—

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September 26th was the 10-year anniversary of the first time I ever tried to run an ultramarathon—the 2015 Bear Chase Race in Lakewood, Colorado, at Bear Creek Lake Park. A brief, bullet-point version of how that happened might be: 

It was kind of a lark, but I got hooked. Jayson and I ran a couple 50-mile races together, then signed up for a 100-mile race, the 2017 Run Rabbit Run, and ran it together. I made a film about the experience (and about Jayson’s life) called How To Run 100 Miles and it screened at several dozen film festivals the next year and racked up almost 6 million views on YouTube. Jayson’s mom liked it, which was really my main goal. 

Over the next 10 years, I ran almost 20,000 miles and ran 15 other races—a couple more 100-milers, some 100Ks, and some 50-mile and 50K races. Outside of races, I put together some big routes in the mountains on my own, and began to enjoy long days out in trail running shoes and a running vest more than anything else. 

Jayson attempted a couple 100-mile races in 2019, and during those attempts started to discover some chronic medical issues. His running went up and down for several years, through the pandemic, job changes, a few moves, buying a house, and in March 2025, becoming a dad. 

All of a sudden—but not really all of a sudden, is it—it was almost fall 2025, ten years after we’d done that first ultra, shuffling around the trails at Bear Creek Lake Park. I texted Jayson:

We signed up for the race, I booked a fast trip to Denver, arrived, and several times in the lead-up and even the morning of, Jayson said: We really don’t have to run together if you don’t want to, like if you want to try to run fast or whatever. With everything he’d had going on, long story short, he hadn’t finished an ultra race since the Run Rabbit Run in 2017. I said: We’re running together. 

I saw it as my job to make sure he got across the finish line, although honestly, I wasn’t worried about him being able to finish. Maybe I just wanted to be there for it.

Time travel, at this point, is not yet possible. And despite all the messaging about making things the way they used to be—America, your skin/testosterone levels/how you felt when you were 22, the band you loved in your 20s getting back together—it’s really not possible, is it? 

You can try to revisit something, but no matter what you do, you can only get partway there, because you’ve changed. Hopefully for the better in a few ways. 

As they say, nostalgia is a hell of a drug. A kind-of-happy, kind-of-sad feeling that can make you smile over the top of a lump in your throat. 

If you run long enough—as with pretty much any athletic activity—you’ll eventually start slowing down. I saw this chart showing typical VO2 max for humans, going from about age 27 to about age 77, and even without the numbers, you probably know how the line trended:

So if you want to continue to do the things you did when you were “young,” maybe you have to get better at self-care:

Which is maybe where Jayson and I are both trying to be, 10 years later. 

We started near the back of the pack, shuffled through the first 6-mile lap, shuffled through the second 12.5-mile lap, taking it easy when we needed to, refueling at aid stations when we needed to, not so much “racing” as enjoying a day out on the trails with volunteers handing us snacks and water. Anyone nearby, even if they didn’t register our casual pace, might have thought we weren’t taking the race very seriously. And I guess we weren’t, in that competition-is-everything-Nike-commercial sense. 

When I think back to all the theater screenings of How To Run 100 Miles, I remember several Q&A sessions when someone in the audience would ask something like, “What was the best part of running that 100-mile race together?” And I’d always say the same thing: The training. I loved getting to run every weekend with my friend Jayson. Even then, in our later 30s, I knew that wasn’t something that many people our age got to do. 

And running the 2025 Bear Chase 50K, we dropped right back into our long-running dialogue, talking about books, kids, jobs, food, same shit, different year, happily. The temperature was fairly pleasant, we had some fortuitous cloud cover all morning, and the wind picked up on our final lap as we chugged the final miles toward the finish. Jayson was definitely going to complete the race, and if everything went well with the baby nap schedule, Jayson’s partner Kate would bring Baby June to the finish. Wind gusts had wreaked havoc at the finish line, and we could see several blown-over tents as we jogged the last 100 yards of trail, scanning for Kate and June near the finish arch. 

