Then I jumped in the river.

The river is living and moving.

The river is also constant and eternal.

The river is sometimes high and cold and sometimes low and cool.

Miles of toil and soil and sweat and salt rinsed and slithered off to their next homes in seconds.

Then I drug back out into dry life on land.

Part of me hopes I don’t get into Hardrock or States.

I want to finish four loops of the Clear Fork of the Mohican again.

I’ve been training consistently and diligently. I’m satisfied, tired, and excited. Over the last four weeks I’ve run 43, 45, 50, and 50 miles. I know these tallies are paltry compared to many, including the Eagles I see putting in 90-100 mile weeks getting ready for the college XC season, but they represent a lot of training for me.

Nate and I got in a 20-miler recently—always an important mental checkmark going into a marathon. I get to cutback this week to absorb the work and prepare for the final training block. Then it’s just a quick taper, race day effort, a little rest, and more training blocks, ad infinitum.

Speaking of finitude or its opposite, I spent most of August under a bizarre, restrictive, non-sensical, self-punishing, logically-incoherent, and likely meaningless rule. If I wanted to unlock my phone, I had to first read a page of David Foster Wallace’s 1996, 1100 page epic, bro canon classic “Infinite Jest.” I called it my Finite Quest. An essay that no one needs is forthcoming.

My XC coaching career started in earnest on Saturday at our first invitational meet.

For the 22 pre-teen boys on the team, the race was their big thing for the day and the week. It was probably the most fun, most stressful, most tiring, and most memorable thing on their August calendars. I got to ride the bus with them, guide them through it as best I could, and then spent the afternoon lounging on the coach, resting and processing it all.

A few highlights among the highlights:

• Every boy finished under 20 minutes

• Four boys set their mile PRs at the halfway split and still hung on for solid 2-mile times

• Numerous 8th graders got PRs

• We got second place by one point, but our pre-race cheer was head and shoulders above the rest of the pack

• A bunch of kids became Arrows by competing for their school for the first time

• Cedar won the 1-mile race for 6th-graders-and-under

• Kai set a 1-mile PR of 10:39

• Kim made it happen for all of us and even wore a cute outfit and only slightly got sunburned and is probably a bigger XC fan than even me tbh, which creates an infectious and constant runner’s high in our house

• We sang “Take Me Home, Country Roads” on the bus ride home

This Saturday is our home meet in Freer Field. Come on out and make sure things are really rocking on Le Col du Chartier for me. I’m genuinely sad I won’t be banging on trash cans and thrashing my vocal cords out there among the pines. Help us keep the tradition alive through this coaching chapter of our lives.

When I’m on the couch resting up from coaching and running, I’ve been luxuriating in a few excellent issues of Mountain Gazette. Feast your eyes upon these awesome covers.

And the writing on the inside is just as stellar. You really ought to snag one of my old issues from me at the solstice.

Speaking of solar events, the equinox is coming, which also means THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX 2026 is coming. On September 22nd, 7:05pm - 9:05pm (just a few hours after the exact equinox, fyi), I’ll be on my front porch with a few chairs set out, a stack of zines, a cooler full of NA beverages, and a speaker playing mostly King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. If no one turns up, I’m gonna have me a ball ringing in the start of fall all by my lonesome. If some of y’all can make it, well then hell yeah!

Crispy

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Installment II

93 days to go

Even excluding my recent forays into ultra-running, I have also built a broad foundation in endurance endeavors, elective suffering, big days out, and embracing type 2 fun.

A brief, incomplete list:

-I’ve completed 8 straight Mohican Mountain Bike 100s.

-I’ve run 2 road marathons and 1 trail marathon.

-I’ve submitted 10 of Colorado’s “14ers” in a 5-day trip.

-I’ve submitted the Grand Teton in a midnight to midnight push.

Things that I know I know how to do, as a result:

-I know how to take care of my body, eat, and drink over a long duration.

-I know how to move forward even when it gets hard.

-I know how to crank through the night and swat away midnight demons.

-I know how to stay mentally committed even when the flesh is weak.

-I know how to stick to a plan.

-I know how to savor my victories.

-I know how to accept my defeats after moderate pouting time.

Today started with a solid morning of writing, both academic and not. I visited Goldberry with Kai and had a great conversation with our friend Dave Kowalka, who I think I’ll write a separate book about. I was uncharacteristically-for-a-Thursday on campus for a bit to be interviewed by an external program reviewer as part of our periodic academic review process at the university. After work, I got Kai from Kim and had lunch at Uniontown Brewing Co. Ashland is a hilariously small town. During our brief lunch, I bumped into: 2 departmental colleagues out celebrating a new publication, an acquaintance who is the CEO of a local marketing firm (he had just heard me on the VOX podcast “unexplainable,” so that was cool), a couple from the neighborhood out on a lunch date, the assistant director of my research center having lunch with a friend, and a member of the university’s Board of Trustees. I rode zwift after lunch while grading prison-course quizzes, played some backyard soccer with Cedar, played a few rounds of Risk with Cedar and Rowe, coached Cedar’s soccer practice, had dinner with the family, and then graded exams in bed again.

Training. 90 minutes at 118 watts with 20 minutes at 232 watts. 9 minutes for ½ mile of running around the yard with Cedar.

Sleep. 9:50-6:20. 8.5 hours. Had a nightmare that included a wild horse and the Dean of the Seminary.

Weather. Cold again! 20s.

Water. 96 ounces.

Food. Bagel with cream cheese. Egg on sourdough. Half a black bean burger and fries. Root beer. Trail mix and syrup on bike. Veggie tikka masala for dinner. Protein chips for late night snack.

93 miles to go

6:46am

I forgot to ditch my headlamp with Kim back at the overlook...oh well. I suppose I need to be a bit more mindful of actual business in the aid stations. Maybe I enjoyed myself a little too much chatting and watching other runners do their thing. Although it’s probably also good to relax and not sweat the small stuff. I encountered a tall, lean woman with an eastern European accent in some of my favorite terrain on the loop—the tree weaving, pine-straw bedded, flow leading eventually up to the Fire Tower. She had a bloody knee from an early trip, was from New York, named Sharlota, and we’d end up seeing each other a lot out on our parallel journeys.

15 minutes

“You chose to do this. Be grateful that you’re here and appreciate the opportunity.”

— Anna Frost

92 days to go

As of high noon today, I’m on spring break. The academic calendar rules. I’m planning a bit of a training camp—hoping for 2 big runs, 1 big ride, and plenty of smaller maintenance workouts sprinkled in.

It’s perfect timing, both temporally and spiritually, to really get after it. I’m all fired up because I read an excellent interview with Anton Krupicka, the ultra-running legend and all-around mountain athlete philosopher king, in Possessed (the magazine of Satisfy Running…who will sell you the steeziest running gear imaginable for hundreds of dollars per small item). Anton is a hero of mine. He approaches locomotion in the outdoors with what appears to be pure love and zeal. He’s a multi-modal traveler (running, riding, skiing, climbing), and logs massive hours of annual training time. He’s also an ex-academic, and clearly a very intellectually oriented fellow. He helps me remember that running is nothing and that running is everything. Lastly, he serves as an excellent injury avoidance cautionary tale. After taking the ultra scene by storm soon after graduating college, and winning everything in sight, he eventually fell victim to a series of overuse injuries and spent over 5 years without competing in a race (he recently returned at the Leadville 100 Trail Run, finishing 3rd and sending his fans, including me, into raptures). The interview included some all-time gems to stoke the fire, like the one at the bottom of the next mile. Do some googling. You’re welcome.

I was up early with Kai, which worked out well for finishing up grading exams. I made a quick NYT check to see if COVID numbers were still backing off and if Ukraine was still holding off Russia, then back to my mundane bullshit. Had my chat with Moss on campus, handed back exams in both classes and answered questions, then zipped home to nab Kai so Kim could lift.

I lazily chipped away at chores and workouts through the afternoon: a short jog, a mini lift, a finger strength session, and a zwift with prison-class grading. Then it was an all-out bro fest evening. Kim had a night out with girlfriends, and the boys invited Bennett over. He’s their best neighborhood bud. He arrived by bike with a pair of well shaken beers for me from Lance, his father and a friend of mine.

I got in some reading (Anton and Socrates), writing (this), foam rolling, stretching, social media (gram, tiktok, twitter, facebook, strava), listening to the new Big Thief album, and had a great chat with Lance when he picked Bennett up. We discussed the myriad joys of exercise, from the intrinsic value of the workout and the physical feelings it produces, to the endlessly fascinating and rewarding pursuit of goals. Then I stretched in the dark listening to a chapter of Racing Against the Clock.

Training. Lift. Hangboard. Zwift for 30 minutes at 100 watts. 19-minute, 1.55-mile easy jog listening to How to Do Nothing.

Sleep. 9:40-5:40. 8 hours

Weather. 30s and sun.

Water. 96 ounces.

Food. Coffee and cream. Bagel and cream cheese. Taco lefties and eggs. PB pretzels and protein chips. Pizza for dinner. Cinnamon rolls for dessert. 2 beers.

92 miles to go

7:01am

Eating and drinking is going to plan so far. I’ve taken in : some caffeinated-black-cherry chews, some syrup, bacon, and some peanut butter pretzels on the move and had coffee, ginger ale, and a few potato chips at the Gorge Overlook aid station. I’m on track so far! I hope I can keep succeeding at this eating contest. The full plan calls for 300 calories an hour via a mix of the items listed above, plus a consistent drip of 16-20 ounces of fluids per hour in a carryable soft-flak doped up with one scoop of skratch labs hydration mix per flask.

I’ll stick with this until I puke or bonk or both and then survive.

16 minutes

“I try to run simply. Keep it unfettered. And I try to run consistently. Any practice, I believe, only has real value if it is habitual. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem to carry much weight. It’s more of a trifle or dalliance if there’s no consistency to it. This is something I think is true for nearly any pursuit in my life, be it in the outdoors, or something more cerebral like reading and writing, or something more mundane, like keeping my apartment organized and neat.”

—Anton Krupicka

91 days to go

A big run for tomorrow was on my mind all day today. I want to go out for a real test on the race course. Planning to do a “short lap,” which is run on laps 3 and 4 of the race (after laps 1 and 2 on the “long lap”). It should come in just over 23 miles. Part of the point of the test-run is to sort out some of the mini-route-finding details of the true race course so I know what to expect on race day. I studied Gabe Rainwater’s run file from last year’s race.

No matter how many of these long test-runs I do, I get a little nervous beforehand. I think the uncertainty is actually part of the draw. I’m curious. Can I hit my target times tomorrow? Can I do it while staying relaxed? While having fun? Without beating up my body too badly?

I laid out my full kit so I’ll be ready in the morning and just to make sure all systems are go.

A technical hat that I can dunk in the river if I get hot. It’s from one of my best friend’s fly-fishing guide services based in Wenatchee, Washington.

Headphones in case Moss and Ellen drop me and I spend a lot of time alone.

Phone for pics, music, audiobooks, writing in google docs, audio memos.

Garmin forerunner 245 gps watch for constantly obsessing about pace and distance metrics.

5 baby wipes in a ziplock bag for emergency pooping. You can always just go with leaves, but I prefer wipes.

Chamois butter in case of chafing.

Ultimate Direction vest.

Nike running shirt Kim got at Goodwill.

Very short (3” inseam) Brooks Sherpa shorts.

Brooks Cascadia 16s. Much more on shoes to come. I’m not sure if my primary shoe will be the Cascadia, or the Calderra, or a mix of both on race day.

Thin wool socks that I love from a company that I can’t remember, but who went out of business, so I need to find a new go-to before race day.

950 calories: 4 Untapped syrups (100 calories each), 2 shot blok sleeves (200 calories each), 5 strips of bacon (30 calories each).

80 ounces of water in 4 X 20 oz. soft flasks.

Enjoyed coffee and yoga in my bedroom until 8. Rode zwift watching another bike race—Strade Bianchi in Tuscany. Saturday soccer for the boys. Both won and both played well. Did some light bouldering with Kai in between games, and got in an easy jog in the afternoon sunshine. Saw Wyatt and Megan, both of whom ran with us on the solstice. They got engaged this week! Pet the neighbor's dog, Plum, on the way in and out of the hood. Evening was spent hanging out on the neighbors' deck, doing chores, reading a great piece on Bernd Heinrich in Outside Magazine (I really hope I’m still getting after it in the woods in my 80s), writing, and prepping kit for tomorrow’s run.

Training. Zwift for 30 minutes at 127 watts, with 5 minutes at 305 watts (that’s a hard effort for me). 1.6 mile run in 18 minutes.

Sleep. 10:30-7:00. 8.5 hours.

Weather. Sunny and a high of 70!!

Water. 96 ounces.

Food. Coffee and cream. Toast with pb and strawberry jam. McDonald’s chicken sandwich and fries. Trail mix. Chipotle burrito.

91 miles to go

7:17am

We’re winding and climbing our way up to the Fire Tower aid station, the highest point of each loop. The top 5 runners in the 50-mile race, which started an hour later than us 100-milers, have caught and passed me. Impressive. Hell yeah. Last in the train of 5 was a dude I’ve become acquainted with at the Columbus rock climbing gym, Vertical Adventures. Cool to see a fellow climber our here crushing so hard on the trails.

15 minutes

“Movement is the essence of life.”

—Bernd Heinrich

90 days to go

Training. The run went great. I have passed the first major test. Moss and Ellen (his fiancé and recent Ashland transplant) joined me for the short lap. 22.76 miles according to my watch (the race info lists it as 23.4) with 2,576 feet of climbing. GPS discrepancy is common out on the trails. We targeted 14:24 per mile pace, which is the pace required to do 100 miles in 24 hours, quite a bit faster than my intended pace on race day.

Ellen plans to do the Mohican 50, which consists of one long lap then one short lap, so we spent much of the day talking through the route, navigation details, and aid station locations. Moss was tired and hungry because he rode his bike 1oo miles yesterday. Both are stronger runners than me, but they hung back at my pace for the day.

