a numb little bug
It’s ok not to be into something everyone else is into, as long as that means you aren’t a dick to those who are into it. I hope I am not being a dick. Here we go.
Right now running is complicated for me. I want to do it so very badly, but I have an irrationally large negative numbered percentage interest in the sport on a larger scale. I think that is a run-on sentence that doesn’t actually mean what I want it to mean, but it accurately reflects the way I can describe how I’ve been feeling these days. Let me back up…
I won the Leadville marathon and then went right on to Western States to pace my best friend Riley Brady to a wonderful finish. It was such a fun week and one that I will save in my heart for at least half a chapter in the book of my life (STAY TUNED! lol jk I would never). After Western States I knew I would need a come down period and break from all my running buddies to adjust back to real life and exhale. I felt very motivated to train for the Leadville 100 miler, which had been on my calendar for half a year even with my ups and downs training with niggles.
However, I came back and two of my employees quit while the other two were on a pre-scheduled vacation. I also tore some ligaments in my ankle the first Saturday I was home. This was the final straw that tore them after rolling my ankle three times previously. The healing time for sprained ankles can range from 4-6 weeks or longer for a grade 3 sprain (lucky me). This meant switching to crosstraining at the gym while working 10-12 hour days at the cafe. I had little time for anything else anyway, so I didn’t see friends, stayed focused on hiring new baristas and just did my thing on the bike. Because this took all my bandwidth, I slowly stopped paying attention to the running community media at large. Whenever I tuned back in for a second, the first thing I was bombarded with was this concept of having to go “all-in” in order to be good, needing to move to a place in order to be better, workout heroes on Strava, or some ambiguous post about how we need to make trail running professional because that is good for the sport. I just don’t care about them right now and it feels very overwhelming to spend my limited mental energy on it. Right now, it is not fun for me to speculate about races, play fantasy, read about Jim’s latest move to a new country because that country will make him win UTMB dammit, Courtney’s recent FKT or how the reason I suck right now is because I am not taking ketones or AG1.
I just don’t care.
I don’t care and I don’t care that I don’t care.
For some good context, listen to this song.
Do you ever get a little bit tired of life
Like you're not really happy but you don't wanna die
Like you're hanging by a thread but you gotta survive
'Cause you gotta survive
Like your body's in the room but you're not really there
Like you have empathy inside but you don't really care
Like you're fresh outta love but it's been in the air
Am I past repair?
July felt a little numb but I was on my own with Skratch until I could get people hired so I just had to survive. Never completely on my own of course. I think I got through this period with Chef Aaron and the back staff plus my two baristas returning from vacation just as I was about to melt down.
Back to not caring. I just didn’t care because I didn’t have space to care and when I did the overwhelming growth and all-consuming nature of running Boulder felt suffocating. I didn’t want to feel anything, so I didn’t until that came to a breaking point.
Broken : missing the wedding
My little brother got married on July 15th. I missed his wedding. My heart broke in half. I cried for the day, watching the wedding remotely which felt reminiscent of COVID. The reason I missed it was due to weather across the country and all flights to St. Louis being delayed or cancelled. My brother’s ceremony was at 10 in the morning, in Rochester NY. The earliest I would have gotten to the airport was 9:45AM the day of the wedding. I was then taking a flight back that night. The quickly planned trip was due to the lack of staff at Skratch combined with my just getting back from a 10-day vacation to Leadville and WSER. I simply didn’t think I would need to worry about canceled flights. Riding the bus home from Denver was the worst I’ve felt in ten years. I felt like I failed as a sister. I am usually the one to not show up to family functions simply due to my schedule and/or lack of fitting in. This time though, I was showing up for them, I was going to be the good daughter, the good sister, because I love them. It broke me in every way to miss this wedding because for once it wasn’t my fault, I wanted to show up.
Missing the wedding made a few things related to what I’ve already written very clear. The first is that I miss my friends and family on the east coast and there is a deep longing in my soul to visit them and be there. The second is that no matter how my running or job is going, when I fail to show up for important people in my life, no amount of praise or recognition compares to that. The third was that I was just so mentally tired from all the shit at work, spraining my ankle and everything I was dealing with that my relaxation was going to be a 36 hour trip across the country and back to see family. It was oddly more freeing and less stressful to do that than to remain here at my job and in this life. I didn’t realize how much I needed that release, that break from the Boulder bubble until it was no longer an option.
Fixing it
I hired some baristas and got a day off. I was at a loss of what to do. No long runs, no one to hang out with on a weekday, what do I actually do? How did I fall so far from being a complete person that I cannot think of what to do on my day off. I remember walking down Pearl St, maybe getting a coffee and saw a woman with her hair french braided. At the same time I could hear Chef Aaron in my head saying “you need to find a hobby outside of work.” Fuck it, I want to learn how to do that. So I went home and watched some YouTube and started teaching myself different ways to do my hair for work and maybe for running. It was a small microstep out of the whole I felt I was in, but it started a process of remembering the layers of my personality and how much I love to learn and try different things. I was (am) complete shit at hair, but I still try every day. I then moved onto make-up, and started trying with my appearance again. Very subtly of course, but just giving effort into something made me feel more confident.
