THE TRAIL RUNNER’S COMPANION

The Saturday after Thanksgiving 2016, i joined some 300 other trail runners to traverse the famous Dipsea Trail, from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco, four times—a 28-mile race with 9,200 feet of climbing called the Quad Dipsea. More than an inch of rain pelted down in howling winds, making the rooted, mossy route through the redwoods—with notoriously steep stairways—more slick and treacherous than in a typical year.

Ironically, the worse the conditions became, the more fun I and many others seemed to have (with the exception of some who looked undeniably cold and miserable). We high-fived and cracked jokes (“I hear it gets better the fourth time through,” or, “I was going to sign up for a Tough Mudder, but it didn’t seem muddy enough”). We did a little dance while crossing a road to entertain the stopped traffic. For several miles, I leapfrogged with a friend—he’d pass me on the downhills, I’d catch him on the uphills—and when he melodramatically pretended to cry as a squall of sideways rain doused us, we both busted up laughing. Feeling stoked like a furnace and giddy with determination, I cranked up my effort level in the final 7 miles to pass women ahead of me and finish as the fifth female overall.

At its best, running and racing trails feels intoxicating. The “runner’s high” becomes real, and if that high plunges during periods of suffering on the trail, then it can spike again once the runner rebounds. But trail running isn’t always intensely stimulating and rewarding. Sometimes, it feels numbingly and relentlessly tedious, and weariness extinguishes pleasure or satisfaction.

In contrast to the feelings experienced during the Quad Dipsea, I felt profoundly fatigued and indifferent while running the 2015 Gorge Waterfalls 100K in Oregon. I didn’t have an excuse of a significant injury or illness that would justify quitting; I just knew I didn’t care and didn’t want to be there. Six weeks earlier, I had traveled to New Zealand and poured energy into racing the Tarawera 100K. Belatedly, I realized the mistake in scheduling two big races, both involving travel, so close together. But I pressured myself to follow through with the Gorge Waterfalls 100K. I already had paid for the trip and didn’t want to miss out. I thought I could handle it; I thought I should handle it. My ego pushed me to go for it and do well.

More ambivalent than excited, I started the race. The result: My first—and to date, only—DNF.

Halfway through, I quit with no better reason than a lack of desire and feeling “off.” The unscientific diagnosis? Burnout.

Trail running and racing can become too much of a good thing if you engage in the sport excessively, without adequate recovery, and without balancing other priorities in life. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that more is better—that is, running more miles per week and racing more events will bring more satisfaction. You may even feel guilty for cutting back your training, or depressed about skipping a trail event.

In the extreme, trail racing (like any competitive sport) can take on an outsize importance in your life, to the point where your self-worth and happiness depend almost entirely on your success in the sport. If the drive to train leads to injury or illness, as it often does when taken to the extreme, then the psychological consequences can be devastating.

New Zealand trail runner Anna Frost is a powerful example of an elite-level trail runner who experienced—and ultimately, bounced back from—extreme burnout and injury. She became one of the world’s top mountain runners, winning notable races such as the 2010 and 2011 North Face Endurance Challenge 50-Mile Championship, the 2012 Speedgoat 50K, and the 2012 Transvulcania Ultramarathon 83K. Then, plagued by injury and loss of desire, she took an extended break and reevaluated her relationship to the sport, as she described in an interview with Salomon TV¹:

“Last year was really bad. I was going out there and pushing myself to run; I felt I needed it. I wasn’t doing it because it was something I love anymore,” Frost said, breaking into tears. “I couldn’t actually see that I was that bad, and running had become the thing I had created for myself, so running was who I was. And that’s not right. It took until I got to absolute rock bottom, where my injury was so bad and my head was so far away from who I was, until I could actually open my eyes and say, ‘Wow you’ve gotten yourself really deep there,’ and it’s been a really, really hard journey back out of there, and made me open my eyes and say, ‘Running really is just running.’”

Even though few of us will reach the level of training, racing, and consequent burnout that Anna Frost did, it’s important to recognize warning signs that you could be progressing from temporary burnout to a more serious condition known as Overtraining Syndrome (OTS).

OTS is a complex physiological and psychological condition marked by persistent fatigue and a decline in performance. Though the causes are varied, OTS usually stems from inadequate recovery from the stress of training.

