And I’d love to hear if this post triggered any thoughts on growing up and going back to reunions.

My head feels as if it might explode from trying to keep track of too many things. It’s my fault—I over-scheduled myself during a week shortened by travel, and I didn’t get done all I needed to do last week due to a combination of running and procrastination. (The more I care about something, the more I tend to procrastinate because I want to get it just right. Perfectionist procrastinators, I see you.) The running, however, complemented my work with unplugged time to think and gain perspective.

I travel early tomorrow to Ojai, California, for a trio of poignant celebrations: my son’s 25th birthday, my daughter’s engagement party, and my 40th high school reunion packed with gatherings and activities. So I really must get my shit together and pack a variety of outfits for running, horseback riding, cocktail hours, and looking like a mother of a bride (help?!) before bedtime.

Last week, I did manage to accomplish the training I need in advance of June 20’s San Juan Solstice 50. I set aside a half day for three days in a row for longer, steeper back-to-back runs on tired legs. (I also lifted weights and exercised our horses.) Thankfully, the ankle tendon flareup and heel pain that bothered me during and after the Quad Rock 50 faded away, and I feel back to normal and healthy.

My volume wasn’t all that impressive last week in terms of mileage, but the slow pace on steep terrain meant 15-plus hours and 15,000-plus feet of elevation gain on the trail in higher altitude. I need that adaptation for upcoming mountain ultras.

Three years ago, I wrote a post that showed how and when to build a big-volume, big-vert week into your training cycle; here it is, with a section on “the gift of a DIY training camp.” The evergreen training principles in it are guiding my buildup now.

The 50-miler in early May gave me a fitness boost, so I’m heading into summer cautiously optimistic and eager for the season’s races. However, I had an anxiety dream about the Hardrock Hundred two nights ago—one of those “can’t get there” nightmares where you can’t get going, can’t find your way, or can’t get something to work. The dream involved arriving to the start line after others had left and pawing through messy, overly stuffed drop bags.

No doubt the small but not impossible chance that I’ll get off the Hardrock waitlist prompted the dream. I didn’t think I had any chance of getting into Hardrock this year, but now it could happen since I’m number six on the “Female Finishers” list but three ahead of me haven’t turned in their service requirement forms, so they may drop off the list. So, who knows?

In any case, this is how my race calendar now looks:

• San Juan Solstice 50 June 20

• volunteering at a remote pack-in aid station at Hardrock July 10-11 (or possibly running it if the wait list moves significantly)

• Aspen Backcountry Marathon August 1 (a final long training run for the Softie)

• San Juan Softie 100 August 14-15 (which I’d skip if by chance I get into Hardrock)

• Imogene Pass Run 17-miler (a local classic, I haven’t run it since 2019)

• volunteering/pacing at The Mammoth 200 in the Eastern Sierra October 2 - 5

• Javelina Jundred 100-miler near Phoenix October 31

Brainstorming and writing all on my own, never with AI

Earlier this morning, I turned in a freelance article after struggling with it for days. (I’ll share the publication and link later, after I’m sure the story makes it into the world.) I’m trying to freelance more, while my in-limbo manuscript awaits judgment from a publisher, to strengthen my atrophied journalistic muscles and to “build my platform,” which involves getting known as an authority and personality on the topic that my book concerns (mainly, midlife and ultrarunning).

This assignment intimidated me because it’s for a major mainstream publication, and I’m new to the editor. I made the classic well-intentioned mistake of over-reporting it and then using only a small fraction of the material distilled for the 1500-word limit.

In spite of (or partly because of) the struggle, I loved the challenging process. I loved finding and interviewing original sources, figuring out the angle, deciding on the essential nuggets of info to include, mustering confidence to write in my conversational voice, and making every sentence—every word—work hard and matter. The ideas and phrases marinated in my mind as I ran. The story assignment engaged my brain like a big puzzle.

I wrote it entirely on my own (as I do with any piece of writing)—from the first email pitch to the editor, to the final revision—and the only online help came from standard Google searches and my dictionary/thesaurus.

I share this because last week, I consumed more of the snowballing news and analysis about how AI is changing (I’d say, hijacking) the business of publishing and the craft of writing. More nonfiction books written mostly with AI are coming to market. More writers are leaning heavily on AI to “brainstorm”—asking for help and feedback on their ideas—and to revise.

I despise everything about this AI takeover (except the scientific and medical advances that can save lives; for example, our fire department invested in an AI-powered smoke monitor, which quickly detected a lightning-caused fire in the woods two miles from our home earlier this season, sparking rapid response).

I cringe at all the cheesy AI-generated graphics increasingly illustrating articles and showing up in my feed. I’m tempted to compose a snarky reply to every email I receive that has a weirdly effusive and flattering tone, knowing someone couldn’t be bothered to write it themselves so they asked AI to craft the message.

People, we’re handing over our critical thinking skills and creativity to machines developed by bazillionaire bros who have little to no care about ethics. We’re taking shortcuts in the name of productivity as if speeding up the process and increasing the volume will make life better and solve our problems. (It won’t.) We’re normalizing plagiarism, recycling and repackaging others’ ideas and work, and gulping down spoon-fed facts without questioning where they came from and how they’re biased or plain wrong.

I took an online marketing workshop a couple of weeks ago with an expert publicist who represents authors, and she rubbed me the wrong way when she extolled the virtues of AI not only for organizing tasks (which I get can be helpful) but also for generating ideas and gaining feedback. Funny thing is, she just wrote this essay about detecting bias in AI and realizing that it was trying to change her opinion, prompting her to recall the scene in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey when the machine talks back, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” In other words, it dawned on her that AI is trying to shape opinion, and we could lose control to it. Yeah, no shit.

I recommend this NY Times Opinion piece (gift link) by an author and educator who wrote:

“Increasingly, many people I talk to—from students to teachers to peers—tell me that they think it’s OK to use AI chatbots for brainstorming as long as they do the ‘real work’ of writing. But this misunderstands something critical: Brainstorming is the work that’s fundamental to writing. As a researcher studying AI’s effects on education, I have concluded that these tools only superficially improve writing. The bigger and more alarming impact they have is to constrict our full range of thoughts and our ability to generate original and useful ideas—what we call creative thinking.”

In addition to that piece, I recommend this essay on “what publishing’s latest AI scandal reveals about the future of AI and authorship” by , who has become my go-to expert analyzing the publishing landscape and AI’s effect on it.

So I’m holding the line as a traditional writer/journalist and celebrating original thinkers and authentic creators. With that in mind, I recommend the following.

The best, most original writing I recently read

Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burke: Yes, I’m on this much-hyped book’s bandwagon. The premise hooked me (a smart, jaded, and hypocritical trad-wife influencer experiences the harsh reality of the throwback 19th-century life she romanticizes and profits from through Instagram), and the character’s subversive and self-centered personality alternately made me admire and loathe her. The book left me pondering my lifelong obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder, country-music lyrics, different takes on feminism and the patriarchy, the MAHA movement, and why the Murdoch’s in Montrose has all those racks of prairie dresses for sale.

Climbing Through by Melissa Strong: This new memoir by an Estes Park woman shares her experience as an accomplished sponsored climber who in 2017 suffered a horrific freak electrocution accident that burned and disfigured her hands. The detailed account of her reconstructive surgeries, followed by her struggle to open a restaurant that she invested in pre-accident and her determination to return to climbing, captivated me like a reality show. As a non-climber, I also appreciated the window into how people learn to climb and become so passionate about it.

A new Substack worth your time: My long-distance friend started a Substack to chronicle her life and projects this summer. She’s a force. Read her About page and first posts here:

Erica Figures It Out

Personal experiments in accountability. Filing notes from the field. One season at a time.

By Erica Moore

Several new subscribers here came to me from Erica’s recommendation of my newsletter (thank you). If you’re here because you know Erica or want to get to know her, then you’ll probably enjoy this post I wrote about her three years ago:

Asking for support to benefit youth in our community

I’m leading a community fundraiser, the Telluride Rotary Hikeathon, which raises money for the local Rotary club and other nonprofits. I came up with the idea last year to benefit the community at large and to motivate people to get outside and hike, and we had the second-annual kickoff last Sunday. Participants hike (or run) to meet a mileage goal during four weeks in June and ask friends for support to raise funds for the nonprofits.

I’m raising money both for Telluride Rotary—for their college scholarships, international youth exchange program, and community grants—and also for a regional organization whose board I’m now chairing, True North Youth Program. True North does an incredible job providing academic support, afterschool programs, and guidance for teens, most of whom live in the rural part of our region with limited financial support and fewer opportunities.

I’d sincerely appreciate if you’d donate to my campaign! You can donate at this link. Big thanks and shout-out to these newsletter subscribers who generously donated to my campaign already: Katie Debski, Mitch Gunderson, Melissa Hendershott, and Jim Ostrem.

Lastly…

This Saturday, June 6, is National Trails Day sponsored by the American Hiking Society. Learn about it and find a trail-stewardship event near you.

Thank you for reading this far! I encourage you to share your summer race plans and/or your thoughts on anything above in the comments.

I didn’t run much last week, because an ankle tendon unexpectedly flared, but I barely had time to run anyway because I prioritized a mind-expanding, heart-opening experience that happens once a year, which is the focus of today’s post.

I reminded myself that it’s fine to have an off week from training, and it can be beneficial if it fulfills you in other ways and allows your body to recharge. This week, I’m back to higher-volume training before tapering for June 20’s San Juan Solstice 50.

Last Thursday through Monday, I was in the audience for four feature-length documentary films, 17 short documentaries, three speaker panels, one author reading, and one writing workshop. My head buzzed and butt hurt from sitting and listening, and it was so worth it. The events were all part of the incredible MountainFilm fest.

I won’t attempt to mention them all but rather share some takeaways and urge you to watch the films linked.1 The festival’s mission is to use film, art, and ideas to inspire audiences to create a better world, and I hope this post will spread that mission.

We need to pay attention and think critically about what’s happening. We need to pay attention, period. Perhaps the most important film with far-reaching consequences, Your Attention Please is a must-see for understanding and resisting the fundamental ways that social media and the companies that run them have fundamentally changed individuals and society, and a call for us to reclaim our human connections and focus. Even if you think you already know all about the harms caused by our dependency on social media platforms and the devices they run on, I believe this film will open your mind to the ways they’re designed to alter our behavior, viewpoints, and relationships—and also, it may help you recognize how the rise of AI undercuts critical thinking and creativity. We can resist, and tech companies can design better systems, but it takes awareness, action, and regulation. It takes more focus on the problem, less distraction. For me, the film sparked a stronger re-examination of my habits and relationship to my phone.

Good films about running (or about any outdoor adventure) aren’t really about running or the adventure. They’re about the athlete’s emotional journey and resiliency. I watched three running-oriented films, and together they reminded me of the myriad ways that people can come to running and compete in it, leading to a more fulfilling and self-examined life because of the practice of running.

The feature-length She Runs the World is a riveting look at Allyson Felix’s journey to become the most-decorated Olympic track star and the stand she took against Nike to fight for maternal rights when she became pregnant. Even if you’ve read about her story, I hope you’ll have an opportunity to see the film to witness her athletic and emotional development. When your values are tested, what will you do, how will you act? Like many MountainFilm films, this one portrays courage.

I also recommend the short film Run In Beauty about Alexandria Staten connecting to her Diné heritage as she ran and struggled through the Western States Endurance Run, and Dicks-A-Thon about a wacky, joyous marathon in Seattle—involving a stop at each of the Dick’s fast-food outlets to consume burgers and shakes—with a tragic backstory.

Small everyday stories matter when they reveal universal truths about the human condition and our connection to one anther. One of the most original and heartfelt films, Stalin Boys, portrays a group of four Mexican-American boys in a remote middle school preparing for the Texas State History Fair. One of the boys becomes obsessed with Joseph Stalin and the nature of good and evil. He and his friends show deep commitment to rehearsing their play for the history fair competition—and they also genuinely play like goofy boys in between grappling with serious subject matter—under the guidance of a dedicated teacher who will inspire all public-education teachers.

The Baker’s Hotline is another quiet, funny short film about everyday people that moved me by showing how much people can care for one another. In this case, people are brought together by queries to the King Arthur Flour call center about baking problems. Helping one another through baking ultimately combats isolation and self-doubt.

Recognize your privilege, and care about and work for those who don’t share it. During MountainFilm, I repeatedly thought about how fortunate I am to be in Telluride, in an able body, financially secure and unthreatened—and then I asked myself, what will I do with this good fortune to translate awareness into action to make the world a better place?

Mujer Santuario (Sanctuary Woman) is a searing portrayal of one impoverished woman living in a church basement who’s threatened with deportation. She works tirelessly and uses her voice to mobilize others to fight against ICE raids and the cruelest aspects of the immigration crackdown. Her defiance in the face of threats made me think about how privileged those of us are who make a goal to “get out of our comfort zone” through endurance sports compared to people whose daily life is highly uncomfortable and a chronic test of endurance to survive.

I also considered my horses’ privilege—they have wide-open pastures to graze—and how fortunate I am to have horses in my life when I watched Fletcher Street, about the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, a horse stable in the most violent-prone area of Philadelphia that provides a place for Black youth to escape hardship and build positive character traits by working with horses. The stables are falling apart and cramped, and they don’t have an arena in which to ride, so the young people and their mentors ride through the urban streets and make the best of what’s available. Seeing the power of horses to transform lives touched me deeply, even as it filled me with anxiety about the fate of the riders and the horses in that tough environment.

Perhaps the most tearjerking and eye-opening film related to privilege and access is the feature that won the festival’s coveted Audience Award, Best Day Ever. It’s about athletes with spinal cord injuries who become adaptive mountain bikers and the advocates who build the first fully adaptive trail network in Vermont (meaning, the trails and their bridges are wide and smooth enough for special adaptive bikes). It made me recall the mixed feelings I had a couple of years ago when I did trail work on a popular local trail to make it accessible to adaptive bikes. As I cut back roots and plants to widen the way and make it more of a path than a rugged trail, I had misgivings about further altering nature for recreation’s sake. This film challenged those misgivings and made me acutely aware of how blessed I am to move nimbly and unassisted through nature.

