the Snow Mountain Ranch 50k: thriving in circular time

a story about loops

When I visited Colorado in July, my friend Sarah had just finished her first ultramarathon. She expressed that she did not have a great time and wasn’t sure that she wanted to do another one, to which I replied that she must have done it wrong. As things go with endurance athletes, one thing quickly led to another and by the end of our dinner conversation, we had both signed up for the Snow Mountain Ranch 50k in Winter Park, upcoming in a few short months.

I can’t consider the type of exercise I do these days “training,” as it is quite purposeless and depends more on the quality and texture of my emotional state than it does on any sort of predetermined objective.  I have also become unresponsive to motivational sources and techniques aimed at getting better or more competitive at exercising. 

The questions I used to be compelled by have lost their luster: How hard can I push myself? What are my limits? How can I leave it all out there? Even my will to forge a more solidified understanding of my individual identity is a pale and pallid remnant of its youthful sheen. Furthermore, I’m not the kind of person who keeps doing things in order to stay relevant or productive, or because I’ve always done them. My revolutionary soul is far too restless for that. 

And yet, interestingly, I find myself still running. Relying on something apparently thicker and more noteworthy than motivation. 

Sarah and I hadn’t conversed about our training progress in the lead up to the race, so we were both pleased to find out that the other one of us had likewise not been burdened with the motivation to expel more than the bare minimum amount of effort into a movement regimen. As a coach though, I must interject that there is indeed a bare minimum amount of preparation required to run a 50k, and that amount is equal to the specific number of dedicated hours that your soul requires in order to maintain devotional reverence to what is outside of the boundaries of your currently identified self, so as to not become overpowered by self conceited brooding. 

The sky was still dripping in starlight when we showed up around 6:15 for a 6:30 race start, ahead of a 7am sunrise. Since it took me approximately 45 seconds upon moving to San Diego to adapt to my new climate, I applied far more diligent preparation into protecting every inch of my tan sensitive skin from the 30 degree starting temperature than I did for the actual content of the race. Regarding the race, I knew that there would be 3 loops and that there would be hills. Regarding my attire, I would begin the race with 6 layers of clothing: 2 layers on the bottom and 4 layers on top, ear warmers, gloves, a hat, a neck cover that I pulled up over my face, and a few of those drug store heating pads shoved underneath various parts of my clothing. For backup, I brought even more layers in a bag that I could revisit on each of the 3 loops of the course. 

Other people, I noticed, were wearing shorts.

1st Loop:

The beginning of the race proceeded in typical ultra-running fashion with a gentle, reluctant trot across the start line, as the approximately 25 of us boldly overcame the inertia of not having bothered to warm up.  

As we sauntered forth, the shadowy trail steered us through a combination of dirt and tall grasses, which bent over a frozen and uneven ground, leaving us guessing as to which footsteps may or may not cause a sprained ankle. The pulsing first loop enthusiasm along with a penchant to prioritize warmth above safety had us scampering along with this gleeful guessing game and we managed to emerge unscathed. 

Sarah and I approached the beginning of the long climb around mile 3, along with the first minimally stocked aid station. The solo aid station attendee informed us that the water and gels were both frozen, a piece of information that we welcomed as a delightful precursor to the type of experience we were each in the market for: one with fleeting ties to anything that may have resembled a well-behaved plan or a tidy, easily summated storyline. 

Part way up the hill, Sarah discovered a tree in the shape of a bent penis and we looked forward to revisiting this penis tree on each successive loop. 

As we meandered along the undulating trails, we began to merge into a collective rhythm. When one of us voiced that we were going to start walking, the other instantaneously found this to be an excellent idea and slowed down accordingly. The same procedure ensued when one of us realized that we had been walking for a while and should probably mix in some good natured jogging. 

By the end of the first loop, the sun had just begun to inch its way over the mountain and pierce through the top layers of trees. In the quickly spreading autumn hue,  the aspen trees unabashedly flaunted their yellow wingspans and our expression lifted accordingly. We talked about our superpowers - not in a make-believe comic strip sort of way - but our very real and specific human-variety yellow blazing light beams, pouring forth through outstretched branches and anchored snuggly by interwoven roots. 