Over the course of the eight-plus years since How To Run 100 Miles came out, I’ve had a number of people ask me, “Is Jayson still running?” or “How’s Jayson doing?” Depending on how familiar they are with him and how much time we have, I’ll tell them a few details to catch them up on his life since the Run Rabbit Run. Sometimes I’m not quite sure what to say in those situations. 

But at the Bear Chase Race, according to the smile on his face as he crossed his first race finish line as a dad, and his first ultra finish line since 2017: 

He’s doing great. 

—

(click here to watch the video on YouTube)

We were scarcely eight miles into the 105-mile Tour du Mont Blanc when I narrowly avoided disaster. I had trained all summer for the steep ultramarathon days we planned to put in on the TMB. I came to Chamonix with 20-plus years of experience in the mountains, which I’d like to think amounted to at least something like wisdom. I have calibrated and recalibrated my risk tolerance as I’ve gotten older, but you can’t think of everything. 

In the mid-afternoon light of the small dining room of La Chalette, a mountain restaurant at the top of the Bellevue Cable Car, halfway through our first day on the TMB, I pushed down way too hard on the ketchup dispenser. A laserlike stream of tomato condiment completely missed the ramekin I held in my left hand, and the deep red bolt of ketchup sailed directly at a German hiker’s backpack sitting on top of the table. My heart leapt into my throat as I watched it unfold in slow motion. 

It missed. A wave of relief washed over me as I apologized to the two hikers at the table and mopped up the ketchup with a stack of napkins. I returned to our table, freshly reminded that when you’re adventuring in the Alps, you expose yourself to many risks, and a faux pas while dispensing condiments is just one of them. We had almost 100 miles left to travel on foot, which I reminded myself is a big number, and an even bigger number if you measure it in kilometers, the standard unit used by every country in the world except the U.S., Liberia, and Myanmar—including France, the country we were in today, Italy, the country we’d be in tomorrow and the next day, and Switzerland, the country we’d enter on Day 4. 

If you were to use a hotel breakfast croissant for a map of Mont Blanc (the croissant being Mont Blanc), this is what the TMB would roughly look like: 

I was invited to run the Tour du Mont Blanc by my friend Doug Mayer, who founded a company called Run The Alps back in 2012 during the twilight of his career as a producer for, I shit you not, Car Talk. Doug grew up in New York and New Hampshire, fell in love with trail running in the Alps, and decided to reinvent himself as a guy who helps people do running tours in the Alps. He asked if I’d like to try one of their self-guided trips this year, and I said: 

a) of course I would, Doug, but 

b) I have a three-year-old and a lovely wife, so

c) what do you have that’s not a super-long commitment? What about

d) this “Express Tour du Mont Blanc” I see on your website? 

Doug said, Well, our regular Tour du Mont Blanc is actually way more popular for many reasons including the daily mileage, but sure, excellent choice, sir. 

I asked Majell Backhausen, a North Face Australia athlete, freelance media pro, and environmental advocate if he would like to run it with me—which was a bit of a gamble on his part, since we had had several conversations but really hardly knew each other, and I was asking him if he’d like to spend 24 hours a day with me for five straight days, and he didn’t know if I snored at a high decibel level, or if I had a thing for conspiracy theories, or if I would demand he close down the hotel bar with me every night of the tour. He said yes. 

DAY 1: CHAMONIX TO LES CONTAMINES

Day 1 was our short day, at 15.7 miles/25.3 km, from the Église Saint-Michel in Chamonix to Les Contamines. If you’ve ever seen footage of the start and/or finish of the UTMB, you’ve probably seen the Église Saint-Michel, aka “the church behind the start/finish arch.” A cliché place to begin (and hopefully end) our loop around Mont Blanc? We started in a light rain on Tuesday, September 5, to the sounds of work crews disassembling said arch, about 36 hours after the last UTMB runners had crossed the finish line. 

We stopped after 1.2 miles/1.9 km for a croissant and a cappuccino, maybe to set the tone for the trip? I mean, we’re not trying to do this thing on a low-carb diet.

