The heart of goal-setting

When your brain can't decide what to run, maybe your emotions can help.

Back in the days of 2015, I waffled and waffled over which race I wanted to run. A friend suggested I might like Cascade Crest 100 – because it had the same old school spirit that drew me to races like Waldo 100k and Pine to Palm 100. And because it was an undeniably gorgeous and rugged course – that meanders through towering evergreens and rocky peaks – treating your eyes while torturing your legs.

So, I devoured every race report I could find on the internet and listened to any podcast with any mention of this 100-mile tour of the Washington Cascades, while I tried to decide if I wanted to run it myself.

I learned about all of the signature and sadistic features of the race, like the notorious needles that attack you around mile 86 – where the trail just stops switch-backing and plunges straight up and down a seemingly endless series of steep peaks (“the first rule of the needles is to not to count the needles,” people warned). Then there was the two-mile tour of an abandoned (and maybe haunted) train tunnel after dark. The ominously named “Trail from Hell,” which is smothered in roots and rocks and rubble and reduces runners to paces that resemble those of an injured snail.

They all left me very certain of one thing: Cascade Crest is a beast. And very uncertain about another thing: whether I actually wanted to run it.

I found myself mulling an unending series of questions about the race: Was it too hard? Was I capable of such technical and steep and hellacious running? Could I handle a possible ghost encounter in the middle of a sleepless night? But what about the spectacular trail scenery? And the legendary aid stations and volunteers? And didn’t I like hard things? But would this be too hard?

After a lot of toiling, I decided to enter the lottery and leave it up to fate.

Two months later, it was lottery week, but the drawing had slipped from my immediate attention and calendar.

It was a busy stretch at work – this was back in my days at a craft brewery and we were launching a new zombie-themed beer – which would be accompanied by a zombie-themed coast-wide pub crawl. Because I was such a go-getter, I participated in said pub crawl with the effort of someone looking to win employee of the month.

The next morning, I was uninterested in anything that didn’t involve being horizontal on the floor. The carpet fibers were leaving indentations in my face as I melted into the rug and moaned like a wounded member of the undead.

When my phone vibrated with a new email, I groggily turned my head to look at it.

“Ultrasign up Order Confirmation: Cascade Crest,” it shouted at me.

I was immediately revived from my zombie-themed-hangover. I jumped up and started dancing in my living room. My heart was doing cartwheels. And after months of deliberating, my emotional reaction told me what I couldn’t figure out with my head alone: I really, really wanted to run Cascade Crest. And I have since run it three times because it’s become one of my very favorite runs in the whole wide world of running.

I still don’t know what big thing I want to run this year – and I’ve spent a lot of mental energy toiling over the decision. I made a list of 100 milers that I might be interested in racing. And when I saw that one of them had filled up, I put my name on the waitlist so I could still possibly get in if I decided I wanted to run it.

But when I got an email offering me a spot in the race, my heart reacted with the excitement of scheduling a dental cleaning. So, I didn’t register.

And, I haven’t taken any steps to sign up for any of the other races, because as much mental space as I’ve given this list, I’m just not feeling a fiery tug toward any of them.

Joe “Stringbean” McConaughy is currently out on the 800-mile Arizona Trail, trying to set an FKT on this long stretch of desert dirt. I’ve been following his run with the fervor of a football fan on Superbowl Sunday. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of his instagram, his daily video recaps, his blue dot tracking across the state of Arizona, his old podcast interviews. I’m scooping up as much stringbean as I can find – positively ravenous for updates and stories from his multi-day trail effort.

I also just devoured Heather “Anish” Anderson’s book Thirst, about her 60-day FKT on the PCT. And immediately ordered her new book about her FKT on the Appalachian Trail after I blazed through Thirst in about a day and a half. I am getting sucked into any and every story about FKT attempts or wild endurance feats or scrappy trail runs or creative adventure projects – where athletes combine sports or link up peaks or trails in some new and exciting way - both big and small. I am so into all of it.

I find myself perusing the FKT boards for fun and fantasizing about what it would be like to run certain trails as hard as I can or string together some new route – both relatively short and real long. Not necessaily for FKTs (but also maybe for FKTs!), but mostly because the idea of testing my strength in the wilderness again is seducing. And it’s exciting to think about what that might look like.

I just recorded a new podcast about my run across the Oregon PCT and when the host Zach asked me how I decided on the Oregon PCT run, I told him that I really didn’t have to think about it at all. It was the obvious run. It was in my heart. I spent around zero minutes toiling over the decision about what big run I wanted to do in honor of my mom, because I just knew.

The decision about 2021 is slightly less obvious than the Oregon PCT. I did the run that was taking up the most heart space for me.

But, I know I want to run something that gets my heart doing cartwheels. I want to feel that fiery tug that I have from runs like Cascade Crest and the Oregon PCT. And when I stop thinking about it and pay attention to what is getting me excited right now, I’m pretty sure my heart is telling me what kind of run that should be.

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