I am a big fan of Luke Nelson, who is a dad, husband, physician’s assistant, sponsored trail runner, ski patroller, race director, and just a swell guy in general. I remember seeing his “Pocatello Round” come through my Strava feed in the summer of 2024, and thinking, “Well, of course he did that.” Luke dreamed up a 72-mile route around his hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, and ran it with friends, and this short film documents the effort and people that made it possible. (video)

(Also, here’s the Strava map and details of his run, if you’re interested in seeing what it looks like on a map)

The Hardrock Endurance Run starts about an hour after this newsletter publishes on July 11 (6 a.m. Mountain Time), and I wanted to share a couple relevant links—one is the interview Zoë Rom and I did with Katie Schide, the UTMB and Western States Endurance Run champion who is definitely favored to do well at Hardrock. We talked a little bit about her college job hauling giant pack loads up trails to the White Mountain huts in New Hampshire, how she has trained for Hardrock by spending time in Leadville, Ouray, and Silverton, and her PhD thesis. Here’s a link to listen on Apple Podcasts, and here’s a link to listen on Spotify.

Second: I loved this preview of Hardrock from longtime runner and writer Sarah Lavender Smith, who finally got into Hardrock this year in her mid-50s. It’s a great breakdown of how she’s prepared, what she’s expecting, and how she feels about running the race in her mid-50s as opposed to her mid-40s. If you’re following the race and want to root for someone, you can root for Sarah—and/or some of the other Hardrock women competitors in their 60s she lists in her Substack piece.

It’s sunny here in Western Montana right now, and f I am not wearing a sun hoody on my trail runs, I have been wearing the new Trekker Snappy Shirt from newsletter sponsor Janji. The high collar is great for covering the back of my neck on days when putting up a full hood is just too hot for me. The shirt is 10% off in the two remaining colors (I am a fan of the Reverse Paisley because I think it’s fun and also hopefully doesn’t show stains as much?). It’s listed as a “men’s” product but as you can see in the pics, it’s not necessarily just for men. And of course you could wear it for things other than running.

I wouldn’t say I’m much of a horror fan—I can’t say the last time I watched scary movie, and I’ve read very few horror books. But I am Patreon pen pals with Wendy Wagner, and got to chat with her at my Portland book event last May, so when I heard she had a new book coming out, I thought, “Wendy’s so nice! Maybe I should broaden my horizons.” She was kind enough to send me an advance copy of Girl in the Creek, and I am pleased to report that it was a fun, engaging read that didn’t give me nightmares. As I said, I don’t know anything about the horror genre, but if you had told me Wendy’s book was classified as something like “supernatural murder mystery,” I would say that sounds accurate too. It’s set in a fictional small town on the slopes of Mount Hood, and if you’re interested, here’s the link to the publisher’s page. If you’d like to support a local bookstore, here’s an affiliate link to the Bookshop page.

I have to agree with this sentiment, but I also don’t think I need AI to do my laundry and dishes, since I get a lot of good thinking done while hanging laundry and doing dishes.

I think I might have shared something about this a few months ago when I first heard about it, but Mustard, who was arguably made even more famous when Kendrick Lamar yelled his name during TV Off (and even more during the Super Bowl performance), now has a mustard collaboration with Heinz—Chipotle Honey Mustaaaaaard. (I have no financial interest or otherwise in this venture—I just think it’s entertaining. Also, did they argue about how many As they wanted to put in the name? “6!” “No, 5!”)

Why are frogs in kids’ books usually male? The Pudding did an amazing analysis of children’s books, and which animals we tend to characterize as male, and which animals we tend to characterize as female (including an experiment in which they asked 1,300 participants to finish a story that begins, “And then the bear said, ‘I must go to the river.’ Upon arriving…” to see which gender the participants assigned the bear.

Also, if you missed it last week, this is an actual coffee mug we just started making (clicking the link will take you to the shop page for the mug):

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I got quite a few responses to my post “A Regular Person’s Guide To Surviving An Ultramarathon” a few weeks back, so I decided to try to turn it into a YouTube video—which I just published yesterday. (video)

I might be a little late to the party here, but I finally finished Orbital by Samantha Harvey, and I was just telling a friend I regretted listening to the audiobook because it was so beautifully written that I wanted to spend more time with the sentences (which is kind of impossible unless you’re really skilled at rewinding an audiobook app). But if a short literary novel—ahem, award-winning, bestselling novel—about astronauts orbiting Earth sounds good to you, I highly recommend it. (Also, I have a theory that most books will eventually settle at about a 3.8-4.0 average rating on Goodreads, and I think I have to amend that to say that any book that’s nominated for the Man Booker Prize will settle at somewhere around 3.4-3.7, since just as many people seem to hate those books as love them). Here’s a link to the publisher’s page for Orbital, and here’s a link to the Bookshop page if you have a local bookstore you’d like to support.

There’s a lot of interesting info in this post from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration about how frequently you should take in carbs during exercise, including the breakdown of five different strategies from small, frequent doses to large, infrequent doses, but I was very excited to find my own strategy validated by a very fast runner: “Ultrarunner Robbie Britton hits 90g/h by consuming a PF 90 Gel in two separate doses. ‘My method is a big gulp initially and then I finish whatever is left in another hit by the end of the hour.'” [Reminder: Clicking the above link gives you 25% off your first Precision Fuel & Hydration]

I started laughing my ass off at the 00:09 mark of this video, and then thought, “this video is 63 seconds long, what else could happen in the next 50 seconds to make it better?” and I gotta tell you, I did not expect this lady to walk up to this guy, and get the reaction she got from him, which made me laugh even harder, and also sort of restore my faith in humans.

