I didn’t sleep last night.
Every few minutes a fresh twinge of pain would shoot through my body, forcing me to roll over, curl up, stretch out, try something, anything that might bring even the slightest relief. In one position it was my knee, in another, my glutes, quads, hamstrings.. Nothing really worked for long, but this was what I had signed up for. A night or two of intense pain for making an impossible seeming dream into reality? Worth it every time, except it wasn’t just this. It was six hours of suffering yesterday, and over a year of intense effort before that, on top of thirty years of disbelief before that.
“I don’t understand why you had to do it though,” Sam had said to me yesterday evening, “like, what was the point?”
It was a great question. Why had I felt like I had to run a marathon that day? I’m a professional climber, not a runner. I’ve been terrible at running my entire life. Running isn’t going to get me up any of my projects, pay any of my bills, or make any sort of difference in the world. Half the time I don’t even enjoy it. Even the number of miles, 26.2 seems so arbitrary when you think about it, and I’d thought about it a lot.
I didn’t have to think twice when I answered him though, because it was actually the same reason I chase any of the things I’m passionate about: To see what I’m capable of. To see where my limits lie, and then transcend them. To chase my ultimate potential. To redefine what’s possible. To redefine myself.
That’s what I told him, at least. As meaningful enough as those reasons seem, the truth is that they barely scratch the surface of what that one run really meant to me.
Part 1: How it Started
When we were teenagers, my sister took up cross country and track, and she was good. My dad was a runner too, and I’d watch from the porch as they’d chase each other all over his property, up and down enormous hills for ages without ever seeming to tire. My cousins were runners too, taking home medals at state championships like it was nothing. Every once in a while I would try my hand at it, but within a mile or two I would always be walking, clutching stitches in my side and limping on sore feet. How did they make it look so easy? I just didn’t get it.
Throughout my adult life I have always continued to try and run a little bit, but it never got much easier. Three miles was always an intense workout, and five was about the farthest I’d ever gone until about a year ago. My legs had been slowly gaining strength since I’d gotten into big wall and alpine climbing over the last few years, carrying me further into the mountains with more and more equipment for the ever-larger mountains I dreamed of climbing. That summer I had made it out to Mount Hooker, seventeen miles in the Wyoming backcountry, and even though horses had carried most our gear, it had finally erased a part of my deeply ingrained belief that I was just always going to be tragically bad at lower body endurance efforts. It no longer felt like I was complete trash at running, and for the first time in my life I could conceptualize how anyone could actually enjoy it.
By fall I was on a different quest however, chasing a roadside single pitch crack just outside of Moab called Stranger than Fiction that asked for very little of the legs. I got close that season, even sending the route on preplaced gear, but never quite managed to put it all together. My climbing partner Lor and I pushed the season into the winter, grasping at straws in the hopes of a miracle send well beyond when any reasonable person would have called it quits. Waking up at 6AM to go try and climb a 5.14 crack in 20-degree temperatures in December took its toll on me, and by the end of the month I was pretty burned out.
For being nomadic, I have an ironically bad habit of sticking around too long in situations well beyond when I know it’s time to leave them. In abiding by that trend, I stayed in Moab for a few weeks even after we finally bailed on the project. It was just too cold to climb, and even if it hadn’t been, I desperately needed a break. For lack of another way to exercise, I started running. Charging up hills simulated the intensely winded feeling I got at the end of Stranger’s sustained headwall, and I only had to be outside in the cold for less than an hour to reach the level of physical destruction that takes a full day of climbing to achieve, and that I am weirdly addicted to. In those ways, it felt like running was filling in a few of the gaps in my life.
I always ran the same trail, called the Pipe Dream, up a big hill on the west side of Moab and then in and out of colorful layers of sandstone until I was too cold to continue. The hillside only got a few hours of sun each day, so I had to time my runs just right. Even then, it was always freezing. Thanks to my increased fitness from the mountains, I found myself able to go longer distances than I was used to, and as the rhythmic beating of my feet on the dirt lulled my mind into a meditative state, I started to get my own pipe dream.
I was just a few weeks away from turning thirty, a looming milestone that had been planting a lot of ideas in my head about what crazy ideas belonged on my life bucket list; things outside of climbing that I felt would really complete a personal resume of a life well lived. On many of those Pipe Dream jogs, I began to wonder if maybe running a marathon belonged on that list. Teenage me would certainly have found it worthy.
By the time I finally left Moab for the season, however, I had written it off. It would take too much work, time, and energy that I needed to put into climbing. I had dreams to chase, after all, and I wasn’t getting any younger.
Just six weeks later, I was back in the desert. It wasn’t enough time away to fully recharge my psyche, but I thought that’s what discipline was—persevering even when you don’t want to. Lor and I poured our hearts into another season on our project, but it felt like all the elements were stacked against us. The weather was terrible, still snowing as late as April, and often trapping Lor in Flagstaff when mountain roads became impassible. A family tragedy pulled me away just when things were finally getting good, and by the end of spring I just felt like I had nothing left to give to the route.