Related to the topic of public lands access and conservation, I appreciated the thoughtful panel discussion featuring the main character in Best Day Ever, Greg Durso, and author Kevin Fedarko as they discussed the inherent tension between preserving the wilderness and building infrastructure to provide access to it. How do we promote equal access to the most special natural places without fundamentally altering the landscape and creating crowding that “loves it to death”? Certainly we can make trail modifications in places that enable adaptive athletes to experience the outdoors while drawing the line at overblown and profit-motivated projects that degrade the experience for all, such as the tramway proposed for the Grand Canyon to transport thousands of tourists to the canyon’s floor.

Privilege and public lands management were at the core of another feature film I urge you to see, burn, scar, about a US Forest Service prescribed burn in 2022 in Northern New Mexico that got out of control and became the largest wildfire in the state’s history. The fire and subsequent flooding destroyed homes and livelihoods of people struggling to make a living off the land. The film delved into the increasing challenges to manage forest land due to climate change and the government’s cutbacks.

Never forget: you’ll die one day, which could be tomorrow, so make the most of your relationships and experiences now. I can’t stop thinking of Teeth to the Wind, a buddy story about two incredible and accomplished alpinists. One of them, Michael Gardner, died from a fall after they began making the film. He grew up in the nearby mountain town of Ridgway as a skateboarder whose father had died in a climbing accident, and his goofy and humble personality belied an exceptional athlete who pushed to extremes. The deep, caring friendship with his adventure partner exemplified how we are better together. I generally have a hard time stomaching extreme climbing films, knowing how many have died in the pursuit (e.g. Hilaree Nelson), but I also think about how we can die from cruel illness or random accidents, so I respect others’ choices to take calculated risks in pursuit of living a fuller life. I appreciated that this film did not address the tragedy but rather celebrated the pair’s moxie, humor, and grit.

In-person events always feel better and more effective than remote or virtual gatherings. A special part of MountainFilm is the face-to-face conversations and eye contact that we make while waiting in line or sitting side by side. No online network can replace the intimacy and ideas-exchange of a shared experience. These interactions sparked connections that I intend to follow up on and nurture.

On the final day of MountainFilm, I heard the humanitarian Maggie Doyne say, “I came here depleted, and I left full. That’s what MountainFilm is for me: You come in a little empty, and then it lights you up and you’re like, ‘I’m going back. My sleeves are rolled and I’m ready and in.’ Every single indomitable spirit and every person filled me, and I needed that.” (Her work supporting Nepal children was profiled in the 2024 film Between the Mountain and the Sky, my favorite film at the festival that year—see it if you can!)

We can’t all climb the world’s highest peaks or fully devote our lives to activism. But filmmaking and literature about outdoor adventure and the indomitable spirit gives us a window to difficult, uplifting, impressive experiences and makes us better prepared to climb metaphorical peaks and work for change in our corner of the world.

So see the films, read the books, and connect in person with others in the process. It’s infinitely more enlightening, touching, and long lasting than scrolling Instagram or TikTok.

You can bring MountainFilm films to your area through the MountainFilm On Tour program.

Last week’s post generated more than the usual number of likes and comments, and I want to thank everyone who shared encouragement or said they could relate.

I felt motivated to train again for the San Juan Solstice 50 and after that, the San Juan Softie 100—in part thanks to that feedback—and had a few good runs. Suddenly, out of the blue and without any unusual movement to prompt it, the lateral right ankle started hurting Monday night with what feels like peroneal tendonitis. It’s so tender, I’m limping downstairs. So I’m typing this with my right foot elevated, taking a few days of rest, and trying not to worry about it too much. Progress, I remind myself, often is three steps forward, one or two back.

This week’s post is a collection of recommended links and commentary. I wrote a bonus post yesterday with a personal story for paid subscribers. If you’d like to receive occasional bonus posts and an invitation to the monthly online meetup, please consider upgrading your subscription to the supporter level.

Subscribe now

Sports science you can use

The prolific Dr. writes about sports medicine and fitness with advice often tailored to us older athletes. His recent post is lengthy but worth reading if you’ve ever puzzled over what your smart watch or Oura ring’s data means and what, if anything, you should do with those numbers.

He breaks down what you should pay attention to most (e.g. resting heart rate) and what you should view skeptically (e.g. proprietary terms like Garmin’s “Body Battery” score) to guide your training, and explains why the intuitive Rate of Perceived Effort matters most of all.

Built to Move, Born to Heal: Notes on Midlife Fitness

Wearables: Stop Letting Your Watch Tell You Not to Exercise

The wearable on your finger or wrist is trying to talk to you. Whether it is an Apple Watch, an Ultrahuman ring, a Garmin, or any of the other devices that now track everything from your heart rate variability to how many minutes you spent in deep sleep, the amount of data coming at you is significant. But it can be very noisy… so the question is whether you are actually paying attention to the right signals or letting noise get in the way of your progress. That’s the goal of this post. It’s long… but it’s important if you want to get the most out of your wearable data without overreacting to messy signals…

Read more

a month ago · 34 likes · 19 comments · Howard Luks MD

If you want the dummy’s version of his essential points, you can read my post from January:

On my Saturday run, I listened to another smart and fascinating podcast by Zoë Rom and Kylee Van Horn of Your Diet Sucks, this one on the history and dubious science of counting calories. I know, calorie talk can trigger calorie restriction and an adversarial relationship with food. But this episode likely will do the opposite—it’ll help you understand how misguided our collective relationship to calories has been for over a century, how wrongheaded and low the standard guideline of 2000/day is, and why endurance athletes especially should focus instead on estimated servings of macros (carbs, protein, fat) and the body’s cues to get what they need nutritionally.

Great writing to read, songs to listen to—and phony slop to boycott

Sorry, I can’t help bring up Cocodona for the third week in a row. This time, I’m celebrating that the female and male champs, Rachel Entrekin (who writes under ) and Kilian Korth (who writes under ), are here on Substack writing long-form, from-the-heart race reports told in their own distinctive and authentic voice, which gets their burgeoning fans to read something longer than an Instagram caption. In spite of the heavy Cocodona media coverage and multiple post-race interviews they did for podcasts, their first-person narratives shared details that weren’t told elsewhere. Read Rachel’s story here and Kilian’s here.

Earlier this season, I wrote a bonus post on my strong stance against AI because of how it normalizes plagiarism, threatens authors and artists, and is harming the landscape in so many ways. My post had been behind a paywall, but I unlocked it here and hope you might give it a read, given that the Barnes & Noble CEO said he has “no problem” selling AI-written books.

When you take an outlier stance, it feels good to know you’re not alone. I had a heartening interaction this week on the topic with our region’s incredibly talented singer-songwriter Emily Scott Robinson, whose new album “Appalachia” is breaking out nationally thanks to rave reviews on NPR and this piece in Rolling Stone. (You really should buy her album and listen to it song by song for a moving experience. Her “Dirtbag Saloon” captures what’s happening in mountain towns like Telluride.)

Anyway, here’s the AI-related story that happened. I was scrolling Instagram and came upon a local real estate agent’s post that showed a series of AI-generated images of the agent looking as phony and idealized as an avatar, sitting in fake mountain settings. She had a caption that said something along the lines of, “I’m having so much fun exploring my creativity with AI. What do you all think of using AI for real estate?” (I can’t quote her directly because she took down the post after the following exchange.)

I know this real estate agent personally, and we have mutual friends, so I paused for a beat before sharing my opinion. Then I thought, what the hell, she needs to hear this. I typed, “Majorly dislike. Sorry but you asked. I value authenticity.” To her credit, she replied with clapping hands emojis and thanked me for my honesty. I further clarified my view with a followup comment, “I can’t support AI use because of how it’s threatening so much of our landscape and the creative work of artists and authors.”

Then, thankfully, Emily Scott Robinson liked my comments and posted her own views about how she would never work with a real estate agent who used altered images because it undercuts their honesty and authenticity, and she expanded on the points about AI stealing from and threatening the creative work of artists like herself. She also read my post linked above.

Emily then texted (and told me, when I asked, that I could share her message here), "Thank you for being willing to have the hard conversations. As a writer and artist, I have an impossible time understanding why someone would want to outsource those things to AI. I’ve heard folks say it’s like a voluntary lobotomy. I love writing—I love the struggle and process of it. I love finding the phrase that’s most succinct and surprising.… Most people I know do not want to be fed AI art, music, or journalism, but it’s getting to the point where they cannot tell the difference, and I am aghast there are no consumer protections in place. It’s like the worst version of the Wild West. I am grateful for your kinship in this crazy world.”

I share this interaction here to encourage you to speak out against AI use in the creative process and boycott the use of generative AI as much as possible. Celebrate real, original writers and their stories (along with songwriters and their music, and artists and graphic designers and their non-AI artwork). Be a good literary citizen by buying human-authored work from independent retailers or Bookshop.org (and for audiobooks, Libro.fm instead of Audible).

Lastly—and this relates to the celebration and elevation of untold stories and creativity—I’m thrilled it’s time for MountainFilm in Telluride, a film festival devoted to documentaries and speaker events about the environment, outdoor adventure, social justice, and the indomitable spirit in us all. I’ll be in theaters most of Friday through Sunday to catch as much of it as I can. First up is an author event with Bridget Crocker, whose memoir The River’s Daughter I reviewed and highly recommend:

Thanks for reading and supporting this newsletter and other real human-authored work!

This note goes to the inner circle of paid subscribers.

I paused for a small moment of Zen on my run last Saturday to admire this opening in a snowfield located above Telluride at about 11…

Read more

Around mile 33 of last Saturday’s Quad Rock 50, I checked my phone to see if I had enough bars of service to call or text Morgan to pick me up at the crew-accessible mile 40 aid station. Even though I had a good-enough cushion to the next aid station’s cutoff time, the timeline exerted pressure to hustle and consequent perception of failure when I couldn’t.

Blisters had erupted on swollen toes, and a weird pain and stiffness on the sides of my heels restricted the ability to flex my foot. My running had devolved into a flat-footed shuffle with as much hiking as running on extra-rocky singletrack trails. The sun’s direct strength crisped my forearms, and my lower back twinged warning signs.

I took my AirPods out of my hydration pack to listen to mood-boosting music, and when I opened the little white case, I discovered it was empty because I had left the AirPods loose on the hotel’s bedside table.

For these reasons and more, my ultra Saturday lacked joy and enthusiasm. I did not connect with other runners to chat the way I typically do mid-ultra, so I missed the camaraderie. Caught in comparison with the positive vibes and tremendous performances witnessed the week prior at the Cocodona 250, I couldn’t help berating myself for falling apart after a mere half day when so many had sustained their bodies’ locomotion over three or more days.

I did not call Morgan. I traversed the full 50 miles. But during the final couple of hours of the 13.5-hour “run,” when I walked excessively and got passed repeatedly on smoother runnable miles to the finish, I struggled to manage the discomfort and to quiet the negative chatter. The loop through my head went, Why do I want to do San Juan Solstice 50, and San Juan Softie 100, after this? Maybe I don’t. Maybe I want to take summer off from hard training …

Facts I need to remember: I finished a half hour before the cutoff after dozens of others had dropped; only 103 of the 168 starters finished, a 38 percent DNF rate. Race director Brad Bishop told me 39 of the 65 drops were due to the runner missing a cutoff (and the event’s permit restrictions necessitate the tight cutoff times). It’s a damn tough route with six major mountain passes on mostly technical terrain. I managed my fueling and hydration well. I only fell once. I did fine.

But I didn’t feel fine. I was pretty down on myself and ambivalent about other ultras on calendar.

So I called my friend Suzanna to commiserate and excerpted our conversation below.

I’ve written about Suzanna Bon before (like in this post about her ass-kicking Tor des Géants when she finished tenth at the European 200-miler in 2022). She lives 40 minutes from me, so we sometimes do long training runs together. At 61, she’s one of the most accomplished and still-fast older ultrarunners I know. She has been running ultras since the early 2000s, has multiple wins at tough 100s to her name, and earned her way onto Team USA at the international 24-hour world championship back in 2013.

Last Saturday, while I was in northern Colorado running Quad Rock 50 near Fort Collins, Suzanna was near Los Alamos, New Mexico, running the Jemez Mountain 50. The two courses are similar with about 11,000 feet of elevation gain and excessively technical singletrack (although Jemez’s route runs long at about 53 miles, and temperatures were about 10 degrees hotter there than Quad Rock’s highs).

Suzanna did not have the day she wanted or trained for, either. The course took her 14 hours, 40 minutes because she spent at least an hour at aid stations to cope with dehydration and cramping.

We Zoomed on Monday, and I condensed our conversation to share this short excerpt below.

“These fucking hard races”

Me: “I’m not necessarily looking for a pep talk but a reality check of what happened and why I felt the way I felt. Tell me how Saturday went for you.”

Suzanna: “I felt great for the first 20 miles, and then the heat started to get to me. I look back and see signs that I should have caught. Like, why do I feel a little lightheaded? Oh, I haven’t peed in four hours. You know, stuff like that. Anyway, the long and short of it is, I got super dehydrated. It’s a hard race, it’s exposed, it’s steep, and by the time I realized how severely dehydrated I was, I was cramping—like, I couldn’t move on the trail. My calves cramped completely … my feet were like ballerina toes. Long story short, I suffered. Fifteen miles took me five hours.

“Mike Smith [a 68-year-old ultrarunner from Santa Fe with 373 Ultrasignup results], bless his heart, put me back together with pickle juice, which I’m never going to another ultra without. I’ve never really been part of the Pickle Juice Club, but now I am, fully.”

Me: “I think our races were similar in that we both faded and fell apart in the second half. I had a strong first half, and then I—both mentally and physically—really started to hurt … I was losing my agility, doing this stumpy little shuffle-shuffle, and it was kind of demoralizing. I was like, I’m falling apart after 25 to 30 miles, so who am I to think I can still do San Juan Solstice 50 or San Juan Softie 100 this summer, let alone the Mammoth 200 possibly next year? So I was down on myself, and then I thought, well, you know, at this point in the year, my body’s not trained to go past six hours that well, and this is the day when I do the training. Tell me about your mental state Saturday.”