Many Tour du Mont Blanc trips actually start in Les Houches, about 4.5 miles/7.3 km down the road from Chamonix, or a quick 30-minute train ride. That option shaves a few less-epic miles off the first day—mostly roads and multi-use paths that we ran, and I get why people skip that part. By starting and ending at the church in Chamonix, we would have a nice clean-looking loop on the map of our route, which would exist mostly in our minds but also a set of GPX files, I guess. 

After Les Houches, we began climbing in earnest up singletrack in a forest, while getting drenched by real rain, the kind of rain you hope you don’t get every single day of your trip. After our climb—about 2,500 feet/750 meters, we took a break at La Chalette to eat frites, aka French fries, aka chips, before finishing the second half of Day 1. 

We climbed up through patchy clouds, passing a few dozen hikers, up to Col de Tricot, the high point of our first day at 6955 ft/2120 m, and then ran as the clouds gave way to full sun and we descended into Les Contamines. We popped into a grocery and grabbed a few post-run snacks, and Majell bought a baguette, ripped it in two, and handed me half. I wouldn’t say I was exactly hankering for a big hunk of dry bread at that exact moment, but when in France. Also, our next day was our biggest day of mileage and vertical gain, so I guess we’d be needing the carbs/glycogen.

DAY 2: LES CONTAMINES TO COURMAYEUR

Going into our TMB trip, I knew I would have to eat hotel breakfasts like it was my job. Fortunately, this is a job I love, especially in the hotels around Mont Blanc, where every morning is a buffet of pastries, breads, jams and nut butters/pastes, good coffee, eggs, and other delights. 

Since Run the Alps had put together our self-guided trip, we hardly had to worry about details, and every morning we got up, packed our bags, ate as much breakfast as possible, loaded up our vests, and took off on our run. Not “took off” like we were bounding out the door running 7:30 miles—more like we walked out the door of the hotel, broke into a light jog while still digesting our breakfast, and ran to the start of the first climb of the day, which usually began fairly immediately. 

Usually, in the first few miles of our day, we’d pass a few hundred hikers, all making their way on the same route we were, in the same direction. Each year, Mont Blanc draws 20,000 climbers hoping to summit, and each year, the same number of people—20,000—do the Tour du Mont Blanc, walking or running around the mountain. You can generally discern the itinerary of a TMB traveler by the size of their backpack: 

Maybe an hour and a half into our second day, I heard someone behind us say “no way,” the voice of Adam Peterman, a guy from my neighborhood in Missoula who won the Western States Endurance Run in 2022. He was out for a training run with Caleb Olson, who won Western States in 2025, and we chatted with them for a few minutes before they detected that our priorities for the day were different than theirs, bid us goodbye, and took off running uphill. 

A little past the eight-mile (12.9 km) mark, we had chugged up 4,200-plus feet (1280 m) to Col de la Croix du Bonhomme, our first big climb of the day. We jogged downhill a few hundred feet to the Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme and popped in for a slice of cake and a lemon tart. 

We ran singletrack down the 3,000-foot descent to the hamlet of Les Chapieux, where we took a proper lunch break and Majell made a sandwich out of a baguette and a small pizza: 

Our next big climb was seven-ish miles (11.25 km) up to Col de la Seigne, on the border of France and Italy. This of course put us in a new country—Italy—but it also was the point in my mind where the view of Mont Blanc really started to dominate our field of vision. Like every time you took a photo, a solid chunk of your visual reason when you pulled your phone out of your pocket was, oh yeah, that’s a dramatic piece of Mont Blanc you’re looking at. A hiker from Singapore asked Majell to take his photo, and while pointing in the direction of Mont Blanc, asked if it was Mont Blanc, and I don’t know if it was the language barrier, but the correct answer was either, “The actual summit is in that direction but partially obscured” or, while gesturing broadly with one hand, “Yeah, that whole thing over there is Mont Blanc.” A big deal. Massive, or even a massif, if you will. 