The miles rolled very easy for the first 12. It’s some of the most scenic terrain out there, from the state park entrance up through punchy climbs and long straight descents, pine straw footing past the Fire Tower, then down the Hog’s Hollow trail to the Covered Bridge crossing the Clear Fork of the Mohican River in the heart of the park. After mile 12, things got a little tougher, climbing up to Hickory Ridge, and then back to the race start/finish campground. I tripped once and felt a minor “pelvic twinge,” but it seems fine now. My feet were a little tender, and my knees ached a bit like normal, but all-in-all things are good between me and my body.

There were tons of trees down that we had to navigate around, but we felt safe enough, with calmer than predicted winds throughout the day. I did the run self-supported, carrying everything I’d need for the full distance. On race day, it’s really nice to only take what one needs from aid to aid, reducing the weight of the vest, and the resulting impact-strain on the body from every single stride. It was seasonally-hot (60s) and sunny today. On race day we may have to deal with proper heat and humidity, so this was a good baby step towards the real deal. We got into the river to cool off afterwards. The water was high and extremely cold so I didn’t lounge in it for long this time.

Next big test—the long lap. Hopefully a hot one.

The morning started with coffee and relaxation with Kai and Cedar. I read and wrote and did yoga by the fire. Rainy in the morning. High winds predicted. I was a bit apprehensive, hoping it would be safe. A woman recently died in the park when a tree fell on her. Delivered coffee in bed to Kim, took enough CBD to chill a horse, then split for the trails! Bob Marley’s “Exodus” on repeat on the drive down. Run. McDonald’s on the way home, quick shower, raised Cedar’s bike saddle to adjust for winter growth, then off to my parents’ place for our Sunday Funday weekly get together. Great food and drinks and conversation. While sitting on the couch with my parents, enjoying some prosecco, I realized that in that moment I could be finishing the short lap I ran today, if I had run it at goal race pace. A good sign!

Sleep. 9:45-6:35. 8.8 hours.

Weather. 60s and sunny.

Water. 120 ounces (including 80 during the run).

Food. Coffee and cream. Peanut butter toast. Banana. Run snacks (3 syrups, 2 sleeves of bloks, 5 strips of bacon). Bacon McDouble on the way home from training. Tater tots and prosecco and ribs and margaritas for dinner.

90 miles to go

7:32am

Arriving at the Fire Tower aid station, but just passing through because Kim should be set up with everything I need at the Snowmobile Lot just a half mile down the trail. It’s a fucking party up here! Red Hot Chili Peppers blaring from a PA system and some very stoked aid station volunteers. Just after leaving the party, I took my fourth piss break. I must be very well hydrated so far.

16 minutes

“100-mile foot races are a uniquely uncomfortable and challenging objective. They have expanded the scope of my life experience in such a way and to such a degree that if I am physically capable of attempting one, I always know that it will be worth my while.”

—Anton Krupicka

First and foremost, some running.

I finished the Hellbender 100, so I’m all set to enter my first Hardrock lottery and my sixth Western States lottery. Please call in any and all higher-power favors for me, thanks.

Hellbender was really hard.

Writing about it is proving to be really hard too, but don’t worry, you will eventually be subjected to a massive, monstrous race report, titled Hell Springs Eternal. My draft is at 4000 words and counting, sorry.

Lots happened out there and in here.

Once my heels stopped bleeding and my left leg stopped being yellow (a couple weeks after the race), I turned my attention to summer training and shorter racing. I’m hanging out in the 40s most weeks these days, though I still sprinkled in some cut-backs to sharpen up for a 5k and a 1600.

At Balloon Fest, 21 days shy of his 13th birthday, Rowe finally beat me. I really did try my best, I just couldn’t hang with his pace in the last half-mile, climbing back up the food-truck-field to the finish line. I was very happy and proud, even as I felt my own failing and crumbling state envelope me. I was thankful to have a healthy body that can run hard on days like these. I was proud that my son was reaping the fruits of his diligent labor. I thought to myself, “He’s probably gone up the road forever now, but I can still get out with him on his easy days.”

Spoiler alert—this old man still has a couple arrows left in his quiver.

I started my role as the Middle School Boys Cross Country Coach, and I’m having a ball. During the optionals season (not to be confused with super optionals), we got in 18 great sessions over 6 weeks and launched the Arrows season with a fun 1600 meter time trial at the community stadium last night. I got to race too, in the community heat. I clocked a 5:42 last year and was hoping to eek out another PR.

Rowe and I had a confidence-boosting session on the track on July 21—800, 400, 200, 200 at brisk paces of 5:34, 5:24, 5:07, 5:03. Everything seemed on track for good rip at the time trial, but the 800 felt HARD, and I knew a PR would require immense, intense pain to achieve.

Fleet Feet comes out for the event to size the team for new shoes for the season. It was super fun to see all the kids picking out fresh kicks and getting ready to race in front of the town and under the lights. I got excited and bought myself some Nike Dragonfly XC spikes, but was a very good boy and did not race in them straight out of the box.

There was a lot of chatter this week about how many of the middle-school boys were going to beat old coach Chris at the 1600. When the dust settled, I took my revenge on Rowe, and smoked the whole squad, clocking a 5:36 in my trainers. Better luck next year, boys. Be warned. I plan to go faster.

Aside from training 5 days a week with the team, and then chasing them around on Saturday mornings screaming things at them like “make it hurt” and “work this hill,” I’ll be trying to fit in some of my own tempo efforts and long runs to prepare for the Columbus Marathon, alongside the local-legend-pastor-cowboy Nate Bebout.

I’ve been in a real purple patch of reading form, on track to finish 52 books this year (my absurdly arbitrary but aesthetically admirable goal), if I can catch up by one book soon and then keep loving one a week until the solstice!

Since my last letter, I’ve completed, and enjoyed, the following books. Holler at me if you want to wander over and snag one from the Solstice Library:

Research Methods in Psychology

Angle of Repose

Running with the Buffaloes

Mount Analogue

The Myth of Sisyphus

On the Road

Small Things Like These

The Last of the Giants

A River Runs through It

Man’s Search for Meaning

Zen Mediation in Plain English

Ron Carlson Writes a Story

Gratitude

Lonesome Dove (I’m too emotionally attached to this one to lend it out)

Tinkers

Run the Song

I’m pecking away at a truly behemoth blog post called 40 Books for 40 Year-olds. Tune in to see if I recommend one of my 40 favorite books from my 40th year directly to you by name.

Some of my other writing projects are progressing at the pace they demand, and I’m enjoying the habit.

I skittered off to Boulder for my Birthday and to make sure Moss was still a mischievous mountain rascal and wrote the weekend up.

I won a teaching award in April and published my speech script, which was really a quote-quiz for you to play along with.

I’ve recently posted 2 installments of 100 TO GO (here and here). I’m feeling a good momentum building over there, and think it’s realistic I have a very solid draft of the full book by the equinox and hard copies available by the solstice.

The zine is coming together nicely and we’re all set to hand and mail some out on the autumnal equinox.

The super-secret-mega manuscript still lives, though it is in a bit of a hibernation period. Don’t worry, it’s just resting up by taking a little break from me.

My next story-stack will probably be Il Giusto Cammino dei Piedi, a narrative essay about running as refuge from the world and from oneself.

Lastly and maybe leastly, I’m peck-peck-pecking away on my first work of fiction. It’s about a tiny college in Mifflin called Little Flock. I might do the installments approach and post sections as I complete them if I enjoy how that goes with 100 TO GO.

Ok, I should probably get back to reading or writing a book. I woke up with a headache, dry mouth, a sore back, brittle heels, a tight hamstring, tv-static mind, and a messy house. Ran 4 easy miles, and I feel better now.

Mandatories start Monday.

See you out there.

100 days to go

In 100 days, on June 4th 2022, I will attempt to finish the Mohican 100 Trail “Run” in under 30 hours. I say “run” because I probably won’t run all that much. In fact, my goal pace will require an average of just under 18 minutes per mile. The winners will run. I will run a bit, jog a bit, shuffle a fair amount, sit some, lay down with moderate regularity, maybe sleep a little, and walk A LOT. I hope you enjoy following me on this journey, and I hope it tells you more about all of us than it does about me. We can do 100 milers. I can do them. You can do them. We can do them.

Russia invaded Ukraine this morning. The possibility of things escalating into world war three are providing a major dose of perspective, fear for those that are in the middle of it, and gratitude for my comfortable life. I get to seek out my challenges via elective suffering.

I had a typical coffee and bagel session at the local coffee shop, Goldberry Roasting Company, with my 2 year-old son, Kai. We saw our other regular friends, Nate (a pastor) and Dave (a retired school teacher). We talked about the similarities and differences between social psychology and sociology. Then I worked from home on some research projects for a few hours, parented Kai some more while Kim went to a Yoga class, trained, coached Cedar’s (my middle son) 5 & 6 year-old indoor soccer practice, and graded some prison inmates’ (students of mine) online assignments over a bottle of wine that I split with Kim.

Training. 65 minutes of running on the roads. 6.5 miles with 260 feet of climbing. 30 minutes of cycling on Zwift at 134 watts with a 5-minute effort at 301 watts. 15 minutes of bodyweight strength exercises. 30 minutes of bouldering and hangboarding. 5 minutes of yoga and foam rolling.

Sleep. 9:50pm-6:20am. 8.5 hours.

Weather. 22-30 degrees. Light snow. Moderate wind.

Water. 96 ounces.

Food. Most of a pot of coffee with lots of heavy whipping cream. Bagel with cream cheese. Chickpea and guac wraps. Bowl of honey bunches of oats. Tacos. Half bottle of wine.

100 miles to go

5:00am

I started right up front. Literally, the first to toe the starting line. Ultra-runners are a bit reticent. When the bell rang, I tried to just gently wiggle down the opening pavement section. Headlamps were shining and bobbing on everyone’s heads. People were noticing little equipment problems and stopping. Not a great way to get the day going, but no big deal; it’s a long one. All smooth for me. A quarter mile of gentle pavement gave way to mellow trail to ease us into the days’ challenges. We encountered a wider and deeper swath of mud than I was hoping for on the initial double-track. After a right hand turn we began some moderate but mostly gentle climbing along the closing mile of the state park’s mountain bike loop. This terrain is all just set up for the first big climb. I was going too fast compared to goal pace, but feeling very ok. I’ll hike later.

13 minutes

“There is nothing quite so gentle, deep, and irrational as running—and nothing quite so savage, so wild.”

— Bernd Heinrich

99 days to go

The Mohican 100 is a 4-loop race. Each loop roughly circumnavigates Mohican State Park using a combination of mountain bike trails, hiking trails, and horse trails. It is almost entirely single-track or double-track, with only a tiny percentage of paved roads. The first two loops are “long” loops of 27 miles each. The second two loops are slightly modified “short” loops of 23 miles each. Participants must also contend with 12,000 feet of vertical ascent and descent. It is technical, rugged, relentlessly hilly, and amazingly beautiful. Conditions can vary widely from perfect “hero dirt” under foot to extremely sloppy and gloopy mud if the horse trails are wet. The final cutoff time for official finishers is 32 hours.

One great advantage for me is that I have covered 100 miles on foot before. I did it as a personal challenge, not an official event, with a few close friends. We used a loop roughly equivalent to the Mohican 100 course. It took me 31:59:57. Just under cutoff time for the official event. Some major caveats however: we picked the date (giving ourselves ideal weather), we picked the start time (aligning it with what worked best for our bodies and sleep cycles), the course was a tad easier than the race, and there were only a few participants (allowing us to focus purely on our own performance without traffic or distractions or logistical challenges that come from mass start events).

You have almost certainly also covered 100 miles on foot even if you have never competed in such an event. Your PR just might be a bit longer than 32 hours. A year? A month? A week?

Today started with coffee, lecture prep for work, and writing by the fire. Local schools were on a 2-hour delay, so Cedar and Rowe had relaxing starts to their mornings. I commuted to an icy campus to teach Research Methods in Psychology and Social Psychology. Before class, I dropped by Jacob’s office to have our thrice weekly chat. He is my ultra-brother. More on him later. In Research Methods we discussed quasi-experimental designs. In Social Psych we had a class discussion on the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game, which can provide some game-theoretic insights into real-world decision-making scenarios, such as the nuclear arms race and the current tit-for-tat tensions between Putin and the West. After class, I had a Kai-baby handoff with Kim so she could do a high-intensity strength training class at the Yoga studio. I trained and worked from home during the afternoon. In the evening we had our typical Friday-night pizza, and then Kim and I watched “The Tinder Swindler” on Netflix after the boys were in bed.

Training. 25 minutes on Zwift at 112 watts with 1 minute at 492 watts. 30 minutes bouldering in the basement. Planning a big run tomorrow!

Sleep. 9:55pm-6:15am. 8.33 hours.

Weather. 19-31 degrees. Gray. Morning sheet of ice.

Water. 72 ounces.

Food. Coffee with cream. Granola bar. Taco leftovers with eggs and sourdough. Bowl of cereal. Handful of protein crisps. Frozen pizza. Bag salad. Cinnamon and butter toast. Mocktails.

99 miles to go

5:13am

I’m already taking my little jacket off, a super thin Patagonia Houdini. By no means am I hot, but the temps are really nice, and I don’t want to sweat unnecessarily so early on in the day. There is quite a bit of traffic on our first climb, switch-backing up and away from the river to the south rim of the gorge. No worries. We’re all moving well, and I’m finding the company energizing and inspiring for now.

15 minutes

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

― Jack Kerouac

98 days to go

I went long this afternoon. The trails are still icy so I had to stick to the road again. I took a 26.19-mile cruise around the country from Ashland to Jeromesville to Hayesville to Ashland. This would have been my first road marathon since the 2013 Columbus Marathon if I’d gone .001 more. Pheidippides just didn’t quite make it to Athens today.

4 hours 58 minutes. 1,393 feet of vert. 11:24 average per mile. Great sight-seeing out there: a bald eagle, the Jeromesville bicentennial mural, and the Vermillion Institute. I also had a delightful 1-minute chat with an older guy who lives on the Lincoln Highway. He was cleaning up tree debris from a large limb that had come down in his yard, weighed down by the coating of ice. I told him that he wasn’t alone - many folks had huge limbs or whole trees down in their yards today. He replied, “huh…this is the only one I’ve seen.” We both just grinned for a while.