Suzanna: “I was convinced when I crossed the finish line that I was gonna pull out of Scout Mountain [the June 5 100-miler in Idaho that’s a Hardrock qualifier]. … Now, I’m thinking about my next steps towards training for Scout Mountain.”

Me: “You really have been training more than me this spring, and you got so much adaptation from Saturday—you stressed yourself so much—that once you recover, you’re gonna have a fitness bump.”

Suzanna: “What do you think will build your confidence up for San Juan Solstice?”

Me: “I have to find the desire. With San Juan Solstice, the two times I’ve done it, I’ve finished over 14 hours and fell apart in the final 10 miles, so my goal going into it has been to go for 14 hours flat and have a strong final 10 miles. But that’s where my confidence was destroyed on Saturday. I know I can still go to Lake City and gut out a long day, and they have a 16-hour limit so I can take all that time if necessary, but I don’t think I want to! I don’t want to be in the back of the pack after dark with my headlamp. I just don’t know.”

Suzanna: “Yeah, you do. You want to. You want to go, and you want to give it your best shot. So this is what I’m thinking—I don’t want to play the age card. It’s such a hard transition to go from being in the mix to just hanging on. But I have to, if I want to continue to enjoy this sport, and just being out there suffering with the best of them made me realize I still want to be in this sport, so I have to be willing to let go of that comfortable place where I usually am during a race, and transition to feeling differently while I’m racing in terms of letting go of the performance and just being OK with giving my best, even if it is back of the pack. I have to be OK with that, or else I’m gonna be miserable as an old-lady ultrarunner, so that’s what I’m trying to hold on to.”

Me: “But there is an alternative that I was thinking about Saturday, like, what would make me happy? What would make me happy is running easier 50Ks. In March, doing the Marin Ultra Challenge was so easy by comparison, and I felt floaty and strong. I’m like, I want to do more coastal mountain 50Ks. That was fun.”

Suzanna: “I totally was thinking of the same thing, Sarah. I swear to God, we were on the same wavelength. Saturday I was like, ‘Sarah and I are picking these fucking hard races. Why am I picking these hard races? Goddammit!’ I don’t know. I mean, I was the only woman signed up in my age group. I don’t know how many other women [over 60] have finished. [Answer: zero! The results’ history shows that Suzanna is the first over-60 woman to have finished Jemez 50 in the event’s 20 years!]

“I still enjoy things that are hard, let’s put it that way. What I don’t want to feel like is that I’m slacking because I’m getting older. I don’t feel like I am, it just feels a lot harder, so I have to find that acceptance of, ‘I’m doing as best as I can. It’s just not as good as it used to be, but it’s as good as it is for now, and that’s good, because I want to enjoy the sport, I want to show up and have a good time, and I want to do hard things.’”

Me: “But you’re still so good at it, Suzanna.”

Suzanna: “But I know internally what the huge difference is [between past and present performance], so that’s what I’m kind of learning to embrace.”

She and I talked in detail about how we handled aid stations on Saturday and how we thought about cutoffs. I spoke more about how I’m daunted by the prospect of upcoming races.

Suzanna: “It was a tough day, but I think, Sarah, you gotta show up again.”

Me: “I guess that’s what I wanted to hear.”

Suzanna: “Me too. I just want to finish Scout Mountain so I get my qualifier, although now, considering Hardrock is like, fuck no! … We can talk about it some more, but I feel like, don’t make any decisions about anything right now.”

Me: “You’re right. I told myself, I’m giving myself a couple of days off, I’m gonna hike, and then I’m gonna do some cruisey runs on flat, and see how it feels. Well, hey, you got through it! I feel emboldened after talking.”

Suzanna: “And you got through it! Honestly, I thought of you so much. That song, Hard Travelin’, was going through my head—I’ve been having some hard traveling, hard traveling—and I’m like, ‘Sarah, I hope you’re not traveling as hard as I am!’”

After we hung up, Suzanna texted:

“Afterthought from our conversation: We must continue to nurture what first drew us to ultras. And have more courage than we did then to show up even when we know, or don’t know, how much harder it will be to finish. Beware the lean towards DNS/DNF!!”

Thank you, Suzanna, for that postmortem talk! I’m grateful for a friend who “gets it” and inspires me.

Meeting some subscribers to this newsletter was a bright spot Saturday. Congrats to readers Christopher Riley and Katie Polich who finished the Quad Rock 50, and to Charlie Ealy in the 25-mile division.

Related post:

Please help me fix my feet and figure out which shoes to use

I think my shoes were partly to blame for the difficult Saturday, because my blistering and heel pain were bilateral and symmetrical. I shot this short clip Saturday night to show my physical therapist:

I’ve run almost exclusively in Hokas since they first came on the market, and last year, I ran successfully in their Mafate 4s (which are similar to their cushioned Stinsons but have the better Vibram sole). But then they “upgraded” to Mafate 5s, and the tongue on the new model annoyingly cuts into skin at the base of my shins, even with the protection of socks. That prompted me to try Hoka’s Speedgoats again. I got the Speedgoat 7s in the same size and thought I liked them, since they’re lighter and feel grippier. However, it turns out they have a narrower heel and toe box than the Mafates. I had noticed my heels’ tightness and soreness before Saturday, and then it blossomed during the 50-miler. I have to assume the Speedgoats are to blame, so I’m faced with going back to the Mafate 5s (since the earlier model I preferred is no longer available) or try something new. I’m wondering—

• If you run in Hoka trail shoes, what’s your favorite model?

• Have you tried their Mafate X supershoe, and if so what’s your impression and is it worth the higher price? I’ve read reviews that they’re like fat tires or inflatable rafts for the feet, and I’m wondering if that makes you feel too wobbly.

• Should I try a different brand altogether and if so, what’s your favorite?

• Have you ever had the kind of heel pain—which feels like the precursor to an Achilles bursitis—described in my video? What did you do about it?

Please share comments below. (Living where I do, without a running store in the region, it’s challenging to find and try new shoes because I have to do it all through the mail and then ship back ones that don’t work.) Thanks for your feedback!

Recommended reading

We’re all probably ready to move on from the widespread Cocodona 250 coverage, but nonetheless, I recommend these two posts by fellow Substack writers who subscribe to my newsletter. This post by Allison Powell illuminates just how psychologically challenging an extra-long multi-day ultra can be and the life lessons we can gain from them. And this post by Scott Kummer takes a critical look at how Cocodona has become a scene in which content creation and look-at-me behavior threaten to jeopardize the essence of the ultra.

Lastly, public lands advocate is organizing a trip October 7 - 11 to the Eastern Sierra to explore BLM lands, and it sounds beautiful and enlightening. It’s in partnership with the nonprofit I support, Conservation Lands Foundation. I’m not going on it because I’ll already be in the Eastern Sierra then to volunteer for the Mammoth 200, but I want to spread the word and encourage signups. Learn about it here.

A book you might not want to read but should

Countless nonfiction books have detailed how to develop as a runner. But as far as I can tell, none has focused on how to cope with the end of one’s running years when running no longer serves the body well or no longer is possible. A new book fills that gap in the running-lit niche.

Dimity McDowell’s The 27th Mile: How to Smooth the Rough Transition Out of Your Running Years primarily is for runners who are struggling to run or no longer can run due to chronic injury, illness, and/or psychological factors such as persistent burnout or stress. But it’s useful for injured runners as well as retiring ones.

You might wonder, as did I, is there really a whole book’s worth of material to explore about the end stage of one’s running? Yes, it turns out, there is!

Even if you don’t want to “go there” mentally to consider a future date when you can’t run, I recommend you do, because our running years likely do have an end point. And, you might cope with a run-stopping injury eventually.

I am not the target audience—I’m happily running long distances (mostly) pain free, hallelujah, and I plan to keep at it for another quarter century if possible—but I discovered loads of helpful advice about leading a more balanced athletic life, supporting one’s injured runner friends, and examining my identity as a runner. I wish I had been able to read it when I suffered three months of blues and uncertainty from my torn-tendon injury in late 2024-early ‘25.

You may recognize the author’s name as the co-founder of Another Mother Runner community and podcast, and as a sportswriter for magazines including Runner’s World. I enjoyed getting to know McDowell better through this book; in fact, her first-person sections were my favorite passages.

She sets a warm and funny tone with an unexpected opening line—”As the author, I shouldn’t say this, but I’m sorry you picked up this book”—and begins by sharing her long battle to be the runner she wanted to be in spite of her extra-tall (almost 6’4”) body that kept breaking or rebelling from foot to hamstring to lower back. For every good day she ran and every marathon or half-marathon finish line she crossed, from the mid-1990s to 2020, she experienced not-so-satisfying or downright frustrating days when she either did not run due to pain, ran cautiously while recovering from an injury, or cross-trained and did PT to manage her injury-prone areas.

“Anybody who isn’t a runner might ask, why? Why spend so much time, money, and effort loving a sport that clearly didn’t love you back?”

We runners get it. We know the reason is because running feels so good when it does feel good, mentally as well as physically, and improves so many aspects of life. In a sidebar at the end of Chapter 3, she includes an alphabetized list of the things she misses about running—a litany of why we love to run—to which I related and you probably will too.

She surveyed some 60 women who are former runners, along with a good number of experts in the fields of sports psychology, coaching and training, and physical therapy. With their input and case studies, she wrote sections that cover:

• how to decide whether and when to stop running for good, and the stages involved with reaching that decision

• how to process the grief from letting go of your routine and your identity as a runner (including writing your own running obituary—and she provides a great personal example)

• how to shift and expand your identity as a runner to an athlete in other realms, and develop new interests and friendships—the phase of the metaphorical 27th mile

• how to manage runner-friendships when you can’t run, and how to stay involved with the running community as a non-runner if you choose to do so

• how to love and accept your body as is, especially as you age and if you put on weight

I’m a former long-distance running coach who still informally advises some peers on running. Reading her examples, I experienced a pang of remorse as I realized that I should be more empathetic and accepting of fellow runners who are injured and who decide to move on from the sport to develop other endeavors, such as cycling, golf, or “just” hiking. I always tell them, “Don’t give up!” and advise them to get second or third opinions and try multiple modalities to heal, as if I’m scolding as much as encouraging. I should trust and support them more to do what’s right for them.

My only overarching criticism is that The 27th Mile relies on all-female examples and therefore limits itself to women. In my mind, this book should be for all and any genders; aside from the well-written passage on menopause, I don’t see why it’s female-specific. I can think of at least two older male runners in this subscriber group—one who’s recovering from back surgery, another from meniscus surgery, both of them uncertain about their return to running—who might benefit from it.

I messaged McDowell to ask about her choice, and I appreciated her candid reply. She wrote, “When I sent out the survey (which went mostly to Another Mother Runner athletes), I heard from just one male runner. I talked to my editor about if she thought I should try to find more, and she said she didn’t think so, so I didn’t ... In hindsight, I wish I would’ve had at least one section about men because this book has definitely resonated with the ones I’ve heard from. If there are any former male runners you’d like to send my way, I’d love to include them in a future post/story.” Emphasis added—men, if you fit that category of a former or retiring runner and would like to share your experience, you could comment below or reply to me by email.

I hope you don’t need this book, but I also suggest you read it just in case. Meanwhile, for an introduction to the author and the topic, I recommend this podcast interview with Dimity McDowell on the Emerging Form podcast with and . I loved their interesting and emotional conversation.

Thoughts, updates & links

Are you as blown away as I am by the Cocodona 250 athletes—especially Rachel Entrekin—and the media coverage? Are you trying not to get too sucked into the addictive livestream? Or do you perhaps have no clue what I’m talking about? Please comment below on what has been most captivating and exciting to you about it so far—or, alternatively, why you might not be paying attention to it.

Cocodona is put on by Aravaipa Running, which just expanded (again!) by acquiring three incredible ultras: Zion, Bryce, and Antelope Canyon—three races founded by ultrarunner and environmentalist Matt Gunn, a storied character who took his life in 2020. For several years, these races were managed by Vacation Races, which I personally felt was a profit-oriented race-directing outfit not very connected to the core of ultrarunning. I’m therefore pleased that they’ll be under Aravaipa’s big tent—as long as Aravaipa, under Jamil Coury, can keep delivering its well-run events, which so far it has. I wrote about Jamil and Aravaipa recently and suspected when we talked that he was eyeing these events. Registration just opened for the March 6 Antelope Canyon, and I’m strongly considering returning to experience those gorgeous slot canyons and Horseshoe Bend again. Past race report on it:

Speaking of Jamil Coury, I got on his run-streak challenge (as detailed in this post a couple of weeks ago). I broke the streak on Sunday, after 34 days, for a couple of reasons. One, I felt in my bones that I needed a rest—my legs felt leaden walking up the stairs in our house—and I wanted to run well the next day on fresher legs and enter a taper week better rested. Two, I wanted to break the streak so I didn’t become obsessive about it. The longer you go, I believe, the more you feel compelled to maintain it. I got what I wanted out of it: a month of consistent back-to-back running with enhanced fitness and fatigue resistance from adapting to running on tired legs. I recommend a streak during a training build—as long as you’re not coping with illness or injury—to enhance consistency and adapt to higher volume. But a month or so is enough.

Three fascinating pieces I read this past week and recommend:

• “The Case for Public Tracks” by on the history and need for recreation spaces open to all

• “The Boomers Are Fucking Up Everything! Or Are They?” by on generational differences, identity and group think, and why blaming boomers isn’t so simple

• “The Super Shoe’s Step-by-Step Evolution,” a NY Times piece (gift link) on how we got to the shoes that helped break the 2-hour barrier at the London Marathon

In last week’s post, in which I celebrated the benefits of a retreat for creativity and wellness, I recommended a couple of other all-women retreats related to writing and running. I forgot to also recommend this one by , which is coed and takes place June 7 - 12. It’s a writing/storytelling + trail running retreat for all levels, and a couple of spots remain open, so check it out or get on Brendan’s list to learn about future retreats he hosts!