I have now known Ed Roberson for seven or eight years, and in that time watched him go from “guy trying out podcasting” to full-time podcaster and emcee/public speaker. He told me years later that the first time we met in person in 2018, at our little condo in Denver, that it was the first time he’d ever used the recording equipment he’d set up on our kitchen table to interview me. Ed has been visiting Missoula the past three years in advance of the Old Salt Festival, where he interviews people on stage and leads panel discussions, and before the festival, he stays at our house for a couple nights. Since 2018, he’s interviewed a lot of big (and/or big-to-me) names, including Nick Offerman, Kristine Tompkins, Hampton Sides, and others, so there’s been a lot of water under the bridge, so to speak, between that first interview and the interview we did at my kitchen table a few weeks ago. Which of course is just two friends chatting about the same stuff we’d been talking about while Ed was helping me build Jay’s playhouse in the backyard the day before—creativity, learning to teach, making my Seven Summits of My Neighborhood film, and the male loneliness epidemic.

We’ve all been there, clicking on one new (wrong) thing and then the algorithm makes all sorts of assumptions about our interests, and, well, “Now my feed is 50% dudes with perfectly groomed beards explaining why modern society has emasculated men, 30% videos of people blending vegetables while talking about ‘ancestral nutrition,’ and 20% ads for supplements with names like ‘Alpha Beast Mode’ and ‘Primal Warrior Stack.’” —Michelle J, “I Followed a Life Coach on Instagram and Now My Algorithm Thinks I’m a Men’s Rights Activist With a Juicing Problem”

This is a brand anthem video for HOKA, which I guess is essentially a sort of ad, but I gotta say, it’s fucking great. Made me think I actually do love running, partly because of exactly what they depict in the video: community. Anyway, it’s two minutes, and I’ve watched it three times this week.

I was talking to my mom a few weeks ago about my feeling that my brother and I had one of the last small-town/suburban childhoods in America where kids rode their bikes around to each other’s houses to hang out (which ended in 1993 when we moved across the state into a house on a highway with a 55 mph speed limit). So I’m probably the target market for this nostalgic collection of photos of kids jumping bikes over each other, many of which look like they probably ended with some scraped elbows/chins/knees. (via Kottke. org)

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Rich seemed like a nice guy, and although we only interacted for a few minutes, I remain forever grateful to him for the psychic load he unburdened me from, and took on himself, despite not knowing me at all.

Rich is a hero, but he’s not unique. He’s one of many heroes around the world who act probably on a daily basis, visiting strangers they meet via Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, coming to their homes and agreeing to adopt a piece of neglected exercise equipment.

I don’t even know if we shook hands before he got in his car to drive away, which I regret. I think I was just so excited to have back the space in our garage that had been occupied by a NordicTrack ski machine for almost a year and a half.

I had bought it off Craigslist on a bit of an impulse during an August when the wildfire smoke in our town was really bad and I needed to exercise. Why didn’t I buy a treadmill? I don’t know. But I would have needed a pickup to haul a treadmill home. Plus the first real ultrarunner I ever met told me years ago that he did a ton of training on a NordicTrack, and that it really mimicked the motion of running well. Better question: Why didn’t I just pay for a day pass at the gym four blocks from my house?

Well, I didn’t. I bought a NordicTrack from a guy in an apartment complex a few blocks away, despite many red flags like a) I’m not really much of an exercise machine person and b) the fact that NordicTrack stopped producing the ski machines in the late 1990s.

I used it a couple times in our garage when the smoke was really bad, and then ignored it for almost a year and a half, watching it gather dust and sawdust, until I finally listed it on Craigslist for much less than I paid for it. Then, after it didn’t sell, I dropped the price. Then I dropped the price again, and finally, I just put it on Craigslist for free. Like just come and rid me of this goddamn thing, please. Within 14 minutes, a guy named Rich messaged me and said he was interested.

I grew up in what I believe was the heyday of infomercial fitness equipment: The Abdominizer, the Thighmaster (hawked by Suzanne Somers), the EZ Krunch, the Abflex, and later the Shake Weight, all of which sold millions of units on the promise of changing our lives, only to be debunked and/or ridiculed later. Suzanne Somers claimed they sold more than 15 million thighmasters, and the much less-famous Abdominizer apparently sold more than 6 million units in 50-plus countries.

Among all those gadgets that promised to give us abs, or muscles, or just fitness, but ended up in garage sales or charity shops or landfills, there must be some stories of people whose lives were actually changed by an infomercial-pitched exercise aid, right? Some folks who did, actually firm up their core by committing to workouts with the EZ Crunch, as endorsed by Price is Right model Dian Parkinson? Or someone whose lifelong fitness journey began with an impulse buy of the Shake Weight late one night while sitting on their couch, dusting Doritos seasoning off their fingertips to dial the 1-800 number on the screen of their TV? Surely this happened hundreds of times, with all the millions of these things sold.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened with the used NordicTrack I bought from the guy in Missoula. I don’t remember what I originally paid for it, but I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $250, which means each time I used it cost me $125, which is almost the cost of a pair of running shoes, which I actually use, and even if running shoes somehow didn’t work for me, they could be used as walking shoes. The unused NordicTrack just sat there, taking up too much space in the garage—but taking up even more space in my head every time I walked by or glanced at it, a little ski machine-shaped spot in my brain colored with light shades of guilt.

Rich from Craigslist showed up to remove it from my garage within minutes of messaging me. I helped him carry it to his car, feeling the weight of the machine leave my hands as we set it in the back. I watched him drive away, hoping he’d get more joy out of it than I had. Maybe it would change his life?

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Wow did I love this 15-minute film about three L.A. cyclists who come from diverse cycling backgrounds and found each other to enjoy, as Dante Young puts it, “riding around in tight-ass clothes all day.” (video) (thanks, Brody)

This one-minute video was simply titled “Researchers react to first-ever photos” on the youseeingthisshit subreddit, and I watched it three or four times before I poked around to try to find more info on why these guys were so excited about this bird. The video is from 2022, shot on Fergusson Island, off the east coast of Papua New Guinea, and the bird is a Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon, which is a bird species that hadn’t been documented by scientists since it was first described in 1882—it was one of 20 “lost” birds that hadn’t been documented for more than 100 years. The guy with the camera is Cornell researcher Jordan Boersma, and he’s showing the video of the bird to local biologist Doka Nason. More info in this Audubon article, but the video itself is just a moment of joy. Like I am not what I would call a big “bird person” but I loooooove this video.