Remember, you need to stress—that is, challenge—your body to improve, and its adaptation to that stress is what creates progress and enhances fitness. With overtraining, your body struggles to recover and adapt to the stress normally—usually because it’s overstressed, sometimes not just from training but also from life stressors, such as work. If overtraining persists, you likely will suffer some of these symptoms of overtraining syndrome:

● Persistent fatigue and feeling rundown: You don’t feel the “good” kind of tired from satisfying workouts and long runs. Rather, you feel an abnormal deep fatigue that doesn’t significantly improve with a couple of days off and a good night’s sleep. (Note: illnesses or conditions such as anemia can lead to this level of fatigue as well, so don’t conclude you’re overtraining unless you have additional symptoms listed below.)

● Reduced performance: You feel you’re working harder and running at a higher level of perceived effort, yet your speed is flat or slower.

● Elevated resting heart rate: You detect a jump in your resting heart rate of seven to ten or more beats per minute, which could be a sign you’re overtraining or fighting off an illness, or both. To detect an elevated resting heart rate, you must first monitor your resting heart rate in beats per minute first thing in the morning, when you wake up, during a period when you feel healthy and normal. (A fitness tracker such as a Fitbit is useful for this.)

● Moodiness and irritability: You’re grumpy and/or you feel depressed, and running doesn’t work its usual magic of making you feel better. Restless sleep: You suffer from insomnia when it’s not related to another cause, such as anxiety or caffeine.

● Lack of motivation: You don’t look forward to running the way you used to. Running feels like a chore or seems boring. You run because you feel you have to more than you want to.

● Achiness and mild injury: You feel chronically sore and achy, and your “niggles” are getting worse rather than better. Full-blown injury may be just days away.

If you suffer the symptoms above, it’s imperative to take a break from running, get extra rest, and then change your training to include more recovery and variety.

If you’re running trails rather than roads, you’re already incorporating an important aspect of training to avoid burnout: variability. Running different trails with varying elevation profiles, and changing your routine, helps keep your training healthy, fun, and interesting.

Also, if you’re following the training principle of alternating easy and hard days, and you “make your easy days easy and your hard days hard,” then you are in a healthy routine that will help prevent overtraining because you’re giving your body time to adapt to hard workouts.

Beyond building recovery into your week, and getting adequate sleep and good nutrition, take these extra steps to prevent burnout and overtraining:

1. Take extra days off from running after a goal race. A rule of thumb that ultra-runners use is one day off for every 10 miles raced, so if you trained hard and raced a 50K (31 miles), give yourself three days off from running. Sleep in, take a walk, get a massage, go for an easy swim—do whatever low-impact activities feel restful and restorative.

2. Take several weeks off from focused, structured training following a training block. As discussed in Chapter 9’s section on planning a training season, dedicated long-distance runners typically divide a year into two or three training blocks lasting four to six months, during which they progressively increase their training loads and their specificity of training for a goal race. After you complete a block of training like that, give yourself at least three to four weeks off from regular training afterward. You shouldn’t be completely sedentary, but you should run more by feel and for fun than by schedule, with a “less is more” attitude. Personally, I traditionally take all of December off from regular training. I put speedwork on hiatus and reduce the weekend long run to medium length, and my total weekly training volume drops at least by half. I do more yoga, and our family heads to the mountains for snow sports, where I enjoy snowshoeing. After the New Year, I feel more refreshed and motivated to start a new training block.

3. Consider a whole season off to enjoy a different activity. Many of the most successful mountain/trail/ultrarunners switch to ski mountaineering in the winter. You might decide to try a triathlon, and prioritize cycling and swimming, or put on a backpack and devote yourself to hiking to prepare for a summertime thru-hike on a long trail. Just as absence makes the heart grow fonder, time away from regular trail running can make you love it more.

4. Give yourself a “wellness makeover.” Ask yourself, what can you do to make yourself as healthy and happy as possible, aside from running? For many of us, the answer involves a combination of getting more sleep, improving nutrition, addressing biomechanical weaknesses or imbalances through physical therapy, and putting effort into nurturing and enjoying meaningful relationships.

After she won the 2015 Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run and was named Female Ultrarunner of the Year, Magdalena Boulet was asked, “What did you learn about yourself this year?” She replied with a reminder about the importance of time off from intense training: “I learned how important recovery is in ultra-endurance events. I learned that you need to give your body and mind a well-deserved break after competing in such demanding events, and that is just not easy for me.”²

Why is it hard to take time off from training? Social media and competitive pressures are partly to blame. If you’re plugged into a network of running friends through social media, or through apps such as Strava, then it can be difficult to reduce your training while your friends are still running a great deal, and boasting about their weekly training volumes or their race results. Social media feeds “FOMO” (Fear Of Missing Out), so you may need to unplug to focus on doing what’s best for you.