Lastly … it’s my birthday later this week (57 candles!), and I have a birthday wish: please consider a donation to my fundraiser.

Last year, as president of our local Rotary Club, I created the community-wide Telluride Rotary Hikeathon, which involves hiking for four weeks in June to raise money for Telluride Rotary and other nonprofits. It was a success, with 80+ participants and $26K+ raised, and we’re doing it again! This year, I plan to hike/run 200 miles in June to support both Telluride Rotary—which uses the funds to host an international youth exchange program, for scholarships to college-bound graduating seniors, and for community service projects—and to support True North Youth Program, where I’m a board member. True North serves teens in our region with academic tutoring, college counseling, outdoor education outings, scholarships, and afterschool programs.

Please consider a per-mile pledge or a flat donation—donations of any size are greatly appreciated! You can give through my fundraising page here. Thank you!

I mentioned in last Wednesday’s post that I would skip this week, but I’m here to share a couple of recommendations and encourage you to carve out time to take a retreat—any getaway to restore a neglected or worn-out part of yourself and to develop your interests or creativity.

First, recommendations with links

Last week, I watched The Cutoff, the new film about determined back-of-the-packers chasing the cutoff times to aid stations at the Cocodona 250. We see the heartache of those who don’t make the cutoff to aid stations, and the triumph of those who squeak under the 125-hour time limit five days after they started.

I loved this film by Dylan Harris, produced by Jamil Coury and Aravaipa Running. You need motivation? You’re feeling uninspired by the choice to run outside during bad weather or inside on the treadmill, so you’re on the verge of blowing off your run? Get on the treadmill and watch this hour-long film while you’re at it—you’re guaranteed to run better and farther.

The narrative script turns poignant: In the end, time is the only thing the cutoff truly measured—indifferent and exact. And in racing against it, you’re reminded that the most meaningful moments aren’t the times you beat the clock, but the ones we chose to live fully while it was counting down.

Longtime ultrarunner and coach Andy Jones-Wilkins is someone I’ve followed for the past couple of decades, mostly for his perspectives on the sport and its history as told through his weekly column in iRunFar. Last week, he had me on his podcast, “Crack a Brew with AJW.” Our lively conversation touched on longevity, goals, and how we run differently in our late fifties compared to our young-adult selves and how we stay optimistic while slowing down or injured. We also talk about Western States, Hardrock, and Javelina. I hope you’ll have a listen here.

Speaking of ultrarunning in midlife—I got a freelance assignment for a how-to piece on how (and why) to safely start long-distance trail running when you’re older. I’ll argue that turning fifty is a great time to develop as a trail runner and perhaps even run an ultra, and I’ll spotlight runners in their fifties and sixties who began running trails only a few years earlier and are competing exceptionally well in their age group at ultras. If you fit into this category—someone who became a runner in your late forties or fifties and now you’re trail/ultra running into your late fifties or beyond, and you think you’d make a good example for this story, please contact me through email or a DM through Instagram or Substack, thank you.

A creative haven

What, exactly, is a retreat? I think of it as time spent retreating from regular life and landing in a special place that feels peaceful and safe, creative and meditative, and healthy. It’s time set aside for self-care and learning.

I’m with a group of 20 women, all writers, led by , an author and writing coach whose in-person and online workshops have been crucial in my writing development. (I recommend her most recent book, Why Bother?, for women who feel stuck in a rut and unsatisfied.) This is not a traditional writing workshop (a time to collectively critique our writing); rather, it’s a creative retreat to encourage each other and develop our voices, void of criticism.

We’re staying in a small historic cluster of adobe buildings called the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, named after a woman who was a well-known figure in New York intellectual and artistic circles in the 1920s. She moved to Taos and fell in love with an indigenous man from Taos Pueblo, Tony Luhan, whose room I’m staying in now. Some of the era’s prominent writers and artists gathered here with them, including Georgia O’Keeffe and Aldous Huxley. When D.H. Lawrence stayed here toward the end of his short life (he died at 44 from tuberculosis), he painted geometric designs in bold colors on the windows of the bathroom I’m using. Later, in the early 1970s, actor Dennis Hopper owned the house for a time, and Bob Dylan stayed here.

When I sit at a wooden table on the second-story porch outside Tony’s room, overlooking a row of fanciful porcelain roosters mounted on the roofline (Mabel named the house Los Gallos, the roosters), I imagine the people and their conversations here from a century ago. Those guests were on a retreat, too, gaining inspiration or perhaps healing from troubles or heartache. It’s the perfect place to immerse myself in my project, and to take breaks to connect with others.

It’s also an ideal place to reinforce the writing habits Jennifer instilled when I was here two years ago at this same retreat: to develop “a creative cave” in any space for writing. Turn off notifications, put phone on Do Not Disturb, close email, close browser tabs. Put in my AirPods and play the White Noise playlist. Tell myself, “five minutes more” when I feel the urge to pivot because I’ve hit a snag and the writing suddenly feels hard.

Every morning, I take advantage of an optional free dance session at 7 a.m. and do my own thing to an eclectic playlist, unconcerned how I look to others in the room, who also are dancing in their own style. For a half hour or so, my body moves in ways I’m normally too inhibited or uninspired to let it. I start with a vinyasa flow for stretching and transition to dance that draws on both 1980s aerobics classes and my trippy Deadhead years. It feels so liberating to dance, bounce, and flow in different planes of motion however feels right, improvising with the music while dissolving stiffness from the prior afternoon’s run. Starting the day that way throws off anxiety, self-doubt, “shoulds,” and limitations on creativity.

Throughout the day, I engage in writing sessions and conversations with fascinating women at various life stages, and I’m challenging myself to be an extra-attentive listener.

What’s not with me during all of this: my phone. I leave it in my room and check it only a couple of times during the day. I realize my at-home habit of carrying my phone from room to room, as if it’s an appendage or crutch, is insidious and ridiculous, and I vow to break that habit when I return home.

My primary focus this week is rereading and revising my memoir manuscript. I had four excellent early readers read it and send me their feedback last week, so I’m reviewing and integrating their suggestions. I don’t want to jinx this project or celebrate too early, but, it’s working! Each of the early readers gave positive feedback, and their comments were insightful and helpful but also manageable. None spotted major holes to fill or problems to fix, nor were they bored or confused.

If you’re wondering, “what is it about?” I’ll share this mini review by one of the early readers, Cam Torrens, who’s a published author of adventure thrillers and a fan of must-read ultra memoirs such as Ultramarathon Man (Dean Karnazas), Born to Run (Christopher McDougall), and North (Scott and Jenny Jurek).

He described my memoir draft as: “an incredible story that goes well beyond a typical endurance memoir, using the brutal miles of the Grand to Grand 170-mile stage race to unpack a lifetime of motivation, missteps, and self-doubt. Sarah Lavender Smith is at her best when she’s honest about the double edge of ultrarunning—how it pulled her away from one set of destructive behaviors while subtly feeding another. The book’s structure works: the desert miles give her space to revisit childhood family dynamics, marriage, and the persistent need to prove something she can’t quite define. What stands out the most is her courage and total lack of pretense. Smith owns her mistakes, especially in her relationships, without sugarcoating them.”

I am touched and grateful, brimming with motivation to deliver this baby and get it into the world.

If you’re looking for a retreat, you can get on Jennifer Louden’s list for next year. But I also recommend a trail-running camp led by my friend Cristal, which functions as a retreat as much as a camp to develop as a runner. I wrote about it last year:

Also, author/runner hosts writing and running retreats. I haven’t been on one, but I’m a fan of Katie’s and have no doubt they’re worthwhile! Learn about them here.

Thank you for being here! Feel free to recommend a retreat, or share a retreat experience, in the comments below—or comment on anything you like.

Even though I’m only hiking, my quads feel a bit heavy. A twinge transmits a tingle up my right Achilles.

Probably because it’s Day 21 of a run streak.

In three decades of consistent running, I’ve never run three weeks in a row. I believe in rest days and usually take one or two during the week. “Rest is part of training,” a wise coach once said.1

But I’m going for a 30-day run-streak challenge and might maintain the unbroken streak longer. I convert what would normally be a rest day into a short, easy run of only two to three miles. I run longer on other days, getting my weekly mileage up above 50. Last week, it hit 63.

A challenge launched April 1 by Jamil Coury sparked this run streak. I just wrote a story about Jamil and his new project for UltraSignup’s Trailhead news site, published yesterday. I hope you’ll read it here. Jamil is extraordinarily innovative and inspires the masses, myself included.

Is a run streak smart or stupid?

Am I setting myself up for injury and burnout by running every single day, or am I developing “fatigue resistance,” also known as “durability,” which is the focus of an emerging area of research in endurance training?2

My intention is the latter—to build durability. With increased steady daily running at a lower intensity, I hope to improve the ability to sustain performance in a fatigued state. I hope to be “a closer” (strong finisher) and avoid a massive slowdown at my upcoming ultras (May 9 Quad Rock 50, June 20 San Juan Solstice 50, August 14 San Juan Softie 100).

A surprising thing happens on this run—and on most runs this month during the streak. The fatigue ebbs, the aches and pains fade. I rediscover a rhythm. I don’t run fast, but I run steadily. By the end of the run, I feel pretty darn good. Back inside our house when I walk up the stairs to the second floor, my legs feel close to normal, not unusually tired. My Achilles and knees are fine.

On longer runs, my form feels as if it’s breaking down less; in other words, after two to four hours, I run more similarly to the way I did in the first hour after warming up, rather than running noticeably more achy and strained as the time passes.

I’m aiming to sleep more and eat more, and the increased rest and fuel seem to do their job. Three weeks into this streak, I don’t feel as depleted as I normally do after a weekend long run.

But I’m mindful of the risks, and I know rest is crucial.

Why and when I’ll break this streak

Five weeks ago, I was so sick with a cold following the Marin Ultra Challenge 50K that I felt weak and couldn’t sleep through the night due to coughing. If (I mean, when) I get sick like that, I’ll take days off from running to fully rest.

Also, if any localized pain such as an Achilles flare gets worse rather than better during the first couple miles of a run’s warmup, and the discomfort affects form as I favor the sore spot, then I’ll stop and take one or more days off as needed. That kind of lopsided running to cope with pain is a recipe for a full-blown injury and possibly a secondary compensatory injury too.

And, I’ll definitely take a full rest day the day before one of the upcoming ultras. I like an easy shakeout run two days prior, and full rest the day before, to arrive at the start line with fresh and frisky legs. That means I’ll probably break this streak on my birthday, which is the day before the Quad Rock 50. And I probably won’t run the day after the ultra, but I’ll walk to loosen the inevitable stiffness and soreness.

So, don’t worry, I’m not going to stay addicted committed to running every single day no matter what. “Addicted” is a negative word, and I don’t see an unbroken run streak in that negative light. I see it as a chosen daily practice with potential psychological benefits like heightened motivation and reduced anxiety, in addition to the physiological benefit of durability.

If it works for individuals and doesn’t lead to injury or excessively risky behavior (like running in dangerous severe weather or through a feverish bout of illness to keep the streak), good for them.

Why streaks work mentally

Generally speaking, streaks work for me because I respond well to the internal non-negotiable assumption that I’ll run today. It resolves any debate about whether to run and thereby cultivates habit.

In the past, I’ve had reading, writing, and abstinence (i.e. Dry January) streaks, and all worked to reinforce those good habits. Last fall’s 100-day journaling streak and January’s “JanYourStory” memoir-writing streak sparked greater creativity and more volume of writing than I ever had experienced in the past.

Now that those streaks are over, I don’t journal or work on my book project every single day, but I’m more likely to than not. The prior streak made the activity more automatic. You show up and start the work, and it’s not such a big deal. You get unstuck and get on a roll.

I also like the “some is better than none” mindset of a streak. Doing a little on some days, when you’re low on energy or tight on time—just 20 minutes of running, or just a paragraph or two of writing—keeps you engaged with the commitment to the larger goal. It prevents abandoning it. It makes you feel OK about producing only a small amount, which in turn feeds motivation to do more on other days.

How about you, do you have any kind of streak going? Have you in the past, and if so, how did it go? Please comment below!

Off next week

This newsletter is a streak of sorts—a weekly commitment going on five years that I don’t want to break. The consistency of publishing every Wednesday means I build on the practice of showing up to write stories and share info through it, which in turn engages my curiosity to develop something to write about for the following week.

But occasionally I do pause it, as I will this coming week. I’ll be at a weeklong writing retreat in Taos—the same one I wrote about in 2024, “The Week I Found Focus and Flow”—and I am shelving normal commitments to prioritize the retreat writing. I’ll be back May 6.

Thank you for being here and reading this far!

Can you help me grow this newsletter? I would sincerely appreciate if you shared the link on social media or introduced a friend to it through the button below. If three or more readers subscribe following your referral, you’ll earn a comp subscription to the paid edition, which includes bonus posts and an invitation to the monthly Zoom.

Refer a friend

Read more

Subscribe now

Just in time for Monday’s Boston Marathon, a new book arrived that made me nostalgic for the road marathons I’ve run and deepened my understanding of marathoning’s history, especially its breakthrough decade of the 1970s.

I received an advanced copy of ’s The Long Run with the long subtitle, Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit, Grete Waitz, and the Decade That Made the Marathon Cool, which I review below. The book’s sweep of history, with its analysis of the running-boom evolution, leaves a runner like me contemplating how far this sport has come and our individual place in it.

Flashbacks to the running boom phases

I became a runner at 25 in a second phase of the boom. It was 1994, the year Oprah ran a marathon, in the decade that gave rise to charity running (most notably, Team in Training) and the Rock n’ Roll marathon series. My first running shero was Uta Pippig, four years older than I, who won Boston three times 1994 - ‘96. Then, in the 2000s, Olympic marathoners Deena Kastor and Magda Boulet captivated me until my focus shifted fully to ultra-distance trail running.