I didn’t plan on any reprovisioning stops today, so I loaded my Ultimate Direction vest (stolen from my friend Moss) with 60 ounces of water and 1,000 calories of snacks (peanut butter pretzels, starburst, sour cream and onion chips, a granola bar, and 3 tubes of pure Vermont maple syrup). I started the run in silence, just focusing on relaxed breathing and settling into an easy rhythm. At the 1-hour mark I put in my headphones and listened to an hour of an audiobook that I was really disliking, but that is starting to win me over a little bit now: “How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell. Next up was an hour of an ultra-nerd book: “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” by Jason Koop. For the last two hours of the run I alternated between music and silence depending on my mood and pain levels. I also write a lot on my long runs and did quite a bit of it today, tapping out thoughts on my phone or recording brief audio memos to be transcribed later.

The body mostly behaved itself today. Pain is inevitable on a 5-hour jog. You just work through it or compensate by adjusting your stride to go easier on the offending joint, hopefully without fucking up some other body part. Sometimes you just pass the pain around from knee to ankle to foot to hamstring to quad to back and then back again to the knee. The first warning signs from my legs came around mile 16 in the middle of a 10-mile stretch of cold headwind and the largest hills on the route. I was on a long descent passing the Maranatha Baptist Church when my left calf and right quad both started to tighten up and bark at me. I just walked it out for a few minutes, ate and drank, and changed the playlist. Then I settled back into my jogging rhythm. What else is there to do? I was 10 miles from home, had to get there somehow, the sun would set in 2 hours, and I didn’t pack a headlamp. I love these self-imposed binds. It takes any head games out of the equation. You just have to keep moving. Sometimes you need to swim halfway across the lake before thinking about it too much.

My feet started getting cranky around mile 20. I try to find a little soft gravel strip on the shoulder whenever I can to reduce the impact of the road, but there was still a ton of cumulative abuse today. By the time I got back to Ashland, around mile 24, I was moving pretty stiff and hobbly, but I finished just fine, still with good energy levels, happy, and healthy.

This morning I got to chill with coffee in bed until 8am. Kim and I trade off mornings taking care of the boys and letting the other one lounge late. Both of the boys had indoor soccer games. We played live coverage of Omloop Het Neuwsblad in the background while we got ready. It’s a cycling classic. The season opener in Flanders, Belgium. Cedar scored and Rowe had an assist. I’m the side-line assistant coach/squirrely kid wrangler for Cedar’s team. Toughest hour of my day. Rushed straight from soccer into the run. Then I took a hot bath. The boys had used up all the hot water, but Kim rescued me by bringing in a boiling tea kettle. Old school. We closed the evening with a finer things club with Moss and Ellen at our place after the boys were in bed.

Training. 26.19 mile road run in 4 hours and 58 minutes.

Sleep. 10:00pm-6:00am. 8 hours.

Weather. 20s. Gray and windy.

Water. 72 ounces (plus water on the run).

Food. Coffee with cream. PB toast. Guac and chickpea wraps. M&Ms right before run. Run food described above. Pasta and salad. A little too much wine during finer things club.

98 miles to go

5:28am

We’ve crested the first big climb, with about 400 feet of vert knocked out already. That’s 2.5% of the total climbing…not bad! Time for some undulating single-track before possible mud pits on horse trails and then emerging onto nice easy double-track. I’m chatting with some veterans, including David Corfman who is semi-famous for his adorable friendship with Greg Trapp. They met at the Mohican 100 many years ago, during the race on the trail, became friends, and now have run the thing together for many years. Those around me seem to have 26 to 28 hour goals for the day. I should probably slow down a bit leading into gorge overlook aid station! I’m shooting for closer to 30.

16 minutes

“I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.”

— Haruki Murakami

97 days to go

The plan for today, a Sunday, was to eat and drink and rest and assess my body for any serious issues after the long road run. My main goal when training for an ultra is “don’t get hurt.” When you go long, overuse injuries are always circling like vultures, ready to pick at your bones as you sit at home realizing you can’t even start your event. You can’t get better if you’re rehabbing instead of training.

I am no stranger from earning a long-term running suspension from the Gods. In fact, I’ve had 3 very long periods without running due to overuse injuries. IT band troubles in 2011 stopped me from completing my first trail marathon. A partially torn meniscus took me out of running for a full year after I ran the Columbus Marathon a bit too hard in 2013. After my 100-mile effort in 2020, I was off running for months due to an audibly “clicky” and very painful left knee. The clicky knee from 2020 feels like a combination time-bomb-land-mine. Is the knee fully recovered? Will it be stronger this year, allowing me to run later into the night than it did last time around (when it gave out around mile 70, resigning me to hike it home for 30 more miles), or will it blow up earlier, say at mile 51, and set me up for an absolute slog, hiking to the finish, fighting to even meet course cut-off time?

So, particularly in light of my recent volume of road running, which is so much more abusive on the body than trails, I have been on high alert. Last week (I plan and track my training weeks starting on Sundays and ending on Saturdays) I trained for a total of 16 hours. 8 running. 5 riding. 3 lifting, yoga-ing, climbing, etc.. In the month of February, I’ve had 4 long runs of 15 miles, 23 miles, 16 miles, and 26 miles. All on the road due to icy trails. Not my favorite surface, but the trainings must happen. Knock-on-wood, I feel injury free so far.

It was my morning to lounge again (we alternate Sundays), but the boys were self-contained so Kim got to join me. I had a long writing and coffee session in bed. Then I trained. Took a bath. Hot this time. Bennett, the big boys’ best friend who lives down the street, came over so our boys were entertained outside for hours. Had a delightful lunch with Eli Moss, discussing Jacob’s upcoming bachelor party (we’re the best men). We mostly just chatted though, about a book we both loved called “The Moral Animal” by Robert Wright, his Medical school studies, and the situation in Ukraine, including the possibility of total world annihilation. In the afternoon I planned out the training volume and calendar for the coming week. I’m hoping for 18 hours of activity. We had a very nice and relaxing family evening at home. I got to read an article on social control of deviant behavior in preparation for a class discussion tomorrow, and Kim and I turned in early.

Training. 80 minutes at 102 watts on Zwift watching another cycling classic—Kuurne Brussels Kuurne. I was just flushing all the bad stuff out of the legs and getting some blood flowing. I think this week will include a lot of easy cycling.

Sleep. 11:45-6:30. 6.75 hours. I always struggle to sleep the night immediately after a big workout and had a little too much fun hanging out with Ellen, Kim, and Moss last night.

Weather. Mid 30s and sunny. Trees melting.

Water. 96 ounces.

Food. Morning eggs and bacon and pancakes with the family. Floyd’s of Leadville CBD Protein mix and oat milk. Burger and fries and a strawberry margarita out with Eli. Fruit smoothie. Chicken nuggets and salad for dinner. Cinnamon and butter toast for a late-night snack.

97 miles to go

5:44am

Got a pleasant little surprise when we took a short cut off the mountain bike trail around the old gas-line hill. I wasn’t expecting that, and it essentially means all 4 loops are a little shorter and easier than I had anticipated, probably only a few hundred feet, but still. I recorded an iphone video summarizing the miles thus far, and I’m in an excellent mood. Good vibes. I took my headlamp off and stuffed it in the back of my vest. It’s nautical twilight - that little bit of time before official sunrise where there’s enough light to see on the trails. The woods are less dense up on this ridge. Much better light conditions than earlier on. I pulled one step off the side of the trail for my first pee break, just as we emerged from some muddy single-track and onto a wide double-track fire road. Very easy flat running for the next mile. Time to jog some more and make up a bit of time, but I also don’t want to overdo it early. These quads have a lot of abuse coming their way.

15 minutes

“In the long run we are all dead.”

— John Maynard Keynes

96 days to go

I thought I had some DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) in my quads and calves developing last evening, but I woke up feeling pretty darn great in terms of muscles and joints. My general confidence is also building recently. Some form of success is starting to feel almost inevitable. The days are rolling along smoothly and I’m convinced the miles will as well in the 100. What can stop me? (ok don’t answer that…lots can…let me just bask in this irrational certainty for now).

I’m turning my attention towards scheduling out the remaining long runs I want to complete prior to the race. The weekly long run is the keystone of any distance running program; probably even more so for ultra marathons. You have to prepare your body and mind for a huge outing. I focus a lot of my energies on a handful of critical, very long, training runs, and worry less about my overall weekly mileage or cumulative volume. The proper big-ones will start soon. Prior to the 100, I hope to complete at least one run each at roughly the 31, 40, and 50-mile distances. Each of these will be separated by several weeks of recovery and body repair to get ready for the next and hopefully avoid any serious overuse injuries. These key runs will also incorporate as much event-specificity as possible, meaning they should mimic my target event maximally. I will try to complete them on trail, with around 100 feet of climbing per mile or more, ideally on the actual race course. At least one of them, probably the 50-miler, will ideally include substantial time running at night to get used to the sleep deprivation and darkness to be encountered during the 100. A 30-hour event, beginning at 5am, goes all through the night, so navigating the trails in the dark, and handling the sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations are key.

It was my morning to wake up with the boys while Kim slept in a bit. The taking turns started when Kai was new and woke us up at some heinous hour (like 5am) most days. Even though it’s no longer nearly as necessary, as he sleeps in a little later, we still love it. Work was relatively busy today: quick chat with Moss, review sessions in Research Methods and Social Psychology, Lunch of Awesomeness (a group of faculty and staff and students that get together each Monday), article discussion in my seminar class, lab meeting, and an advising meeting. After work, I took Rowe to his piano lesson with Beth Fitch out on her farm south of town, then zipped home to tag Kim out so she could workout at the yoga studio. The evening started with a pumphaus session (basement rock wall climbing and lifting) with Moss and Quinn. Kim and I watched a really strange and delightful documentary called “Shirkers” and turned in early.

Training. I walked to and from work. A little under 2 miles round trip. I love nabbing these sorts of incidental fitness boosters. That stuff adds up. And the commute route is absolutely pleasant. Out my back door, into the woods, along some park paths, over a creek, across the big field with a barn, and then a few blocks of good sidewalks to campus. To “count” walking as training, I only require that I do it faster than race pace (18 min/mile). In the evening, I did some low-rep, high weight lifting (bench press, deadlift, weighted pullups, squats, front levers), some hang boarding (hanging off of small wooden edges by my fingertips) and basement bouldering.

Sleep. Slept a lot. 9:30-6:45. 9.25 hours.

Weather. 30s and sunshine. A tiny sense of spring is springing out there.

Water. 72 ounces.

Food. Coffee with half and half (poor man’s heavy whipping cream, in my opinion). Bagel with cream cheese. Salad with buffalo chicken and blue cheese. Mac ‘n cheese. Cherry pie. Apple juice. Fruit smoothie and bacon and Doritos and a protein bar for an afternoon snack. Homemade paninis on the waffle iron for dinner.

96 miles to go

5:59am

The flat fire road is really nice. No roots to clear, no worry of tripping, no weaving in and out of trees. Just easy cruising. This pace feels sooooo slow and chill. That’s a promising feeling. I’m noticing that the field around me has an awesomely-wide age range, from a teenager I just met who is running it with his dad, all the way up to folks who appear to be in their 70s. All together, quietly cranking through the forest. We’re 1/20th of the way there.

15 minutes

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

— Albert Camus

95 days to

I had another nice, slow morning of coffee and working in bed. Caught up on slack messages and pecked away at some academic writing. Spent an hour at Goldberry with Kai. Did some more WFH in the mid-morning, but I was really just stalling for the weather to clear up a bit. Trained. Then spent the afternoon writing my exams for tomorrow. Family dinner was Taco Tuesday. Took Rowe to soccer practice. Netflix murder show at night.

Training. I rode very easy, piano, for 4 hours today. 44 miles of roads on my mountain bike southwest out towards Lucas, OH and back. The weather was just on the right side of acceptable—mid 40s, gray, moderate wind, and light rain on and off. At about the midpoint of the ride, I snuck in a 10-minute work-call with my Department Chair. I also tapped out some notes for a few academic writing projects on the side of the road a few times. A productive work day, if you ask me.

I spent about an hour just thinking and riding in silence, an hour listening to Spotify’s “stoner rock” playlist, and 2 hours rotating through my 4 current audio books:

1. How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell (mentioned previously). Really interesting chapter on Thomas Merton (the high monk of Kentucky), and other ascetics.

2. Training Essentials for Ultra Running by Jason Koop (mentioned previously). Today’s chapter focused, ominously, on all the ways runners report that their bodies have failed when they DNF (did not finish) an ultra. It was a great pre-mortem exercise for my 100 attempt. Most ultra-runners find success through a lack of failure on race day because, “they prevented themselves from becoming a nauseated, sore, blistered, battered, and stumbling mess.”

3. Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype in Science by Stuart Ritchie. This one is right up my professional alley. I may assign it in a future course. The author is a conference acquaintance of mine. Always a good person to have a beer with and chat about ways of improving scientific practices.

4. Racing the Clock: Running Across a Lifetime by Bernd Heinrich. Bernd is an absolute inspiration to me. He is a world-class scientist in insect physiology and an amazing endurance athlete, even now in his 80s. The book focuses on some of the biological aspects of animal (humans included) aging, and how aging changes our running capabilities and experience. It also chronicles his attempt to break a masters world record for the 100k.

Why all this cycling? At least 3 reasons:

1) I love it. I can’t help myself. I’ve been a cyclist for 19 years and it’s probably still my favorite way to travel.

2) I can get great aerobic training without all the abuse of running.

3) I have some big cycling goals this year too! I’m hoping to have a strong ride at the Mohican 100 MTB race and to go under 9 hours at my first ever Leadville 100 MTB race - “The race across the sky.” I need to keep building a solid base of cycling fitness, even as my cycling goals are on the back burner for now.

I’ve juggled a few pursuits pretty consistently over the past 9 years: cycling, running, and climbing. I could probably be a better runner in the short term if I just singularly focused on running, to the exclusion of climbing and cycling. BUT, I enjoy having multiple outlets for my energy. It keeps me mentally fresh, and it is hugely beneficial to have fall back endeavors when a race gets canceled or an injury prevents me from competing in one discipline or the other.