A few weeks ago, Zoë and I got to chat with Mike Ko, aka Kofuzi, for The Trailhead podcast, about his journey from regular guy to YouTube running celebrity, including the evolution from a “not that fast” runner (other people’s words, not mine) to sub-3-hour marathoner. In a move that was maybe kind of like wearing the band t-shirt to the concert or the bar t-shirt to the bar, I wore my “Non-Elite” hat for the video call (which was designed by Kofuzi and the folks at PATH Projects), which is still one of my favorite hats.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify

I am starting to increase the distance of my longer trail runs to prepare for a big 5-day-long effort in early September, and the folks from newsletter sponsor Injinji thankfully sent me a pair of their Ultra Run Crew socks, which I am loving because of the extra padding for those longer-mileage days here in Missoula. If you’re looking for socks for running or hiking, clicking this link will give you a code for 20 percent off your purchase at the Injinji website.

There are only a few instances of profanity in this Substack piece about a really weird Airbnb experience, but if I were going to teach a class on how to use a few rated-R words exactly enough in your writing to be funny but not *too much *, I would use this essay as an example. (I think being able to write dialogue with a Scottish accent probably helps too)

This My Modern Met story is really just kind of a summary of a CBS Evening News story, but DAMN. Molly Shafer, a high school senior in a small town near Madison, Wisconsin, had friends when she was younger, but lost touch with many of them during high school, as she became a “loner.” But during her senior year, she decided to try to reconnect with them by painting portraits of 44 classmates. She spent about 13 hours on each one. The news crew interviewed many of the classmates for the short segment, and Molly, who said: “You can’t go through life thinking that you don’t have friends because they don’t like you, because that’s not the case. People aren’t thinking that hard about you. It’s all in your head. You just have to try.”

Boy did this Longreads story end up being way different than I thought it would be—the headline “Eight Limes, No More: The Accidental Poetry of Found Lists” really doesn’t even hint at the depth than you get when reading it. I particularly loved the list writing/writing exercise the author describes near the end of the essay. Also this bit: “Lists are how we fight chaos with ballpoint pens.“

Jason Chatfield has a wonderful Substack newsletter called New York Cartoons, and it was an honor for me to do a Substack Live discussion with him last week, as I consider him to be a real cartoonist (for the New Yorker and others), a real artist, and a real comedian. Also a really nice guy, in my experience meeting him for a quick coffee the last time I was in New York, which turned into, if I remember correctly, a several-hour, multi-coffee discussion with maybe some lunch too? Anyway, hell of a guy, loves to create and dig into the creative process, and we talked about everything from self-publishing books to road trips (he’s on one right now, in an RV somewhere south of Portland), to failure. If you’d like to watch our chat, here’s a link (we both decided to wear glasses for the interview, without discussing it beforehand?).

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NEWS FROM ME: As of today, August 1, we are opening up 25 more spots for the next session of my How To Tell One Story online writing course. So far, 180+ people have taken the course, and I’ve gotten tons of positive feedback from them. It’s six weeks, two emails per week (Mondays and Thursdays), each email containing a lesson, short video, and writing exercise that takes between five and 30 minutes. You complete the lessons at your own pace, and you have access to the lessons and videos as long as you want them. We’ll close registration after August 8th, or when the 25 spots fill up. (and psssst, right now it’s $50 off the regular price). Here’s a link if you’d like to check it out. 

I watched this video and thought, “maybe too weird for the newsletter,” and then I thought, “nah, maybe I’ll just share it anyway and the weird people will like it,” and then I watched it a second time and noticed the end credit that said “characters (and trumpet) by my son,” and the source drawings, and thought, “OK, maybe it’s not so weird, and just sort of cute in that little kid way.” But that’s me assuming the son is a little kid, so who knows. (video)

I was aware that people hike to all 48 of the 4,000-foot summits in the White Mountains, and I was also aware that people do all 48 of the summits, each one in each of the 12 months of the calendar year, but I honestly was not aware that people hammered out all 48 summits in one push until Gary C. sent me an email with this link to Andrew Drummond’s write-up of his latest attempt, which he finished in just under five days (!!!). Apparently people have been doing this since Reverend Henry Folsom put a route together in 1970, and did it over 19 hiking days (not consecutive). Anyway, the numbers to do it in less than five days are jaw-dropping (especially the final day, 59.53 miles and 19,678 feet of elevation gain).

We’ve been having Black Sabbath dance parties with our toddler since Ozzy Osbourne died July 22, and I saw a Popular Mechanics story (paywalled) about Ozzy’s genome sequencing showing that he was predisposed to hard partying and also surviving said hard partying, AND that he had some Neanderthal lineage. Which was pretty interesting, but this Psychology Today article explaining why his DNA won’t produce “another Ozzy” was even more interesting. So, RIP Ozzy.

I have, until this week, sort of assumed that a blood sugar crash during exercise was the same as “bonking,” and it took reading this article from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration to realize that no, they’re not the same. If you take anything away from What happens when you ‘bonk’? (And how to avoid it!) by Andy Blow, let it be that you should not only enjoy eating more carbs in the days leading up to a big effort, but that it is actually, as my junior high basketball coach used to say, prior proper preparation preventing poor performance. (also note that clicking the above link will give you 25% off your first purchase on the PFH site)

I just realized this week that endurance cyclist Alexandera Houchin has a Substack, and the first thing I read—her reflections on her many experiences racing Tour Divide over the years—did not let me down. My favorite part: “In a society obsessed with finish line narratives, we mustn’t forget the starting line stories, too. For I believe the distance from the starting line is where the true spirit lies; where did you come from to get to that race start line? Now, maybe more than ever, I urge people to dream impossible things, to line up at starting lines, and tell their stories.”

