Trail running can be a dichotomy, you can hit wonderful highs in distance, pace, and elevation, but you can hit incredible lows as your mental state is stripped down and shackled to your most basic fears. It is hard to believe that both things can occur at once, but it happens. In ultrarunning you learn to hold on to the highs, and let go of the lows. But letting go is easier said than done…

Pre-Infinitus

Going into Infinitus this year I wanted a major PR. But my training was interrupted during the peak mileage weeks by a situation that I had never really prepared for. For the last few years my father had been ill, falling alot and generally not able to take care of himself. He had several stays at the hospital in early April, and when he finally came home he was in the house for less than 12 hours before falling face first onto the kitchen floor.  Unlike me, my dad was not an active person.  His life was all about brainpower, he had incredible mental stamina and clarity of mind.  But it was a sedentary life, and his legs had been deteriorating for years.  So when he fell, he fell hard!

For at least three years we had seen his mind go as a result of dementia and possibly a stroke.  By the end his brain hadn’t the ability to enjoy any of his leisure activities—reading, writing, and studying really complicated mathematics. No one in my family was really prepared on how to deal with a person in this condition. We tried to make him comfortable, but the man he had been his entire life had faded.

When fell in mid-April it would be the last time he was in the house, and two weeks later passed into the next life.  

Since then I couldn’t concentrate on much, the mind wandered.  I thought about my dad, and I thought about our cat—Jack.  Because a few weeks after Dad died, Jack passed away as well.  In an odd way Jack’s death hit me harder than Dad’s.  Unlike Dad, Jack was omnipresent in our lives. Hanging out by the bed meowing for food in the mornings, wandering in from the living room when one of us got home, meowing for attention.  This 20 year-old cat was always underfoot, a source of emotional comfort for seven years, and then suddenly there was silence.   

In the month before Infinitus, I would lay in bed and have a nonstop flurry of thoughts about my father and Jack. The first Saturday evening after Jack died I screamed into the silence of the house, the quiet was painful. Workdays were no more helpful as I attempted to focus on a job only to be sidetracked and saddened by a stray thought.

I went into this race being stripped bare, but weirdly the race rebuilt me.  I spent many nights alone in my camper, thinking only about the next day’s race strategy. And while I did have 12-15 hours during the day alone to think about everything—Dad, cat, my wife, friends, our house, my career goals, and my activism work—it was the preferred place to have these thoughts.  The forest and running have a power to lay everything out for examination. Your mind can follow different paths and branches exploring each individually or together.  Coming to conclusions or just hashing out details to be reexamined at another time. Dealing with the difficult thoughts, the agonies, the regrets, and also the loves, the joys, and the triumphs.  

While being enveloped by the green life-force of nature—the trees, the ferns, and the life of the creatures that stirred in the woods, I felt comforted and safe. I was a part of them, they supported me, and at mile 63 all of it came to a head! I laid down on the trail, stared up through the green canopy of leaves and cried.  I thought of my dad and hoped that his spirit found its way, I thought of Jack and hoped we were good for him. I could have laid there forever, to be hugged by the forest into eternity. But it’s not yet my time. This was both a low and a high and I needed to see where that would lead.

Lows and Highs 

Multiple deaths in a month was a low, Infinitus was one of those highs this year.  

But it was also a week of being misgendered—being called, “man,” or “guy,” or hearing “he is doing _____.” I am none of these things. Navigating any race as a non-binary person is challenging and can be dangerous.  The first week of Infinitus always greets me with a group of multi-day long haulers that are very welcoming of new people—both on the trails, and at base camp.  We look out for each other, because there’s less than two dozen of us spread across 13 square miles. And at the same time I still felt like an outsider. 

Trail runners will say that our sport can be very accepting of everyone, but as many Trans, Queer, and Non-binary folks will tell you there are people who will boldly get in your face to tell you why your existence is immoral or unnatural, or beat you for being yourself. And which type person I will encounter has no rhyme or reason, so the guard is always up.    

When award ceremony time came around, I knew I wasn’t going to be winning anything because I love to DNF.  But should I be in a position to win something that would also be a scary situation, being up on a podium and pigeon-holed into a gender category.  As a person I am non-binary and also Intersex (gender and sex respectively), and I don’t fit into the binary man/male or woman/female classifications. I use woman because that’s what feels right for me.  But in using that there is always a risk/fear that someone will take umbrage either verbally or physically. 

This time I didn’t speak up for myself as much as I usually do, I was concentrating on my race, dealing with death, and not wanting to seem difficult. While I was trying to hold on to the high that is Infinitus, I caused a low, to suffer by not being authentic. Even this low rebuilt me, I know again how important it is to speak up for myself, and those who have no voice.

113 miles.  A barefoot PR for myself.

16,477 ft elevation gain.

1 Non-Binary Runner