We called it quits in May, but again I lingered in Moab even though I no longer wanted to climb. I was even more burned out this time, and the apathy I felt rattled me to my core. Seeking some kind of outlet, I started running again, this time joined by my friend Max.
As we jogged up the Pipe Dream trail one day, I casually mentioned that I sometimes thought about running a marathon, what it would be like, and if I might be capable. It still seemed like it would never fit into my life, until to my surprise, Max said he had always wanted to do it too. We barely knew each other, but we spontaneously agreed to start training for one together.
I held the idea pretty loosely at first, still not believing it would ever actually play out. Running with Max brought me joy that I hadn’t been able to feel anywhere else that spring though, so for the time being it was worth at least pretending it was real.
According to a quick google search of marathon training plans, each week typically marks a one-mile increase in your longest run, so it didn’t take long before I was entering uncharted territory in terms of personal best distances. The first time I battled my way through eight miles felt like levelling up as a person, and when I did my first ten-mile run, I found myself rethinking everything I’d ever thought I was capable of in this realm. Maybe a marathon wasn’t such a pipe dream after all.
Max and I signed up for an event at the end of summer, in the Pacific Northwest where we were both supposed to be. When the time came however, he was a thousand miles away dealing with his dog’s torn ACL, and I had gotten sidetracked by a resurgence of climbing psyche that had derailed my training. Neither of us ended up going. Max eventually got injured, and I began to doubt whether it had just been a fool’s errand after all.
Still, I’m nothing if not stubborn, so even with a loosened grip on the dream I continued to work towards it, reaching a high-water mark of 17 miles by the end of summer. It had been so difficult I couldn’t fathom doing 26.2, but still I cautiously held faith. At that point I didn’t know when, or where, or even how, but I believed deep down that I would find a way to make it happen eventually.
That was when I, too, got injured, and I stopped believing in anything.
Part 2: When I Stumbled
Just as how turning thirty had made me dream of a marathon, it had been a driving force behind attempting to level up in climbing as well. Determined to return to Stranger stronger than ever, I had hired a coach, gotten a gym membership, and poured my heart into training all summer. By the end of August as I was just beginning to plan for my return to Moab, I realized that what I had thought was a mild case of tendonitis was actually a much more severe problem. Being told I could not crack climb was a devastating blow, the biggest loss in a year-long string of mostly losses and failures that deeply shook my foundational belief that enough faith and hard work can make even the craziest dreams not just impossible, but inevitable. Who was I kidding, to think myself worthy of such a climb, capable of such a feat, or deserving of any of my dreams for that matter?
I felt utterly and completely defeated. I had done none of the things I’d set out to do that year. I hadn’t sent Stranger in the spring like I thought I would, I hadn’t sent hardly anything in Squamish that I thought I would, I hadn’t run the marathon I’d signed up for, and now I couldn’t even go back to try Stranger in the fall. If I’d thought I had no fight left in me at the end of spring, now I couldn’t even curl my fingers into fists to throw a punch.
I briefly visited Moab in October, and it broke my heart to be there. It represented everything I wanted, and everything I couldn’t have. Lor continued to work on Stranger, now joined by the Wide Boyz, while I got left behind. I tried to run, but the weight of all my angst made it feel like I had chains shackled to my ankles, dragging me down with every step. I could barely go seven miles. I left town with an incredibly heavy heart, desperate to put a few state lines back between me and the dreams I wasn’t allowed to follow. Running away from Moab was some of the best running I’d done since summer.
I idled in Yosemite for the rest of fall, barely climbing for fear of exacerbating my injury that seemed to be healing at a snail’s pace. Finally in late November I spoke to my physio about it, and learned that it was actually doing better than I’d thought. For the first time in months, he gave me hope that I would one day regain access to my dreams. I didn’t know where I stood with Stranger after Lor had recently sent, because I couldn’t imagine the project without them; we had always been a team in my mind. Still, I finally found a scrap of the belief that I had lost that my dreams, whatever they ended up being, were not as impossible as they had felt lately. Very far away maybe, but not impossible.
After the call, I went on a ten-mile run that instead of work, felt more like flying.
I ended up in St. George for a few weeks after that, where a lot of rest days, alone time, and interesting trails got me running more frequently again. Having not been on the program I didn’t know how fit I was, but I found myself frequently surprised at how easy things were that should have felt hard. I had long since lost sight of any sort of idea of how it was all going to add up in the end, marathon-wise, but somewhere along the way I had genuinely falling in love with running. This thing I used to hate, used to think I’d never be able to do, or be any good at, had become a thing that now brought me pleasure. Maybe for a while it didn’t need to be anything more than that.
The year was almost over by now. It had been a hard one, and as my 31st birthday and the end of 2023 approached, I couldn’t help but think about all the things I hadn’t accomplished… but also all the things I had. I had taken this running thing so much farther than I’d ever thought possible, for which I was incredibly proud, yet I hadn’t quite crossed the finish line. It was the same with Stranger; the two were metaphors for each other in my mind: things I had worked so unbelievably hard for, yet fallen short on at the final hour. Things I wanted so badly, yet struggled to believe I’d ever achieve. Things I’d considered giving up on so many times, yet was incapable of fully letting go of. Things that felt like so simultaneously inevitable yet impossible, right on that intrepid line between fantasy and destiny.