From the mid-1990s on, I hardly ever looked back in time. I took it for granted that women ran marathons. I learned gradually over time, piecemeal, about the significance of Joan Benoit and the first women’s Olympic Marathon in 1984, just one decade before I took up running. Thanks to The Long Run, I have new and profound appreciation for all the change sparked by Benoit, Grete Waitz, Kathrine Switzer, all the way back to Stamata Revithi (a female runner at the 1896 Athens Olympics who was banished from participating but ran the marathon course on her own the following day).

Dugard’s The Long Run not only filled gaps in my knowledge but also took me back to my youth in the 1970s, when almost everyone (except my chain-smoking parents) took up jogging. On TV, I watched the stars of Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman jog in satin short-shorts and headbands. I got my first pair of Nikes—navy blue with a light-blue swoosh—and Dolfin shorts in 1980 for the start of seventh grade. I listened to my best friend talk excitedly about a runner named Mary Decker.

But junior high PE turned me off from running, and my parents did not encourage me to be sporty. I took up smoking at 16, followed by harder recreational substances. I cared only about horses, and later about aerobics for weight loss. I wore high-cut leotards for step aerobics as a newlywed in the early 1990s. A fluke opportunity to watch two friends run their first marathon in 1994 made me a runner overnight, swapping my Reebok Freestyle Hi aerobics shoes for Saucony Grids, and I ran my first of 20 road marathons1 in 1995. (Since then, I’ve also run 110 marathons and ultras on trail, eclipsing my road marathoning.)

When I think about my early days of marathoning in the 1990s, I envision purple Team-in-Training singlets, balloon arches, the first-ever packets of Gu gels safety-pinned to my shorts waistbands (because shorts didn’t have pockets to carry gels), Casio watches, pre-race spaghetti dinners for carbo-loading, and reports of slower runners over-hydrating mid-marathon to the point of risking hyponatremia. Running felt social and inclusive, welcoming slower paces and larger body types. Most runners I knew made a goal to break four hours (around a 9-minute/mile average pace), maybe 3:30 (8 minutes/mile), not the speedier sub-three-hour goal of earlier marathoners before the boom made urban marathons massively popular, even mainstream.

Now, in hindsight, I truly wish I had paid attention to Grete and Joanie in the late 1970s through mid-1980s when I was young!

Book review

Dugard’s book left me wanting more from the thin profiles of Waitz and Benoit. He (or his publisher) put the two women on the cover and in the subtitle, striding along with Pre and Shorter as if equals, but in the 290-page book, fewer than 30 pages are devoted to spotlighting Grete and Joanie toward the end.

The women get shortchanged in this book because it is weighted toward covering the 1960s to mid-1970s, and Waitz and Benoit made names for themselves as marathoners a bit later, starting in 1978. Dugard frames his book around “the decade that made the marathon cool” (the 1970s) and the history that led to the first peak of the boom; that is, to the 1976 New York City Marathon—the first time the NYC Marathon ran through the five boroughs—and the 1977 release of The Complete Book of Running by Jim Fixx.

As a reader, you get the feeling Dugard’s heart was in the male-centric story of the 1960s through mid-‘70s because that’s the era that inspired him as a boy and teen to run. I really can’t fault him for that. The rise of long-distance running—both by competitive athletes and slow hobby-joggers—is fascinating, starting with JFK’s exhortation for physical fitness and the long-walk fad. The best chapters involve Coach Bill Bowerman’s pivotal role in the mid-’60s popularizing jogging, followed by the dominance of Pre and Shorter.

In between the Bowerman and Shorter/Pre chapters, a terrific chapter focuses on the hot-headed Jock Semple, the Boston Marathon director who infamously grabbed Kathrine Switzer and tried to pull her off course in 1967 when she broke the rule allowing only men to run. Two years later, Semple fumed to Distance Running News (the precursor to Runner’s World) that Boston was being destroyed by “joggers, idiots, and prank runners,” so he implemented qualifying times.

Dugard also devotes an eye-opening chapter to "the six who sit,” about the six women at the start of the 1972 New York City Marathon who sat on the starting line for 10 minutes after the start gun went off to protest the Amateur Athletic Union rule that women could not race with men and must start 10 minutes ahead or behind. Ten minutes after the start, the women—and the men behind them who supported their protest—all started running together.

Aside from that “six who sit” chapter and short mentions of Bobbi Gibb (who unofficially ran Boston in 1966) and Switzer, the female marathoners get tacked on to the end of the book almost as an afterthought—as if they’re a consequence of the evolution as much as a catalyst for change. That’s why I feel The Long Run’s cover promises something that the story doesn’t deliver by picturing the two women with the two men, implying equal coverage.

The book’s imbalance—weighted much more toward the 1960s and early to mid ‘70s than what follows—is compounded by Dugard’s choice to devote more space to Prefontaine and to glorify Pre’s legacy, even though Pre never ran a marathon. The chapters devoted to the 1972 Munich Games, chronicling Shorter’s triumph at the marathon and Pre’s flame-out to fourth at the 5000, are some of the book’s most gripping parts, but in my view we could have read less about Pre and more about Bill Rogers, and more about the women who transformed marathons at the end of the decade.

In a chapter that jumps to the present time of 2025, the author addresses whether Pre is “overrated” and then weirdly and defensively reflects on his decision to give Pre a great deal of credit for the running boom. He speaks to the reader, “I’ll have my say. Then you decide for yourself. Debate it on your social media platform. Devote a paragraph of your The Long Run Amazon review.” Huh? Here and elsewhere, I wondered why an editor didn’t trim or rework passages where Dugard blurts and abruptly shifts gears.

I might also suggest that an editor rework the book’s entire Part 1, about the early history of the marathon from Pheidippides in 490 BC to the 1908 Olympic Marathon. Dugard’s tidal wave of facts might be useful for trivia, but they overwhelm the reader. The narrative feels rushed to get to the good stuff about the modern era of marathoning.

Dugard also made the maddening choice to write history in the present tense, presumably to make the past stories feel alive and relatable. But present-tense writing combined with jumps in chronology results in scattershot and sometimes confusing transitions. He often goes between the present and future tenses to describe sequences of events that all happened decades ago. It’s awkward.

One more quibble. This. Incomplete sentences, sportscaster voice. Punchy. Short phrases. Gets annoying.

Setting aside complaints about the style, I applaud Dugard for shedding light on so many revealing anecdotes involving storied athletes, and for fresh perspective on running’s evolution.

For example, I have written before about the start of the Western States Endurance Run in 19742 and how it spun off from the Tevis 100-mile horse endurance race to become the country’s oldest 100-mile ultramarathon. Dugard deepened my understanding of ultrarunnings’s origins by putting the rise of Western States in the context of a backlash to the running boom. He writes:

“We all feel proprietary about the things we love, so it is no surprise when a quiet backlash sweeps through the running world during the boom. The theme goes something like this: Running used to make me special because I was doing something nobody else was doing. I liked when people said I was crazy for doing it. Now everybody is doing it. … A lot of runners find a new thing. A harder thing. Crazy tough, like people used to say about the marathon.”

He then points to the rise of triathlons, mountain biking, and ultrarunning as offshoots of the running boom.

On occasion, Dugard also shares touching personal recollections. I particularly liked his description of how his first marathon finish—in 2:57:19 in 1979—affected him: “Finishing a marathon made me feel like I joined the historical cadre of runners dating back to Pheidippides. It didn’t make me a real runner. We’re all real runners. But it made me feel like a full-blown, card-carrying, dues-paying, member-for-life of the tribe, climber of the suburban Everest. And yes: amazing.”

On that, I wholeheartedly relate and agree.

If this review made you contemplate a road marathon signup, I invite you to read my post on how to train for one:

And if you want a short article-length history, read this history of marathon fueling by Precision Fuel & Hydration (hat tip to for it).

New favorite shorts

I don’t do gear reviews, but occasionally I recommend items if they’re extra good. I’m not sponsored and get nothing from mentioning the product, so my recommendations are straight talk.

I’ve started running in rabbit’s Leggy Smashems 7” compression shorts. This is a big change, as loose split shorts have been my go-to bottoms for almost forever (except when it’s cold and I wear capris). Something about the level and feel of the compression, the length of the short, and all the pockets on the sides and in the waistband (where a lot of gels can fit) have converted me.

The main advantage to split shorts as a woman is you can pee standing up simply by pulling the crotch to the side, which isn’t possible with compression shorts. But I’m willing to squat and bare my butt while pulling these shorts down trailside when necessary because I prefer the feel of them.

And that’s all for this week. (Sorry to leave you with that mental image!)

Please share in the comments if you’re running Boston this Monday, and if so, how many Bostons will this be for you? Or, do you have any other road marathon on your calendar this year?

Thursday’s Zoom = ask me anything

Before I share some commentary, please mark your calendars for this Thursday, April 16, 5pm Mountain for our monthly Zoom meetup. I hope a good number of you will join!

I want to offer an “ask me anything” session. On the call—or in the comments or via email, if you can’t make the Zoom—feel free to ask me anything related to running or to life in general, and I will try to answer as candidly as possible.

I’m doing this because I’ve listened to podcast hosts field questions during “ask me anything” sessions, and the variety and randomness of questions make for an interesting conversation. So, please float a question to me!

Also, congratulations to three people in this group who recently finished big ultras: Orly Liba at Big Alta 100K, Karen Fennie at Umstead 100, and Jennifer O’Connor at American River 50. I bet there are others in this group who also recently finished a challenging race whom I don’t know about, so I encourage you to share the news in the comments below. If any of you are on the upcoming Zoom, you can share a short recap of the highs and lows of your race, if you like.

AI is dominating my thoughts even though I’m rejecting it

I’m part of a dying breed—the dwindling number of humans in the developed world who don’t use AI. By that I mean, I don’t actively use it. AI, of course, is omnipresent and enters my sphere without me asking for it through Google AI summaries, Zoom transcriptions, the Waymo autonomous cars that drove by during our recent trip to the Bay Area, and in many other creeping ways. If I must, I’ll use a Chatbot on a company’s website if that’s the only way to get customer service.

But I have never, ever, not once queried ChatGPT or asked Claude to do something for me. I never have subjected my original writing to it to request feedback, summarizing, or suggestions, nor have I ever asked AI to write something for me, and I never will. This is a line I will not cross, a slippery slope I don’t want to start down.

I also have turned off the AI analysis function on my Stava, and whenever stupid Microsoft Word tries to “improve” my writing by suggesting Copilot, and I tell it to go to hell and make it go away.

I suspect many of you are shaking your heads and thinking I’m naive, ignorant, and hopelessly backward-thinking. Perhaps a few of you, however, are more like me. Let me explain my views and my fear a bit.

For months, I’ve been following the ways in which AI is threatening the publishing world, leading to a “crisis of authorship,” as expertly analyzed by my book coach, Brooke Warner.

This morning, I read a spot-on post by author Andrea Bartz, the bestselling novelist specializing in psychological thrillers who sued Anthropic for stealing copyrighted work to train large language models (LLMs).

I urge you to read her post about why she has rejected AI use. She made me feel understood!

Andrea Bartz: Get It Write

Why I'm against the use of generative AI altogether

I’ve been talking a lot about generative AI the last few weeks (in the New York Times, on the Brian Lehrer Show, and more), and I keep using the same phrase: “In a vacuum…

Read more

2 months ago · 60 likes · 9 comments

She goes into detail about how “LLMs are bad for our heads and hearts” and AI use degrades critical thinking, normalizes plagiarism (by using AI to create writing and taking credit for it), enriches unethical companies, and is progressing in a way that likely will lead to catastrophic consequences. She concludes:

“…to look at the list and go, ‘but have you tried asking it to make you a vacation itinerary?!’ is an incomprehensible reaction to me. I know many people are being forced to use AI for work (or feel the pros outweigh the cons), but for me, this is a firm line in the sand. I’m not perfect, but I’m using LLMs as little as possible. Humans have existed without AI for hundreds of thousands of years; the whole ‘embrace it or fall behind!!!!’ messaging is just that—marketing, propaganda from a sector that many economists consider a bubble.” We can resist. We can minimize our generative AI usage and choose to connect with humans instead of machines.”

To those who might chide me for “falling behind” or keeping my “head in the sand,” I assure you, I am not completely ignorant about AI. I read the news about it. I have watched YouTube videos that explain it. I see my husband use AI daily and extol its virtues. (Claude builds him websites and creates images for his business.)

AI is starting to cause tension in our relationship, so much so that when I wanted to share the Bartz column above and my views on it with him, I emailed rather than talked, because our conversations about AI tend to degenerate in tone and body language as we each express frustration with the other’s viewpoint.

To his credit, Morgan read it and replied by email, mostly agreeing with me. He wrote:

“At a minimum, AI is going to cause devastation in the job market, and that is already happening. … and I think there is a massive risk of us all losing control of AI, especially if bad actors get involved, and they have no guardrails … I also agree that AI could well cause people to stop thinking critically, because it makes things so easy. … But not using it won’t mitigate the risk. If I could wave a magic wand and have it disappear from the world so no one had access to AI, I would do it in a heartbeat. But without that, I will still use it to do things like make my new website, which I could never do on my own.”

So, we agree to disagree. I have signed a pledge to boycott ChatGPT through QuitGPT.org and urge you to check out their site and consider it, too.

What’s your take on all this? I hope you’ll comment below on whether you love and daily use AI platforms, whether you share my contempt and rejection of it, or something in between.

Speaking of critical thinking and authentic writing, I’m in my favorite place in town—the library—surrounded by books. I have communicated my thoughts here without any AI boost or shortcut. I’m going to get offline and read a novel, turning the pages and savoring the utterly unique, authentic voice of the author as my brain conjures images of her story (Tayari Jones, Kin).

Glancing down at a page from her book right now, I spot a line of her dialogue that I can’t imagine AI writing: “Getting married on top of secrets is like spraying perfume without washing first.”

God forbid this novel gets fed to an LLM and someone asks AI, “Write me a short story in the style of Tayari Jones” and then passes off the plagiarized essay as their own work. I know, it could happen. That kind of thing already is happening all the time. But I won’t be a part of it.