We ran the downhill, dropping about 1,800 feet (550 m) in three miles (5 km) to a brief flat section passing Lac du Combal, and then began our last climb of the day while Mont Blanc bathed in the best light we’d see all day (maybe the best light of the entire trip?). I mean, look at this shit: 

The TMB traverses up through bits of forest to Arete du Monte Favre, then rounds a corner into the top of the Courmayeur Mont Blanc ski resort. We stopped to fill bottles at the Maison Vielle Refuge at Col Checrouit, then dropped via steep tight switchbacks into the town of Courmayeur, where we ended our 50km day at the Hotel Bouton D’Or. As soon as we showered, we walked to dinner at La Padella, where we split:  

• 1 salade montagnarde
• 2 orders of gnocchi with cheese
• 1 order Pommes frites/French fries/chips
• 1 aI funghi pizza
• 2 orders of bread

I had a cold, which I’d felt the inklings of the day before our trip, thinking to myself, “Perfect timing, as always.” Thankfully, the next day was our “rest day,” which had been built into our itinerary by the folks at Run the Alps. At first I kind of pooh-poohed the idea of taking a rest day, but now I was more than happy to take one. 

DAY 3: COURMAYEUR TO COURMAYEUR

We smashed a big breakfast even though we were not running on Day 3. Thanks to the hotel, I discovered the invention of pistachio paste. We bought tickets to the Skyway Monte Bianco, a tram system that took us to Punta Hellbronner, (3466 m/11,371 ft), via a rotating cable car. Then we ate more food and watched it downpour outside, which fortuitously passed through during the night. 

DAY 4: COURMAYEUR TO CHAMPEX-LAC

The morning of Day 4, for whatever reason, the breakfast room at the hotel seemed way more crowded. Several groups looked like they were also headed out on the TMB. I gathered that one person in a big group near our table informed her friends that she was going to have to skip the next couple days and meet them in Champex-Lac, which must have been a huge bummer. 

People reserve rooms in the hotels and mountain huts along the TMB about a year in advance, and the route is, of course, a circle with only a handful of towns along the way, so if you have to miss a day because you’re injured or sick or whatever, you might have to miss two or three days and shuttle around the mountain via taxi or bus before you can re-join your group at the next town. 

Majell and I sat with our food and coffee, enjoying an immoderate breakfast and looking forward to another immoderate day on the trail measuring somewhere around 29 miles/48 km and 8000ish feet (2400 m) of climbing, according to the profile on our Run the Alps app: 

The route started climbing literally a few feet from the front door of our hotel, up the winding streets of Courmayeur, picking up a trail at the edge of town after about a mile of pavement. We passed groups of hikers, Majell jokingly saying to me “surge!” before we sprint-hiked past the groups of 10 and 12 trekkers and my heart rate jumped into Zone 4 territory. 

We passed by Rifugio Bertone after climbing 2,500 feet (760 m) in just over 2.5 miles (4 km), then ran as the trail mercifully flattened and contoured around the mountain. We cruised into Rifugio Bonatti, which Majell had said was more hotel than rustic mountain hut, and I ordered a couple cappuccinos and cookies. Majell had also, for some reason, purchased a one-inch-thick chocolate bar and would not let me not help him eat it, so, faced with another challenge in the mountains, I sat there in the sun and enjoyed all of it. There are many differences between the mountains in my beloved American West and the Alps, and every time I get to visit the Alps, I take advantage of places like the Bonatti refuge, which combines a couple of my favorite things: a mountain view and a solid espresso cafe. And also baked goods. 

Only one-fourth of the way through our day’s map, we chugged on, dropping down a few hundred feet and then starting our next climb, 2,500ish feet up to Grand Col Ferret, the high point of the TMB at 8,323 feet/2,537 meters. We shared the trail and the col with dozens of hikers, and I stopped to take photos for folks posing in front of the view back down the valley, which, to be fair, is absolutely incredible on a clear day and if you’re alive and there in person you damn well better stop and look at it, because otherwise why did you even bother coming?

At the col, we said goodbye to Italy and hello to Switzerland, a country we’d be in for, *checks notes* almost 24 hours, eight hours of which we’d hopefully be asleep. We descended, running down, down, down, for 13 straight miles (21 km), stopping briefly for a coffee at Buvette de la Peule, and to stroll through the town of La Fouly. As we were jogging through the hamlet of Praz de Fort, Majell remarked that he’d been through this spot several times before and didn’t remember it being so scenic. I assume all those other times, it was either dark or he was blindfolded. 