I had such a blast talking to my friend Fitz Cahall a few weeks ago, and having a bit of a return to The Dirtbag Diaries after several years. This conversation, and what I guess is really my first poetry reading, started when I published the “Reminder To Touch Grass” poem back in February and Fitz messaged me and asked if I’d like to read it on the Diaries. (Which I of course said yes to)

Did I need NPR to tell me that the word “dude” is useful? No, but I did need NPR to tell me that scholars spent 20 years trying to pin down its origin, and published a 261-page book about it. Also, “even with the rise of ‘bro,’ “dude” still reigns supreme, according to a recent survey linguistics professor Scott Kiesling conducted.”

This is just a short video I found on the Maybe Maybe Maybe subreddit, of a guy being very good at his job, and having fun with showing tourists a good time, and also kind of showing off a little bit.

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This photo of me, running to the finish line of a race with my toddler, Jay, was about 45 seconds away from not happening at all:

Hilary had woken Jay up from his nap, driven an hour and a half from Lake Hawea to the finish line parking area, scooped Jay out of the car, hustled him and his strider bike to the finishing corral, and gotten there just in time to see me about 150 feet away, jogging toward the finish alongside a guy named Kyle, scanning the fence line for her and Jay. I saw them, slowed and stopped, engaged my core, and grabbed our 30-pound, bike-helmeted kid from Hilary as she lifted him over the fence, set him down and we ran across the finish line together. 

In an alternate scenario, I might have ignored my wife and son in narrowed vision tunneling to the finish, downshifted, gritted my teeth, and sprinted next to Kyle, racing him the final couple hundred feet through the red arch, in a battle for 85th place. That might have come as a surprise to Kyle, as we’d run together off and on for the final six or so miles, chatting and jogging fairly casually. 

Of course, that didn’t happen—Kyle ran to the timing mat, jumped in the air to click his heels for the camera, and crossed the mat 16 seconds ahead of Jay and me, finishing 85th. 

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Years ago, I was listening to a podcast with a runner who was also a race director. I don’t remember anything about the interview with this person, except the part where they made fun of people who held hands with someone while crossing the finish line—a spouse, pacer, a fellow runner. At the time, I remember thinking, Huh, weird hill to die on, especially if you’re a race director. 

I had recently finished a race while holding hands with my wife, who had patiently paced me the final 30 miles of an extremely painful 100-mile race. As we approached the finish arch, I remember feeling that there was no way I would have made it to the end of the race without her. 

Maybe I also remembered that Kilian Jornet, arguably the greatest ultrarunner of a generation (if not all time), had finished the 2016 Hardrock Endurance Run while holding hands with Jason Schlarb. And that was a race he could have won. But, he said, “It’s logical…not to make a sprint to finish one minute ahead.”

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I have, like everyone else, put the hammer down (as much as I could, anyway) to run hard in the final mile of a long race, taking long strides to sprint (OK, kind of sprint) across the finish, even if I’ve been barely jogging, not-so-powerfully power-hiking, or hobbling for the previous five or 10 miles. That is also not logical, and yet I have done it. It was how I felt like showing up, at the time. 

If you have also done this, a pace chart of your race might look something like this: 

I don’t know what other people think about in their low moments when they’re pushing themselves out on on a race course or in the backcountry, but I would guess I’m not alone in a) wondering why I make myself do hard things in the middle of nowhere b) thinking about my home, which is to say my family, and sometimes my bed at home. It’s a privilege to go out and voluntarily seek adversity in nature, and when I find that adversity, it reminds me to be grateful for what I have.

Running is who I am for most of the day on race day. And in a typical week, it’s who I am for about 6-8 hours. But I’m a lot of other things all the time. 

I have told people that the UTMB finish line in Chamonix is probably the best finish line in sports. This is not because it has some 100-plus-year tradition (like the Boston Marathon), or because the greatest elite runners in the sport routinely battle it out in the final 100 meters to determine who will be that year’s champion. It is because you get to watch people from all over the world feeling whatever emotions they feel at the end of a 103-mile odyssey around Mont Blanc. Plus, they can run through the finish corral with their pacer, spouse, kids, dog, whoever they want. Some sprint, some walk, but they all cross the timing mat, and complete one of the biggest efforts of their lives. 

But a finish line, whether it’s the UTMB, or the terminus of the Appalachian Trail, or a local 5K race, can represent one of the biggest efforts of somebody’s life. And no matter how we show up there, in a sprint that threatens to explode our quads, or hobbling next to a friend cajoling us to go a few more steps, or carrying a kid who maybe doesn’t understand what Mom or Dad just did to get to this point, aren’t we really just trying to say, 

I’m 

So 

Happy 

I 

Could 

Be Here 

Right Now? 

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If you enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting my work. 

Today is the last day to sign up for my How To Tell One Story online writing course! As of my typing this (Thursday afternoon), we still had eight spots available. Since I kind of messed up a funny video promotion I did for it on Instagram that had a discount code on it (long story), it’s $199 for everyone instead of $249. But, again, today is the last day to sign up, and the spots are filling. Here’s the link for more info. (We’ll open up another 25 spots the week of October 3-10).

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As a huge fan of independent movie theaters, I really enjoyed this breakdown of how they make it work financially—although no one featured in the video mentioned memberships, which our local indie theater uses to keep the lights on (I am of course a member). (video)

Great headline on this short piece from Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg’s newsletter: “The Most Underrated Performance Enhancer: Having Fun,” which is in the same vein of something I’ve told a lot of people when they mention the idea of starting writing a newsletter: have fun with it, or you’ll find yourself abandoning it because it feels like work. I believe Steve and Brad are writing more about success/winning, but I think we’re on the same wavelength (isn’t fun its own kind of success?).

I follow the PerfectFit subreddit, and it’s usually just mildly satisfying stuff that happens to fit together, but this photo delivers a whole story, and you can just imagine the relief: A woman lost her engagement ring on a cross country trip, found a month later in husband’s deodorant

I am sure there is more to this story of the late musician and Harvard mathematician Tom Lehrer writing a letter to representatives for 2 Chainz in reply to their request for his permission to sample his song “The Old Dope Peddler,” but I think the writing itself is just *chef’s kiss*.

