Back in June, I started my ultra running journey in earnest. Before you think, “Wow, that’s impressive,” take note that it sounds more impressive than it really is. An “ultramarathon” is any distance longer than a marathon. 100 miles is an ultramarathon. So is 28 miles. In my case, I started with the 50 kilometer distance, which is 31.2 miles. Technically an ultramarathon, but just barely!

That said, the course was quite difficult, especially since it was nearly 90 degF and around 75% humidity. Despite sweating my ass off, I very much enjoyed the first ~16 mile “lap” around the trail. I talked to several amazing people and walked the hills to keep my heart rate under control. I took a 15 minute or so break after the first lap to change my socks and shove as much food as I could in my mouth and then was back on the trail for lap number two.

While I didn’t know it at the time, about five minutes into lap two, my life changed. I started running with a guy named Alex. Our conversations started like any other on the trail. How we came to running. Trying to convince ourselves why we were not crazy for loving ultra distances. But then we kept talking. We talked about our childhood traumas. We talked about our purpose in life. We talked about our battles with anxiety and how running trails have helped us confront our demons. The next three and a half hours flew by. I realized that this person, who just a short time ago had been a complete stranger, knew more about me than just about anyone else in my life.

The next month, Alex and I met up to do another 50k.

Then we met again one month after that to run yet another 50k.

I was cruising through these 50k races, not really even sensing the time passing because Alex and I were so deep in such authentic and vulnerable conversations that have largely been swallowed up by today’s social media black hole. I still loved to run to connect with my body and mind, but now running was so much more. It was about connection. It was about building community.

Over the few months I got to know Alex, I found out that he was heading out to Moab, UT to run the Moab 240 endurance run in October. For those of you that have not heard of this race, look it up. It’s arguably the most challenging endurance run the world has to offer. It attracts the who’s who of ultra runners each year who are looking to push themselves beyond their limits over 240 miles of rock, mud, dirt, clay, pavement, and two mountain climbs. This year, amongst the runners toeing the start line was legendary David Goggins, who as shown below, looks like he was created by AI.

In the weeks leading up to Moab, I casually asked Alex if he wanted me to pace him on the run. When the answer was a resounding “yes,” we immediately started the process of geeking out over all the gear we would need and game planning the run. Alex’s amazing (and supernaturally patient) wife Claire was going to crew us during the run, while I would join him running somewhere between 75 and 115 miles. We had everything planned out with contingency plans for our contingency plans. We were ready for anything!

And then, as the race was starting on October 10th, a few rain drops started to fall in the high desert. This rain barely let up for the next five days, blowing our plans to smithereens… although we didn’t know that at the time.

Anyway, back on October 10th, we saw Alex off at the start, and crossed our fingers that he would be in good shape when we saw him 68 miles later (the earliest part of the race when pacers are allowed to join runners).

The next day Claire dropped me off at the Indian Creek aid station at mile marker 68. After a few hours Alex rolled in. It had rained all night on him and his feet were paying the price for it, already having accumulated some quite impressive blisters. I let him sleep for 20 minutes as a reward for his all night mud-run, and then we were off. Because, you know, we had 172 miles to cover and a plan to follow.

The first five or so miles or so just rolled by. Alex gradually recovered his energy and we were moving well. Eventually we reached a stream, which after a few confused moments we realized WAS the trail. It was completely flooded. Not wanting to get our shoes wet and deal with more blisters, we started a multi-hour process of bushwhacking along the side of the stream/trail. When the vegetation became too thick, we used our trekking poles to leap across the stream to the other side of the trail, and resumed bushwhacking. Every now and again, we walked across a tree branch to cross the trail/stream, presumably placed there as a gift by a kind runner earlier in the day. We proceeded this way to the next aid station at mile marker 82 - The Island.

After about an hour at The Island, I woke Alex up and we started filling our water bottles for the next leg of the journey. As we were about to leave one of the race volunteers warned us that there was another storm in the area that was expected to bring freezing temperatures, hail, lightning, and high winds. His advice, “get ready to get shit on.” Okay then. Off we went!