Sleep. 9:45-6-30. 8.75 hours.

Weather. 40s and light rain most of the day.

Water. 96 ounces (48 normal, 48 on ride).

Food. Coffee and cream (heavy whip again!). Bagel and cream cheese. Butter toast. Ride snacks (banana, bar, syrup, trail mix). Bowl of granola. Taco Tuesday.

95 miles to go

6:14am

Just before the Gorge Overlook aid station, on a little flat and easy patch of trail, I intentionally slowed down and took a pee break just so I didn’t show up too damn early and have my crew mad at me. It was really cool and uplifting to see Kim and Moss there. Gabe Rainwater, a local legend with over 10 consecutive finishes (which started when he was a teenager), passed me in the aid station while I was chilling in a camp chair and enjoying a thermos of coffee. No need to rush. I’ve taken in about 16 ounces of water and 250 calories to this pint. I’m hoping I can keep my gut online, absorbing this amount of food and water late into the push. Much of my success or failure will be down to my ability to fuel and hydrate over the next 28 hours and change.

18 minutes

“Dedication sounds like I’m trying really hard to do this, but I just can’t hold myself back. It’s just too much fun.”

— Peter Croft

94 days to go

I am not on the “couch to 100 program,” having started these 100 days of preparation already at a solid level of fitness and endurance. While I did lose a full week of training to COVID in January, my prior training was mostly consistent and high-volume. In fact, the 100 days before these 100 days included two other ultra-running events.

In November I set a personal record at the 50k distance in the local Fuzzy Fandango trail race. It was on a very tough and hilly course split between private trails on the host site, called Camp Nuhop, and Mohican State Park trails, some of which are on the 100-mile course. I snuck in just under my goal time of 6 hours, completing the event at an average pace of 11:35 per mile, with over 5,000 feet of climbing. The Fuzzy was a huge confidence booster, even though it was much shorter than my target event.

On the winter solstice in December, from sunrise to sundown, a big group of friends and neighbors ran and walked many, many 1.25 mile loops on the trails behind my house, in a county park called Freer Field. A group of 4 of us covered 40 miles that day in just over 9 hours. Once again, far shorter but quite a bit quicker than Mohican 100 target pace. Another good sign of general preparation. I was ready to get ready by the time February came around.

Kai was up a little early today. I wrote my two exams over coffee. I walked to work and to lunch today for some bonus training. The way in was brisk but beautiful. At work, I proctored my 2 exams, had lunch on campus, met with a collaborator about a big grant project upcoming for the Psychological Science Accelerator (my main scientific focus at the moment), worked on various research papers with Savannah Lewis (the one staff member at my research center), and interviewed a student for a potential scholarship program. Back home I got in a brief training session in the pumphaus, had dinner and beers with the family, and then graded exams in bed for a while.

Training. 42 minutes of walking. 2.5 miles throughout the day. 30 minutes of bouldering and hangboarding in the pumphaus.

Sleep. 9:45-5:59. 8.24 hours.

Weather. 40s and sunny.

Water. 72 ounces.

Food. Coffee and cream. Bagel with cream cheese. A Rueben and potato latkes, one slice of pizza, juice, and cherry pie for lunch. Chicken salad for dinner. 2 beers.

94 miles to go

6:32am

I left the Gorge Overlook feeling very good and just trying to keep it hella chill. Took some pictures of other runners and some prettier parts of the course right around the Gnarnia bridge. Such a photogenic spot. We’re in full light now.

14 minutes

“The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious.”

— George Sheehan

I’ll be posting the current draft of the manuscript in ten installments as I edit and format it to self-publish. Feedback is welcome in the comments or via email. My hope is to have bound copies available 100 days prior to the 2027 Mohican 100.

Please enjoy installment one, which is very brief and mostly just front matter.

Crispy

Preface

I drafted the majority of this book over the 100 days leading up to my first 100-mile footrace, the 2022 Mohican 100. I then returned to the draft each of the next 3 years, reading and editing it along the way, as I trained again for the race in 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Then I got interested in other projects, both running and writing, and mostly forgot about 100 TO GO. It almost died on the vine, until a friend who had read earlier drafts messaged me out of the blue to say that they’d like to read the final product. Having an audience, even of just one, was all I needed to dust off the manuscript and drag it across the finish line.

This book includes 100 days of journal entries. They summarize the major events of each day, my thoughts and feelings as the race drew nearer, my training, and even my sleep, nutrition, and hydration notes. Each journal entry is followed by a narrative description of one mile of the race itself. Those mile-by-mile accounts were written after the fact. I based them on extemporaneous audio memos, videos from the course, handwritten notes at aid stations, and retrospective accounts from my crew members and pacers.

You can consider this book an autobiographical case study—an N of 1 demonstration of how I ran 100 miles. It is not a training manual or a beginner’s guide. It is just my report back from the trail, but I do hope that some of you will use it as a daily companion while preparing for your own 100-miler. If you don’t plan on running an ultramarathon in the near future or ever, I still hope there is something here you can enjoy or learn from.

Running 100 miles is a normal thing. I think you can do it. When I started the process, I wasn’t sure I could, but (spoiler alert) now I know I can. You’ll be on the other side of that uncertainty soon.

Christopher R. Chartier

July 9, 2026

Ashland, Ohio

Morning Of

I woke up at 2am, just before my alarm, ready.

Why so early if the race doesn’t start until 5? Simply put, I wanted to poop several times before running.

I brewed coffee in our dark kitchen, then started drinking it slowly with a healthy dose of heavy whipping cream. I didn’t want to overdo caffeine on this first morning of the race, but I also wanted to feel energized and alert for those early miles through the darkness. I stretched on the floor. I ate bacon and a toasted bagel with cream cheese. I tested my headlamps and moved three bins of kit into the car.

Kim drove me south through Loudonville, slow and careful in the fog in case deer were out. She waited patiently in the car during my three porta-potty visits. We listened to some music. I wanted to wait in the car as long as possible. She was more hype than me. I had to remind her we had a long day (actually days) ahead of us, and I didn’t need to be too fired up just yet.

The morning was cool. A good omen. Runners were darting around and making final preparations in the gravel lot. The air filled with nervous chatter.

All 163 of us were about to find out.

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I hope you’re safely soaking up as much sun as you can today. While it’s quite far from the next solstice, about as far as you can get I suppose, I’m already dreaming about it. This year’s event, slated for Saturday, December 19th, will include a little launch party for a new publication from The Righteous Path.

We’re calling the project SOLSTICE EQUINOX SOLSTICE EQUINOX, although depending on the time of year, you might also catch me calling it EQUINOX SOLSTICE EQUINOX SOLSTICE. It’s written, edited, designed, and published by a group of solstice regulars.

Issue Zero, THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX 2026, is going to be a test run, and is scheduled to be released on September 22nd. The first official issue, THE WINTER SOLSTICE 2026, will be released on December 19th at our annual ritualistic gathering.

We’ve already got a great starting lineup of articles for Issue Zero:

• “Go Find Your Fairies” by Jill White

• “CCXC” by Spencer Dolezal

• “Am I Even A…” by Jacob Paul Moss

• “Riding the Waves” by Emily Hook

• A book review of “The Last of the Giants” by Kai, Cedar, and Rowe Chartier

• Last and least, “Super Optionals” and “Hell Springs Eternal” by yours truly

We promise to keep this operation low-budget to ensure it could never be confused with a “real” magazine or periodical. Issue Zero will be an ~40 page zine-style booklet. You can support the project in a few ways:

• Request a copy

• Read it

• Toss me a few bucks for printing

• Submit an article, artwork, or idea (chartier.cr@gmail.com)

I hope to see you on the equinox or the solstice or the equinox or the solstice, if not before.

Enjoy summer,

Crispy

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I first read On the Road by Jack Kerouac when I was 18, in the middle of a cross-country road trip with my childhood friend, Mike Siekman, after picking it up in a used book store in Illinois. My car at the time, a maroon mercury mystique, didn’t make it home from that trip. We successfully made it to the Pacific from Cincinnati, Ohio, but she terminally overheated in Winslow, Arizona. We donated her to goodwill and took a 48-hour greyhound back home a few days before we started college. The book made it back with me just fine and now sits in a proud position in the Solstice Library.

I had a nice new shiny copy (bought it for myself for Christmas) with me for this trip to Colorado. When I got to the parking lot at Cleveland Hopkins Airport, the bored attendant told me to park in row “J like Jack.” Some omens are good.

I read about 70 pages on the flight. A huge swath of the continent blurred below over a few hours of dozing and reading and thinking and waiting to be with friends in the mountains. Suddenly, I was in Denver. When we landed, I took my phone out of airplane mode, googled what the word “beatific” meant, and saw an email that Kerouac’s Dharma Bums had been delivered to my home in Ashland about 6 hours too late to join me on the trip.

I took the train to Union Station and headed straight into a foot-powered literary tour of Denver. I popped into Tattered Cover and bought Theo of Golden by Allen Levi, which Kim is really loving and recommended to me. Then I wandered Larimer Square and almost bought another book at another shop, but stayed strong, already concerned with my return flight carrying capacity.

I walked the length of 15th Street to meditate at Confluence park where the Platte meets the Cherry. Ellen joined me for nachos and a margarita (Kerouac’s favorite) at Denver’s oldest pub, My Brother’s Bar (Kerouac’s favorite). We sat out back at a comically-tilted wooden table and got rained on while a group of conference attendees with lanyards and nametags took cover inside. We talked about The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, Antarctica by Claire Keegan, and Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr.

The 3-mile walk home along Cherry Creek to their apartment on Logan Avenue provided a rich human tour of modern Denver. We dodged joggers, dogs, skaters, tourists on e-bikes, corporate phone-talkers, “campers,” meth-heads, and other sundry down-and-outs. I was kind of out of breath after the walk, because my backpack was a bit heavy (books and running kit), and we were a mile high. I confessed this fast to Ellen and she handed over her work bag. It must have weighed 40 pounds. Apparently she had three laptops and super-compressed bricks of military-grade tungsten in there. Moss had to work late so we just exchanged a hug and laid out our running kit before bed.

I turned 40 in the morning. My alarm rang at 5am. Moss and I slurped americanos and hit the road at 6, headed southwest towards Buffalo Creek for a long and picturesque loop. The trail was smooth and the dirt grippy after recent rains. I tried to keep my effort in check, not used to 7k elevation, so we had a rare treat: a mellow jogging and chatting session with the extra capacity to look around and smell the rocks.

We were sang to by black-billed magpies, steller’s jays, western bluebirds, mountain chickadees, and yellow-rumped warblers, who flitted about from branch to branch in the ponderosa pines, douglas firs, quaking aspens, and narrowleaf cottonwoods. It smelled just as good as you think.

We got frequent peeks of Little Scraggy, a granite dome watching from above us all, that makes up part of the Pikes Peak Batholith (a massive blob of cooled magma that didn’t immediately thrust above the earth’s surface, but rather was slowly whittled away through erosion, until it jutted proudly above the surrounding soil). We wandered past plentiful caves below Little Scraggy. They looked good for sleeping if you were backpacking on the Colorado Trail or if you’re a massive, mythical snake-lizard hybrid-demon named Batholith.

We talked about retirement and family and living locations and what we still wanted out of life. We talked about print media and Mountain Gazette and newspapers and Substack. Mostly we just talked about the terrain and our movement through it. 15 miles zoomed by with minimal effort. On a long descent through a stack of granite dominos, we agreed to try the Boulder Skyline Traverse the next day—17 miles with 6,000 feet of climbing.

Just an hour later, as we were climbing in exposed sun, out of water and over 20 miles into the run, I started to wonder if the full traverse was a good idea. After the run, as we drove away from Buffalo Creek and I chugged all the water I had, Moss described the full traverse, complete with steep climbs, technical descents, and likely baking sun in the afternoon, I started to doubt it even further.

We got buffalo chicken wraps and chips at Rocky Mountain Wraps in Conifer. They were playing some truly dreadful jam-grass live shows on a tv in the corner. I think dreadful jam bands is kind of their vibe. The wraps were great, though, and they, plus a couple of root beers, helped me think clearly. It was settled. No traverse tomorrow. We’d reduce our ambitions and enjoy a more manageable day in the mountains above Boulder, hitting some of the famous peaks, but cutting our day a few hours shorter than it would be for the whole enchilada.

After quick showers and micro-naps, we rode our bikes to, and then mellowed away the afternoon in, Cheeseman Park. We mostly sunbathed and watched planes, but we also worked on a letter for our friend Spencer who had just completed his first marathon. Once Ellen was done working (someone had to keep the world turning, I suppose), we got sushi and schemed up plans for the winter solstice. After dinner, Ellen and I got a head start on the solstice book exchange. I gave her my freshly-purchased copy of Theo of Golden, and she handed over a handful of books for my consideration: The Overstory, The White Album, Once a Runner, Small Things Like These, and On Surfing. We set them on the counter to “let them breathe,” as I’d probably only have room for one or two of them in my backpack for the flight home.

We sat on the futon and watched the entire 2-hour set of Fred Again and Thomas Bangalter. An amazing piece of performance art. I highly recommend it.

Friday started on the same timeline of alarms, americanos, departure. I picked up a gas station burrito in Golden on the way to Boulder and declined the PB and J sandwich that I was randomly offered in the parking lot. We got the last open spot at Chautauqua Park and headed up into the flatirons, via the steep and glorious amphitheater trail, towards the summit of Green Mountain. This thing is gnarly. Technical, rocky, and relentless. We marveled at Kyle Richardson’s ascent time and even more at his descent time as we hiked up.

The summit of Green is a special place for mountain people. It has a sweeping view of the snowcapped peaks comprising the LA Freeway. A circular metal display with little protruding dots orients you to the specific mountains off in the distance. One of my heroes, Anton Krupicka, often posts a little picture of the plaque with the mountains it represents looming in the background. He has the current FKT on the Freeway, and Kyle had it back in 2018. I was giddy with my physical connection to the lore of this spot on earth.

We drank some water, ate a bar, and generally luxuriated in the midmorning mountain air.

