what it’s like to live in a city addicted to exercise

Most physicians would recommend one exercise 30 minutes per day, most of that aerobic movement and to work a bit harder maybe once or twice during one of those 30 minutes bouts once per week. I have never done that in my adult life, first because I was running away from an ED and my thoughts were better controlled through movement, and now being a professional athlete, my daily training is simply more than that. Of course there is more that went into the former reason, but I’ve written about that before and therefore not the subject of this piece. I moved to Boulder, CO in October of 2022 for a job to open the world’s first endurance sports eatery, Skratch Labs Cafe. Boulder bills itself as a running and endurance sports mecca, and that holds up. I knew many athletes who moved there to train or did camps there because it does have many resources for us to thrive. Though I was moving for a job, I didn’t really think about the other people who lived there. The people who were not professional athletes and simply lived there. It’s a bit how I view Hawaii. I know people must live there full time, but all I can see is beaches and vacation, therefore making it hard to think about a lived experience. A normal person doing a normal day job. A Hawaiian mail carrier, a plumber, a bank teller. These things exist of course, but an outsider like me, or someone who only goes to Hawaii to take a vacation, doesn’t always think about those lived experiences.

To describe what I’ve lived in for the last year and a half is both incredible and overwhelming. I love that I can train in a way that doesn’t make people say I’m crazy. I do not regularly do excessive training, but on the peak weeks each year I do, it is rad that I have friends who will do it with me. People do embrace your habits and encourage you to get outside and live life. I have luckily found a group of people here who are insanely talented, but also wonderfully humble and rational and never make me feel like I don’t measure up. They also do not humble brag or sandbag, which is even better. They know their worth and prove it on race day. It might be simply that they are validated in other ways (a paycheck from Hoka or Topo comes to mind) or realize everyone hates fishing for compliments. Anyway, I’ve somehow found a group that works for me here, I am lucky. When I take a step out of our bubble, when I interact with people at work, I see different attitudes about endurance here. People in Boulder do not enjoy their weekends, they CRUSH them. There is no resting or relaxation, there is a 14er that isn’t good enough to look at, it must be mounted and fucked. The city has normalized exercise addiction and I’m not sure how I feel about it to be honest.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just embrace it. Should I fall into disordered exercise habits outside of what I already do? One could argue that I already exercise outside of the norm. I train 3 hours a day when I add up all the drills, strength work and core efforts to keep my seemingly crippled moose like figure glued together. I am not being hyperbolic when I say I enjoy most of it. I look forward to nights spent on the foam roller while watching Modern Family. I enjoy the zoo of people at my local gym and reading a book while spinning easy on the bike. Sure, injuries suck but to be honest the podcasts that keep me going have really helped me mature into a better human, empowering me to question my surroundings…which is what I am doing now.

When I think about my ability to move my body, or it being taken away, it frightens me. My legs are longer than route 66 and need to be used at least once an hour or they start to ache. I get it people, I do. I also suffer from injuries and niggles either due to my past neglecting my health or accidents either at work or on trail. I use crosstraining as a way to keep my body in a state I’m used to it being in and because well I fucking love to race keep up. Exercise has a lot of gray area and I will sounds like a hypocrite at times. There is a baseline of health, which I described above, but also individual preference and that variation is meaningful and valid. I will admit that when I am diagnosed with an injury, my first thought is gratitude that I have facilities available to me that will permit my continued exercise. I also think about this when planning trips or even now my work schedule. Crosstraining takes more time than stepping outside my door to run, that time must be accounted for. Right now I justify that time as being a factor in my professional athlete career…but what if I wasn’t that? What if I didn’t have a reason to exercise if I was injured? After all, rationally I know that if I get a broken leg, if I stay off it then it will heal. I also know that I can take off months, a year or more, to let it heal and come back to my previous level of fitness. I know that rationally. However I would be lying if I didn’t say that not exercising for a few months or a year sounds awful. I worry that I would slide back into past behaviors. I worry that I would regress emotionally, my mind mirroring my physical body. That could even be true for me, I hope to never have to find out. I also know that MOST people in the world do not exercise in the way I do. Except the people in Boulder, which is why it’s a fascinating topic for me to pontificate upon. MOST people, finding out they broke their leg, wouldn’t think twice about exercise and listen to the doctor for it to heal. I think I find myself wanting to be at that level of contentedness with myself. I want to embrace whatever my body can and cannot do, unapologetically. I have never before lived in a place that reminds me at all times what it values athletically, and that is way above the norm.