This is maybe not “inspirational” in the typical mostly-positive sense this newsletter usually embraces, but I have been thinking about it since I watched and saved it on Tuesday—I sometimes wonder if in 10 years, we’ll have retreated more into digital living, or if we’ll collectively say, “wow, this kind of sucks,” and rebel against it, doing more things in the “real world.”

Sometimes I look at certain pieces of art and wonder if they’d be as well-known if they were, you know, smaller—like Picasso’s Guernica, but 11 inches by 25 inches, instead of 11 feet by 25 feet. I’m not saying this hyper-realistic pigeon on NYC’s High Line is Guernica, but it is huge. (via Kottke)

The morning of my friend Nick Triolo’s book launch party at the library in Missoula a few weeks back, I invited him to join me on one of my twice-weekly runs on Mount Sentinel, since he hadn’t been in town for a while and we were due for a catchup. I of course totally forgot that a) his new book, The Way Around, was about circumambulation, which is kind of the opposite of summiting a peak, and b) my regular run route goes to the summit of Mount Sentinel. I of course remembered during the Q&A when he mentioned it in a sort of “hey, nothing against peak bagging” joke. We had interviewed him a few weeks prior for The Trailhead podcast, in which we talked about his book, and his 30-plus-race-finish ultrarunning career. Links to listen here:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Speaking of the Trailhead podcast, if you’ve been listening the past few months and would like to help us out by taking a quick 2-minute survey and share your opinions and/or recommendations, here’s a link to it.

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Did you know that you can respond to this newsletter (or recommend something for next week’s Friday Inspiration) by clicking “reply”? It’s true. I love getting replies, and I am able to read them all, and try to respond to them (but sometimes I can’t, which is a bummer, so thanks for understanding). (If you received this email from a friend, and would like to subscribe, please click here.)

I had a lot of fun figuring out how to make this 2-minute YouTube video about “the creative process,” which involved a) digging an actual hole, b) rigging a ring light in our shower just to shoot 10-seconds of GoPro footage of my feet, and c) spending way too long hand-writing all the subtitles. But I hope it hits home. (video)

 I was talking to a friend the other day about writers who can create great writing out of the smallest events. I was thinking of Bill Bryson, in one of my favorite passages he wrote, where he’s on a road trip, staying in a hotel in a small town in South Dakota (I think?) and he makes this incredibly funny essay about all the restaurants in town being closed, as well as the hotel dining room being closed for some private event, and he ends up just buying a bunch of candy bars from a vending machine and eating them on the hotel bed. And then yesterday I read this essay on Substack, about a barista writing someone’s name on a coffee cup, and the reaction the writer had, and it’s the same exact skill. So, my hat is off to Michelle? for this one. (Also, this video was mentioned in the comments, and I somehow had never seen it before.)

My friend Ed sent me this short blog from Seth Godin, Scarcity and Abundance, and it partly captures something I have been thinking about often, which is a mindset of scarcity vs. a mindset of abundance, and how much more I gravitate toward other people who believe they can “win” without other people having to “lose”—and of course, vice versa, how I’d rather just avoid people who think the only way they can be happy is if they somehow “beat” other people. And how we should all think about that sort of thing more (especially when driving automobiles?).

I am starting to make a packing list for a bigger adventure I’ll mention here in a few weeks (and in my next update for Patreon supporters), but I am psyched to be going somewhere I hope to have to pack a layer or two, including this 4.4-ounce wind jacket from newsletter sponsor Janji that I have scarcely worn all summer but am excited to potentially pull out of my vest when a cool mountain breeze picks up, fingers crossed. (Here’s a link the women’s fit version)

A while back, I started looking more and more to Reddit for interesting things to include in this newsletter, and I am not sure why I like it so much more than social media—maybe it feels more likely that I’m goign to find weird stuff, instead of things the algorithm(s) decide are successful? Anyway, it seems like every few weeks I find a new subreddit that I think is hilarious, and I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve encountered the WhyWomenLiveLonger subreddit, which appears to be mostly comprised of videos of men doing dumb things (which seem like they must quite often end in personal injury), but also this screenshot of a post that I think is hilarious, and doesn’t need a trigger warning.

Maybe you’re not in the space today that you want to look at a bunch of breathtaking astronomy photos in the shortlist of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, but I’m going to share the link here and mention that a) experiencing awe is good for you, b) the universe is incredible, and c) people who have mastered their craft to the extent that they can photograph things like comets, blood moons, and solar eruptions are inspiring.

I am not a running streak person, but I’m impressed by people who are, and even if I wasn’t, I think I’d have to admit that the presentation of the data of this person’s 10-plus-year running streak is kind of amazing.

Is this level of research about the best way to dice an onion necessary? It is absolutely not, but I love it when people go this hard on math and science for something as non-essential as dicing an onion, and then put some love into the presentation of it.

Finally, I posted these two poems to my Strava a few days apart, then realized that together they kind of made a fun little saga, so I created some image slides to put on Instagram. I thought I’d include them here, just in case you’d like to read about my attempt to get rid of an old radiator that had been partially buried in my backyard (which is the kind of content I assume everyone needs nowadays).

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I saw this video somewhere on Reddit a few weeks ago and would have shared it here but I couldn’t verify that these folks actually went and retrieved the tire afterward—but it appears they answered that question in the comments on YouTube, so please enjoy this very satisfying three minutes. (thanks, Hannah and Dan) (video)

Hilary is a huge fan of Blackbird Spyplane, and I am a fan of the writing voice and general presence, although I am not as regular a reader as she is since it’s more about fashion. But this piece from two years ago, The End of Cool Small Cars, really resonated with me, as the owner of a 1979 Toyota Pickup and a person who has tremendous nostalgia for the old Chevy S10s and Ford Rangers of the late 1980s and early 1990s (not to mention my piece-of-shit two-door manual transmission Pontiac Sunbird). Especially this line:  “We can of course sense that, whereas road trips do rock, when it comes to daily commutes, etc., cars are prison cells masquerading as tickets to freedom.”