As we left The Island, I noticed that Fear was taking over my mind’s steering wheel. Not only was I about to go into my first all night run, but I may also have to dodge hail and lightning throughout the night. But I quickly noticed that this was a different form of Fear. It was helpful. It kept me alert. It reminded me to monitor my body temperature to make sure I had enough layers on. It reminded me to keep up on my fueling during the race. It kept me hyper alert on my foot placement to make sure I didn’t twist my ankle. I was in the shit already and the only way out was through, so Fear became my friend, reminding me to take care of the things I could control to prepare me to make it through the night. By this time another runner, Ryan, had joined us for the night run. Approaching 90 miles of nearly continuous movement Alex and Ryan were obviously quite tired, so Fear also reminded me I was responsible for them as I was the most rested of the group. I was beginning to like Fear, which was a strange feeling given we had not always had the best of relationships.

Around 1:30am we finally arrived at the Bridger Jack aid station (mile 96). After about an hour the skies opened up on around 40-50 hungry, tired, and very wet runners, pacers, and volunteers. We all crowded into one of two tents, packed like sardines waiting for the rain to die down. And that’s when it happened. I had to take a shit.

This time Fear was not so kind to me. You see, Bridger Jack was in the middle of the mountains and only accessible by ATV. As such, there were no port-a-potties there. There was a bucket and a “wag bag,” which I had only a few days prior learned is what you shit in when you are in the middle of nowhere. When I envisioned my Moab experience it didn’t include pooping in a bag. But there I was. It was coming out one way or another, so I went out into the freezing rain, grabbed the bucket and found a somewhat hidden place in the woods to take care of business.

With that experience checked off my bucket list (pun intended), Alex and I packed up and started what would end up being a 10+ hour climb up to Shay Mountain. To say the conditions were bad was an extreme understatement. The following picture shows the “trail” that we had to climb for hours on end. Each time we saw the top of the climb in the distance, it ended up just being a switchback leading to more climbing.

Further complicating matters was that fact that I was still having pretty severe GI issues all throughout the climb. I had to run off the trail at least a dozen times over the 10+ hour climb to squat behind a tree and poo in a bag. I eventually ran out of bags and wipes… and dignity. It was a constant miserable process on repeat - climb, worry about having to poo, going poo, climb, worry about having to poo, going poo, etc.

Meanwhile Alex was worried about me. Like very worried. I mean, I guess it is somewhat abnormal to crap a dozen times in 10 hours. Deep down I knew nothing was wrong as I have been prone to all sorts of (anxiety related) GI ailments throughout my life. But I still couldn’t stop worrying about the next time I was going to have to go. I was just praying it would go away. That some magical being would take away my suffering and let me climb in peace. In other words, I was jabbing myself with the second arrow.

I learned about the second arrow from my studies of Buddhism. Basically, we all experience pain. This is inevitable and completely uncontrollable. Pain is the first arrow. But then we are also wired to catastrophize about the pain when it comes. That’s the second arrow and it’s usually causes far more suffering than the pain itself. In my case, I was so concerned about the next poop that I stopped eating and drinking, as I was convinced that this was making my situation worse. Well, try climbing 3,600 feet over many hours on no calories or water. I don’t recommend it! I just got weaker and weaker, enhancing my pain and suffering. And that’s all because I was so embarrassed to just pull off the trail, take care of business, and get back to climbing.

Given that you are reading this now, you probably guessed that I eventually made it to the top of that climb. Below is a picture of me and Alex just steps away from the Shay Mountain aid station. And if you were wondering… yes, I had to crap my brains out in this picture, which explains the intense focus on my face.

At the aid station, I started reflecting on what I just endured. Why did I suffer so much? It was clear to me I made the entire climb much worse than it needed to be by constantly jabbing myself with my second arrow.

But at least I was in a painful situation. I thought back to the years of suffering I had endured in complete absence of any painful situation. This is what I now see as destructive anxiety, or the fear of some future uncertainty or rumination over some past failure.