Boulder has a lot going for it that I wish other cities did. Because the top one percenters here like to buy $10,000 bicycles and show them off, we have a robust system of bike paths. There are electric scooters and bikes everywhere so people do not need to use cars as much. I wish rural Mississippi had the infrastructure we have. The NIMBYism directs its privilege towards promoting clean outdoor spaces (minus homeless people of course…the horror!) and ways to appreciate what we still have left before climate change burns us all. There is also never anything stopping you from seeing beautiful mountains and trails, which makes getting that 30 minutes of exercise a day both easy and pleasurable. Not only that, but it’s normal to like these things, which I know in small towns with no facilities or fitness community, sweating on purpose is still embarrassing and weird. On the contrary, it’s weird here if you do not have your endurance “thing”. If you don’t have an endurance thing, then usually people point to other places in their life where they are reaching towards a goal. My friend Jon Levitt said it once that people in Boulder move away from homeostasis. They fear getting stale or staying in one place too long. That is a great way to put it, but what pains me about this city is that there is an omnipresent feeling of never being enough. Self-contentedness, or appreciation for the human beings we are is mostly extrinsic or tied to some goal or achievement. Everyday I am told story after story of epic adventures, new side hustles (sir, that is a hobby) or something meant to make them stand out to me. If someone isn’t crushing one goal or another, they seem ashamed not to have something to share and hang their head. I really want a tee shirt that says “Mediocrity is sexy, I’m just here to exist” because maybe it’ll make people feel that it’s normal to have regular hobbies they aren’t trying to win, and not feel a desire at all times to improve themselves. Or maybe I’m the crazy one and just don’t fit in here sometimes. When people do rest or take a break it is often framed as “I am resting for a purpose and that purpose is to CRUSH MY GOALS!” Sure maybe that’s true (fact: it is true!) however having the mindset that you cannot rest or fully nourish yourself unless it is tied to extrinsic performance or societal standards is heartbreaking. Sometimes food is just food and rest is just rest and there needs to be no reason for it, no justification, no second thought.

My job is an anchor that both exposes me to the city’s most addicted, yet also to its most sane. I would have lost my mind if it weren’t for Skratch Labs. It’s ironic really, that this place is where I get to be around the most normal people, but it’s true. They are my employees and coworkers. The people I have hired to work here are not professional athletes, nor do they really exercise in any way that would be abnormal in any other part of the country. That is so important to my mental health because I need normal modeled to me or I will forget it. I will eventually get to a place where the excessive exercising habits I am surrounded by become my normal, not my “once or twice a year”. My employees and coworkers also just own what they do and who they are. Chef Aaron and Chef Nicki are phenomenal professional chefs. Yet, they have a life that centers around their daughter and family, while also having hobbies. It’s so fucking normal and reminds me of my home roots. It reminds me how to be human, because they are incredible at what they do, but it’s not all of who they are. They have depth and a wide view of the world and their role in it. Sometimes I cannot see past my training, consumed with whatever thing I am unhappy with at the moment. Skratch helps pull me out of that, giving my purpose and connection and love. I am so lucky to have found that in Boulder, because sometimes my world gets too small, and it prompts essays like this. I am worried about letting myself shrink into a depthless life. Sometimes, being in this town which has accepted exercise addiction and embraced it, with my chosen hobby makes doing so very easy.

Some might say that exercising in this way is self-discipline. I’m sure the David Goggins baffoons among us would fall into this camp. I was meditating on this when I fell into the work of Mark Manson, he said is best “The toxicity of self-discipline occurs when it is shame-driven, when you buy into a narrative that you are worthless or a failure for not being disciplined…It’s important to be able to do hard things when necessary. But that doesn’t mean doing hard things is always necessary. Similarly, it’s important to be able to slow down and enjoy yourself when necessary. But that doesn’t mean slowing down and enjoying yourself is always necessary.” I think it gets murkier when self discipline is actually very satisfying in itself. Sure, it takes discipline or routine to get up at 6 every morning to train, but I also really enjoy it. It’s when I cannot let that go that I know my intentions are misaligned and I have to reexamine what is going on.

Maybe I am writing this to remind myself to be normal. To give myself that permission, once again, to be content. It’s just so fucking hard sometimes and I wondered if anyone else felt like I do. I’ve only been here for a year and half so I asked for feedback.

What does it feel like to live in a place with normalized abnormal exercise habits? [emphasis mine]

I agree with you that there is a lot of exercise dependency in Boulder. I suffer from it too. I am not going to say I’m not a constant strava checker and seeing what my friends or competitors are doing. It sometimes makes me anxious that I’m not doing enough. Also being in a city that has so many world class athletes and semi professionals, for me, it’s a little bit of showing out and saying, “hey, check out what I’m doing?” All in all I think we should do what makes us happy and not get sucked into the comparison game but sometimes it’s too damn hard not to.

Imagine a newly sober alcoholic who must spend 3 hours each day at the bar, surrounded by his friends getting drunk. It’s really hard sometimes to be in an environment where it seems like your athleticism is being tested everyday. Not being into Strava myself, apparently the newest update compares your week last week with your current training week, signaling whether your time spent went up or down, giving you a green arrow if it went up and a red one if it went down. Strava assumes that if you didn’t exercise as much this week as you did last week, that is something to be ashamed of. That’s fucked up.