Longtime accomplished ultrarunner Meghan Arbogast, who in her mid-fifties still places among elite-level competitors, blames trail runners’ propensity to overtrain and burn out partly on social media, and partly on the increased demand to participate in ultra-distance trail events. “With the advent of social media, combined with ultras springing up every weekend, runners are scrambling to do it all and do it now,” she wrote in a 2015 blog post.³ “It isn’t sustainable or healthy. Injured runners who signed up for a year’s worth of races, only to be sidelined by overtraining errors, waste dollars. Healthy runners race themselves into burnout and ignore other life priorities.”

After my friend Kevin Skiles raced the 2015 Western States Endurance Run, he felt burnout with a capital “B,” and he wasn’t alone. Some of his friends felt the same post-race letdown.

“We each took vacations with our respective families, took time off running, and even tried road running (ugh), but nothing seemed to shake the blues,” Kevin wrote in an article about his experience.⁴ “… Sure, we ran, but it was decidedly uninspired. We joked about ‘retiring,’ with Western States as our walk-off shot. Nervous laughter followed those jokes. Was this the end? What would it take to get our running back on track?”

The answer—the thing that rekindled the trail-running mojo for Kevin and his friends—involved a camping trip with running and hiking on trails around Yosemite Valley. The awesome landscape gave him a refreshed perspective and “rekindled a flame—the simple joy of running,” Kevin wrote. “I reflected how in three short years, I went from being a road runner happy to finish a half marathon, to a 100-miler finishing Western States in under 24 hours. I had been so enthusiastic about ultrarunning that I was piling on the training miles and entering eight to 10 ultras a year. But it dawned on me: Maybe even a mid-packer like me can fall victim to over-racing and burnout.”

If you feel ambivalent at best about training and racing, then consider planning a special hike or trail run with the overriding goal being to enjoy and feel renewed by the wilderness. Instead of pushing yourself to finish quickly, savor the experience and take all the time you need. Go with friends to make it social, and to enhance your safety. Treat it like a vacation.

Several trail-running travel outfits and camps have cropped up over the past few years to help runners plan and enjoy multiday trail-running excursions. Additionally, several elite-level trail runners host trail-running summer camps or retreats. Go online to research; in particular, check out the archives of Trail Runner and UltraRunning magazines for articles about specific camps and group trail-running trips.

When trail running compromises other aspects of a healthy, happy life—such as relationships, work commitments, or adequate sleep—then something has to give. Some runners choose to keep running as their top priority while literally running away from trouble spots in life.

For endurance athletes, the trouble spot often involves a relationship with a loved one. If you have a spouse or partner who doesn’t share your passion for trail running, then you may face serious challenges to your relationship over “the long run” (pun intended).

In 2015, I researched the question, “Is running a threat to your relationship?” for a Trail Runner magazine feature. I developed the following list of warning signs that indicate your priorities may be out of balance and your relationship may be unsatisfying and perhaps unsustainable.⁵ If any of these situations sound familiar, then you and your partner should talk openly and empathetically about the issue, and seek counseling if you can’t resolve the conflict:

3. Physical contact with your partner is becoming less frequent, and you’d rather run or sleep more than have sex.

4. You share details about your life with your runner friends that you feel you can’t or don’t want to share with your partner.

5. When you make plans for long training runs or you register for races, you downplay or hide those plans from your partner rather than express your enthusiasm about them.

Through give-and-take, self-awareness, and better communication, it’s possible to achieve a better balance and healthier relationship with both your partner and with the sport. One of my ultrarunning friends, now in her mid-fifties, offers this example: “I definitely see my early years in ultras as an escape from the grind of work, parenting, and marriage … I got a lot of affirmation about myself as an athlete, and this felt really good to my ego.” She still runs 50-milers and 100Ks, and she loves her time on the trail with her mountain-running group, “but I no longer feel that running ultras defines me, nor do I escape to the trail to deal with life’s struggles. I turn to my husband instead of turning away.”

GIVE BACK TO THE TRAILS

Don’t take the trails you run on for granted. I encourage and challenge you to join me in doing the following things at least once in the coming year:

1. Trail maintenance: Grab your work gloves and join a trail-maintenance crew for a half or full day to rebuild a trail or to do other work, such as removing nonnative vegetation and picking up trash. Often, advocacy groups known as “friends” groups adopt a trail or park, and organize trail-maintenance work for it. Check out the website for your favorite trail system or park, and consider joining its friends group’s mailing list to find out about trail-work days.

