Challenge you to balance.

I've grown to dislike competition. It's strange since I was obsessed with triathlon only two years ago. There is competition in sport, competition in work, and competition within yourself, and I have dueled enough with each.

This time two years ago I was around 300 days into my most focused training. I wanted to be pro (didn't we all), at least in the minimum sense that I wanted to win Wildflower. My friends loved training nearly as much as I did, we went places warm, and all I had to do was turn my homework in on time. I swam until 10 pm and woke up at 4:30 am a good chunk of my mornings (I don't know how I did that). While I may not have won, I finished less than 4 minutes and seven positions back.

Hayley, Megan, Dan, and myself before the SHAC Triathlon, 2013. Megan would brush her shoulder off but that would ruin her fueling strategy.

The summer after Wildflower I began "training for life," meaning I just wanted to have fun, not get injured, and train in the name of longevity. Maybe I adopted this mindset because I am not as talented at  pure running as I was at triathlon, and therefore definitively not as competitive as I once was. I have, however, also watch competition ruin many perfectly sane people.

Last year I signed up for nine ultramarathons. This year I am signed up for two. The ultrarunning community is small enough that races are synonymous with reunions. Many of my friends, however, I never saw because they holed up to hide from what they assumed to be the spotlight, but what I interpret to be delusional nerves.

Running is fun. It's cheap. It's what you do with your friends or your parents and your dogs, in the snow and the sun, on the beach or in the mountains. Competition is important for the growth of the sport, and for the betterment of our own personal selves, but it is something I find more joy not getting wrapped up in.

Defenders of the weekend.

I mentioned competition in work, and I think that is a great example. Comparing ourselves to our coworkers motivates betterment, but mulling over it too much is just stressful. If everyone worked on the weekend, those of us who didn't would eventually get fired. So defend your weekend, run only as much as you need to get the job done, and keep it enjoyable. I would not be able to maintain my sanity in grad school if I didn't have running, but I would run myself into the ground if I didn't have grad school.

While I am claiming I lost my competitive edge, I am not suggesting I've lost the motivation to work hard. My overarching goal for what I've deemed my opportunistic off season was to keep it crazy consistent, but not crazy. For me, this ended up meaning four months of ~40 miles running, ~2 hours weights/core, and enough cycling to round off 11-14 hours training per week.

A 35 mile runventure in Canyonlands with John and Hilly was the only crazy part of my crazy consistent off season.

In sum, competition is fun. It's what makes me run faster up Towers with Becca than when I'm alone. Competition is necessary. It's given ultrarunning recent legitimacy despite its perceived insanity.  But competition is nothing if it is not fun.

Backwards gloves. Photo by Myke.

Theodora, sweet remora, I wish you hadn't presented this pandora. 

If I had known this symbiosis would end in blind hypnosis I would have rubbed you off a rock a long time ago. A great deal, you cleaning, me killing. Gluttonous attack after hedonistic snack. Until we could no longer separate the two acts, afraid to expose your sucker head and my suggestive preying.

With your drag on the left, my swimming shrank concentrically until all I could dream of was the beat of my own tail, alone without your persistent flail. Sharks can be social or solitary, so please respect my solidarity.