Just as we were thinking of heading down off of green and into the backside trail network onward to our next peak of the day, Kyle Richardson came charging up the trail with a 35 pound pack on, getting some weighted vert work in, to join us at the summit. Kyle holds the roundtrip FKT up and down Green. Moss and I had been chatting not just 1,000 feet below about how damned fast his time is, so sharing the summit with him was a bit surreal. I thanked him for mailing me his photo-art-mountain-zine “Linking Giants” last year. Moss thanked him for being kind to him and Ellen after her accident. Kyle was sponsored by BD at the time and had been materially and interpersonally supportive. We chatted about gear, and shoes, and races before parting ways—each of us on to other mountains and towns and books for the afternoon. I joked about wondering if I’d also see Anton today to complete my fanboy bingo card. Kyle laughed and said, “Tony’s probably scrambling around down in the flatirons.” Anton is “Tony” now. A friend of a friend.

We descended off the backside of Green on some eminently runnable trails. The ridge leading to Bear Peak gradually came into sight, and we began a short, but very steep, ascent from a broad and windy saddle towards the craggy and prominent summit.

The summit of Bear is a true pinnacle in the sky. Up top, birds dive bombed us as we took in the view back down into Boulder. I guessed that they were a type of swifts. Moss guessed they must be flying over 100mph. I later looked them up. They were white-throated swifts, and they often reach 105 mph. We planned to descend straight to the car and enjoy a lounge-y and food-filled afternoon back in Denver. It had been a great, unexpected, full day together.

We drank some water, ate a bar, and generally luxuriated in the late morning air.

Just as we were about to scramble off the summit, up clambered Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air and several other must-read elements of the western adventure canon and formative texts of my youth and middle age. I asked him sheepishly, if he was him.

“Are you Jon Krakauer?”

“Yep. Who are you?”

“I’m Chris!”

“Nice to meet you, Chris.”

I blurted out as many things as I could think of quickly. I loved all his books. Thanks so much for writing them. A teacher, Karsten Klint, started me on them at 18. Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I still read his work every year.

“Thanks. I’ve got 32 years on you….It’s a great day to be in the mountains.”

I agreed. He went to the top. Moss and I went back down to Boulder, dumbfounded and tingling.

There was a thick, low, mental fog between me and my passions in the two weeks after Hellbender. Energetic doldrums? Sedentary recovery syndrome? Endocrine fuck-ed-ness reset? I just sort of didn’t want to do much. I still had a little spark on most days, willing to go on short jogs, read a bit, and plan for future races, but my stamina was so whacked that I mostly just drifted from thing to thing, aimlessly flailing on a rotation of projects and tasks only for a few minutes at a time, and generally achieving nothing of note. I guess that’s how recovery works.

Go deep and it takes a while to resurface.

Seeing Kyle and Jon in the mountains, doing essentially the same thing I was doing was inspiring and affirming—a timely reminder that my great mountain heroes of running and writing do not awake each morning on a ridge, high above the inversion, prayer flags gently whipping, and crisp cedar needles wafting, kissed by the morning sun, and effortlessly converting its rays into FKTs or art projects or critically acclaimed books and articles for Outside Magazine. They wake up low, like us all, in town, and have to sweat and grunt and drag ass up to higher ground. They have done this for decades and, lord willing, will continue for decades more.

Back down in Boulder, the universe kept providing, and a parking spot came open on Pearl Street just as we pulled up in front of Trident—a famous coffee shop and bookstore. We had cortados and croissants. Moss bought a copy of Kyle’s zine. I bought Kerouac’s Big Sur, because I’d read all the Krakauer they had in stock, which I suppose is true of any bookstore on earth, but I always check.

We joined the 20mph traffic-conga that links Boulder to Golden every afternoon (doesn’t anyone work anymore?). We ate huge burgers at Bob’s Atomic. I drank 3 root beers. Back in Denver, I tried to hit up the florist, but my driver’s license had expired on my birthday, so they wouldn’t let me in to buy flowers. No worries. Next time.

On the walk to dinner, we toured a wizard-themed gaming store. I almost bought myself another cloak and staff, but figured they wouldn’t fit in my backpack for the flight home. We had family-style Chinese and orange wine, and talked about Aristotle, the day’s run, flip-flops, and Patagonia.

That night I read some more of On the Road on the futon in a small circle of yellow light roughly in the center of an isosceles triangle whose three points were Ellen’s work-desk, Jacob’s bikes, and the espresso machine.

I tucked The Overstory and Small Things Like These into my backpack, slept 5 hours, and then gladly accepted a dark ride to the demonic-horse airport from Moss. I flew home with chapped lips and bricked-up quads. I paid for bottomless coffee and had 5 cups in 2.5 hours to help me finish reading On the Road on the flight. I think Jack would have been proud of that.

It was just 48 hours in the Front Range, but now I feel more connected to Moss, some books, the wind, and the good mountain people of our world, of which there thankfully seem to be many, including my friends, near and far, old and new, like Kyle, Jon, Jacob, Ellen, Kim, Spencer, Claire, Tony, Allen, Mike, and Karsten.

when you’re feeling low,

get high,

crispy

Gray rat snakes are native, huge, and fun. They can grow up to 8 feet long and often remain motionless when encountered. This makes them easy to catch, though handling them is not recommended. They are not venomous, but it’s best for the snake if you just leave them be.

They climb trees really well, but are usually seen slithering slowly along trails. This distinguished gentleman was chilling across the Mohican Mountain Bike Trail right around mile marker 14, and didn’t seem too interested in getting out of our way, so we just went off trail to get around him.

Happy hunting,

Chris

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Thank you so much. Thank you to Dr. McBrayer for the introduction. Thank you to the anonymous student who nominated me, though I’m pretty sure I know who you are. Thank you to the award committee for the selection. I consider it a great honor to join this list of great educators who have received the Taylor teaching award.

Congratulations to the other deserving finalists this year. I was a finalist several years before winning, and I am sure you’ll have your turn soon. And of course, congratulations to all the students who will be receiving awards here today. It is a great privilege to share this day of celebration alongside you.

I’ve been asked to speak on excellence in education. I realize I’ll be preaching to the choir, both literally (point at choir) and figuratively, to a room full of award winners selected for their outstanding academic performance.

You all are already doing great work on this campus, so mostly I just need to make sure I don’t say anything to divert you too far off your current course.

OK, as it says on the program, I’m a professor, so I consider this session a lecture more than a speech. Don’t worry, while there will be a quiz associated with today’s lesson, it will not count towards your GPA.

I’ve embedded 16 quotes from great thinkers, educators, coaches, artists, athletes, and writers throughout my remarks, that I hope will shed some interesting light on education or excellence or their intersection.

Your task is to see which ones you catch, and to see if you can correctly attribute them to their original source. I welcome everyone here today to play along mentally. I’ve got the answer key in my pocket, so come see me after the ceremony, or email me with your answers. Some of the quotes are lightly edited or interpolated to fit my remarks without giving the answers away to easily.

Oh and remember we have a robust academic integrity policy. No googling, no asking your neighbor, no cheating of any kind. And lest you think I’m stepping into a possible plagiarism violation myself with this little game by quoting others without naming them, I’ve got all my sources cited in perfect APA style right here on my hard copy, which I will share upon request.

Alright let’s get into it. Apologies for the lengthy preamble, if you

1. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

I have an extremely brief and simple message for you today:

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

These 5 words are simultaneously recognition and suggestion. I could stop right there, but I want to elaborate on how I choose to construe this simple phrase.

I and many others usually interpret the saying, keep up the good work, as mere praise, a pat on the back, for the good work already completed. As you receive your awards today, “keep up the good work” will be just that, a congratulations and reinforcement for work you’ve already done.

I want us to focus on the literal, forward looking message, though. Keep up the good work is a call to continued action. A directive to press on, by doing ever more good work in the future. What a great compliment: the work you have done is good….you should do more of it.

By your very presence here today, I know that you’ve performed well in the classroom, but keep in mind that,

2. “Education is not the filling of a vessel, it is the kindling of a flame.”

Always keep stoking your own fire.

Perhaps you’ve successfully executed complicated procedures in the lab. You must repeat your good work over and over and over, because,

3. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Maybe you’ve practiced and refined the performance of intricate pieces of music. I’m sure you could practice more.

4. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

Some of you may have just recently solved a particularly vexing mathematics problem. Congrats. Find a new one to struggle with.

5. “Before enlightenment chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water.”

If you’ve created beautiful images in the studio, you’ve doubtless done this not all at once in a single masterstroke, but brush by brush.

6. “Consistent competence equals eventual excellence.”

Or maybe you’ve worked out twice a day, 7 days a week, to eek out a 1% improvement in your physical fitness. Good for you. You must continue indefinitely, so that you can someday say, earnestly and honestly, report that,

7. “What I had, I gave. Because what you save is lost forever.”

Regardless of the domain of excellence being pursued, the message is always the same.

KEEP! UP! THE! GOOD! WORK!

Commit to those few, important, vital things that you can make unique contributions to. The good work you’ve done thus far is going to give you opportunities for….more work! Do not squander these opportunities. They may feel like a burden or over your head, but they are a chance to learn and grow and give. If the struggle feels endless or futile, recall that,

8. “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Enjoy the toil and find your meaning in it, because,

9. “To suffer is a privilege.”

Keep showing up; today, tomorrow, and for the long haul. I can assure you that,

10. “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

Even when trying your best, you will encounter barriers, challenges, setbacks, doubts, and moments of despair.

11. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

When this happens, spit out some blood, get up off the mat, and keep on fighting, because,

12. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

In my free time I like to run long distances. I have a relatively long race in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina coming up next month. I know there will be pain. I know there will be fatigue. There might be cramps, and blisters, and vomit, there will likely be overnight hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation. I fear these things. But I also know that I can face them, and keep moving. I will think of you, and know that I, like you, can keep up the good work, even when the good work is hard.

I love running. In fact, I find that,

13. “Life is an excellent metaphor for running.”

The bigger challenges are always the bigger opportunities for learning more about ourselves. Keep in mind that,

14. “We choose to do these things... not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Ok, that’s more than enough lecturing for a Sunday, let’s wrap up.

This room is full of extremely gifted human beings. I feel blessed to know you, and I’m impressed by what you’ve accomplished thus far. But remember, the work is never finished. Even for you seniors, your education is a continuous and endless practice, and,

15. “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

So as we celebrate your achievements, don’t forget that tomorrow is Monday, and you must begin again.

There is no rest for the excellent.

Enjoy the afternoon and evening, but set your alarm early. Upon waking,

16. “first be a good animal.”

Drink some water, eat a good breakfast, move your body a bit, then get your butt to class.

I’ll see you there.

Thank you, and keep up the good work.

~Chris

(make your guesses for the sources of the 16 quotes in the comments, and I’ll share the answer key at some point)

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They are not native, but I don’t care. They have so taken to North America that they are now considered naturalized, meaning they are fully integrated into the local ecosystem. Some call them weeds. That’s just mean and has no basis in science or reality.

They are the sun, the moon, and the stars.

The example individuals pictured below are from AU’s campus, the Ringler soccer complex, Freer Field, and my front yard.

Go find some for yourself and send me the photo evidence.

Happy Hunting,

Chris

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I’m all in.

The Hellbender course is finally set.

102.5 miles with 20,000 feet of climbing and descending.

It’s gonna take a long time. I’m in the middle of my final training push. Two more weeks of high volume work and then a 10-day taper. I’ve run more miles than ever this winter and spring. I feel ready.

Starting this fall, I will be the Ashland Arrows Middle School Boys Cross Country Coach. I plan to wear a hat, tuck my shirt into some golf shorts, string a whistle and stopwatch around my neck, and carry a clipboard. I genuinely could not be more excited for this opportunity to work with the Men of Ashland on more than Super Optionals. I hope that we have fun, work hard, support each other, deepen our love for the pure thrill and freedom of movement on foot, and win OCCs.

Vinyl Marketing and AU made this little video about the overlap between my running and scientific work. It is of course a promotional video geared towards potential donors and students, but I still think it’s pretty cool. Right on cue, a large-scale project that I contributed to alongside a few of my AU colleagues was published in Nature and made the cover of the magazine.

I’ve written a few things since sending out the last running letter. If you haven’t read them already, here are links to Quite Valley, Roaring Mountain, Book Report: A Sand County Almanac, and Eiger Daydreams.

I did not win the writing competition that I submitted Eiger Daydreams for. Oh well. It was fun to try, and I’m happy with the story I published. I think I’ll try for more things like this going forward, even if it’s just an excuse to write and share stories that I otherwise wouldn’t write.

A nice thing about writing and publishing is that people hold you to your written word and remind you of happy things you may forget about yourself.

If you write about evening higgenlaufens for instance, someone might send you a postcard a week later saying that it was a cool piece, and maybe this postcard arrives just as you are thinking you should slump into a little maladaptive pile of flesh on the floor and grump away the rest of the evening, but instead you lace up your shoes and move and of course feel awesome.

Or maybe you write about doing office pullups and your son’s doctor asks you how they’ve been going during a quick ear-ache check-up and so you light up and smile because they’re going great and someone remembered the nerdy little thing you’ve been doing.

Or maybe your neighbor brings you a book about mushrooms and another book about climbing mountains, because they can tell from your blog that you might be into that sort of stuff.

If you want people to know you, you need to tell them about yourself, and I don’t care much for talking when I’m not at work, so instead I write, and receive these little reader artifacts in return—a full and warm chest of gifted golden ingots.

The semester is racing to a close. Here are my overall grades for weeks 10-13.

• Training: 210 miles on foot, 175 running, 35 hiking, ~20,000 vert (a month to match the vert of hellbender…), B+

• Reading: 876 pages across 5 books, finished 2, A-

• Writing: 5,279 words in the secret manuscript, B

See you on the other side of the mountain,

~Coach Crispy

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Ashland County is right in the heart of their native range, covering almost all of eastern North America. I found these Beauties in Freer Field all along the Hardwoods Loop.

Happy hunting. Send me a picture, let me know where you find them, challenge others to join in, and don’t forget it’s still open season on False Turkey Tail and Eastern White Pine!

Chris

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False turkey tail feeds on fallen trees, typically in hardwood forests. It’s native to Java, but seems to be doing just fine over here in Ashland. Maybe we’ll do “true” turkey tail in the future.