2. Trail event volunteering: Help a race director by serving as one of the many volunteers that each trail race needs to function (see Chapter 12 for information on volunteering at trail-running events).

3. Trail philanthropy: Join a nonprofit trail advocacy organization and make annual donations to it. You could support a group in your extended backyard, such as your regional park district’s foundation, or a national organization for environmental stewardship—or, even better, both!

4. Trail advocacy: Stay informed and lend your voice through petitions and letter-writing campaigns to keep trails and their wilderness surroundings undeveloped and accessible for responsible public use.

5. Trail respect: Endeavor to minimize your impact (for example, by carpooling to trailheads and by staying on trails rather than creating erosion and other damage by going off trail), and never litter! Pick up others’ trash you might find along the way.

One of my gray-haired trail-running friends posted a photo on social media showing him with his running buddies more than a decade earlier, when they all raced and placed at trail ultras. His caption: “The older we get, the faster we were.”

As a master’s-level (over 40) runner myself, I can vouch for feeling wistful about younger, faster race times, which in hindsight seem even faster and better when compared with present-day performance. It’s tempting to bemoan aging and how it affects our running. There’s no denying the numerous studies that show that with each decade, our body’s ability to process oxygen (measured as VO2 max) declines, and consequently we have to use more effort to maintain the same level of speed. We also gradually lose muscle mass, bone density, and, eventually, mental acuity; meanwhile, stiffness, achiness, and body fat tend to increase over the years. As my dad put it when his mobility severely declined in his late 70s, “Growing old sucks!”

Try not to give into the negativity and fatalism that lead many older runners to reduce, or entirely give up on, running.

The more you can stay positive, proactive, and consistent with regard to your trail-running as you age, the more you will slow age-related athletic decline.

Training strategies listed below, combined with a passionate and positive attitude, go a long way toward helping trail runners run well into old age. In his excellent book on sports psychology, How Bad Do You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle, author and endurance athlete Matt Fitzgerald noted, “Some athletes fall off their peak early and decline rapidly, while others sustain their highest level of performance much longer, and when at last they begin to slow down, they do so gradually. What do these slower-aging athletes have that others lack? … The most successful endurance athletes over the age of 40 are so similar in personality it’s almost uncanny. What we see in all of these men and women is a limitless passion for sport and for the athletic lifestyle that stems from a positive, life-embracing personality” (emphasis added).⁶

Beyond fostering a positive attitude, try to follow these training strategies year after year:

1. At least once a week (except during deliberate easy-recovery or offseason weeks), have a hard workout, where you run faster and/or charge up hills (as described in Chapters 3 and 10). Elevate your heart rate and breathing for a sustained period, past the point of being able to speak in full sentences. While slow, gentle runs and hikes definitely promote health and wellness, you will lose your cardiovascular fitness more rapidly as you age unless you deliberately work to maintain that fitness through consistent high-intensity workouts.

2. Maintain a dynamic stretching routine to warm up and work through stiffness before each run, and a post-run static stretching routine with physical therapy exercises to preserve flexibility and prevent injury (described in Chapter 5).

3. Maintain a strength conditioning routine two to three days a week (also described in Chapter 5) to preserve muscle strength and bone density.

4. Keep racing trails, but temper your expectations. Trail races serve as great high-intensity workouts, and the social support at the event is motivating. Every five years, as you graduate to a new age group (for example, from 50 to 55), challenge yourself to set a new personal record in that age bracket for that distance, rather than dwelling on faster personal records from your earlier years.

5. Allow for extra recovery time after a race or a hard workout; do a low-impact activity instead of running until you feel fully recovered from the hard effort.

Personally, I will endeavor to age not only with grace but also with guts and good humor, with every intention of running trails well past sixty! I hope to emulate Gunhild Swanson, who, in 2015 at age seventy, famously became the oldest woman to finish the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run. She sprinted toward the finish line to beat the thirty-hour time limit by a mere six seconds.

I turn seventy in the year 2039. I bet a woman in the seventy-year-old age group will break Gunhild’s record before that year. Then, watch out—I’m going for that record (or a similar one at another race)! At least, that’s my outlook, which in turn is my best shot at extending the uncertain date on a trail-running shelf life.

CHAPTER 14

KEEP YOUR TRAIL RUNNING FRESH AND FULFILLING