A Not-So-Simple Hiking Date

Running complicates a long-running relationship

Last weekend, my husband of thirty-four years and I went on a weekend getaway that I planned. It involved a long hike.

He announced to our two kids, “Your mom is trying to kill me.”

He joked again last Friday night—“You’re going to kill me”—as we stood at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim and looked down 5000 feet to the chasm where we’d go all the way down and back up. He felt confident he could handle the distance and elevation, although it would be a challenge, but the potential high heat made him nervous. Our running joke about my extremism potentially killing him was his funny way of communicating that he needed me to let him go his pace.

South Rim selfie the night before the big hike.

“This is all your idea,” he added as insurance. (True, it was.) In other words, if something went wrong and we had a bad time, he could blame me. But he said it in his same funny matter-of-fact way, only mildly accusing.

I sensed he felt torn. He wanted to do a big hike in a beautiful place, but he worried about keeping up and falling apart midway if the canyon’s temperature rose above 90.

Meanwhile, I was feeling sensitive to the fact that some people, especially my husband and two kids, are reluctant to share the trail with me because they find my running and trail skills intimidating, and they fear I’ll make them go farther or faster than what feels manageable for them.

A newer running friend actually voiced this view to me last week. “I never would have started running with you this summer had I known,” she said.

“Known what?” I asked.

“About your ultras, especially the 170-mile desert thing. I would’ve been way too intimidated.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m the least intimidating person I know,” I said.

But her comment made me think. This woman started running with me in early summer because I was supportive and encouraging, and I let her set the pace. She didn’t know about my past accomplishments as a runner and didn’t worry about keeping up with me. I didn’t care about how she ran, I just appreciated her company. Our shared run together once a week for a few miles was purely social, no big deal.

Over the past quarter century, I managed to turn my husband and kids off from running, and I’m pretty sure it’s because they viewed it as a big deal. They saw me place so much meaning on, and devote so much effort to, “training” for the sake of competition and health that running took on a serious, complicated aura.

Morgan and I used to run together in our thirties and early forties, but he lost interest. He never took it that seriously. It became my thing, not ours, which saddened me.

My family stopped wanting to traverse a trail with me because it was never as simple as a family-foursome outing. It was me taking the lead and offering advice (which they heard as criticism) on how to do it. It became un-fun. Take it from me, it feels shitty to be the un-fun person in the family.

 My daughter, now 26, likes to hike but seeks assurance that I won’t push her to run. It’s as if she’s working through PTSD.  All three adamantly refuse to join me at the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot 5K. “No way, sounds awful,” my son, 23, said a few days ago when I floated the idea with perennial hopefulness. He has no interest in hiking even though he willingly walks 18 holes of golf.

How did my running become this toxic thing in our family relationship, this wedge that not only separates me from them but makes them reject the thing I love? I feel they’re rejecting me.

These family dynamics and psychological baggage overshadowed the big hike from the moment I suggested it to my husband, Morgan.

Could I plan and execute a hike with him in a way that was purely for fun and togetherness? Could we enjoy a simple long-hike date, as we have in the past? What did I need to do differently to undo whatever I did to turn him off from wanting to share challenging miles with me?

I sensed what I needed to do, which felt easy and natural, really, because I’ve mellowed and don’t care as much about training now that my big goal for the year is behind me. I genuinely just wanted to hike and be with him.

I needed to let go of any thoughts of running or training during our time together. Don’t shoehorn in a run after our long drive Friday, don’t do pushups on the hotel floor. Get fully in vacation mode. Enjoy dinner out the night before, along with a tasty pint of beer, rather than abstaining as if it’s the night before a race. Stop comparing our planned outing of 18 miles on the rim-river-rim route to the much harder and twice as long rim-to-rim-to-rim run I did with runner friends. Respect and fully appreciate that the route we were doing was, in fact, a stretch for him and any normal non-ultrarunning person.

“See?” he laughed, reading my thoughts as he pointed to a sign at the rim as we walked to dinner the night before the hike. It read: “Warning: never try to hike from the rim to the river and back in one day. Many who tried suffered serious illness or death.”

I needed to allay the concerns he implicitly expressed about overheating or rolling an ankle by preparing to handle any problems that arose. I therefore packed and carried anything and everything we might need: extra water with ice in an insulated reservoir. Ankle and knee braces. Sunscreen, blister kit, full first aid. Map. Plenty of trail snacks plus a lunchtime picnic. I carried all the extra water and stuff in my larger pack so that he only needed a lighter hydration pack.

He was willing to get up extra early and start in the freezing-cold dark with a headlamp to catch the sunrise. I could tell by his good mood, even though he wasn’t quite ready to give me the satisfaction of expressing excitement and eagerness, that he was in fact excited and eager to do this big thing, and grateful I had arranged it, once we got there and got everything ready.

We hit the trailhead at 5:30 a.m.