The last 3.5 miles/5.6 km, climbing one last gentle kick-in-the-shins 1400-foot (425 m) climb to Champex-Lac, took us a little over an hour, and by the time the Hotel Splendide came into view, I was ready for a chair. Fortunately, we had a room with an incredible view of the Grand Combin, and it had two chairs. There were more chairs in the dining room, where we ordered two dinners apiece and watched the moon rise over the Grand Combin, and I took the world’s worst moonrise photo with my iphone:

DAY 5: CHAMPEX- LAC TO CHAMONIX

This past spring, my friend Nick Triolo came out with a book called The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere, and in it, he explores the idea of circumambulation, which is, according to the dictionary definition, “to circle on foot especially ritualistically.” It’s full of all sorts of beautiful prose and thought-provoking shit, ruminating on why (some) humans want to summit/conquer things and (some) humans find meaning in circumambulating things. Like this, from the introduction: 

Having historically been a bit of a mountain summiter/“peak bagger” myself, but also loving a good loop now and then, I am a fan of both approaches. But I’ll say this: If your goal is to summit, there comes a point when it gets easier, usually halfway through the trip (or earlier). Of course I’m aware that the majority of mountaineering accidents happen on the way down the mountain, but aside from that unfortunate bit of data, once you summit, gravity is helping you get down. Maybe your pack is lighter, maybe you get a night or two of relaxing at base camp, maybe you walk off the top of El Capitan and hike back down to the valley. 

On the other hand: If you’re doing a loop, such as, say, the Tour du Mont Blanc, you can’t really take your foot off the gas, so to speak, till you finish the loop, which ends where you started the whole thing—in our case, Chamonix. Yes, we could have taken a train back into town if we wanted to skip the final seven-ish miles/11 km if we were really in a bad way, but that would have to be an emergency, in my opinion (and before 8:21 p.m., when the last train leaves Le Tour). 

We weren’t exactly bounding out the door of the Hotel Splendide after breakfast on Day 5—we walked most of the way through town, the past few days’ mileage weighing down our legs a bit. But we finally got going, jogging downhill until about Mile 3, and I reminded myself: Three more big climbs. 

I also reminded myself: Many, many people do this whole loop in a single push. It’s called the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc, aka UTMB, and 1,665 people finished it this year, out of 2492 entrants. Three people in our shuttle van from the Geneva airport to Chamonix did it, out of seven. Anyway, plenty of those people must have been at least a little bit like “fuck this” by the time they got to Champex-Lac. But they kept going. Maybe even without stopping for espressos! The humanity.

About five miles/8 km in, on the first climb, a kid in his late 20s stepped aside to let me pass on the steep trail. I said Bonjour, he said Bonjour back, and then, “You are strong.” I laughed and nodded, looked at his big pack, pointed at my tiny 12-liter running vest and said “small pack. ” At the top of our climb, we stopped for water at the Bovine alpage, which must be one of the best places in the world to be a cow, I guess if you’re a cow who enjoys expansive views of stuff like the Rhône Valley almost a vertical mile below. 

We dropped down into the town of Trient, stopping only for water, and settled into our 900-meter climb. Majell actually got out of my sight for what I think was the first time the entire trip, and I was not in a hurry to catch him. I kept plugging away in the intermittent shade on the trail, drenched in sweat and wishing for even the slightest breeze. Right around 14 miles/22.5 km, pretty much halfway through our day, we crossed the border back into France, which is not marked but paralleled the Tête de Balme chairlift right above our heads.

Just around the next corner, the dramatic north-facing expanse of Mont Blanc came back into view: 

We would barely lose sight of it the rest of the trip, as we wound another 13 miles/21 km up and down into the Chamonix valley, stopping once at Chalets de Balme for a sunny 9-Euro apple crumble and one last trail cappuccino. As we traversed the trails on the south face of the Aiguilles Rouges, we looked across the valley at the spires and glaciers of the entire Mont Blanc massif, unobscured by a single cloud. 