I had thought about giving up on Stranger so many times by then. I often wondered what was the point of pouring so much into one rock climb, when there were a million others out there. Such a big part of me wanted to walk away and never look back… yet if that were true, why couldn’t I stop thinking about it? Why couldn’t I move on? Why did nothing else seem to matter the way it did?
In the end, the why is probably a question I won’t truly be able to write about until I eventually clip the chains, but in simply continuing to think about that question, I finally knew for certain that I was going back, whatever it took. I also knew that I couldn’t go back until I ran that goddamn marathon.
Part 3: How it Ended
A few days before the end of 2023 I ran twenty miles; by far the most distance I’d ever done in my life. It was my best effort at sending off a hard year in a way that honored all the work I’d put in, yet also sadly represented my continued results of being so close, and yet so far away from the finish line. I was both proud and disappointed. When I’d first started dreaming of going the distance last December, I would have been blown away by running twenty miles, yet I also knew January 1st would arrive with me falling six miles short. An arbitrary date for an arbitrary distance, yet it mattered so much.
2024 arrived with the party to end all parties, a mini-Burning Man in the Joshua Tree desert with so many of my closest friends. In the time-honored tradition of writing down New Year’s Resolutions, I put two things: run a marathon, and return to Stranger. At least for the first one, I knew I was finally ready. I just needed to find the right time and place.
It had to happen in January, because by February I’d be in Australia on a different kind of adventure, and if this dragged out much longer I might lose momentum again. It had to happen in January, because I wanted to start training for Stranger ASAP, and I couldn’t give 100% to both. It had to happen in January, because I spontaneously found myself back in Moab, the place where it all began, with the perfect window during which to do it. It had to happen now, so that I could believe again.
I had agreed to work in town for a few weeks to help get the new Moab climbing gym ready to open, and conveniently had two days off right in the middle; the perfect window to do the run, and hopefully recover. Whether by coincidence or fate, it was also the warmest day with a high of 41… which is pretty fucking cold actually, but also rather fitting since that was what my first Pipe Dream runs were like too. Going out the same way I started, in the same place and time of year, and for almost the same reason.
I was still doing this to explore what was possible, except for the first time in a long time I now knew that it was. I knew I could do it in a way I hadn’t truly believed I could do something hard in what felt like ages. I hadn’t walked up to a climb, even something moderate, knowing I was going to send in months. I hadn’t felt confident about anything in so long that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like, but now I remembered. I remembered so vividly that it felt like I’d been under water this whole time, and had finally managed to come up for air.
I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing, just that today I was going running. No one would know how much it meant to me anyway, so I kept it to myself. This had long since become a solo journey anyway. I could barely even listen to music as I drove out to the trailhead, each pulse of electronic bass sending so much nervous excitement through me that I felt like I was going to explode just from the anticipation. It was a remarkable feeling I won’t soon forget, to be that alive.
I chose a trail I had run with Max back in May when it was almost too hot to be in the sun and couldn’t help but miss those temperatures. Right now it was below thirty and windy, and mine was the only car in the parking lot. I planned to run a few loops around the area, returning to my van every eight miles to change layers as the day warmed up and I needed to refill water (though it never actually warmed up all that much). The weather was grim, but I knew with every fiber of my being that today was my day. Not snow, rain, wind, or all the hounds in hell could stop me.
For six hours I ran circles around the desert. When I’d crest certain hills I’d catch glimpses of highway 313, the road that leads out to Stranger. It felt full circle to see it, as each sighting would harden my resolve. I’d tell myself I had to finish what I was up to here, so I could then go finish the even bigger thing over there. The two seemingly unrelated dreams were still as connected as they had ever been.
As I reached the final quarter mile, I queued a song I’d always associated with Stranger, called “Once in a Lifetime,” because that’s what these journeys both were. Tears streamed down my face as I heard my favorite lyrics reverberate all the way to my bones:
Two kids
A pocket of dreams
And a pile of student debt
Future’s uncertain but
You’re the one thing that makes sense
The chips are stacked against us
But I’ll go all-in on this bet
What is this feeling?
Tell me, what am I feeling?
You bring me to my knees
I get this cold sweat
When you’re speaking to me
Something ’bout your touch
Is setting me free
Cause girl, I think
You got what I need
Starting to believe
This is once in a lifetime
I had felt it coming on for the last few miles and now it was more pronounced than ever: that what was happening right now was a once in a lifetime feeling; doing this thing that, for thirty years, I had never even imagined would be possible. This thing I had worked so unbelievably hard for, this thing I had lost my way towards so many times, this thing that represented everything I always try so hard to be in life, all the mantras I preach and try to live. It was this thing that so clearly stated that I would face my demons and never accept defeat, this thing that proved, without a shadow of a doubt, that I could give more when I had nothing left, and most importantly that anything is possible with enough passion and heart.
Like I said, last night I couldn’t sleep because I was in so much pain from destroying my body, but the truth is that I celebrated every ache and throb. Compared to the pain I’d felt for so long of not believing in myself, this didn’t really hurt at all.
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