I found this pack of Stereum Ostrea in Freer Field, about 40 yards Northeast of the vernal pool, but they are flowering all over the county right now, particularly in Mohican and Byers Woods.

Send in your pics, the weirder and wilder the better, and suggest a species for next week if you’ve got a favorite.

Happy hunting!

p.s. don’t eat this one.

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***

Leaning my armpits onto my poles, I told Kevin I wanted to soak up the scene. Hot cheese and cold rugenbrau wafted from the patio. Friends caught up in at least five languages, laughing in the afternoon sun. We took a few deep breaths in the shadow of Eiger’s North Face, preparing to ski four thousand vertical feet of Ricola-commercial-worthy terrain.

Kevin is tall, boyish, and lean. His cackle is infectious, fun, and welcoming. It carries across rooms and valleys. We’ve stood together in life’s big moments: his wedding, my wedding, and winning the Little 500, the bike race depicted in Breaking Away.

***

This saddle of repose is Kleine Scheideg, a perch of civilization with a direct view of the Eiger’s notorious climbing lines. I first heard about it in Jon Krakauer’s Eiger Dreams. Krakauer and legendary alpinist Mark Twight progress high up the Nordwand–a coveted target for alpinists–before getting weathered off and bailing instead of risking their lives to ledge, rock, and ice falls.

I craned to study the route. Cornices peeled off and wisped little paths down the face, past the Hinterstoisser Traverse, where a 1936 party cleared a long and exposed seam in the center of the wall. Shortly after his heroics on the traverse, Andreas Hinterstoisser died in an avalanche.

I spotted the Death Bivouac, a tiny ledge where two members of the same party spent a frigid and fatal night shivering out the dark hours before the sun would return along with a chance at survival.

Standing safely on this bluebird December day, some little part of me longed for an exposed bivy, a tenuous traverse, pitches of rock and ice, and a final push through the White Spider snowfield.

Kevin snapped me out of it; Kim might be getting hungry. I waved Auf Wiedersehen to the Nordwand. No more imagined heroics for me today, and likely no actual heroics for a good long while. At least Krakauer took a crack at it before tucking tail!

We turned our tips downhill towards Grindelwald. Gravity tugged us into a timeless flow of arcing turns and swooshing snow. The bracing air rosed my cheeks. Cows chewed, their bells jangling lazily.

***

Kev never moved back to the states. You can guess the story. He met a beautiful, smart, and ambitious girl from Cava de Tirenni. They crafted a life together, raised two little kids in Luxembourg, and excelled in their accounting careers. He also whittled his marathon time down well under 3-hours and will probably push it lower still.

And I never did make it back to the Alps. You already know the story. I had created life with Kim and turned my attention to creating a life with her. Adventures would diminish in scope and risk for a decade or two.

But first, Kevin and I savored the descent.

***

We skidded to a clean stop, racked our skis, and waddled over to Kim. Did I mention Kim was kind? Kind enough to lie to us. She reportedly had not gotten bored or hungry while we galivanted. “What’s next?”

Grown up stuff seemed about ready to sluff off the Eiger and tomahawk down valley into my temples. The delivery, parenting, a PhD defense, an assistant professor gig, moving to Amish country, buying a house, and hopefully learning to love modest and safe adventures in a new backyard.

But first, lunch, then a night in Interlaken, New Years in Zurich, a train to Paris to visit family, and a flight home to Cincinnati. To cheer myself up on the train, I read a book about dying by noted pessimist, Christopher Hitchens. Or did I read a book about dying by noted optimist, Oliver Sachs? My memory is fuzzed. Either way, it was some secular sage I used to worship wrestling with their own unique and universal mortality.

***

Ten years after our trip, I was crying in Mohican State Park, watching the second sunrise of my first 100-mile run. The pain was immense. I’d been peg-legging alone through the night. My knee couldn’t bend without an audible crunch and hot liquid anguish filling my body from the center out. The bones of my foot were apparently trying to escape the skin. Blisters and chafing abounded.

Hearing Soundgarden’s Black Hold Sun in my headphones put me over the edge. The finish line was 8 hours of self-inflicted torture away. I knew I was going to get it done. I wept, happy for myself. I walked the 100th mile with our youngest son on my back. It took me 32 hours. Far from fast, in the context of ultra-racing, but lightning personified in the context of geological time.

***

I had found trail running soon after we moved, dosing it into my days as a way to relax, cope with the absurdity of modern life, and process ideas between classes, labs, and committee meetings. Camus said we must imagine Sisyphus happy. If you can’t do that, go ahead and imagine him as a slow, graying, forgetful, but satisfied Dad of 3, mostly hiking around Ohio’s 7th most popular state park.

Over the years, Kim built a successful business and ran marathons occasionally, one while pregnant with our second son. I published influential scientific papers, ran four consecutive Mohican 100s, taught psychology to thousands of students, learned to climb traditionally protected rock routes, got tenure, set PRs in the mile and the marathon, and generally created a life I am proud of and enjoy.

It turned out I didn’t need the Alps.

***

But maybe I want the Alps?

Slowly at first, then all of a sudden, life got a little easier, and parenting got a lot less tiring. I started daydreaming again. The Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, a 105 mile race around the French, Swiss, and Italian Alps, burrowed its way into my brain, and joined my wish list, right alongside Western States and Hardrock.

To get into UTMB, one must collect “stones”-UTMB’s cringe title for lottery tickets–by completing qualifying races. Stones don’t exactly grow out of the Ohio loam. They mostly come from long, grueling races in far-off, expensive places. I have time, though. Life is long. Our kids move out soon, in the context of geological time, at least.

I can smell the cheese and hear the bells again. In these new visions, crowds scream as I hike up le Col du Bonhomme, and I navigate the crowded streets of Chamonix through finisher’s tears. Kim, our boys, and Kevin are all there waiting for me.

If these daydreams stay just that, if I never circle the Mont Blanc Massif in a push, that’s fine, but let a boy dream. I’m trying to.

Now I just need the stones.

I submitted this story to a writing competition organized by Run the Alps. The winner will get an all-expenses-paid weeklong residency in Chamonix to run and write. I’m sure my chances are extremely slim, but the writing process was fun regardless of outcome.

I typically peck away at stories over a long period of time, and then on some random day, decide to hammer out a final draft and publish. This one was different. It had a set deadline, and the turnaround was brief, by my standards, at 9 days from first learning of the competition until submission.

I worked through Brendan Leonard’s online writing course, which consists of 12 lessons and writing exercises, with a 1,200 word story as the main assignment. I enjoyed the course when I first took it, a little over a year ago, to write Hooked. It was really fun to revisit the lessons and use them to help draft a new story. I highly recommend the class.

Luckily the word limit for the competition was exactly 1,200 words. At the end of the course, I had a solid working draft of the story. I then read and applied some of the rules from Good Writing by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott.

I probably could have kept refining and improving the story for months, but I submitted what I had last night. I’ve dropped some process pictures blow, showing various stages of drafts, notes, and edits.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

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Eastern White Pines are evergreen conifers native to Ohio.

They grow over 150 feet tall and host hawks, ospreys, eagles, woodpeckers, herons, and owls (all of which will be WANTED ALIVE in Ashland County once I buy a fancy camera).

This individual lives next to the creek, 100 yards southeast of the Ohio Bicentennial Barn in Freer Field.

Its name is Sentinel.

Go find it or another representative of the Pinus Strobus species alive in Ashland County, or anywhere else, and tell us. If you send pretty pictures, I’ll share them.

Feel free to suggest an exemplary species or individual for next week.

Happy hunting!

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I ran and walked a minimally acceptable amount (40 miles), but I wasn’t able to devote much time to reading or writing, and when I did find a little pocket of mental freedom on Thursday evening, I didn’t much feel like using it well.

So I just went for a walk, and then as if by magic, I felt better, so I did a little reading, and then I did a little writing, and now here we are, writing a quick story about how I got my hands on a nature-canon-classic that had eluded my grasp for over 40 years.

I first heard of A Sand County Almanac, and Aldo Leopold, as a teenager while reviewing lists of the greatest adventure and outdoor books of all time. These lists, probably in National Geographic and Outside Magazine, are where I first learned about many of the classics:

• Into Thin Air—Krakauer’s gripping account of hubris and death on Everest in the 90’s

• Worst Journey in the World—Cherry-Garrard’s disaster-survival epic from an ill-fated south pole expedition (which I’ve started twice but never finished…a sad note on my reading endurance)

• My First Summer in the Sierra—Muir’s magnum opus that partially led to the creation of Yosemite National Park

• Walden—Thoreau’s “no-introduction-needed” self-experiment (confession: I’ve never finished this one either!!!!!)

• A Walk in the Woods—Bryson’s everyman-hikes-the-AT comedy

• Desert Solitaire—Abbey’s agro-environmentalist masterpiece

• Sailing Alone Around the World—Slocum’s journal from his record-setting circumnavigation

• The Snow Leopard—Matthiessen’s account of his scientific trek through the Himalaya that turns into a prolonged meditation on searching for elusive things

A Sand County Almanac just kinda sorta kept coming in second-place for about 25 years whenever I was picking what to read next. I’m not really sure why. It just never fully grabbed my attention. Maybe it was the down-home-aw-shucks title? It didn’t sound like the kind of book where anyone was going to die in an alpine avalanche or find God in the heart of the Grand Canyon.

I’ve had a google calendar reminder to get a copy of it for a few years now. I just kept bumping it from one week to the next. As I was constructing my syllabus for Spring Semester, I put it on the reading list, but then crossed it off in lieu of other books that I actually had on my shelf.

Then my brother-in-law-by-way-of-best-friend—Tommy Freeborn—texted me out of the blue…

I edited my google calendar reminder so the text was in ALL CAPS. That oughta do it…

Then life kept on life-ing, and I kept on reading other books for no good reason other than I was stoked on them.

A few months later, I was perusing the local paper, when I saw…

I planned to go! Finally, I’d get my copy.

But then March 7th came around, and a cascading chain of youth soccer, chores, and parenting events far too boring to enumerate intervened and prevented my attendance. But at this point, I was committed to getting the book and unwilling to ignore all the signs the universe was sending me.

Rowe, Kai, and I headed over to the library for a look around. The youths showed me how to use the library computer. Their system had many copies of A Sand County Almanac listed, but this being a modern library, there were zero books of the actual book on the shelves for books. I could get a pdf, a kindle copy, an audio download, or a weeks-long wait for an actual book. Satisfied by none of these non-book-in-hand options, I went home with nothing and tucked back into Long Distance by Bill McKibben.

Then came a knock on the door. Neighbor Steve! Neighbor Steve is…my neighbor.

He’s also Rowe’s Math teacher’s father. He’s also a member of Pastor Nate’s flock. He’s also an artist. He’s also a nature lover. He’s also a role model and mentor to many, luckily including me.

Steve is extremely active in the county parks department, helping with trail maintenance, putting on art classes, and advocating for the parks in any which way he can.

When a tree falls in Freer Field, Steve and his friends come and care for it, clearing the trail and leaving a cute little stack of wood off to the side.

The last time Steve showed up knocking at my door, he was carrying the beautiful gift you see below—a visual representation of the the Chartier homestead and family tree.

I welcomed Steve inside, and he produced my elusive quarry—a brand new copy of A Sand County Almanac.

“Have you ever read this, Chris? I think you might like it.”

The stars had aligned!

I subjected Steve to all of the details documented above plus a few more for good measure, thanked him for the perfect gift, and opened it straight away.

The book was published in 1949 and has three main parts. The first is a collection of essays that Aldo wrote about a farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin, that he purchased, nourished, and appreciated as a summer retreat in his later years. It’s on the US National Register of Historic Places so you can go check out the farm and his little shack if you like (romantic date idea…).

The second part describes Aldo’s travels and reflections in Illinois, Arizona, Mexico, and Alberta. The book closes with a manifesto of sorts, cataloging various conservation and outdoor recreation communities, principles, perspectives, and reasons for protecting wild and natural places near and far.

In terms of influential ideas, Aldo’s “land ethic” has become a central theme in modern conservation, suggesting that we extend ethical concern usually reserved for humans and animals to complex biological systems and even the land itself. A Sand County Almanac is rightly considered a must-read for nature lovers and has sold millions of copies…none to me.

I think it’s classic for many reasons. A few favorite lines:

A few words and phrases I’d never encountered:

But wait, Aldo can cut you down too! A few heavy hitters:

The main feeling that this book instills in me is one of deep appreciation for what’s wild and beautiful right where I live. What a gift.

I actually saw Steve again today. He was walking to church and I was heading home after hiking with Quinn. We often bump into each other and chat away many minutes while ignoring whatever responsibility we were supposed to be attending to—a couple of excited boys sharing ideas and experiences with a friendly ear.

We got to talking about “the back forty.” I didn’t understand this phrase. Steve says it frequently, but I never asked what it means, and Aldo uses it liberally. Time was, in the 1800s, homestead laws set aside 160 acres per settling family, often with 40 acres left untrammeled and relatively wild. People now use the phrase to refer to any remote or undeveloped landscape.

We all have a back 40 to visit and cherish somewhere close at hand. For me it’s literally my back yard. For you it may be across town, or a short drive away.

Get out there and love it.

After the vocabulary lesson, Steve invited me to walk the Camino de Santiago Trail with him this fall. He’s going to do a test walk this week to see how he holds up over many miles. I wish him well but imagine I won’t be able to join him on this path.

A nice walk and talk with Neighbor Steve only requires a sabbath. A 1,000 kilometer pilgrimage across Spain may require a sabbatical. I’ve got one coming up in a few years…

Ok, back to my chair in the Solstice Library. I actually still have 12 pages to go!

Thanks, Aldo

Thanks, Steve

~Crispy

p.s. reading this book gave me an idea for a new game I’m calling “Wanted Alive in Ashland County.” I’m going to post pictures of the various species I encounter when I’m out and about in the back 40 by foot, bike, or boat. Each week I’ll post a species and challenge y’all to go and see one for yourself. I’ll post these to substack and to the Righteous Path’s Instagram account so you can share a pic in the comments if you’re successful. The first edition goes out this Friday. My boys are out back searching for bugs and birds and plants to take pictures of as I type. Happy hunting!