In hindsight (now with years of therapy under my belt) it’s clear that I had an anxiety disorder for a very long time. Wherever I went, I never forgot to bring my second arrow, and made sure to jab it in my side from time to time despite there being no real threats anywhere in my vicinity. I now see that there can be addiction to anxiety that forms over time. If I am not suffering, I am not trying hard enough! I am not planning thoroughly enough to protect myself from all risks! I am slacking. I wore my anxiety like a badge of honor. Companies rewarded me for it calling it by different euphemisms on performance reviews. And so like Pavlov’s dog, I kept practicing destructive anxiety, subconsciously convinced that it would bring more recognition and money. I was proud of it in a way, but terrified to talk about the suffering it was causing me.

Maybe most people don’t have diagnosed anxiety disorders, but anxiety likely is still a slippery slope for all of us. It can be helpful at times. Like worrying about getting hypothermia as freezing rain starts to fall will spur me to put on my rain coat and a dry base layer. That’s constructive anxiety as I can do something with it to prevent risk of harm. But then continuing to worry about hypothermia when I can no longer do anything about it tips over to being destructive. I may make worse decisions in the moment, just like I did when I decided to stop eating and drinking on Shay Mountain. And then there is the most destructive type of anxiety where I sit and worry about some future event that may or may not even happen. This has spiraled to the point where I lay in bed unable to sleep from the suffering inflicted from my second arrow. There is no pain anywhere in sight, but immense suffering, which then leads to real pain (sleep deprivation) and even more suffering.

But that was before Moab. In Moab, I was determined not to slide into my anxiety black hole. So, after 10 or so hours of sleep, I woke up refreshed and motivated to get back out on the course. Alex was about to start climbing the La Sal mountains, which we had heard were even more challenging than Shay Mountain. And this time, he was going to have to do it overnight. I wasn’t going to let my good friend do that alone. So I loaded up on Imodium (which worked!), hopped in Claire’s car, and drove out to meet Alex at the base of the mountain range.

We met up at the Road 46 aid station (mile 170). The initial climb to Pole Canyon (mile 186) went pretty well. We made good time, arriving 45 minutes ahead of our projection.

Once again, it started to pour on us at the aid station. The aid station was slammed with runners trying to find any warmth. Most did not have seats and were standing in any dry area they could find. Aid station volunteers were running out of food. Tents were missing panels so horizontal rain pelted runners sitting under tents when the wind changed directions. Basically, everything that could go wrong, was going wrong.

In this moment I noticed something else was missing. No one was complaining. All of these amazing runners, who had travelled 186 miles on maybe a few hours of sleep, were perfectly content just being. If there was food, they ate it. It didn’t matter what it was. Many sat around a fire calmly chatting. Some slept on cots randomly scattered under tents while people talked and laughed around them. Everyone profusely thanked the aid station volunteers for their time and support.

Despite that fact that I had a job to do (I had water bottles to fill for myself and Alex) I made it a priority to observe this dynamic for a few minutes. Was this the true point of running long distances on little to no sleep? Was this the reason people pay money to push themselves beyond their breaking points? To find the true beautiful humanity that lies underneath our selfish preferences that typically control our everyday behavior? I’m not sure, but I realized one thing. I wanted to live in a world surrounded by people this carefree, kind, and caring.

Taking risks and pushing my boundaries wasn’t only about bettering myself anymore. Or even just about building community by meeting people like Alex. I now saw discomfort as the key to saving our shared humanity. It helps shed all the mud and gunk that builds up on our exteriors as we go about our modern day lives, leaving us as the gleaming golden beings that we all once were.

It was around 2:45am on Tuesday morning when we departed Pole Canyon and began our trek up to Geyser Pass in the La Sal mountains. It only took about 30 minutes before we arrived at the mountain trailhead, our head lamps illuminating a climb through brush and rocks that appeared to never end. One step at a time, we made our ascent. It was tough work, and we stopped frequently to catch our breath.