Around mile 7, the trail tilted downward, leading us around a steamy mountain lake before ultimately returning us to where we started, a little over 10 miles earlier. With our orientation directed back down to the trail, we remembered the concept of consuming calories in order to sustain ourselves for the long day that ensued.  I bit into one of my frozen waffles. 

At the end of the first loop, we entered back into time-bound reality where our friends, dogs, and potato chips gladly awaited us. Due to the underwhelming nature of the aid stations on the course and our mutual objection to adhere to anything that resembled hurrying, we took our time loading up on calories, fuel, and dog cuddles. 

the pit crew, holding it down per usual

In my relationship to time, I have at least 2 distinct orientations. On the one hand, there is the ordinary, agreeable, manager of calendars, schedules, and anything concerning culturally consensual constructs of evenly parsed clock time. This orientation has, of course, an important role to play in allowing for social engagement as well as maintaining a career, among other things. But given almost any opportunity to unwind into the eternal, this schedule keeper is all too easily overpowered. The orientation I have to the timeless is - it could be said - tyrannical, if left unmediated. I’ve experimented with different ways of being in relationship to this insatiable hunger including denial, attempting to control or mitigate it by numbing or exhausting myself, or alternatively using it as fuel for hierarchical advancement and relentless forward progress. Each of these respective experiments have resulted in successful temporary repression, as well as unsustainable life-diminishing side effects.

2nd Loop:

Upon re-entering the course, there was no adjustment period back into the welcoming arms of ordinary reality’s wild unruly twin. The golden hue was spreading quickly as green leaves turned to yellow right before our eyes.

I was so overcome by enchantment that could hardly keep my feet underneath me and it wasn’t long before I tripped over the long grass and face planted into the soft, thawed out earth below.

Usually when the face planting occurs, which is not infrequent, the literal returning to the ground is my reminder to re-inhabit my body so as to not get swept off into the etheric dreamscape. But this particular fall came with a landing so gentle that I floated right back up as if nothing happened, and we continued gallivanting along with our heads in the clouds.  

We gushed about the robust and dynamic leadership being displayed by women in sports - like tennis phenom Coco Gauff, Olympic shot putter Chase Ealey, and the entire WNBA - how they embody such exquisite blends of feminine and masculine energy, both within and amongst themselves. How this passionate and masterful self sovereignty is the wavelength of the future. How the goddess proliferates and thrives in a limitless diversity of expressions. 

The fierce and sensual feminine is wildly entrancing and we let it carry us right off the race course approximately 1 mile in the wrong direction.  After a minute or two of dumbly staring at our watches as if either of us was of the state of mind to read a map or discern a logical transmission from a technological device, we simply turned around and ran back until we found a race sign. From there on out, we silently affirmed an agreement to remember our inseparability from our environment, renouncing the disenchanted and insidiously destructive perspective of viewing the world from the outside. As if we could ever be outside of or separate from any of it. 

Nature, I believe, wants what we all want: intimacy rather than voyeurism; a merging that is experienced at the level of footsteps and in the exchange of breath. And we too, aside from the obvious pitfalls like wandering off in the wrong direction, are plagued by diseases of discontent and spiritual poverty when we treat our endeavors as experiences to be conquered or consumed, rather than multi-dimensional panoramas to be dwelt within, to take up space inside of, and to roll around and exchange skin cells with. A realization Sarah and I reintegrated just in time to engulf ourselves in the deepest blue sky I can ever remember swimming in. A blue too entrancing to be reconciled at any fewer culmination of footsteps, or in any less permeable a state of reverence.  

In the meantime, I believe we had passed an aid station or two. Affirmatively, it was far more compelling to be absent minded than it was to be hydrated. 

Due to our now fully established rhythm, there was no longer a need to communicate about who was going to start walking or running or peeing on the side of the trail. All superfluous mutterings were cast aside and we continued to venture into more enamoring linguistic landscapes. Our pace is what dictated the shape of stories and the convergences of conversations. I would never have agreed to run with just anyone in need of an updated experience of ultra-running. The pace of experiencing is too important to me. Too fast would have held too tight a container and too slow would have muddled the exuberance. Although the specific forms and tasks we each undertake in our ordinary enterprises vary drastically, Sarah and I have a very similar pace of enthusiasm for life.