From the moment we parked our car near Yaki Point and began descending on the South Kaibab Trail, runners who were embarking on a daylong outing kept running past us. As a hiker, I found them more annoying than interesting or impressive. They talked too loudly, disturbing the dawn’s peace. Few said thank you when we stepped to the side. Not all, but several ran with a vibe of superiority and entitlement to the trail. Others seemed hurried and stressed.

They were my people, and yet I found myself fully allied with Morgan from the start of our hike and genuinely wanted to be in his hiking mode. These runners did not spark envy in me, as they might have, perhaps because I’d already experienced the run they were starting.

Morgan and I have been in a relationship since I was 15 (we recently celebrated forty years since we got together in October of 1984), and therefore we wordlessly know with great accuracy what the other thinks and feels. He could tell that I was on his wavelength, not feeling pulled to run. This bonded us as partners from the moment we started clickity-clacking with trekking poles down the steep trail with its innumerable built-in steps.

A photo of us that a passerby took early in the hike.

You might think that we would run out of things to talk about, but no. We talked in hushed tones, respecting the awe and majesty of the sunrise in the canyon setting. We wondered what the park’s mules ate to make their manure so green. We speculated on who built the trail’s rock work and when, since it was pre-WPA. We oohed and ahhed at the sunrise at Ooh-Ahh Point. We guessed about where the backpackers coming up the trail had camped overnight, and we considered hypothetical backpacking trips. We fully shared the wonder of the complexity, history, and beauty of the canyon that spread out below us.

The South Kaibab trail visible on the left side of the first photo, and the bridge that leads to Phantom Ranch crossing the Colorado River.

A bighorn ram we admired on the way back up South Kaibab.

We and everyone else needed to modify the typical rim-river-rim route (which is South Kaibab Trail down to Phantom Ranch and back up Bright Angel Trail) because lower Bright Angel is closed for a big construction project, replacing an aging water line. Therefore, after buying the world’s best lemonade at the Phantom Ranch Canteen, we crossed back over the black bridge and backtracked up South Kaibab to Tipoff Point. From there, we started traversing the Tonto Trail westward.

On the easygoing Tonto Trail.

I had never been on this stretch of Tonto, so my newness there made us equals. Those relatively flat four miles to Havasupai Gardens were perhaps the most easygoing and pleasurable, marveling at the massive plateau and the profusion of greenery around a couple of small streams we crossed. We verbalized gratitude for the Goldilocks weather, not too hot.

When we reconnected with Bright Angel Trail and got our first look at where we needed to ascend to get back up to the South Rim, Morgan expressed fatigue for the first time. “How the hell is there a trail?” he asked, looking at the vertical wall of sandstone topped by limestone rising several thousands of feet. It seemed as if we’d need ropes to climb it.

Bright Angel Trail near Havasupai Gardens, no trail evident in the wall ahead.

It was at that point that I admitted I had underestimated the mileage remaining. The reroute made the whole route a bit longer. “It’s actually about five miles from here, not three,” I told him. “That means you’ll do at least 20!”

I said it cheerfully—perhaps bordering on patronizing, as if suggesting he deserved a gold star—and he gave me a withering look. Two extra miles at a slow uphill pace meant an extra hour. But the real issue was that I felt guilty and worried he’d struggle. My comment fit with a long pattern of me underestimating mileage and taking longer to finish a run than I said I would take, which I partly attribute to inherent optimism.

We sat to rest, he ate a bar, and then he felt better. I could tell he was curious to see how the hidden trail fit into that wall. He looked determined. I knew then that he’d handle the climb just fine, and I felt deep admiration for him.

We finished the final miles steady and strong, together. We felt amused by all the tourists who wandered down only a mile or so from the South Rim, and we recalled how that’s what we did back in 2009, when the kids were only 11 and 8. We had come so far together on this day’s big hike and in life.

Morgan ascending the Bright Angel Trail and at a tunnel near the top.

He spotted the warning sign we saw the prior day, and he laughed at it again and made me take a photo to show our kids and his parents. He told me over dinner that he was glad we did it and grateful I planned it. We started considering a hike from the North Rim next year.

The next morning, I ran four miles to fetch the car from the trailhead where we left it. The run felt refreshing, but secondary and less meaningful compared to Saturday’s hike.

I realized I had accomplished something significant. I had stopped caring so much about running—that weekend, and more generally—because I care more about Morgan and our ability to share a trail at any pace in this phase of life, before we really get old. And that, in turn, allows me to love him fully as a hiker and to stop mourning the fact he no longer runs.

He wasn’t the one who needed to change.

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Next week, I’ll endeavor to publish a story on Tuesday, not Wednesday, because most everyone will be focused on election news Wednesday. I may have a 100-mile race report, no promises but fingers crossed. I’m on the fence about participating in an event this Saturday; the weather is a factor.

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Related posts

On how to do a rim-to-rim-to-rim Grand Canyon adventure (almost):

A Magical Modified R2R2R

And on the appeal of a multi-day long walk:

Walking El Camino Is the Way