Two of my subscribers connected and made this podcast episode!

I’m gratified that both and are in this group of newsletter supporters. Both are longtime ultrarunners. Both had the same run-stopping injury requiring surgery and months of recovery: a meniscus root tear.

Scott is a podcaster, and when I suggested that he talk to Sophie about their shared injury and recovery, he had her on the podcast! I loved this conversation, and anyone who’s been through a long orthopedic injury with surgery and followup PT likely will gain some wisdom from it. In the second half, Sophie talks about her running history, including the origin of our friendship.

Listen here on the Ten Junk Miles show.

That’s all. Thank you for reading, have a great weekend, and I hope to see you on the Thursday Zoom!

-Sarah

Give a gift subscription

Subscribe now

I’m writing from the town of Basalt, a little northwest of Aspen, where I spent a couple of days to be close to the state-of-the-art Steadman surgery center, which specializes in orthopedics and sports injuries. Not for me—for my daughter. She’s on the mend from a followup surgery.

If you’ve read this newsletter for over a year, you might recall she had a ski accident followed by surgery fifteen months ago to repair a badly fractured—splintered, really—tibia plateau (the head of her shin bone). The hardware implanted to repair the bone had begun to bother her, interfering with her IT band on the lower lateral side of her knee. She made a pilgrimage back to the same surgical team to get it removed, and I joined to take care of her before and after.

I got a call from the outstanding surgeon, Dr. Jared Lee, as soon as he finished, and he reassured me that he got all the hardware out cleanly and that the area would heal smoothly, but “it was tricky,” he said. Some screws were so adhered to the metal plate that he couldn’t unscrew them normally without potentially stripping the screw heads, so he firmly but delicately spent extra time and extra care unscrewing each one.

“This is the kind of surgery that can only make surgeons look bad,” he said, meaning that when done right, the result looks simple and clean, but when done wrong, it creates a mess. A surgeon less familiar or more rushed with this procedure might have manhandled the hardware, stripped the screw heads, and potentially broken them off from their shafts, requiring pliers to pull them out. None of that happened.

But just learning about that potential bad scenario made my heart pound and triggered every mama-bear protective urge in my body. So did seeing my daughter in her post-op sleepy vulnerable state. I felt a wave of gratitude for our access to the best medical care and for our togetherness.

You never outgrow being a mom, even when your kids have “adulted.” To me, this means I always will move mountains (or at least, travel far over them) to be with my daughter and son when they need me.

I don’t think I’m guilty of helicopter parenting, because we let our kids free-range as they grew up as much as we supervised them. After they graduated from college, my husband and I nudged them out of the nest to develop their own lives and their own sources of income. My daughter, now 28, is an entrepreneur and engaged.

Yet, I intentionally raised them always to feel the security of knowing that I am available and ready to support them, and that they matter more than anything to me. They inhabit the core of my identity. I can’t be happy unless my kids are happy and healthy, and our frequent phone calls and texts nourish me like water to a thirsty plant.

I have my own mother to thank and blame for my maternal fixation. So much of my parenting style (and my running, too) developed in reaction to her parenting style and personality. My mother unintentionally inspired me to strive to become her opposite.

I was the youngest of her five—with a seven-year gap between sibling number four and me—so by the time I came along when my mom was 35, she must have been bone-deep tired as a housewife and yearning for some independence. In my older age, I’m finally able and willing to cut her some slack and empathize with her circumstances. But when I was younger, I felt resentment and disappointment toward her more than love or admiration.

For myriad reasons, including the culture of the time, my mother and I developed distance and misunderstanding between us that snowballed during my adolescence, and by the time I married at 21, she was on the periphery of my life and clueless about who I really was and what I was doing. I rarely disclosed anything significant to her, and I didn’t trust her to babysit my babies for longer than a couple of hours.

Now, as my 28-year-old daughter eagerly shows me her Pinterest of wedding inspiration and details her hopes and dreams, I feel deeply satisfied that we have the mother-daughter relationship I always wanted. I also deeply miss my mom, who died in 2022, and yearn for a do-over with her.

My forthcoming memoir is a midlife adventure and love story, involving peaks and valleys of ultrarunning and marriage, and my mom figures prominently in it. Toward the end, I revisit times when I was awful toward her, such as here:

I resented her for never being someone in whom I could confide. I mocked her for ironing Dad’s cloth handkerchiefs (“pointless”), for reading Jackie Collins and Danielle Steele paperbacks (“trash”), and for cooking recipes with Best Foods Mayonnaise and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup (“gag me”), even though her dishes actually tasted good.

“You’ve been brainwashed by commercials during Guiding Light and As the World Turns,” I once told her in my know-it-all way, trying to come off as the enlightened, feminist, nonconformist college student she never was.

I eventually came to terms with my role in our distant relationship and ultimately experienced more appreciation than antipathy for her and how she raised me.

I believe we all, on some level, have mother issues, and they never go away. But we can analyze them from different vantage points over life and, with time, evolve to make peace with memories involving mom.

Mothering and my mom are on my mind not just from spending time caring for my daughter, but also from reading an excellent new novel involving maternal abandonment, Kin, by Tayari Jones.

I’ll also take this opportunity to recommend a poignant mother-daughter memoir by an ultrarunner I admire, , called To the Gorge. I confessed to Emily that it took me a while to read her book because I felt jealous of the close, inspiring relationship she had with her mother. I’m glad I got over that and read it.

If my “mommy issues” have interested you, and perhaps you relate, I invite you to read this appreciation of her and of my childhood that I wrote after she died:

A local’s insight to trail running around Grand Junction

Grand Junction—the “big city” that’s 2.5 hours north of my home, near Colorado’s western border—is on my mind for a couple of reasons. One, this weekend is the Desert Rats by UTMB trail-running festival near Grand Junction and its neighboring small town Fruita. I ran the 50K there in 2022, before UTMB gobbled it up (as UTMB-Ironman has done with too many independently-own ultra races, argh).

Now, the event is larger and harder to gain entry to run it. But you can look at their route map and explore segments of the red-rock trail system above the Colorado River in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area on your own, which I highly recommend.

Also, The New York Times recently published its guide, “36 Hours in Grand Junction,” which is well done, and you can read it here (gift link). It motivates me to get back to Grand Junction and Fruita for a day trip to run and dine there before summer temps make the trails dangerously hot.

The Times article begins: “Grand Junction, the western Colorado city that abuts the state’s largest wine region, draws outdoor enthusiasts for its accessibility to both mountain and desert trails, abundance of water sports, and the wondrous red-rock formations in Colorado National Monument. An eager adventurer in the late spring can even ski and bike on the same day. What visitors haven’t typically come for—until more recently—is the city’s ambience. Now with a small but growing destination-dining scene, new hotels, expanded arts programming and improvements … Grand Junction’s appeals extend far beyond just superb recreation.”

I asked my friend Heather Sackett, who lives in Grand Junction, what did the article get right, and what did it miss?

Heather is an accomplished journalist and runner whom I once coached. We connected under bittersweet circumstances in 2013, when she was a reporter at the Telluride newspaper, and she contacted me to get info to write my dad’s obituary. I really appreciate her taking the time to share her regional expertise with me, so I can share it with you!

“Trail running in the Grand Valley is some of the best on the Western Slope, especially in the spring and fall,” she wrote me. “The New York Times itinerary mentions Devil’s Canyon trail system in Fruita, which I agree has some of the best trail running in the valley. The local trail running group Mesa Monument Striders runs out here almost every Monday. There are no mountain bikes allowed, and lots of people hike with their dogs here. The Pollock Bench loop, the Flume Trail, and Cabin Loop are some of the best.”

“There is also great trail running at the Kokopelli trail system, off I-70. Rustler’s, Horsethief Bench and Steve’s are three of my favorite loops with scenic views overlooking the Colorado River. If you want to avoid the crowds of mountain bikers at the main Kokopelli Trailhead, go to the west end of the trail system and park at one of those three parking areas: Troy Built, Hawkeye, or Lions. There are endless possibilities to create loops of any distance in this trail system.”

“The Palisade Rim Trail is a great 8.8-mile figure-eight loop with views of the valley and a stop along the way to look at ancient rock art. And for an uphill workout, there’s always Mount Garfield, the iconic rock outcropping that is part of the Bookcliffs. It’s less than two miles to the top, but it’s a crusher of a steep, exposed trail, with almost 2,000 feet of vert.”

The Times’ “36 Hours” guide also recommends the Lunch Loop trail system near downtown Grand Junction. Heather’s take: “I know not everyone will agree with this, but I don’t love running at Lunch Loops. It’s close to town so it’s conveniently located, but it’s primarily a mountain biking trail system (which is very popular and can be crowded with bikers), and I find the trails to be so technical that they slow me down.”

Most importantly, she says and I agree, “The key to Grand Valley running is to get out early in the day to beat the heat and the mountain bikers. In the summer, trailheads are empty of cars by 10 a.m. because everyone has already come and gone. It’s absolutely imperative since temps regularly surpass 100 degrees in the summer. I’ve had to adjust my daily summer schedule since running after work is simply not an option unless I want to get heat stroke.”

I would add to these trail recommendations the 18 Road trail system north of Fruita, where I have done several heat-adaptation runs and raced the Kessel Run Ultra.

When and if you’re in Fruita, you must visit the Fruita Tavern on Mulberry Street! My nephew Justin and his wife Randi bought it last fall and rebranded it as a taproom. It’s known as “Fruita’s living room” because it’s a casual, community-oriented gathering spot.

Heather offers these additional recommendations for eating and drinking in the Grand Valley region: “After running in Fruita, I like to hit up the Hot Tomato for pizza, salad, and beer. Other restaurants I like that aren’t mentioned in the Times are Taco Party and Trail Life Brewing, both in downtown Grand Junction. In addition to the ones mentioned [in the article], Palisade has a lot of wineries with relaxing outdoor spaces. Maison la Belle Vie, the Blue Beryl, Carlson and Carboy are some of my favorites. Talbott’s Cider also has a nice tasting room and peaches when they are in season.”

Have you run around Grand Junction? Share your recommendations in the comments below if so.

Lastly, I’ll recommend this new article in UltraSignup, “Women Are Getting Faster In Ultras. Here’s Why” by Zoë Rom. It’s an intriguing, nuanced analysis of why women are kicking ass and finishing faster now compared to five to ten years ago. I’m consistently impressed by Zoë’s reporting and her podcasting (on Your Diet Sucks and The Trailhead).

In fact, I gotta wrap this up and hit publish so I’m not late getting my daughter to the airport and meeting Zoë for a lunchtime run today in Carbondale!

I was about 90 minutes into a solo run last Saturday when I became confused. The reddish dirt of the singletrack trail, lined with piñon-juniper, rabbitbrush, and sagebrush typical of a high-desert ecosystem, curved one way, then another, and I thought for sure the intersection where I needed to turn right would be just past the next bend. But it wasn’t.

The prior miles had dropped a few hundred feet into a canyon with warmer temps, which meant I’d be slower and hotter on the way back. I shouldn’t go much farther on the trail due to limited fluid supply. But I couldn’t decide whether to run to the next intersection and make a loop out of this part of the route, or turn around for an out-and-back.

I looked at my phone, and it was no help. I had failed to download the route, and I couldn’t get a cell signal to view the trail on any map app. I had done the wise old-fashioned thing of taking a photo of the large map on display at the trailhead, but then I had run farther, connecting to a different trail system, and my photo of the map didn’t cover that area.

So I played it safe and turned around, sure I could retrace my steps. A little ways later, however, the trail branched into a Y that I didn’t recall. Suddenly, my mind played tricks. Had I come down this trail, or that one? Both ways looked familiar yet uncertain.

I chose the correct trail to get back. But I spooked myself.

Finding my way out of that canyon, I went through a mental inventory of the rookie mistakes I had made and the risks I faced, which a seasoned trail-safety nerd like me should know better to avoid. I had been careless setting out on that run, and it could have turned out badly. I decided to share with all of you trail runners and hikers the reminders of do’s and don’ts that I gave myself.

• Don’t assume the outing will be easy or that you will finish in a certain amount of time. I approached this run too casually because I planned to go “only” 13 miles at “only” 6000 feet elevation, in an area about 60 miles from home where running generally feels more manageable. I overlooked the fact that I had been sick the prior week and was still recovering, hence I felt weaker, and the temperatures were hotter than usual (in the 70s).

• Don’t rely on your phone for navigation; do assume you won’t be able to get a signal. I should have downloaded a map to use offline. I am not very familiar with this trail system, so I couldn’t trust my memory.

• Do take more fluid than you think you’ll need, especially if water sources along the way are uncertain or nonexistent. I generally need one 500ml bottle of fluid per hour. I almost took only two, thinking I’d finish the run in close to two hours. Thank goodness I took three bottles. The run lasted a little over 2.5 hours, and the climate was warm and dry, so I drank every drop and was thirsty by the time I returned to my car.

• Do take extra calories (mostly carbs) and enough electrolytes. I didn’t take enough and got hungry. I had framed my run as medium-length, not long, and therefore didn’t go through my typical long-run routine of calculating enough carbs per hour to carry. I also didn’t take into account I had an empty stomach following the 90-minute drive from my house to the trailhead, which meant I started the run low on energy.

• Do put your phone on airplane mode, or at least low battery, to preserve battery life.

• Do carry basic first aid and comfort items. I almost always have a baggie in my pack with bandages, a small syringe to irrigate a cut (using water from my water bottle), a safety whistle, a couple of Pepto Bismo pills in case of stomach or gut distress, a couple of antihistamine pills in case I or another trail user gets stung by a bee and needs it, and a couple of Tylenols in case of significant pain. Another baggie has toilet paper in case I need a big potty break; if so, I carry out the used TP in the baggie to leave no trace. I also carry a small tube of sunscreen and anti-chafe ointment. But I had washed my pack in the laundry the day before, and I forgot to re-pack all those things! I completely spaced on bringing those essentials, duh.