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Outside of 100-mile races, which sit alone in some fringe category not quite comparable to normal life, that’s my biggest running week ever.

Coach K and I snuck off to the Smokies and found what we were looking for—a trail runners’ paradise, completely devoid of other trail runners.

In 2 days of majestic travel over 43 miles of trail, we crossed paths with exactly zero other runners. It’s fun to be move relatively quickly through such scenic and historic terrain. No rush—just seeing as much as we can in 11 hours on foot.

The dank tank was loaded down with 11 books and 6 pairs of running shoes as we headed south, stopping for a little shakeout in the Red River Gorge to loosen the legs with 4 hilly miles, followed by a bath in the river, and a pie on the front porch of a world heritage site: Miguel’s.

We jogged 2 more miles to shake out the second half of the travel on Schoolhouse Gap Road after arriving at our quiet valley and cozy cabin in Townsend, Tennessee.

It was a dark morning in the valley on Tuesday. All the sounds were far off in the comfortable distance. Jays, cardinals, warblers, crows, roosters, finches, sparrows, doves, robins, starlings. Farm dogs circling the cows and goats. Thunder rumbling over the ridge. Kids talking as busses screeched to a stop. The day’s efforts were still off over the ridge too. More coffee and cream and reading and breathing first.

We parked 10 miles down a gravel road along the Middle Prong of the Little River, crossed an old wagon bridge, and began a continuous ascent of three thousand five hundred uninterrupted feet of climbing in drizzle. Rhododendron and Maidenhair Fern were glowing at us in every shade of green I know of plus a few more.

There were no big views, even up top. Just sideways rain, cold hands, and a sublime little bubble of living cloud. I wish the climbing could have gone on forever. We’d be on the moon about now.

Our ascension ended when we joined the Appalachian Trail high on the ridge between Thunderhead Mountain and Buckeye Gap. For about a mile we actually traversed the Tennessee - North Carolina border. And still we saw not a soul.

We turned downhill to head towards the car on the Miry Ridge trail, which was mostly just a thorny and muddy, but still fun, deer path down and into the Panther Creek ravine. We crossed paths with just one party on this stretch, a haggard and sogging crew of 20-somethings dragging their way up to the AT.

The last 4 miles were continuous and smooth descending. Tough on the quads but easy on the heart. Literal tons of water were moving down the “little river” alongside us, and bucket-loads of families were hiking the lower section of triple-track now that the rain was finally letting up for the day.

21 miles with 3,750 feet.

JP and I are now the 6th and 7th fastest runners on the loop (never you mind that only 18 people have done it).

We spent a long and loungy afternoon snacking and reading and listening to sad-boy music like Father John Misty and Uncle Tupelo. Essentially, we were being very good boys and resting our legs for another big outing the next day. I love the slow pace of mountain running and the no pace of recovery in a long-forgotten valley.

Long Distance by Bill McKibben has been really stimulating. I’d first read it about 15 years ago, before I was as old as Bill was when he embarked on a year-long quest to get as good as he could at cross country skiing. He spent the year training long hours with intense interval work and raced quite respectably in 50k events at the end of the experiment.

The latter half of the book deals with his dad dying while Bill is in the peak of his most arduous training, causing him to reflect on the endurance overlap in aerobic pursuits and life itself.

It planted a little germinating seed in my mind. Perhaps 100 milers are practice runs at dying well, even more than they are at living well. I need to pay close attention and capture the lessons after the bonk.

We train and train and train so that we don’t have regrets at the race and can finish with the rarest of all things down here on earth: calm contentment. Satisfaction and a willingness to strive no more. Respite from the otherwise constant and eternal struggle upwards out of the dark valleys.

So too we live our days and decades in the hopes that on some far-off, back-porch evening we may be permitted to lay down for the last time knowing we did it right and are happy with our efforts, in the face of our unique challenges, hemmed in by our idiosyncratic limitations and faults, having fully expressed our strengths, and allowed our own personal fire to burn bright and long.

I hope I die the way I walk in the last marathon of my 100-milers. Slow and limping, of course, but resolute. Smiling through the pain. Thankful for the company and help. Proud of the effort. Maybe wishing a couple things had gone different, but mostly happy that I tried hard and followed my path.

Day two was the real monster of the week. Up the second highest peak in the East, along a complex network of rocky ridges, and rooty flanks, then plunging back down into the thick air of the White Oak Flats.

We climbed for an hour and a half with a nice mild sweat on our backs, but a mountain breeze cooling our limbs. Water ran down the shale underfoot. Views opened as we ascended. The labor was easy, only having run 21 miles yesterday. We drank from the pure spring behind the closed lodge.

We had a gel at Cliff Tops. We sunbathed at Myrtle Point and shared snacks with the chickadees, looking out over the whole southwest shoulder of the smoky range.

Maybe we never came down. Maybe we’re still up there stretching and reading and enjoying the view, talking about training and all the cool things we still want to do…someday.

The party was rocking out at Charlie’s Bunion. Hikers were relaxing on the rocks looking a bit tired and eager for their return trip Newfound Gap, then Gatlinburg for anything and everything civilization ever invented to soothe a modern soul.

From the rocky outcropping there’s a grand view looking back at Mount LeConte and the Boulevard Trail that we’d just taken.

After four and a half hours, fifteen miles, and a vertical mile of climbing, we still felt smooth and strong and energetic. My head was a little foggy from spending so much time up around 6,000 feet of elevation, but I never stopped enjoying myself.

JP rolled his ankle once just before the Jump Off and then again just after the Bunion, so we proceeded conservatively the rest of the way, nursing him in and making sure he didn’t do any lasting damage. Last I heard, all is recovering well.

In the last stretch of Appalachian Trail, as you approach Newfound Gap, things start getting wilder and more “civilized” with each step. Objects that you forgot existed begin appearing around every corner — children, the elderly, sandals, bluetooth speakers, slim jims, mountain dew, gym bros, yoga pants, trump hats. It’s a progressive immersion into the bowels of some sort of Noah’s Ark stocked to the gunwales with regressive American specimens and artifacts.

And then the coup de grâce — Newfound Gap itself. After spending 5 hours in the relative serenity of the trails, the massive parking area is a fetid feeding trough for the sensory systems.

Huge groups of tourists and gawkers and slow walkers mill around and strategize their next gargantuan meal, and the quickest way to appease the one member of their group that wants to move around a little bit and see more than the selfie-plaque, so they can descend back into the valley and check out Ripley’s Biggest Ever Corn Dogs or whatever the foul fuck it is.

We dropped a few thousand feet in 4 miles along the Park Road. The shoulder was mostly ample, except for a little adventure inside a tunnel that required some fourth—class tip-toe-ing along an elevated platform a few vertical yards above the traffic.

We stopped for our river bath early, two miles from the car, when the perfect pool presented itself to us.

A few excited fellas, hiking along the road towards the Alum Cave trail, asked me what I was training for. They seemed pretty stoked by the answer.

22 miles with 5,433 feet.

I was done training big for the week already on Wednesday before sunset.

49 miles in 3 days.

Just 11 more miles in 4 days to hit my targets.

After a swift pint with the lads down in Gatlinburg, we porchmaxxed all evening, feeling the storm roll in on a cold wind.

I read A Sand County Almanac one sentence at a time.

Last light was at 8:04.

First rain hit at 8:24.

Goodnight.

Laying in bed, I was overwhelmed by the realization that maybe the reason I note and underline so much when I’m reading is that when a book makes me have a very specific and new-to-me feeling, I want to hold onto it or stow it away somehow. I want to trap the feeling and control it and make sure I can feel it again someday on command.

These little epiphanies and nice thoughts that authors plant in me seem too good and delicious to just let them flit away. This is probably the same reason I take pictures on trail runs. Like all the similar shots I took of JP’s butt up on LeConte. But of course the feeling goes and probably won’t ever come back around no matter how dutiful I am in my annotations.

And yet the notes and dog-ears and pictures sometimes do work as reminders that allow me to at least hear an echo of the original shout. I try to be a good guest on the trail, in the book, and in the moment. Pay attention. Take notes. Snap a few pictures. Say a little prayer of thanks. Come back if able. Pass the feeling on to others, including a future version of myself.

It rained hard all night. I woke up early and read a few more chapters by headlamp over a pot of coffee.

Books are so cheap. This copy was free to me, a long story that I’ll tell sometime, but the back cover said $15.95. That was the same price as my burger in Gatlinburg.

This one will feed me for a week.

This trip was a good test. We moved well, even up large and steep mountains. We enjoyed the views and the people we encountered. We ate and drank like serious athletes. We climbed with poles in zone 2 and descended via gentle jogs in zone 1.

All felt free and breezy.

I hope miles 20-60 of Hellbender feel like this.

What happens from mile 60 onward, is for me and the course to sort out later.

Only 8 more weeks until the Final Exam for Hellbender 420.

Here are my grades for week 9:

• Training: 62 miles on foot. 60 running. 2 hiking. 11,490 vert. 17:16 total training time. A

• Reading: A light week by pages—just 158. I finished Long Distance, am really enjoying A Sand County Almanac, and continue deeply studying and taking copious notes from The Examined Run by Sabrina Little, which I may post a book report on. B-

• Writing: 1,840 new words in the less-secret-by-the-day manuscript, for 40,679 thus far, well on pace for the 50-60k desired by the end of the semester. B

• Friendship: Spent so many great hours with JP, celebrating 20 years of training camps. Still moving and thinking and externally processing together. Can’t wait to toe the line and then sit on the finish line with you. We’re both getting pulled in the Hardrock lottery next year for sure, dude. A+

Keep your pencils sharpened,

Crispy

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To enter my office, aka my work shed, I must do a pullup using the 2-inch edge on top of the door jam. I even installed some grip tape to season the skin and sand off excuses about sweaty hands or slick paint.

To leave my office I have to drop down and hit one or two pushups. I’m mixing those up: diamond, clap, feet elevated, seal splayed, strict, wide, offset, archer, etc.

I’m getting some minor activation of fingers, forearms, lats, biceps, triceps, shoulders, and pecs even while I’m trapped at my lovely place of employment. A few students have noticed. If I’m radicalizing the youth, which of course I hope I am, it’s in the dark arts of sneaking fitness progress into vocational and intellectual pursuits.

I’ve logged 44 finger pullups and 53 pushups so far. I know it’s not much, but it’s very much not nothing.

Hellbender is a mountain ultra and will require mountain muscles and mountain toughness. I want to be STOKED and YOKED. This slow drip approach should accrue a fair bit of additional strength and jacked-ness and general mountain rowdiness by exam week. I don’t think these incidental moves detract too much from my energy for running training.

When in doubt….move.

Hellbender is also apparently a very dangerous wilderness expedition if the required gear list is any indication. From the most recent informational email sent to all registrants:

And a reminder of our required gear list as you start planning your race. Due to the unpredictable mountain weather on this course we will require all RUNNERS and PACERS to carry the following gear at ALL times for their safety. This includes: headlamp, back-up light and batteries, flashing redlight to be worn on the back during nighttime road sections, weather proof jacket (seam-sealed), emergency bivy (an emergency blanket does not count), insulating long sleeve base layer, warm hat and gloves, emergency whistle, calories, hydration carrier (40oz+), water filter/purification, cell phone or Garmin inReach, and GPS unit provided by the race. We will be very strict about these gear requirements. We will have mandatory gear checks before race start, and at multiple times during the race. We will reserve the right to pull runners and/or pacers from the course at any time if you are not carrying the required gear.

Bruh, chill.

That’s a lot.

Time to spend some money and load down my vest. So much for my weight management mantra—“the lean wolf leads the pack.” So much for a clean and unencumbered aesthetic. So much for showing off my new office-chiseled physique by running shirtless with one bottle and a gel in my little belt thingy.

I’m getting a little antsy about my running volume and the rapid approach of the race. Block 2 is done (grades down below). There are only two more blocks and then a taper to go! Oh how time keeps going, too fast and too slow at the same time.

Will I be ready? Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter this week reminded me that “no one is every ready.”

So true. No need to panic train. I can’t cram for this exam.

I’ll just stay on the Righteous Path, building slowly, forever. Coach K has me training hard but sensibly. Hellbender will get the Crispy I give it, and that will be enough. I won’t win, but I will finish, and I will live to train, and read, and write another day.

Just because no one is ever ready doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try! If I keep waiting for perfect conditions, in my life, or in the world, or at work, to really crack on with this running and mountain adventuring thing, or writing the books I have planned, or reading all the books on my list, I’ll be on my deathbed any minute now wondering if tomorrow is the right day to start increasing my training volume a little bit.

So instead let’s of dying with training-volume-related regrets, let’s go pretty big right now and carry on building until fate strikes us down or we accomplish everything we’ve ever dreamed of at which point we can finally just garden and read poems and take care of our big rock and live in a little hobbit hole for the next several hundred years because that whispering salamander in Mohican was right and we’re actually wizards after all.

All this to say, I’m going to put in…

MY BIGGEST EVER RUNNING WEEK

(100-mile race weeks don’t count)

…to see how the body handles it. I’m hoping for 60 miles. Here is a brief history of my biggest ever running weeks. This whole review was prompted by Rowe on a recent run. Thanks for asking!

• September 21st, 2020. 58 miles. Training for the MoFundo.

• August 29th, 2022. 51 miles. Training for the Columbus Marathon.

• April 3rd, 2023. 52 miles. Training for the Mohican 100.

• April 7th, 2024. 55 miles. Training for the Mohican 100.

The response to my “super optionals” essay has been really gratifying. My typical readers of course ate it up (shout out Mom), but I also heard from new folks via DMs and text messages saying that they enjoyed it, and that it was moving or touching for them.

These little reactions mean a lot to me. They make the writing feel more worthwhile or validated or important to keep doing when I’m not in one of my occasional, semi-manic, states of inspiration. I started writing “super optionals” in November on our Thanksgiving vacation. I put it away for weeks at a time, but I occasionally pulled it back out for a few minutes to work on reorganizing a little section, or to select which pictures to use, or how much of my own feelings to inject into the summary, or which paragraphs to cut out entirely, then reinsert, then cut back out again, until eventually I was ready to share it with the world. Brandon Leonard calls these little messages of appreciation from readers “emotional paychecks.” My rainy day fund is full.