3rd Loop:

I remember feeling eager to head back out onto the 3rd loop. That inner artist- lover-dreamer, in her tyrannical role as gatekeeper, was keen to not allow logic and rationality to slip back into the blissful empty space of my mind, or especially, my body. Although we were over 4 hours into the race, and neither of us had done a training run of longer than 3 hours in preparation, there wasn’t so much as a hint of exhaustion to be found between us. 

We stumbled across two tiny snakes that immediately ignited my default snake response, which is essentially a forfeiture of all movement, breathing, and anything else that might otherwise give me away as a living organism, until something snaps me out of it. That something was Sarah bending down and proclaiming the tiny snakes to be “cute,” which is a word I had certainly never considered could be applied to this slithering life form. So, I stood at a distance and considered it, a miraculous and unexpected departure from my default reactionary consciousness. 

Shortly after the snake encounter, we stopped to adorn our faces in glitter, further claiming our enmeshment within the sparkling landscape. 

We passed by our old friend, the penis tree, on our way to the long climb. But on this loop, and as hills are known to do, the ascending grade began earlier and extended for longer than it had on the previous 2 loops.  Had we been more enamored with the idea of running to get somewhere or to accomplish something, or held the relief of finishing in high regard, we may have been discouraged by this playful suggestion to spread out even more into this unfurling meeting place. 

Our entangled expression and unforced melodic movement allowed our minds to meander freely outside of individualist body cages, where in a solo endeavor, we may have felt tired or otherwise persecuted. This timeless way of traveling gave our bodies the capacity to endure without the assumed weight of accumulated fatigue. Sarah even fancied that perhaps in another life she would have made an excellent prisoner of war because of her high tolerance for physical pain and complete lack of any sense of timing. 

We wound around that vibrant mountain lake and wondered if the fish ever felt like they were missing out on engaging with new vistas, or if the birds ever wondered that about us. And we were careful to leave space for all of that wondering to take flight of its own accord.

Somewhere around mile 30, we came to the unfortunate realization that this was going to end soon. I was briefly distracted by the entertaining scene of Sarah attempting to pick up an empty can she had dropped, only to have the can roll 1 inch at a time ahead of her decrepit, hard-won, bent over positioning, as she then proceeded to take a small step and re-engage the whole process over again, inch after inch. It’s the little things really.   

We strolled up casually and triumphantly towards the finish line amidst the background noise of the announcer telling us to put in a final push or something along those lines.

The Continuation:

Motivation is fickle and self aggrandizing. It insists on requiring a reason to affirm your place amongst the interconnected web of life; to claim your own true way of living in and with the world. Motivation, especially operating in accordance with default reactionary consciousness, tempts its consumers to hurry towards some false impending finality. 

Ordinarily, this is the part of the essay where I’d construct a neat and ideally inspiring conclusion about what I now know for sure. But, as you’ve likely gleaned, this is not a story about me. This is a story about loops. How they continue. How when we soar up into the sky on unremembered wings and perceive our lives from a zoomed out vista, we can see how we are both always and never arriving, just encircling. Flying high and returning to the earth in a limitless diversity of expressions.  

The loop then, inspires a new question: how to find a pace or a way of being in time that is equally sustainable and fulfilling. 

For someone with an unquenchable thirst for the vast ocean of eternity, this is a worthy challenge. That this aching is insatiable asks me to learn how to be in relationship with it, rather than to try to obliterate myself or conquer it in some way. How to be fed and soothed by it and how to give it away as a gift and an honoring of my small and fortuitous place in eternity.  

Being that life is ongoing but essays are not, I’ll simply agree to return and meet you back here upon completion of the next loop, whenever that may be, with new perspectives and hopefully fewer assumptions about what I think reality is. And as a final request, please raise your hand in the comment section if you think Sarah should sign up for a 50 miler with me. 🙋‍♀️