The works of the village

Writing isn't a solitary pursuit, and neither is running Hardrock

A question I’ve been asked a hundred times since July: “How was Hardrock?!”

Photo by Ben M Thomas

My dumb jokey reply: “Hard!” (Well, it was.) I tried writing up a race recap two months ago but DNFed 1,480 words in because almost none of what I’d written had much to do with Hardrock—and what kind of race recap is that? When friends have nudged me to share more, I’ve found that most of what I’ve wanted to talk about has not so much been the race itself as the journey to get there.

What I was doing the morning of Dec. 2, 2023 when my name got pulled in the 2024 Hardrock lottery. I learned I’d gotten in via a congratulatory text from my friend Sarah Lavender Smith.

I first put my name into the Hardrock lottery in 2013. I thought that this decade of reluctant patience on my part would make me unique, but it did not; I had many, many companions in the 10-year waiting club—and we were ALL outdone by three runners this year who’d waited even longer for their turn to pin on a Hardrock bib. At the pre-race briefing, race director Dale Garland had everyone give those three a special ovation. Tears were shed, and I confess there was something special about being in community with so many others whose hearts had long nurtured the same dream.

Part of me laments the wait: that I didn’t get into Hardrock when I was younger, childfree, freelancing full-time (i.e., going for long, luxurious mountain runs whenever I pleased) and living in Telluride (i.e., at 8,750 feet) instead of at sea level. There’s another part of me, though, that’s grateful I didn’t get into Hardrock earlier, because (a) delayed gratification and all that jazz, (b) so much of the magic of this experience was not just the race, but my journey to the start line, including the decision to road-trip to Colorado with my 3-year-old and spend the better part of a month living out of a tent, and (c) thank goodness I’d had the opportunity to amass more experience at the 100-mile distance before the Hardrock lottery gods let me in. Ten years ago, would this course have chewed me up and spit me out? Almost certainly yes.

Did it chew me up and spit me out anyway? Kind of! Maybe that’s just Hardrock’s MO? I do take some comfort in knowing nearly all of us had a rough go out there, despite this being the most experienced field of ultrarunners I’ve ever been a part of. Though Courtney Dauwalter finished more than seven hours ahead of me, I was tickled to learn her race trajectory wasn’t all that different from my own: body not feeling it from the start; feeling envious of all the spectators going swimming in Island Lake while we runners marched into the blazing heat of our third big climb of the day; getting power glitter and a real mental boost at the infamous Kroger’s Canteen aid station; feeling inexplicably good over Engineer Pass and Handies Peak; puking at Sherman; suffering greatly on the final climb of the race, but grateful for a pacer who dangled a tempting enough carrot to prevent things from devolving entirely into a death march slog to the finish. (I’m hard-pressed to think of many ultras that haven’t followed this same general trajectory: I felt good and then I didn’t and then I did again and then I didn’t again, and then, lord was I glad to see that finish line.)

People tend to think of racing as a solitary pursuit, but it’s really not. Two days before Hardrock, Salomon released this great short film, “A Team Sport,” about Courtney’s epic 2023 racing season—and I have so much appreciation for Courtney as a humble role model in this sport, speaking about her accomplishments less as individual triumphs than as team efforts. Since then, I’ve been moved, too, to see all the gratitude that fellow first-time Hardrocker Tara Dower has heaped on her crew for the indispensable role they played in her incredible record-breaking run on the Appalachian Trail.

Despite the reputation that writing has for being a solitary pursuit, it hardly is either. If you read the acknowledgements section of any book, it becomes clear just how many hands are a part of the writing process, even if ultimately only one person’s name appears on the cover of a book.

Races are a lot like books: for every individual name listed in the race results, there’s an entire community behind the scenes that’s enabled that person’s experience and performance: the obvious ones (crew, pacers, race director and volunteers, etc.) as well as the less visible ones (faraway friends and family, training partners, perhaps a coach, etc.)