As we passed through the outdoor seating for the cafe at La Floria with about two miles/3 km to go, I started to let myself believe I was going to actually make it—none of my minor aches or pains would turn into something catastrophic, the cold I’d been fighting wouldn’t knock me out, and maybe I’d finish the final bit to the Église Saint-Michel in Chamonix without stumbling and falling. 

And I did. Majell and I crossed the bridge over the river back into town, weaved in and out of the hordes of people shopping the sales of all the shops in town, and jogged back up the church steps to complete the loop. 

It was kind of a whirlwind, and taking a couple more days to do it is definitely the more sane option. But we finished our circumambulation of the big mountain, and we took in all of it in the daylight. So now I understand why 20,000 people do it every year. 

—

For more information on Run The Alps guided and self-guided tours all over the Alps,
visit RunTheAlps.com.
The founder of Run The Alps, Doug Mayer, pronounced the apple fritter at Veera Donuts in Missoula, Montana, one of the best apple fritters he’d ever eaten, in March 2024. Or maybe he said “the best apple fritter I’ve ever eaten”? I can’t remember exactly. 

About three years ago, I decided to start writing bad poetry on a fitness app I use regularly. When I checked last week, I had written more than 500 poems. Mildly curious about whether any of them were halfway decent, I gave them a quick read. And then …

… did someone offer me a significant sum of money to publish some of my running poetry in a chapbook? No. 

OK, but was I pleasantly surprised to discover that I had, through persistence and hard work over three years, become a great poet? Also no. 

What did happen is I waded through a 500-plus page document and found that I had written a lot of bad poetry. But, some of it—well, hold on just a second: 

How I originally started doing this was: Back in 2022, I read this book of poetry and essays by Chris La Tray called One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large, and loved it. Then I listened to a 2020 episode of my friend Ed Roberson’s podcast, Mountain and Prairie, in which he interviewed the author, and Chris shared the process of how all that poetry became a book. That process, to put it in bullet points, was: 

• While working as a manufacturing consultant, Chris wanted to keep practicing the craft of writing, so he committed to writing one sentence every day (yes, a One-Sentence Journal, if you will)
• he happened to read the book Braided Creek, a collection of short poems that Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser wrote as correspondence to each other
• Chris realized that if he made some edits to the spacing and punctuation to the sentences in his one-sentence journal, they could be poems too
• He made the edits to the spacing and punctuation to the sentences in his one-sentence journal, and they became poems
• The poems became a book called One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large in 2018
• The book won a bunch of awards and Chris became Montana’s Poet Laureate

I did not have any illusions of writing an award-winning book of poetry (or even a non-award-winning book of poetry) or becoming a poet laureate, but I did think to myself: 

“Shit, one sentence? I could probably do that.” 

So in November 2022, I ran 3.1 miles, one of those just-going-through-the-motions, something-is-better-than-nothing runs, I stopped my watch, pulled up my Strava activity details, and tapped out a poem on my phone keyboard with my thumb. It was, like the run itself, a real going-through-the-motions, something-is-better-than-nothing effort: 

And then I just kept doing it. After every run, I’d stand in my kitchen, dripping sweat (late spring, summer, fall) or slowly freezing in my sweat (every other season), trying to type out a few lines that might, in the most generous of definitions, pass as poetry. In the worst case, I was still showing up—like a server at a brunch restaurant showing up for work on New Year’s Day after a very late night out partying. It may not have looked or felt that great, but I got the food to the tables and didn’t get fired. Like this one: 

In the best cases, I’d be present during the run, taking things in, trying to connect some sights or sounds into a scene that would work as a poem. Or something would happen during my run, and all I had to do was convert it into some sentences in my head by the time I finished running. Like this one: 

As I said, nothing magical happened—as in, nothing unexpected or miraculous happened. What usually happens happened: Some of the poetry wasn’t total shit. Lots of it was shit. Which is kind of what happens when you run, or go to the gym, or do any form of exercise—some days you have a really great time out there, and some days you just gotta get out there and get it done. 

Some days I’d have a great run, barely even thinking about my poem until I stopped my watch and remembered, Oh yeah, I always write a poem when I finish. Some days I’d have an average or below-average run, but a poem I thought was pretty decent would basically write itself. Rarely would I have both a fantastic run and an easy time writing the poem afterward.