• Don’t wear headphones, especially noise-canceling AirPods, if sharing the trail with mountain bikes. This trail system attracted many cyclists, and a couple of times they surprised me coming fast around a bend. I wanted to listen to a podcast, so I played the volume from my phone speaker in my pocket low enough that I could hear other sounds and it wouldn’t disturb other trail users.

• Do always ask yourself, “If I rolled an ankle or hurt myself another way and had to wait for help, would I have enough fluid, calories, first aid, and clothing layers to take care of myself while waiting an unknown length of time to be rescued?”

• Do take an extra snack and drink to have in your car at the end of the outing, in case you return thirsty and depleted.

What safety tip might you add to this list? Comment below. [Update: read the comment thread, as some great tips came in from readers!]

I made a 50-second reel of my run. Feel free to follow me on Instagram if you don’t already.

A race report that rocks

A couple of Saturdays ago, I followed the bonkers women’s race at the Chianti Ultra Trail 120K, thrilled that Courtney Dauwalter kicked her way to the front in the final stretch. The race made me more of a fan of third-place finisher Rachel Entrekin, who has surged to the top of the sport with last year’s course-record wins at Cocodona 250 and High Lonesome 100, plus she won the inaugural Mammoth 200 last fall. She has won so many extra-long ultras in recent years, it’s too many to list.

Being on a winning streak, I wondered whether Rachel would be bummed or make excuses that Courtney the queen passed her and that she didn’t close the gap on Norwegian Yngvild Kaspersen. Hell no, she overflowed enthusiasm and respect for the race and for the other two women. I loved her race report—and the fact she banged it out on her phone and put it on her old-school blog instead of on Substack, not caring too much about whether it spread on the Substack universe, only wanting to capture the details of her run regardless of how many people read it.

As she wrote in this wacky post: “WE WROTE A RECAP AND REPORT. In blog only bc Substack doesn’t allow new posts via mobile app, apparently. I’m too tired to write anything else. What a life. Helluva sport.”

I encourage you to read her whole race report for its entertaining route descriptions, such as: “You’ll pass by castles, cute towns, and people taking wine tours while you’re out there running up and down pointless hills …. Finally, you’ll close the loop by going up the steepest grassy hillside and subsequent paved road of your life followed by TWO FULL SETS OF STAIRS, eventually collapsing into the finish chute.” But mostly, I admired her perspective on racing the top women, such as this moment: “Behind me, I hear rapid footsteps—I tell myself it’s a 70K runner, but I know it’s Courtney. She flies past me—an incredible feat, because I know exactly what she’s been through, and I am NOT moving slowly. I am hauling ass—she is just hauling better ass.”

People were complaining online that the epic showdown wasn’t live-streamed. Oh, well, a good ol’ race report on a throwback blog made me feel as if I were there, and the writing warmed my heart.

Ask me anything

I typically host a monthly online meetup for paid subscribers. The next will be Thursday, April 16, 5 p.m. Mountain, and I’ll do an “ask me anything” Q&A. If you have any question you’d like me to address—either about me personally, or about training and running in general—please feel free to ask it ahead of time in the comments below or via a DM on Substack or Instagram (or if you’re reading this post via email, reply to the email). For those who can’t make the Zoom, I record it and send a link to paid subscribers to listen to afterward.

If you’d like to be a part of this Zoom conversation, and to receive occasional bonus posts, please upgrade your subscription to the supporter level.

Subscribe now

A few reasons I’m celebrating

It’s the first day of April, and we have April showers! It’s drizzling outside and snowing higher up on the mountains. Everything is misty and wet. We desperately need this moisture—especially since a lightning strike caused a scary fire to break out yesterday around 5:30 p.m. in a dry wooded area just two miles from our home. It grew to a few acres. Fire crews are extinguishing all hot spots with the help of this precious precipitation.

Also, I finished the rewrite of my memoir manuscript! It’s about 84,000 words and 299 pages. It follows a 90,000-word incomplete draft I wrote in 2024-’25 that was a big mess. I completely started over last summer, reorganized, and rewrote it in about eight months.

I let my husband—who’s a main character in the story—read it, expecting him to wince and ask for changes in the most sensitive parts involving our relationship. Instead, he said, “It’s really, really good,” and he didn’t ask me to change a thing. He had been reluctant to read this draft, because he worried it would be as muddled as the first version, but he thinks this one’s narrative arc and flow work. I am so relieved.

Now, the manuscript is with four beta readers, and I’m shifting gears to begin querying agents. I’m determined to have it published and out in the world before the end of 2027, because when my first and only book came out in 2017, I vowed to write a second one before the decade ended.

Lastly, I’m celebrating that an event I hosted was a success. I had to twist arms to get a good crowd to come to my house and donate over $5000 to support the candidate I wrote about last week. I care a lot about this race, and if you’re a Coloradan, you should too. If you missed last week’s post, please read it here and support Michael Dougherty for Attorney General:

One more reason I admire Mike Dougherty: I took him on a seven-mile run with not-insignificant vert on Telluride trails early yesterday morning (he needed to get a run in to keep up with his training for the May 2 Collegiate Peaks 50M). At the end, I asked if he’s on Strava.

“No, I don’t keep track of my runs like that,” he said, and he pulled up his long sleeves to show bare wrists, no watch. “My life is so scheduled, I like my runs to be unstructured and unplugged.”

All of you with high-stress and deadline-pressured lives, take note.

Subscribe now

If you don’t want to read about politics, I get it. I used to be a news junkie, but I mainly just scan headlines now. I’m part of the moderate middle that’s an endangered species, and I can’t stand the polarization and extremism that rips our country, even our communities, apart. It’s crazy to me—a former newspaper reporter, schooled to strive for now-old-fashioned objective and balanced reporting—that we consume and believe such vastly different versions of reality, and misinformation makes us cynical and apathetic, unwilling to trust anyone in power.

Yet I still yearn for good-government do-gooders—the public servants and elected officials who do their job for the greater good—and I still believe they’re out there1, often striving against long odds or political machines as an underdog. And I’m a sucker for an underdog.

This story is about running more than politics per se. But it concerns an upcoming election, and a guy running for office who’s also an ultrarunner. The kind of guy I can get behind.

I clicked through, and we clicked

Early in the year, cleaning out my email, I almost deleted yet another political solicitation, but the subject line had to do with running—really running, not only running for office—so I clicked through and learned about a Democratic candidate for Colorado Attorney General who claimed to be an ultrarunner. Always skeptical of people inflating their ultrarunning cred, I toggled over to UltraSignup to verify that he had more than a single 50K from more than a decade ago under his belt.

With the name of Michael Dougherty, he wasn’t easy to check out, because the database has a bunch of Doughertys, and his results were listed under both Michael and Mike. By figuring out his age (54), I zeroed in and discovered that sure enough, he’s a legit ultrarunner who has finished a bunch of 50-milers, plus a sub-24 Leadville 100, and his results stretch back to 2005.

For whatever reasons—partly because I used to coach and therefore like to ask runners what’s up with their training, and partly because I’m prone to poke a bear—I emailed him, “I’m curious, as a fellow ultrarunner, how come no races are listed on your UltraSignup from 2025? Any plans to run ultras and do another 100 again?”

A thoughtful personal note came back that began, “I am a big fan of yours and used to listen to the UltraRunner Podcast all the time, so it was great to see your name in my inbox.” (He was referencing the now-dormant ultra podcast I co-hosted with Eric Schranz circa 2013 - 2017, sadly now lost forever since Eric abandoned the archives.) “I am sorry for the delayed response. I handled a sex assault trial in December and everything got backed up.

“I really wish I had done an ultra in 2025,” he continued. “I am running for Attorney General, while continuing to serve as District Attorney. So, I have two full-time jobs, and I often think of this stretch of life as an ultra. Certainly, the lessons and ability to persevere come to mind often during these days and nights of work.”

He went on to describe how he’s stoked to get in shape for the Collegiate Peaks 50M in May and believes another 100 is in his future.

I did a deep dive to learn about him, and he agreed to an interview. Since I’m married to a longtime litigator, and I used to do legal affairs reporting, I’m familiar with the extraordinary pressure put on trial attorneys in a deadline-driven adversarial environment, especially those handling criminal or injury cases who represent victims and their loved ones who’ve been severely hurt. Add to that the pressure of being in an elected office and managing a large team of lawyers, and being a dad to twin teenagers, I wondered how this guy kept from being the proverbial frog in a simmering pot of hot water. The answer has to do with running.

The gnarliest cases and the reset from a run

I learned that he—not his subordinates, but he personally—has handled some of the gnarliest cases that shake your faith in humanity, from the Boulder King Soopers supermarket mass shooting case in 2024 to myriad sex crimes and homicides. Before becoming Boulder County District Attorney in 2018, he worked in the office he now aspires to lead—the Colorado Attorney General’s Office—heading up the criminal justice team in areas including financial fraud, environmental crimes, and law enforcement accountability. Before moving to Colorado in 2010, he spent more than a decade as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney Office specializing in sex crimes and homicides.

When we talked via Zoom, I asked the obvious, how does he make time to run? And why does he run ultras?

He answered by reflecting on the recent trial he handled involving a fire department captain who sexually assaulted five women, including a high school intern.

“I strongly believe, as a leader, that I should do the same work I’m asking of others, so I still handle very serious cases,” he said. “The trial would usually end between 5 and 5:30, and we’d have a quick team meeting to prepare for the next day, and I’d recognize that my energy drops and I’m not particularly productive after that meeting. So that’s when I’m gonna run. I just would jam it in then, and coming back from a run, I always felt completely recharged.

“I look at running as part of how I get through trials, and how I feel better about the work that has to be done the next day.”

The experience and perspective he gains from training for and racing ultras helps him handle the metaphorical peaks and valleys of his ongoing work, both in the DA’s Office and on the campaign trail.

“The stamina that we learn from running is what gets me through some of the long days on the campaign trail now,” he said. “For middle-of-the-pack runners like me, there are times when I’m really suffering [during ultras], and you learn after doing a couple of long-distance races that that’s just part of it, and you come out the other side and again feel strong, and again feel fast and supercharged. So if I have a long day, or something doesn’t go my way, I tend to be even-keeled about it and say, ‘OK, tomorrow’s another day, let’s keep going.’”

Now, patience and tenacity as an ultrarunner are helping him persevere to close the gap on frontrunner Jena Griswold, who’s the Colorado Secretary of State in the lead thanks largely to name recognition and in spite of her dearth of trial experience (more on that below).

“My campaign has a lot of momentum now, and it’s going really well. My wife, Antonia, said the other night, ‘It’s like mile 87 at Leadville! You’re coming on strong!’ And I’m like, ‘I’m pretty sure this is mile 60, but I appreciate the sentiment.’”

From adventure races to “just” running

Dougherty grew up being a sporty kid on Long Island and in Brooklyn. As a young adult, around when he earned his JD at Boston University School of Law, he ran the occasional 5K or 10K. Soon after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, when he was a 30-year-old up-and-comer in the Manhattan DA’s Office, a friend convinced him to sign up for some 12- and 24-hour multi-sport adventure races.

“We did all these crazy races, including rappelling off the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier in the Hudson River, which I’m not sure is the healthiest thing I’ve ever done. They were great, but they took a tremendous amount of planning with the logistics and all the equipment. I got to a point where I found myself saying, ‘I just want to run’ and not carry bins of equipment and drop them off at different locations.”

Around 2003, he ran his first 50K near Ithaca, New York, followed by a 50M in Rhode Island. But those early ultras weren’t nearly as humbling as his first Colorado mountain race in 2006, the Pikes Peak Marathon.

“We flew out from Brooklyn, got into some little hotel in Colorado Springs, and in the morning, I looked up, saw Pikes Peak, and was like, ‘Oh my God! Training in Brooklyn was not preparation for what’s about to happen here.’ But I finished, and it was an amazing day.”

He, his wife Antonia, and their twin son and daughter moved to Colorado in 2010, and he promptly signed up for the Silver Rush 50 in Leadville that year, finishing in a respectable 11 hours. Several mountain races followed over the years, Collegiate Peaks 50 near Buena Vista becoming a favorite that he repeated a few times. Most impressive to me is his 12:30 finish at the 2017 San Juan Solstice 50, since I’ve tried and failed twice to break 14 hours there and will try again this June.

When I asked how his training for Collegiate Peaks 50 is going, I could relate to his answer as someone struggling to increase my long-run volume.

“I’m running enough days, but not enough miles,” he said. “I don’t know if this is age or just where I’m at with my training, but there are some days when I can run two or two-and-a-half hours, and I feel just great, like I can run forever. And there are other days when I run two hours and think, if I had to run another hour, I’d probably be crawling. But we’ll get there.”

Running for higher office

I asked why, if he’s successful in the DA’s Office and isn’t termed out for another six years, did he launch a tough campaign a year ago for Colorado Attorney General?

“I really believe the moment calls for it,” he said. “A number of people were strongly encouraging me to run. Then, when Trump was elected to a second term, Antonia looked at me and said, ‘You are running for Attorney General.’ Because she realized we need an AG who is going to fight and win those fights. We need someone who’s going to fight Donald Trump when he violates the law and harms Colorado, and I’m willing to do that on Day One, but also do it with integrity and not based on a political agenda.

“We’re living through a crisis in this country now, and the Attorney General’s Office needs to be led by someone who can take us through this crisis and make sure that we do justice and do the right thing, and we also bring people together in a time of real divisiveness. I’ve never been guided by political agenda or political ambition—I’ll always be guided by the rule of law and justice—and I think that’s more important than ever as we work to restore trust in our democracy.”

My endorsement

Like many of my peers, I reflexively backed Jena Griswold for Colorado Attorney General early on because she’s a woman and because, as Secretary of State, she was near the center of a news story with national implications involving a far-right conspiracy theorist, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was sentenced to prison for breaching election security in an effort to bolster Trump’s big lie of election fraud. Griswold gained my respect for her actions and stand around that case.

The problem is, Jena Griswold has none of the courtroom experience that Dougherty does, which is crucial to lead a team of hundreds of attorneys and staffers in the AG Office and the network of statewide DA’s offices. This hard-hitting piece by respected Denver reporter Kyle Clark, from early March, nails Griswold for inflating her legal experience (she said she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, when in fact other attorneys represented her case) and points out she has tried only a single case early in her career.