I am very susceptible to the formula of “Topic X written in the voice of a famous author,” and this piece, which published the same day Dune: Part Two was released, is right up my alley (and I don’t think you need to be that familiar with Bukowski’s work to enjoy it?): Charles Bukowski’s Dune

This is the third month of Injinji sponsoring this newsletter, and I am thankful for their financial support, but more than that, I am grateful for the many pairs of toe socks they sent me, which I have now subbed into my regular running sock rotation, which has increased morale on my long runs as much as a pair of socks can. The most recent addition was the tie-dye Courtney Crew socks designed by ultrarunning GOAT Courtney Dauwalter herself, who will be running UTMB starting next Friday and looking for her fourth win there. As far as these socks go, my thinking is, good enough for the GOAT, good enough for me. Here’s a link to the socks, and the code SEMIRADUTMB will get you 20% off all Injinji toesocks through September 5th.

I love artist Mike Monteiro’s newsletter—in every post, he answers a question from a reader, in an essay, and I don’t read every post, but for whatever reason last week, the subject line “How to Stay Hopeful” grabbed me. And I was delighted to find that his answer had a lot to do with walking, bikes, neighbors, and cities.

This is a long read, but I found it incredibly thoughtful, interesting, and insightful: Piers Gelly, an English professor at the University of Virginia, designed a course around the using AI to write, let his students decide and debate whether to use it in class, and to also decide if they’d rather learn from an actual human-taught class or by AI. A couple of the quotes from the piece that really hit home:

“We depend on a calculator to produce identical results no matter who uses it, but identical results in a writing context are boring at best.”

“ … because it’s exhausting to give a shit. My point wasn’t that they should give a shit, only that they could. The choice was theirs, as always.”

—Piers Gelly, What Happened When I Tried to Replace Myself with ChatGPT in My English Classroom

The point of the DiWHY subreddit, you might assume, is to question why (some) people would spend time creating things that are (maybe subjectively) ridiculous, but I’d argue that all creative works could be viewed as ridiculous, and certainly a ridiculous way to spend one’s time. But come on, look at these customizable ripped jeans and tell me they were a waste of anyone’s time.

I believe I found Matthew M. Evans’ Fog Chaser substack a few weeks ago through a post by my friend Anna Brones, and I was just thinking about how much I liked the last song he’d put out, when I saw the new one from last week, and the story behind it: night sketch (for jd)

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I kind of think this idea—having kids dream up fairytale characters and then having those characters professionally designed—should happen more often? (video)

We are hopefully getting toward the end of fire season here soon-ish in the western U.S., but I thought it might be useful to share the app I use to track wildfires around Missoula during the summer and early fall. I’m sure many people have heard of it, but Watch Duty is a free app (which you can support for $25/year or even more if you want Pro features) and it is so far my favorite app for seeing fire info as soon as it’s available.

I got stung by a bee three times a couple weekends ago, which led to me doing some research on newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration’s website (seems unrelated, but stay with me): I was thinking back to the last time I got stung by a bee, the first day of a backpacking trip in the Sierras in August 2008, and I remembered that I also had woken up with a splitting headache that morning. I was concerned about altitude sickness, so I’d bought a gallon jug of water to drink on the long drive to the trailhead from the Bay Area, and as I maybe suspected but hadn’t confirmed, that was not the correct strategy. I read this piece, How to START hydrated and why that’s so important, and now realize I probably drank myself into some mild hyponatremia. I was fine, but I would have rather not had the headache, if I’d known better. Anyway, within the PFH article are guidelines for pre-hydrating (with proper amounts of sodium, thanks to research, including some NASA research), and if you shop at the PFH site through that link, you will get 25% off your first order.

This is so cool—this photographer used Google Street View to locate 250+ signs hand painted around Detroit by Ron Miller of Ron Signs, who has been doing it since 1978, still doesn’t have a website or email address, and works entirely by word of mouth around the city. (Here’s a page on Andrew’s website for better viewing, and here’s the post he put on his Instagram)

I have not eaten many Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supremes, but I do kind of love how it’s influenced chefs at non-fast-food restaurants to create their own version of the dish. As Eater writer Khushbu Shah puts it: “Trends tend to trickle down from fine dining to fast food  … the Crunchwrap Supreme is one of the few, rare examples where a trend traveled the other way, working its way, over the past 20 years, to the menus of beloved independent restaurants.”

I don’t know how these bumper stickers about Tacoma ended up in my feed, but I particularly love the “TACOMA: Come for the rain, stay because your car got stolen” one, as well as some of the more r-rated ones.

I am not trying openly hate on AI (although I am a little weary of hearing about it so much for the past couple years), but as an avid em dash user, I did take it kind of personally when I found out people were saying that usage of em dashes was a sure sign something was written by AI. I have no authority to say that’s bullshit, but I have to say this essay by Brian Phillips warmed my little em dash-loving heart: Stop AI-Shaming Our Precious, Kindly Em Dashes—Please

There’s a really great bit about the carnival vs. the circus in this piece Marty Brodsky wrote about going to the county fair, and I’d just excerpt it here but I think you’ll be way happier if you just read the whole piece instead. Also, semi-related, since Marty talks about the demolition derby at the beginning of the piece: My friend Nick’s uncle won two different demolition derbies in northwest Iowa back in the day with the same car. Consider that for a minute—not that the car actually survived one demolition derby and was still drivable afterward, but that he WON both of them.

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I’m walking my kid to the library in Chamonix, holding hands, or rather, he’s holding my middle finger in his hand. 

I get a tug on my finger every few steps, because he’s looking down as he jumps from seam to seam on the sidewalk, and I am looking up at the Aiguille du Dru, one of the six classic north faces of the Alps, 850 meters of steep granite, trying to remember the history of climbing routes on it. 