I see the danger in it. But personally, the community has helped me get back into regular running and a rhythm again. If one can self moderate, it’s a good thing that there are so many to get your fix with at any given day. I have seen it blow people up though… especially those new into running. They just do what everyone else is doing and it’s way too much and they end up perpetually injured. And running groups get competitive about paces and easy is no longer easy.

Like I mentioned with the bike paths, there is a lot of good in being surrounded by a community of people encouraging you to take care of your health. Especially if it’s done in a positive way. The Skratch group run and Soft Hour come to mind for me. These two mornings are honestly the best and mentally healthiest running groups I’ve ever participated in. Guess what, they’re road running groups, which is ironic considering it is trail running that has a more chill vibe. On the contrary, here is Boulder I see a lot more toxic comparison, ego driven training in the trail running community than on the road running side. That of course is my experience and I assume not everyone feels this way.

My experience would very briefly be summed up as: it’s the only place I’ve lived that it felt difficult to make running friends. I feel like that would be different now only because I know people who’ve moved there in the years since I was living there. But I made more friends on my first night in Flagstaff than I did in months of living in Boulder. It felt so hyper competitive and like no one wanted to let you figure out their “secret”. I swear Anton was the only runner I ever saw out on the trails that even smiled at me.

Making friends as an adult is really hard. Finding a like minded community seems like it would be straightforward here, but honestly it takes more work than it might seem. For one, there is a barrier to entry in cost and time. There are a lot of work from home people who are easily able to take a 2 hour bike ride at noon. For those of us in traditional jobs, the 9-5 hours are blocked. Then there is the upstart cost to join a lot of activities here. The amount of time I’ve been told to rent skis and buy a day pass at Eldora…DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THAT COSTS AND THE TIME IT TAKES TO SPEND A FUCKING DAY IN LINE?!??!?! I grew up on the poorer side of the tracks and remember my mom clipping coupons, shopping sales and everything I owned was hand-me-down. Sometimes it seems like people here just expect you to drop cash at the drop of a hat. Sure, it’s easy to join our biking group, just get a $5,000 bike. I am not trying to shame people who have the means to do these things. It’s not impossible, but there are a lot of barriers for those of us sharing a house with two roommates, working an in-person job, and trying to stay afloat. Another interesting thing I got about making friends here, one person said they experience,

Feeling guilty for not running 20+ miles every Saturday and suddenly having NO friends when you break your leg and can’t train

I pushed back and asked “Do you think this is self imposed a bit? Like you can’t run so don’t want to be around that?”

They said “Most of my social interactions involved around endurance sports (running, climbing, ski touring, etc)… so lots of “let’s go for a run and then get brunch” and similar things. I think because I wasn’t being invited to the activity, I was naturally not being invited to the social part after…But I also should have friends outside of endurance sports…. Or at least do other things with my friends in endurance sports. Not every activity has to be tied to moving.”

I totally understand her here because sometimes even if I am invited to post-exercise activity, it’s not as fun when I didn’t participate in the same activity. I even do my own thing beforehand, but it’s definitely not the same as doing the thing together then eating together. My friends are I make it work, but I’d rather have participated in the thing before the thing. It’s like tailgating at the Bills game, everyone needs to get drunk together before the game because they the table flipping is even more epic.

One person from Denver mentioned they usually prefer to recreate in other parts of the foothills. Sometimes it feels like everyone has someone to prove out on a trail and that energy is heavy.

These last two responses indicate that sometimes the things I am seeing or feeling come from my own internal anxieties about living here rather than what others may be thinking. HOWEVER I will never forget the conversations I’ve eavesdropped concerning people and their dating preferences. At least three times I’ve heard people say they could NEVER date someone who couldn’t keep up athletically. SHEESH if that isn’t some pressure then I don’t know what is. Imagine if I went on a first date and the guy handed me a pair of Alphaflys and said I had 3 hours to run a marathon to make a second date. WHAT THE FUCK THAT SOUNDS CRAZY…yet I have definitely heard this before from various groups of people [eh em, they were climbers but I digress].

So where does this leave me? I enjoy living here. I have no regrets about moving here and I’ve believe that the benefits of an exercising population outweigh the negatives that come along with it. I think that a previous version of Ellie would have had a hard time, but because I’ve done a lot of growing up, a lot of learning, and have very strict boundaries, I can enjoy the splendors of this town while [sometimes] rolling my eyes at the things I hear or see others do. I do marvel at some of the abilities here and feel so empowered by what the human body is capable of. I simply think not everyday needs to beat the day before it, and intention is everything, and whether that’s compulsion, competition, weight control or anything else, every once in a while it’s good to take a hard look at why we’re doing what we’re doing.