As Dougherty put it, “If you’re taking Donald Trump to court, it cannot be your first time walking into a courtroom, or your first time telling attorneys what to do on a particular case or making decisions about when to file or how to proceed. Having a proven track record and being battle tested matters more than ever, especially at a time when Congress is doing, in my opinion, very little, and it’s falling on the justice system and judicial branch to make sure the rule of law is followed.”

For these reasons, if you’re a Colorado voter, please join me in supporting Michael Dougherty and make sure you are registered to vote in the June 30 primary. I also believe he’s the strongest candidate to face the Republican challenger, Colorado Springs DA Michael Allen, in the November general election.

I hope you’ll watch his short intro video. It restores some of my hope and optimism!

Read more

Subscribe now

I made a conscious choice before starting the Marin Ultra Challenge 50K last Saturday—my first ultra since last September—and that choice led to a smooth-sailing and happy 30ish miles in spite of entering it undertrained.

The choice and good result did not have much to do with training, tapering, fueling, or wearing the best shoes for the conditions. Nor did it involve setting goal split times to aid stations, studying the course profile to strategize pacing, or doing umpteen hill repeats on similar slopes in the weeks prior. Those are things I do for “A” races that I take seriously.

Rather, the choice was this: to recognize and act as if it might be my last time ever running those trails and seeing those old friends, given that my trips back to the Bay Area are fewer and farther between, and who knows what may happen?

I therefore chose to pause and take photos, to chat with some friends who were running near me, and to stop at aid stations to talk to anyone I knew there.

I became a runner and spent my formative adult years in the East Bay Area, from grad school in my twenties to parenting through my forties, and the Marin Headlands to the north always beckoned as an inspirational trail-racing destination. Over the decades, I became thoroughly familiar with Saturday’s route from earlier runs at this Marin Ultra Challenge, along with the Northface Endurance Challenge 50 and Miwok 100K. Four years had passed since I last raced here.

Running up from Rodeo Beach at daybreak, with the white noise of waves crashing and the chatter of runners and rhythmic thud of their footfalls in my ears, all the details and memories rushed back—the rickety stretch of ladder-like wooden stairs, the shuttered hillside bunkers with rusted hardware and a big long cannon on display, the crescent shape of the beach below.

On rested legs in oxygen-rich sea-level air, running felt blissfully manageable. I actually could run up the kinds of slopes that I downshift to hike in the mountains around our Colorado home at 9000 feet. My body relaxed because I carried no anxiety, no doubt, and no pressure to achieve goals except to celebrate the route and run (rather than hike) as much of it as I could.

After snapping photos of sunrise and the Golden Gate Bridge, and cresting two 800-foot climbs, I ran into the Tennessee Valley Aid Station at mile 10 and heard my husband yell, “There she is!”

Four old friends swarmed me—our college roommate plus three past coaching clients and running buddies. “I’m spending at least 15 minutes here!” I said, exaggerating but declaring my priorities to rekindle relationships.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman wearing doughnut-print shorts whom I guessed was in my age group. She exited the aid station and got ahead of me, but I did not care. I might catch her later.

One friend told me to hand her my sticky gel wrappers and snotty tissues while another helped me refill my bottles. I told Morgan to take off his sweater so we could view his “Practice Maximum Enthusiasm” shirt, and we all laughed as the contents of his pockets accidentally spilled to the ground.

I hugged them all and walked backwards out of the aid station to view them longer, and as I turned and started running toward the rocky cliffs overlooking Pirates Cove, I thought about the studies that have shown that relationships are key to happiness and also contribute to longevity.

Would I trade these interactions to run in the front and win, if I still could run that fast? No. But, for the challenge and for my ego, I wanted to chase down and pass that woman in the doughnut shorts who looked to be my age.

Earlier in life, I ran fast enough to win 50Ks here, back when I was a cocky road-marathon convert with younger, fresher legs in a still-fringe sport with fewer competitors. In 2008, when the erstwhile Pacific Coast Trail Runs outfit hosted the Rodeo Beach 50K on a route similar to Saturday’s, I ran all-out to squeak under five hours and placed first female in 4:59, when I was 39. I ran it again as hard as I could in 2011 to beat the others and win in 5:09, and I showed off by cartwheeling through the finish line.

A decade ago, at the 2016 Marin Ultra Challenge 50K, I finished in 5:03 for fifth place among stout competitors. I honestly don’t know how I ran that fast back then on a course with 6300 feet of vert. I don’t understand the physics and physiology of how my legs turned over that quickly, or what changed in my stride and its speed since then, because now, I would be thrilled to finish an hour slower, close to six hours. And the pace I was running midway through the route on Saturday felt fast.

I then made another key choice: to focus on feeling fast, and running light and loose, rather than the objective measurement of speed. Instead of comparing myself to my earlier faster times, I celebrated how much better and faster I was running in the Headlands compared to how I run in the high-altitude mountains around home.

I caught up to my friend Katie above Pirates Cove, then increased my speed to zoom through Muir Beach.

Dare I say, on the big climb up another 800-foot hill called Diaz Ridge around mile 18, the run felt relatively easy? The slope gently zigzagged in a series of smooth ramps. I passed and gapped the woman in the doughnut shorts.

Of course my altitude adaptation helped. I also took in plenty of carbs (~60g/hour) and electrolytes. But the easy feeling came from relaxation and positivity. So often during ultras, I focus on the finish and hurry up to get it done. I push, rush, and redline. This time, I looked around and ran by feel.

The second time through Muir Beach (mile 21), I spotted one of my favorite people, Lisa Felder, aka Mama Lisa. She and her partner coached me for marathons with the Team in Training program starting in 1999, and Lisa helped me transition to ultras.

She hugged me and said, “Sarah! I can’t believe you’re here!” and I said, “I can’t believe you haven’t aged at all!” She asked about my kids—since she remembered them as babies—and I asked about all the runners she was supporting on the course. I handed my phone to a nearby woman to take our photo, and we stood posing as that woman supposedly snapped pics.

“I have to finish these final ten miles, but I’ll see you again,” I told Lisa, inwardly wondering if I ever would.

Imagine my disappointment when I looked at my phone and realized the photo-taker hadn’t pushed the button. I had no image of that special interaction except in my mind, but Lisa later touched my heart by promptly emailing the next day and writing, “You looked great, just like the beautiful athlete I always knew you to be.” Her words hit like praise from a favorite old teacher, or words I wish my own mother had expressed. She reconnected me to the young, ambitious runner I had been—the runner I felt in my bones on Saturday.

I dug up this photo from 2016, when she and my other coach, Alphonzo Jackson, were inducted into the National Black Marathoners Association's Hall of Fame. I like that my note to them lives on in the upper righthand corner.

How could I not mention the weather and clear sky? Everyone has been dreading the high-pressure ridge and its heat wave, but it made for crystal-clear mild weather all Saturday. We can worry about the climate-changing weather, and we can embrace a postcard-perfect day with temps around 70. I won’t ever take a clear blue sky for granted in this era of increased wildfires.

I had one more mini-reunion. My friends Clare and Kim, who were out for a fun run to cheer on the ultra participants, appeared near the summit of the final hill, around mile 28. We stopped to hug and hike a bit together.

Seeing them gave me a boost. I pedaled my legs and windmilled my arms down the final descent as if I were the younger me trying to finish close to five hours instead of six. My muscles quivered and lower back ached. But my good ol’ knees handled the job admirably. I would pay for the aggressive downhill running by wincing while walking downstairs the following three days.

I finished in 6 hours, 12 minutes, second in the 50+ female age group, 23rd woman out of 86 finishers, in the top third overall. In other words, far from the podium but respectably mid-pack.

I hung out at the finish with the age-group winner who beat me by a couple of minutes, another Katie, and discovered we have mutual friends. She graciously joked, “I was glad Kim and Clare stopped you on the hill.”

I thought about how I could have finished closer to six hours flat if I hadn’t spent time talking at aid stations or with friends along the way, and I concluded I would not trade those minutes reconnecting with people for any prize.

I have ultras coming up on calendar that I’ll take seriously, like the extreme high-altitude San Juan Solstice 50, where I’ll challenge myself to break 14 hours (having missed that mark the prior two times I ran it). I’ll push, rush, and redline, and in the midst of suffering, I’ll fondly recall this season-opening 50K when I let myself pause and feel all the joy and nostalgia from decades-long relationships with those people and those trails.

When in the Bay Area …

We splurged on this trip and stayed in two special hotels that I recommend.

First, we spent three nights in Sausalito to be closer to the start line of the race, at Cavallo Point Lodge at the historic Fort Baker, which is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It’s right next to the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and close to the Sausalito waterfront. I used to run there and take our kids to the Discovery Museum located next door, so I loved returning and strolling along Horseshoe Bay, looking at the San Francisco skyline across the bay.

Then, we spent our final two nights at 1 Hotel on the San Francisco waterfront, across from the Ferry Building. This hotel has a remarkable collection of plants—verdant, healthy plants sprout and hang everywhere you look in the hotel’s interior—and the woodsy texture of all the surfaces gives the luxury hotel an earthy eco vibe. I particularly liked the rooftop garden.

One last highlight of being a Bay Area tourist: we walked up to Coit Tower (the day after the race, on sore legs) to admire not only the views but also the murals inside. Don’t miss it if you’re there.

And that’s all! Thank you for reading. Please let me know you were here by liking or commenting on this post.

I’m writing this with feet propped up and laptop resting on quads tender to the touch. Outside, the Bay Bridge with a sailboat gliding un…

Read more

Last Friday, the wind howled and gray clouds rolled in, and a day of steady snow dumped nearly 10 inches on the mountain. We woke Saturday to a landscape that sparkled white. I laced up my winter Hoka Speedgoats that have built-in spikes for traction, knowing it probably would be the last time this season that I use them, and headed out on a 13-mile run, tapering for this Saturday’s Marin Ultra Challenge 50K.

I studied the snow-covered mesas and peaks, and the curtains of dripping icicles hanging from rocky slopes where precious water springs, and recognized that their transience enhanced their beauty. The sun was shining strong, the temps rising into the mid- to high 40s.

Two hours later, I was running on mud that stuck in my spikes. The melt happened that fast.

Four days later, the roads and most meadows are bone dry and brown, save for some crusty white patches on shadowy north-facing slopes. The forecast calls for highs in the mid-60s a week from now as a heat wave builds over the West. We’re wondering if the ski resort will shut down early, in a couple of weeks instead of later in April, if no more snow arrives.

I want to revel in the springtime transition and brilliant blue sky, and welcome the arrival of green shoots of grass poking up through the dead-brown landscape. And I would—if it were May. But we’re two months early for this transition.

I know I’m not alone in struggling to savor and appreciate the present when an inner voice worries, “We’re screwed.”

The Colorado River is screwed1. The wildfire season looms. With existential dread, it’s reasonable to expect that every year going forward will be incrementally hotter, and that our future grandkids will not know snow.

What do we do in the face of that? I don’t have answers. But I do hold onto faith that nature adapts, people adapt. I remind myself that in each of the past three Mays, I optimistically planted flowers and hung flower baskets too early, around May 1, only to have them freeze from a cold blast, and that we sometimes get Cinco de Mayo snowstorms.

Meanwhile, we harden our home and take whatever fire-proofing and water-saving measures we can. We get outside to absorb the beauty. We support regional environmental groups that are doing important work and making an impact, even as our nation’s leaders worsen the situation by eviscerating environmental protections and denying climate change.

We take photos of fresh snow.

Pilgrimage to the Marin Headlands

In lighter and brighter news, I am so excited to return to the Bay Area for the Marin Ultra Challenge.

Those of you new to this newsletter probably don’t know that I spent the formative years of adulthood—from grad school in my mid-twenties, to raising kids in my thirties and forties—in the East Bay Area, and the trails in the Headlands across the bay always beckoned as a special running destination.

To give you a sense of what it’s like, I offer this short-and-sweet race report from 2022—the early months of this newsletter—which hardly anyone read at the time. It helped me to re-read it to remind myself of reasonable goals and a positive mindset for racing.

When I raced the Marin Ultra Challenge 50K a decade ago, in 2016, I finished in 5:03 (a 9:46 average pace on a course with about 6300 feet of elevation gain). Now, I would be happy and proud to finish an hour slower than that. I’m estimating the 50K this weekend will take me 6:15 to 6:30, averaging around a 12-minute pace. That’s the reality of running at age 56 instead of 46. People assume that altitude acclimation from living at 9000 feet will make sea-level running easy. It’ll help. But the fact is, slow-paced mountain running here in southwest Colorado, with a great deal of hiking in the mix, has normalized a 12-minute/mile average pace on most trail runs, slower in the high country. So be it.

I listened to a podcast last weekend that helped me adopt a positive attitude toward this race—to think of it as a vacation, which it is, with no disappointments! I’m so stoked to revisit this area in its springtime green glory and to connect with old friends! The podcast is The Trail Network featuring Katie Asmuth’s recap of the Tarawera 100K.

More generally, I’m so grateful to be healthy and uninjured! My body feels blissfully normal for now. Neither my knees nor my lower back is protesting.

Also worth your time:

As a Rajpaul fan, I appreciated this story about his triumphant, patient comeback from last year’s heartbreak, when he won the USATF 100-mile championship, then was DQ’ed for shoes that didn’t comply with the regs.

I’m a latecomer to aka Ali On the Run, who’s widely known for her podcast and her Substack. I appreciated her latest post, Sweet & Salty, for her smart take on the USATF women’s half marathon championship finish-line shitshow and her general advice about social media hot takes: “I just wish people didn’t have to be such assholes about every injustice. Take. a. breath.”

And that’s all this week! After writing the intro above, I made a snap decision to set aside work and shoehorn in 90 minutes of skiing mid-morning because it may be my last chance for zoomies on the hill this season, if the snow is a slushy, patchy mess this time next week when we return from our trip. Carpe diem.