It’s almost a mile and a half straight up from where we’re shuffling along, on our stroll to the library, where I hope to find some puzzles and toys to entertain Jay. Jay is three years old, and doesn’t care about mountains as much as his dad does, or really, much at all, which is pretty normal for a three-year-old, I imagine.

I brought him here because I wanted his mom to see this place, because like me, she loves mountains, and Mont Blanc is a pretty good one, as far as mountains go. Someone said in conversation yesterday that there’s no other town on earth that’s this close to a mountain this high and this steep, and that seems legitimate, I think, standing here looking up at it.  

At this moment, as Jay and I walk through Chamonix, thousands of people are running around Mont Blanc, or will soon be, in one of the UTMB races. This is something that 3-year-old Jay can’t really conceptualize—all he knows is that there are a lot of people here, everywhere. And that we are letting him eat a lot of croissants. 

I might call his perspective naive, but I also I understand it, and even sometimes share it, because part of me realizes the ridiculousness of the whole thing—ascending and descending for hours without sleep, pushing yourself to your physical limit, training for months or years to run while you’re not being chased by anything. But another part of me, the part that loves mountains, thinks it’s one of the coolest things you can do in your life, if you’re able and have the means to do it. 

One time I asked my friend Gregory to tell me what bicycles meant to him, because I was making a film about the bike shop he started. I was hoping to get some sort of soulful quote from him since he was a true believer in bicycles, having raised two kids as a car-less family, riding rain or shine. 

So, with the camera pointed at him, I asked, what does bicycling mean to you? and he said, “It’s a way to get from Point A to Point B that’s faster than walking.” 

This was not at all what I was expecting, but I had to admit that what he said was inarguable. 

I look up at mountains sometimes and I know they’re just folds of the earth—places where things crashed together, or a volcano erupted, or whatever geologic event happened. Sometimes I can be as reductive as Gregory and admit that yeah, that mountain over there is, really, just a place where the ground is higher than it is here. 

But I can’t really square the time I’ve spent in the mountains with the reductive definition of them: they’re just another landform.

But still, my toddler doesn’t get it. And with a full day to solo parent him a few days later, I pushed him in a stroller over to the kids’ amusement park here. In full view of the snowy summit of Mont Blanc, I shelled out way too many euros, feeling maybe a tiny bit guilty or at least a bit self-conscious, so he could operate a kids’ excavator, a crane, a digger, drive go-karts, ride on tiny trains, and squeal with delight on the alpine slide.

I never understood why these types of businesses seem to exist adjacent to places of natural beauty, like in national park gateway towns in the United States. And of course I get it now, now that I have a toddler to entertain: Mountains are beautiful, sure—plenty of adults would agree, and maybe plenty of kids too. 

But the beauty alone doesn’t really set the hook in you, not like it has with me, and my friends, and the mountain folks I know, and the people running these races.

The kind of hook that pulls you to rearrange some or all of your life so you can spend more time in the mountains, on trails, on summits, trying to capture whatever magic it is you think is up there, or out there.

That, I believe, requires a story, or stories, about the mountains or about the people who come here to discover something. And I think you might need to be a little bit older than three for those stories to resonate with whatever part of you needs them, or to fit in you like a key in an ignition, turn and fire up your engine. 

We watched a few minutes of the golden hour of UTMB on Sunday, the final 60 minutes as people ran, trudged, limped, through Chamonix toward the finish arch, every one of them (hopefully) believing it was worth it. I didn’t know any of them, but I’m sure every single one of them heard about this race somehow, in the form of some story, somewhere, and the hook set in them. You don’t spend 46 hours through the dark of two nights, in the rain and cold, grinding it out, up and down, up and down, by accident. Every one of those people had been on a journey.

Jay sat on my shoulders for a few minutes, not very interested, while I tried to soak up as much of the human experiences as we could see in a handful of minutes, the crowd cheering everyone on, regardless of where the runners were from, what language they spoke, whether they were moving well or looked like they were near death. 

I don’t know if Jay will remember any of this, the runners digging deep, the cheers and the cowbells, or the view of the Bossons Glacier and the summit of Mont Blanc backdropping downtown and the whole scene. I’m trying to not push anything on him, or assume he’ll love the same things I love, and want to do the same things I love to do. 

But standing there in the sunshine, with him on my shoulders, I thought: I hope you like mountains when you grow up, but I don’t hope that hard, honestly. I hope you find something that fires you up, something that you tell stories about, something that means as much to you as the mountains mean to your dad. 

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Well, today is the 500th edition of this Friday Inspiration newsletter. Aside from a couple of short breaks (one for some time off in 2021 and the other for the first few weeks of Jay’s life back in 2022), I’ve been doing this every week since November 20, 2015. Which is a long time. If you open this email every week or every once in a while, thanks for reading. If you are supporting this whole operation via Patreon or a paid subscription, thank you again for your support—if it weren’t for you, I’d quit, because, well, bills.

If you’ve always wondered what it’s like to feel the satisfaction of helping keep independent art alive and also would like to hear what’s going on behind the scenes, here’s a link to my Patreon, where you can support for a couple bucks a month. I might be so bold as to say that the writing publication of 500 of these things is a pretty good sign I’ll show up next week, and the week after that, and so on.

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I was listening to this live set from Fred again.. and this really catchy bit caught my ear, maybe even sounded familiar, so I looked it up and it turns out it was Fred remixing a tune by one of my favorite artists, Valerie June. Here’s a link to the song, and here’s the full set (video):

There are multiple things that just dropped my jaw when I listened to this really brief Atlas Obscura podcast about The Earth Room. For example: a) an artist put 280,000 pounds of dirt in a 3600-square-foot apartment, b) the apartment is in Soho, meaning its real estate value is in the millions, c) it’s been there since 1977, and d) that I had never heard of it before. (If you’re not able to listen to the podcast, the transcript is a good quick read.) Oh, and you can visit The Earth Room—here’s the info.