(And even then some. The poet Andrea Gibson has spoken about wearing their late grandmother’s thimbles when writing poetry, and feeling as if the two of them—Andrea and their grandmother—can type poems together in this way. My grandma on my dad’s side is still very much alive, yet I think of her playing basketball in the 1940s—half-court, max two dribbles, since full-court basketball was thought then to be too strenuous for girls—and how, in a way, when we women engage in any kind of sport, we all do so in the metaphorical sneakers of our grandmothers.)

My memoir manuscript is still far from done, but I wrote the bulk of the acknowledgments for it two years ago. They came to me in a flurry one day, starting with gratitude for my friend Jeannette who’d been coming over to my house every Wednesday night for nearly a year to hang out with Sahale while George was at work so I could attend a weekly two-hour Zoom class on memoir-writing. When I first found out last December that I’d gotten into Hardrock, one of the first texts I got was from my friend Annie: “Do you need someone to take care of Sahale during the race?!” (I did, because George wasn’t able to make the journey to Colorado with us.) I knew then that anything I ever wrote about my future Hardrock experience would need to start, too, with gratitude toward the people who made this dream possible for me in the first place.

Annie and Sahale gallivanting together in the San Juans during Hardrock

The day after the race, when heartburn kept me awake far too late, I used the time to recap my experience at Hardrock via a series of Instagram stories, which is probably as much of a detailed “race report” as I’m ever going to put together—and, in doing so, I realized how many of my memories and highlights centered around other people. What brought me the greatest joy during the race?

Photo by Nick Danielson

The glorious mountains, to be sure, but also: the conversations with and words of encouragement from other runners; sharing many miles with my mountain-sorority-sisters Emily Halnon and Becky Bates; the people cheering along the way; previous two-time Hardrock winner Anna Frost, whose daughter befriended my own in Silverton this summer, pulling me out of an early mental low point by reminding that I had up to 48 hours of childfree time to enjoy to myself, and not to rush it; the friends of mine who journeyed to Silverton this year (Trisha Steidl and Kate Woodard from Seattle; Sarah Lavender Smith from Telluride; Annie Farris and Jen Burn from Carbondale) to support my dream of kissing that rock.

The “Before” shot of the crew.

The “After” (almost) shot of the crew.Photo by Ben M Thomas

Also: my friend Jenn Hughes for showing me, in 2022, that it was possible to camp with a toddler in Silverton for a month and then run Hardrock. Doing so meant a lot of my training wound up looking like this …

… instead of “running,” but honestly, I’m pretty sure hiking with 45 lbs. of wiggling, giggling cargo on my back, and then going to sleep with the sun every night, is some of the best training a person can do for an event like Hardrock.

And, of course, I’m grateful to George and all the years he poured into coaching me—introducing training principles that I continue to rely on even now that I’m coaching myself—and building up my confidence, brick by brick, to toe that Hardrock start line and believe not only in my ability to finish but also to try to race it.

While I don’t have sponsors to give shoutouts to, I can still express gratitude toward some organizations that made this experience possible for me, too: REI, for employing me for ten years now and being a remote-friendly company that said “Heck yes!” when I said I wanted to go spend a month in the mountains this summer, utilizing generous PTO to make it all work; the YMCA back home, for offering a wonderful space for my toddler to hang out and socialize while I squeezed in treadmill workouts and strength-training sessions; Silverton Family Learning Center for taking Sahale on countless bike rides, walks to the park, outdoor scavenger hunts, excursions to the Silverton farmers market—all while I worked and ran and thanked my lucky stars that any of this was possible.

Most of what I carry forward from my experience at Hardrock this year is a refreshed appreciation for the magic of community. It takes a village to raise a kid, to write a book, to race 100 miles (I’d say “run 100 miles,” but let’s be honest, Hardrock doesn’t involve a whole lot of running). And I’m so grateful for all the villages I’ve known, the ones I continue to be a part of, and the ones I dream of helping yet build.

Photo by Ben M Thomas