Slowly, I am rediscovering the Ellie who can Google anything and figure it out. I had the time at work now, having hired four amazing baristas, to think creatively, which developed into an interest in relearning cooking basics to nourish myself at home. I look forward to each day off where I try a new technique or recipe while listening to music and being completely absorbed in the moment. I care about my whole self and my happiness again.
I care about finding other pleasures outside of running. I care about the running I can do, and spending my days at a place I helped build that feeds my soul. I care about having conversations with people that don’t involve exercise or endurance. I crave homeostasis, normal hobbies I am not trying to win, and conversing with people about things that do not have to do with exercise.
Part of this lack is my fault. When I am in it, running and talking about running is wonderful. I am so happy to have people who I love that will do that. But because of this, I find I have not nurtured my soul in other ways and I am not practiced at asking my friends and loved ones good questions that inspire different conversations. I am very good at this with my employees and coworkers at Skratch, which is maybe why I’d rather be there than at a race expo, endurance movie premiere or UTMB. I love running for myself, but when I do it I would rather listen to a Sporkful podcast about pickles and think about how I can bring something of that to Skratch than I would listening about training theory or the next twenty-something dude telling me to “stay tuned” on his next big project. Right now I am over it and I do not think that is better or a good/bad thing.
Let me preface this next part by saying people can do what they want. If runners, or any athlete in general, wants to go full steam into their pursuit, forgoing financial security and having nothing else in their life, who am I to judge? However, that does not mean I want to listen to it or read about it. Coming from a lack of financial stability in my early adult life, I find it hard to understand why a person would give that up for a small chance that they make a pittance from “professional” trail running. In my weakest mental moments, I am just sad, and faking my delight at these announcements feels like an insurmountable task. So rather than say something I shouldn’t, I either change the subject or disengage completely. The problem becomes when said person has nothing else to talk about than their pursuit and passion, which is running. I like these people and in a different time or headspace I would love to indulge them, but right now I simply cannot. I don’t ignore anyone, I simply stop reaching out. I stop planning things. Due to my extroversion, I am usually the person who gets everyone together. When I don’t have energy for that, it doesn’t happen (thank God for Rachel Rea, girl you’re the best for getting us together last week). Since Western States, the mood has shifted and I think our group was both a bit tired of each other and needed a break, and then I got comfortable in my other routines, realized I didn’t miss running chatter that much, and here we are a month later and we’ve seen nothing of each other. I do enjoy catching up and hearing about my friend’s lives, running and not running. I care because they are my friends and I love them. Getting updates about their own running or life is much better in person than reading it online and that feels ok to me. However once the running chatter is done, is it crazy that it takes like 30 minutes and then if there is no other thing in life, the conversation ends. It feels unfulfilling. It feels surface level. Whereas I know there is so much more to these people, when running is the focus or passion in the moment, those other things fall away. The friendships start to dimmer a bit and they take more work.
That was a small tangent because what I really wanted to say when I started this section is that I do not find it interesting when another human goes all-in on running after having small successes running for a year or two. I do not find it problematic, I simply do not find it interesting. The professional side of trail running is not like the NBA, however the athletes we watch on ESPN have been doing their craft for over 20 years. They played for their whole childhood before making any money. I do not understand why trail runners should not have to put in that same depth to reach a similar status. It’s great to see the sport grow, but I guess I think growing it from the grassroots level is more motivating and exciting to me. Great performances, going all-in, it’s like a quick hit of dopamine or sugar. The highs are very high, but they do not last and the comedown is hard, especially when you put everything you have into this one thing. I think that growing the “normal” running class (most if not all of the people reading this…thats US!) is like eating brown rice and beans. Lasting energy that actually fuels the sport’s growth. My opinions are my own, and they will change. This is how I feel right now.
My only comment about how more money needs to be pumped into the sport is to quote the philosopher Biggie Smalls, Mo’ money, mo’ problems.
I have gotten a couple asks as to whether I have left Twitter. To put it bluntly, the platform kind of sucks right now. Since the Musk takeover, increasingly I see shit that I have zero idea why any algorithm would think I want to see. Mostly dudes, saying things, mansplaining things, and pictures of meat??? I used Twitter mostly to follow races and exchange conversation with people whose opinions I thought were interesting or funny. No longer do I see most of these things, and I am uninterested in racing and sports media right now, so there has been no reason for me to engage. Threads popped up at about that time, so though I am trying to learn that platform, it isn’t great yet so largely my social media usage is Goodreads, Reddit and the occasional IG story. I’m ok with that for now. I haven’t written off social media, I just don’t have as much to say and find that just shutting up is a fine solution to this occurrence. I wish I learned this sooner, and was better at practicing it.
And that’s ok. It’ll come back, or not. But either way, I’ll keep running and that’s just right for me. I have begun to incorporate running back into my schedule after a long 6 weeks off. I am fit and love training, but I don’t have any future plans yet. I have been listening to music, cooking good food, teaching myself to cook even better, reading everything I can get my hands on and generally feeling like there’s this other part of me that has been neglected and needs some space to grow.
Anyone who thinks I have written this post about you, maybe you’re kind of right and kind of wrong. Either way, your feelings and passions are valid. They are no worse or better than anyone else’s. You can tell me to fuck off and go to hell whenever you want. Just be true to you, like I am being to me.