After a couple hours, we made it to the first plateau and joined up with several other runners, who tended to band together overnight to make sure no one got lost. Note that until this moment, it was hard to get lost as our Garmin watches had been almost perfectly reliable. Given my conditioning over the prior days to mindlessly follow the purple “trail” line on my watch, I went ahead and turned right as the watch told me to and ventured into thick brush. I bushwhacked a bit expecting to find a trail and instead stood at the edge of a cliff. I glanced at the watch again. I was apparently on the trail, despite clearly not being on the trail. Oh shit. Hello Fear.

Thankfully, some of the other runners suggested we backtrack and start heading down an earlier turn off and walk ahead to see if there were any trail markers. After about a half mile, we all celebrated finding a trail markers, hooting and hollering into the vast emptiness of the night. And on it went, stumbling through the darkness trying to guess at what turns to make that were in the vicinity of the direction we knew we had to go (but not on any trail we had in our devices) eyes peeled for the next trail marker to make sure we had not veered of course.

As we climbed higher, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. Freezing rain fell in sheets soaking through all three layers I was wearing. I could barely feel my hands. Alex was hallucinating from the lack of sleep. The thought then crossed my mind that if I got lost right now, Alex and I may never make it back. I recall mentioning to him, “this is no longer about the race, it’s about seeing our families again.”

That’s about when I noticed a super power take hold of me. It was Fear. It provided me with what felt like superhuman focus on the many uncontrollable variables around me. It allowed me to focus only on the next step rather than the many hours of pain that were surely ahead of me. It made sure I said the right thing to Alex to allay his fears and made sure that I was always on the lookout for that next trail marker.

Hours passed this way in what felt like complete flow state. The sun eventually came up and as we started to descend temperatures rose. We were out of immediate danger, and rewarded by some of the most beautiful and expansive vistas I have ever seen.

About an hour or so after the sun came up I stopped to wait for Alex and looked out over the horizon. I could see for what felt like hundreds of miles. There were mountain ranges, mesas, red rocks, cities, and then more of the same going on and on for what seemed like an infinite distance. At this moment I realized the mountain was rewarding me for my effort. As expert mountaineers like Ken Posner will attest (read his latest book, Chasing the Grid, if you haven’t already), mountains are living, breathing, and very spiritual, entities. They will break you down and then build you back up. The La Sal mountains were building me back up at the moment, and I desperately wanted to document this moment for my family (and this blog). So, I reached into my pack for my phone, and realized it was gone. I must have lost it somewhere on the mountain. To my surprise, I had no reaction! After what I had just been through I couldn’t even force myself to conjure up any care for the whereabouts of my phone. I couldn’t help think how easy life would be if I could carry this perspective with me when I stepped off the mountain.

(As an aside, a day later my phone showed up on the floor of our Airbnb. We still do not know how it got there, as I had with me at Pole Canyon. I chalk it up to mountain magic.)

It has now been six days since I returned from Moab so I have had a lot of time to reflect on this transformational experience. I now see how I’ve almost never been outside arms length of my second arrow. I have self-inflicted wounds everywhere that the external world can’t see. But they are very real to me, and prevented me from fully experiencing my life.

Moab forced me to put down my second arrow and pick up my trekking poles. I was able to submerge myself (sometimes literally due to the rain) in situations that would have spurred crippling anxiety, and leverage my Friendly Fear to help really enjoy the experience of living inside my anxiety. In this way, some of my walls of anxiety came crashing down.

While I am certain I will do my best to build those walls back up as I transition back to my comfortable life, I now know there is always an antidote to destructive anxiety that is just sitting there waiting for me. All I have to do is be willing to step WAY out of my comfort zone and venture into the unknown.

I want to thank Andrea, Jenny, and the Duvall family for allowing me to tag along on their epic Moab journey! It takes a village to support a Moab 240 runner, and this was one of the most beautiful and caring villages I have ever had the privilege to spend time with. Much love!