Rowe got second at the Super Bull Trail 5k today, running 27 flat on a very muddy, technical, and hilly course.

Meanwhile, I have been a very brave boy and survived a rest week. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing, just sitting there and enduring the palpable sense of time passing like a thick, chewy, sludge. You mostly just….wait. The training is working inside you. Slowly. Invisibly. You can’t check on it, by running long or fast, or you’ll ruin it.

The best recovery advice is the same as the best advice I’ve heard for saving money: “go inside your house and lay down.”

Listening to good advice sucks.

I find it all so painfully asymmetrical. You’re telling me I have to laze around, hardly moving, for seven days, in a row_, just so I can run hard for the next 21?

Oh well, I guess it’s a good time to get caught up on some work stuff. Mostly I’ve been trying to follow the now-quite-famous Work Shorter plan: “work hard twice a week, long once a week, and then accumulate as few other work minutes as you can safely manage.” This rest week lets me accumulate some of those minutes so I can safely manage logging fewer between now and race day.

Hellbender 420 Grades for Week 7

• Running quiz: Really lovely 20 miler in Mohican. I did it as a gentle squeeze-progression and PR’d a bunch of Strava segments without trying very hard. Feeling fit. A

• Training: 56 miles on foot. 46 running. 10 hiking. 6,752 vert. 17:12 total training time. A

• Reading: 216 pages. 2,443 total. B+

• Writing: 2,500 new words in the manuscript. 35,573 total. A-

Hellbender 420 Grades for Week 8

• Resting: 41 miles on foot. 30 running and 11 hiking. 2,953 feet up and down. 12:56 total training time. A for lack of effort

• Writing: 3,266 more words in the manuscript. Things are taking shape nicely. I've also met my goal of publishing something every Sunday so far this semester. I’m really happy of myself. A

• Reading: 290 pages this week. I finished two very different, but both very great, books—"Make It” by Brendan Leonard and “A Year in the Maine Woods” by Bernd Heinrich. I hope these two dudes have met. A+

One passage from the Heinrich made me think of my friends and smile:

I’m off for a brief training camp in the Smokies with Coach K.

I love these old mountains

Catch you in the morning moonlight,

Crispy

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Last October, a handful of 6th and 7th graders were preparing to race a Thanksgiving 5k and sought my guidance, perhaps because they notice me running a lot at meets in between yelling encouraging things at them like “embrace the pain” and “finish on empty.” The Turkey Trot would be just over 5 weeks after the middle school conference championships, where they’d come a disappointing third behind the Lexington Minutemen and Wooster Generals. The first step in battle-sharpening our Ashland Arrows would be this little off-season training block.

I was already planning to run most days with Rowe, and I had some autumn races of my own to prepare for, so I invited a few of the boys tag along on our runs each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That left me three days a week—Friday for track intervals, Saturday for long trail runs, and Sunday for hikes—to round out my own training.

Suddenly I needed a plan. They would show up eager to run and expecting instructions! We began on day 1 of the off season, a Monday, with 6 by 400 meters at aspirational 5k pace, plus drills and stretching and socializing.

It was immediately rewarding. They seemed to see me as a kind of coach, which I suppose I was. I loved the role as well as the workouts. Three 6th graders and four 7th graders participated in at least one session in our 5-week block. Folks just joined on the days they chose. These sessions were so optional that they weren’t even officially “optional” for the team. I decided to call them “super optionals,” joking at first, then eventually using the term seriously.

Three of the boys were still juggling travel soccer through the fall, while another had officially retired from the beautiful game to fully take up the art of endurance. One made the 7th grade basketball team (hell yeah) and thus had to bow out when practices started. Rowe and I were present for every session.

A super optional session would typically start with a few minutes of chit chat and checking in. We warmed up easy, discussed our running goals, hopped through dynamic activation drills and leg swings, completed a structured workout or steady long run, and closed with strides, a cool down jog, stretches, and hyping up each other up on our job well run.

Our goals for the fall included running a sub-20 5k, finishing a 5k for the first time, breaking 14 minutes in the two mile, and running 5:40:00 in a trail 50k.

We shared miles on soccer fields, wooded trails, country roads, gravel, dirt, the track, and in our neighborhoods, the rain, snow, sleet, wind, and the cool sunshine of ever-shortening evenings.

We did strides most days to build neuromuscular coordination and raw speed. We ran track sessions to tune up our anaerobic power and leg turnover. 400s, 200s, 400s, 200s, 400s. We developed our aerobic engines with fartleks, progressions, and long slow cruisers.

But mostly we just enjoyed the daily act of running and enjoying each others’ company. I stayed quiet and listened to plenty of girl-focused gossip from the 7th graders, and clash of clans strategizing from the 6th graders.

On the easy days we often played a game called “guess the pace.” I wore a GPS watch while most of the boys were tech-free. We’d pick a target pace as a group—7:12 or 8:34 or 10:45 per mile—and the boys would take turns trying to lead the pack at that pace for a pre-determined distance. At the end of the interval, they each got to call out their guesses for the pace we’d actually run. If the guesses were close, coach had to do sit-ups that night before bed. If the guesses were off the mark, the boys had to do sit-ups that night before bed.

Most of the boys were mildly to wildly inaccurate, but they got slightly better over the 5 weeks, tuning into the internal and external cues of pacing and speed, learning to differentiate “race pace” from “tempo” from “threshold” from “steady” from “slow” from “easy.”

CS was an exception the rule of inaccuracy. That boy just never missed. He’d calmly tap out the prescribed pace when it was his turn to lead, and confidently guess the pace the others’ had set when it was his turn to follow. He perceived the very fabric of space time. I still suspect some sort of covert spy craft technique whereby he was receiving data from my watch spoken into a hidden earpiece or something.

Don’t tell the boys, but I never did my sit-ups.

All in all, there were 19 sessions – totaling 73 miles. We took Halloween off so they could all trick or treat. This is a transitional age. They were willing to work hard, to willingly occupy a place of pain and effort day in and day out, but they’re still children.

Our biggest super optionals was on an unassuming Wednesday night. All 8 of us boys—CC, RC, GM, CM, EJ, CS, RR, and KC—got in 3 miles in the hood from 4:45pm to 5:30pm with a 5:15pm sunset.

RR saw his old house. He moved out of our neighborhood when he was 6, after his parents split up and only has foggy memories of the place.

GM got nervous when we jogged past AS’s house. Later that night he texted AS to see if she wanted to be his girlfriend. She said yes.

CS’s mom passed away a year ago on that Monday. Running can be a place of solace. Last night he was smiling and talking crap with the boys, filling up with cold dry air, and emitting a healthy steam when we stopped to do our strides and stretches in the auburn and indigo twilight.

A great run.

The next day we did hard 1k repeats on the road. A pack of college runners cruised by during their warmup and hollered encouragements to the boys.

The next week we jogged an easy 4 miles on the solstice loop with grass strides. A cool mist eventually darkened our hoodies. CM softly concluded, “I like trail runs the best. It’s just so…like…calm and peaceful.” We walked back to the house in silence.

It’s hard to articulate why these mundane runs were so special to me, but “ichi-go ichi-e” is a relevant Japanese idiom that captures my feelings during most super optional sessions quite well. It means something along the lines of “for this time only” and is uttered as a call to treasure and appreciate any present moment as if it will never be experienced again, because it won’t. It’s mostly used in the context of tea ceremonies, which are simultaneously mundane and transcendent rituals of traditional social life in Japan.

The phrase, and it’s home of origin, reminds me of the time I was in Kyoto to present my research on social coordination opportunities in conflict-laden interdependencies. I skipped out on a day of meetings and talks to rent a bike and just started heading northwest on a ribbon of crushed limestone. Eventually I was hours from town, waving at confused farmers, and ascending gently into the rural foothills of the Kitayama Range, never quite yet willing to half-close the experience by turning around.

I knew I’d never return to this place. If I didn’t explore the next mile of earth now, I never would. Only by accepting this fact could I embrace that the very finitude of life, the inevitable missing out on nearly everything there is to experience, is exactly why this moment, and any moment we actually do get to experience, is so precious and sparkling-through with nothing less than the bright and pure essence of being.

Even if we keep super optionals going for years, we’ll only hit strides at sunset in KC’s gravel driveway, then have his cats jump and crawl all over us while we stretch and debrief the session, once, then, and never again. CS will only steam away the night’s sadness under a burning sky surrounded by that crew of earnest brothers in legs once, then, and never again. CM will only realize it’s the peace of a soft rain and the quiet of a wooded trail that he’s out there chasing once, then, and never again.

Each of the boys of super optionals set a new PR in the 5k on Thanksgiving, with times of 20:26, 20:39, 21:33, 22:24, 22:41, 24:39, 24:41, and 24:51. I also got a PR in the 50k with a 5:42:14.

The Lexington Minutemen and the Wooster Generals sure better be out there getting ready to go up against next year’s Ashland Arrows. Track starts up next week so the 7th and 8th graders will be reporting for duty. I’ll keep getting out with the 6th graders whenever they want to put in some work.

In life, as in running, there are mandatories, there are optionals, and if you’re lucky, there are super optionals.

ichi-go ichi-e

~coach crispy~

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Visited the Discovery Lot, Hog Hollow, Fire Tower, Turkey Ridge, the Chute, Covered Bridge, Mossy Falls, Long Pines, Big Lyons, Rainbow Cliffs, Amish Fish, the Dam, and Observation Forest.

Great day out. Legs felt strong the whole way.

On race day they would only have 78 more miles to go.

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Boys in the Boat was the third book I’ve read by Daniel James Brown in recent months. The Indifferent Stars Above is a massive, epic, comprehensive telling of the Donner party survival disaster and cannibal death saga in the Sierra. Under a Flaming Sky is a gripping, page-ripping, wildfire story set in Minnesota, when a timber fire swept through a huge swath of the state and blast-furnaced whole counties into oblivion, killing darn near everyone in its path, including Brown’s own great grandfather. Following on from these two, Boys in the Boat is quite a change of pace. All warm and fuzzies. A feel-good inspirational tale of hard-work, college crew, the Olympics, courage, beating Nazis, and generally overcoming all internal and external obstacles. I liked the other books better, but this one was still stellar! It is officially available for loan from the Solstice Library if anyone wants to drop by for a book trade.

A few of my favorite lines:

On rowing…

On boat building…

On finding the sublime groove…

On moments with real stakes…

Higgenlaufen.

We made the word up. We think. It’s Nordic nonsense, but it sounds like a good hearty Scandinavian tradition. And the activity itself feels like a good hearty scandanavian tradition. Imagine feasting on elk stew and boiled tubers, bundling up and hiking a loop in the black woods, returning to your cabin, and enjoying a cozy evening reading by candlelight.

Laufen at least means “to walk” in some language or another…I’m pretty sure. And I was recently reminded of the Danish word “hygge” in a lovely little book called “wintering” by Katherine May. “Hygge” is a sense of coziness, contentment, well-being, and joy that is derived from sharing a warm atmosphere with loved ones. I think it fits the HL spirit. We may need to update the spelling to Hyggenlaufen.

Ashland is basically the Scandinavia of Ohio for reasons that are apparent only to me and upon which I will not be elaborating at this time. Our Higgenlaufen procedure is simple:

• Finish family dinner

• Clean up the kitchen together

• Bundle up or shed clothes as needed

• Shod.

• Step out into the cold night bundled up

• Work briskly against the wind

• Get your blood pumping and heart rating and laughter flowing and chatting chattering

• Return back into the warm house

• Sit by the fire

• Lose layers now that you’re higgened and laufed from the inside and out

It’s part digestion walk, part catch up, part nature check-in, part reward for finishing the day’s primary responsibilities, and part transition into rest. I suppose it’s also active recovery, but it seems more heart warmer and soul expander than leg loosener.

In summer we bring cold drinks, or ice cream. Sometimes we do an easy road loop in the hood, sometimes we do a solstice loop in the woods. Whichever way we go, we’re likely to see people, dogs, the sun, the moon, mushrooms, squirrels, maybe deer, birds of many varieties, and seasonally featured flora. Sometimes the boys bring a football or a stick or a soccer ball.

The post-HL procedure is also quite simple:

• Read

• Write

• Zone out

• Drink tea or cocoa

• Listen to millennial-cabin-core music

• Stretch

The higgen high typically lasts until bedtime, and then into savory slumber, and straight through to sweet dreams of a new day that will once again wind down with a laufen.

When we can, all five of us go together, but every possible family assortment, of which there are 32 in a family of 5, has HL’d before. We don’t aim for perfect weeks, we just ask whoever is around if they want to HL after dinner, and usually most everyone says yes.

When it’s rainy, we bring umbrellas, or skip it.

When it’s snowy, we wear boots, or skip it.

When it’s dark, we use headlamps, or skip it.

When we’re dog sitting, we bring poop bags, and never skip it.

Naming the activity and codifying it in our evening routine has a power of commitment and devotion. We all sacrifice some personal time and freedom for this brief collective ritual. I hope we keep making this trade for years to come!

It’s always Higgenlaufen season.

Do you have a name for such a stroll in your family?

If not, give it a try, let me know how it feels, and send over alternative name suggestions.

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I got extremely fired up this week after reading a profile of Jessie Diggins called, menacingly and inspiringly, “all it is is pain” in the NYT magazine.

Immediately upon finishing it, I got out a fresh legal pad and fountain pen, and filled the page with a list of things to do better and work harder on. What a role model.

I’m sending my list out with mailed copies of this letter. Holler at me if you want one.

I hope to give pain a more friendly hug going forward.

Thus ends 6 weeks of Hellbender 420. Momentum is building.

• Training: 56 miles on foot. 46 running. 10 hiking. 6,466 vert. 17:22 total training time. A

• Reading: 233 pages across 5 in-progress books. Completed zero books. 2,227 pages enjoyed so far. B+

• Writing: 3,829 new words in the manuscript, for 33,073 total. A

Let’s keep doing it. Spring break is coming soon.

Crispy

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