Austin Kleon shared this link to a clip of photographer Noah Kalina calling his dad—who is a psychologist—and asking him (as a psychologist) about ups and downs in creative energy/creative blocks/creative burnout, and I have to admit, it hits home for me. On one hand, I’ve always been a big fan of the Lorne Michaels quote about Saturday Night Live, that “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.” On the other hand, I have definitely forced it before, and have had a lot of weeks in the past few months that felt like a lot of work to get something decent out there. (Here’s a link to the full 11-minute video.)

These shots are incredible, but I think made even better when you know a bit of the story of how long these photographers waited/planned/did math so they could get the shot. It would be really interesting to hear what they said about how they felt when they finally got these shots, and how they dealt with finally getting something they obsessed over for years.

Based on the title (“Always read carefully”) you might kind of know what’s coming by the time you’re about 10 seconds into this clip, but this podcaster’s co-hosts’ laugher really brings it home in that sort of “we are very comfortable busting your chops and sometimes we don’t even need to say anything when you self-own this effectively.” (From the Contagious Laughter subreddit)

We interviewed runner and writer Sarah Lavender Smith on The Trailhead podcast a couple weeks ago, and it was such a blast for me to hear from a real person in their mid-50s who recently struggled to get through the Hardrock Endurance Run when things didn’t go her way at all. It was also a blast to read some of Sarah’s writing about the race back to her on the podcast—including the passage about vomiting fire. If you’d like to give it a listen, here are the links:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Only somewhat related: Sarah also recently posted on Substack a link to a New York Times piece about “men leaving fiction reading behind,” and asked if any men who followed her were still reading fiction. I didn’t read the article, but I of course was in the middle of reading a fiction book at that point and said so. Then I looked back and realized I’ve read quite a bit of fiction this year, so I thought I’d share the titles here.

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

Parade by Rachel Cusk
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

The First Bad Man by Miranda July
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

The Dispossessed: An Ambigiuous Utopia by Ursula K. LeGuin
Publisher’s page | Bookshop

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I have enjoyed many of Arthur Brooks’ columns for The Atlantic over the years, so I wasn’t surprised that this video, “You Need to Be Bored. Here’s Why.” hit home for me as well. Sometimes I wonder if we’re all keeping ourselves so “busy” with everything that we don’t have time to feel anything anymore—boredom included, but also other things. (video)

I don’t know who the market is for this app, or if the market actually exists, but I love that this person created it: A Chrome extension that adds dust to your browser tabs the longer you’ve had them open, starting at about 3 hours.

Hilary shared this Substack piece with me and although I don’t see myself in everything the author says about running culture and numbers contests, I definitely agree we could all use a reminder about perspective—like I know a lot of people who run very long distances in the mountains, but I am also very aware that everyone at the starting line of an ultramarathon is probably the “weird runner person” in their family/office/neighborhood. I loved this bit: “That’s why I say: think of 2K like 20K. A small run after a workday is already a victory. Getting yourself moving, even briefly, is a powerful act in a daily life that already exhausts us.”

True story: One time when I was living in my van, I met up with my friend Mauricio one morning to scramble up the Third Flatiron in Boulder, carrying a harness and a small tagline to rappel off the top when we were done. We hiked in, climbed the easy route to the summit, and only when I opened my pack to pull out the harness and rope did I realize that I’d carried my MacBook Pro in the backpack’s laptop sleeve the entire time. This incident was the first thing I thought of when newsletter sponsor Janji sent me their new Revy Pack, an 18-liter backpack designed for running, and also run commuting (you can slide either a 15″ laptop or a 2-liter hydration reservoir in its separated compartment). I have not put a huge amount of weight in it so far, but I have run with a laptop, rain jacket, and water bottles in it, and I have to say, I’ve been liking it.

My friend Jason Tyler Burton is releasing a new album, and his Kickstarter went live for it last week. You might be into it if you like Jason Isbell and/or John Prine—here’s his Bandcamp page for a sample of his work, and here’s one of my favorite (older) songs of his, which I think he put out a year or two before I first met him and his wife Jenn, in Springdale, Utah, more than a decade ago: A Garden Grows. (Funny story: Hilary and I asked Jason if he’d play guitar at our wedding + wedding reception, very chill, just whatever he felt like, but we asked him to cover one song, which he had to learn, Nick Jaina’s Sebastapol, and play it as Hilary and I walked down the “aisle” after the ceremony. For whatever reason, I basically have zero memory of him playing that song, and I don’t think any video recording of it exists, but I’m sure it sounded amazing. )

Mike Sowden, in this piece, delivers a clinic on how to follow your curiosity to create something really interesting. He goes from this sentence: “Unfortunately I have no idea how birds work.” To: “In fact, as my research in a local library uncovered that afternoon, birds are supremely useful to long-distance walkers. Here are four ways how.” And then, guess what, four really cool things about birds!  I remain a huge fan.

We interviewed Denverite and ultrarunner Junko Kazukawa on The Trailhead a couple weeks ago, and the episode went live this week. I have to say, while doing the interview, I was really struck by how casually she talks about her running career—she ran her first 100-mile race, the Leadville 100, at age 48, just after her second bout with breast cancer, and she’s still cranking out ultramarathon finishes  at age 62 (including this year’s Bighorn 100 in Wyoming). It was a really inspiring chat, and I think might make you wonder if you’re actually younger than you feel, no matter how “old” you are on paper.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify

I had a blast co-teaching the Freeflow Institute Grand Canyon writing workshop this past April, and I am both happy to share that there will be a second Grand Canyon workshop in April 2026, and sad that I’m not going to be teaching next year (I love the Grand Canyon and I love Freeflow workshops, but it was too much time away from my little guy). But Craig Childs and Sherwin Bitsui will be, and I bet it’s going to be amazing. If you’re interested, more info is here, and applications are due by September 17, 2025.

Do you need to look at a huge map of the entire Star Wars galaxy? Sure you do. Why am I not surprised (but still awed) that they created this? I love humans. (via Kottke)

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