But I never expect every run to feel amazing. I don’t really run with a goal of performance; I mostly run because of what it does for me: anti-anxiety, time in nature, fitness, lengthening telomeres, time to get away from devices and think, et cetera, et cetera. If I had a motto for my running on a sticky note above the closet where I keep my shoes, it might be: 

So then maybe the poetry motto would be: 

I was just messing around, really. Right? Publicly sharing poetry is not something most of us would probably do at an open mic night, or even on Substack. But Strava, an app where nobody reads much of your description of your activity (unless you’re a famous athlete), that’s kind of a safe space. If I was serious about it, I’d probably try to get published. But telling myself I was just messing around gave me permission. From myself, which is funny to say.

Chris La Tray said another thing in that Mountain and Prairie interview that stuck with me. He was talking about when he started going through his years of daily sentences to see if any of them would make good poems, and said, “for every good one, there’s five terrible ones.” That’s probably him being at least a little bit self-deprecating, but hey, if one out of six is good enough for our award-winning Poet Laureate’s first drafts, that seems like permission for the rest of us to try. 

I share Chris La Tray’s story—guy, busy working regular job, determined to keep creating every day, gradually builds something great—with all my writing workshop classes, because I think it’s inspiring and admirable for the rest of us (in the spirit of Austin Kleon’s “Forget the Noun, Do the Verb” or Oliver Burkeman’s “Kayaks and Superyachts”). But I also blame One-Sentence Journal for being a gateway drug to me inexplicably buying and reading poetry books, which is becoming a significant expense, but not quite a problem. Yet.

When the three-year mark passed a couple weeks back, I had thought I’d written a poem for every single run I’d done in that time period. But the spreadsheet said otherwise. I must have given myself a break from writing bad running poems  in January 2024 (a month in which I usually try to run a 5K every day, just to make myself get out of the house during our cold, dark days here), and was pretty spotty through that spring, when I was getting sick a lot thanks to viruses Jay was bringing home from day care. But overall, I wrote 524 poems in three years, 20,000-some words, kind of by accident. 

And if one out of six of those poems is good, that’s more than enough for a fairly standard poetry collection book, so maybe I’ll put one together sometime. Or maybe I’ll keep writing more bad poems, in order to eventually produce a few more good ones.  

—

Here’s a look at a new coffee mug design about the creative process (mug available here): 

Similar to last Sunday, I completed another 7K run today. I ran the same route as last week, just in the opposite direction, in 40:56. I maintained an average pace of 5:51 per kilometer, which is slow for me. I find it hard not to focus on pace at all.

I had decided to film all my runs for a week, and exactly one mile into my first run, Jay wanted to get out of the jogging stroller and play in the snow. So we did.

I didn’t really have a strong overall vision for the video, but 10 minutes into it, it seemed like an appropriate vibe: not so much “Run Your Fastest Race Ever With This Workout Plan”—more “OK But We Don’t Take Ourselves THAT Seriously Around Here.” I ran the final four blocks to Jay’s preschool, dropped him off, and continued my run, clocking a 22:18 second mile. Which felt authentic.

I am aware that being a 1) middle-aged guy 2) raising a preschooler while 3) trying to make a livable income off of writing and art is not probably an ideal path to being a “successful” ultramarathon runner. But I love to run on trails and am grateful that I get to do it most weeks, and I thought I’d attempt to share what that feels like. So there’s no music in this short video, just the sounds of my footsteps on varying surfaces, and they’re all real running routes I do on a regular basis, squeezed in around my family and work life. It’s not flashy, just a kind of tour of the places I run.

The week I filmed was February 23 through March 1, which was more wintry than most of our winter here in Missoula. I’m thinking I might to make one of these videos every season this year—I hope you enjoy this one: A Week of Training: Winter. It ended up being way more fun to make than I anticipated.

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This 35-minute recovery run was my first outdoor run after two weeks of treadmill training. Mentally, it didn’t go as well as I hoped. I’m frustrated with my current results, but I know I need to stay patient and consistent without overextending myself. Moving on to the next week, my goal is to continue balancing strength training at the gym with one or two recovery runs outside.