Running and Feeling It All
A collection of stories to help you feel and run better
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Finally, after frighteningly warm temperatures in early February that evaporated snow and baked the dirt road like a clay pot, the sky dumped more than a foot of much-needed snow. I drove through near white-out conditions and managed our truck fishtailing on the slippery road. I shoveled heaps of heavy white stuff to clear our walkway while my husband fired up the SkidSteer to remove drifts from the driveway.
Inside, I reunited with the treadmill—my three-year-old NordicTrack 32i model that goes all the way up to a 40 percent incline. For four days, I willingly ran and hiked uphill on the treadmill and felt gratitude toward the machine and my healthier body. Injury recovery is perhaps the best motivator to run, along with angst about the state of the world and special races on calendar.
On Sunday, the sun emerged, the county’s overworked snowplow driver belatedly cleared our road, and I went out for a longer run on packed snow wearing the Hoka Speedgoat GTX unisex winter model with built-in spikes, which I recommend and like more than strapping on traction devices. I rediscovered a rhythm of slow running to the white noise of snow crunching underfoot. I felt relaxed, not impatient, and stretched the run to three hours—my first long run since the ultra on November 2 where I caused self-inflicted damage in the form of a tendon tear.
Those three hours amounted to only fourteen miles at an average pace of around 13 minutes/mile, due to all the uphill hiking breaks and slow running through soft slush. But I didn’t mind, I loved moving my body steadily regardless of speed in the sparkling outdoors.
Last fall, I had planned to train for an early March road marathon, which meant by now in mid-February, my aim would have been to cover twenty faster road miles in a three-hour training run, to hone a sub-9-minute/mile marathon pace. That pace feels entirely far-fetched now. Being a road marathoner was not in the cards this season, and that’s fine. Even a relief.
Feeling healthy and motivated matters so much more to me now than speed and performance. Motivation these days springs from appreciation for what we have and what is beautiful—health, community, and the mostly unspoiled outdoors.
If you read the second half of last week’s post (a.k.a. what I’m doing to stay sane during crazy times), you know I feel the dark changes underway deeply. I am raging against the firing of National Park Service and US Forest Service staffers who are desperately needed for park operations and wildfire risk reduction, for example, and for so many other destructive acts the new administration undertook in a mere four weeks. (Click through and read this post for just one example.)
That darkness, however, heightens my awareness for goodness and beauty. It also makes me run emboldened, and to channel anger into action and outreach.
Today’s post aims to share motivation and positivity—reminders that people are mostly good and resilient, and we can be better together. I assembled a collection of links I recommend for reading, watching, or listening. I hope they lift your spirit and motivate you to move, to speak out, and to hug and support others.
Inspirational running role models and feel-good stories
Class act: Last weekend, Rajpaul Pannu, an ultrarunner from Denver who used to live in the East Bay Area and whose parents immigrated from India, won the USATF 100-mile road championship in 11 hours, 52 minutes at the Jackpot Ultras event near Las Vegas. It was the second-fastest American men’s time in the 100-mile, in spite of terribly windy conditions. By Monday, however, the title no longer was his. Turns out, he unintentionally violated the rules by wearing shoes by Hoka, his sponsor, that were too high, according to regulations that govern the thickness of the sole at this championship event. No one informed him during his nearly 12-hour effort that he was wearing illegal shoes.
Raj could’ve taken this news hard—bitter, angry, argumentative—and could’ve blamed his sponsor and/or the officials for not making him aware of the shoe rule. Instead, he took responsibility and reacted extremely graciously, and also congratulated the second-place finisher, who finished about an hour and a half behind him, for earning the title. He concluded, “Regardless, this was the best training run of my life.” You can read Raj’s full statement by clicking through the Instagram post below, and I recommend this first-person story by him about his background.
The fastest and nicest 50something woman: At that same Jackpot Ultras 100-mile road championship, a 54-year-old woman took the win, placed third overall, and set an age group record! Jian Springer, who goes by the nickname Stella, ran 100 miles in 15 hours, 29 minutes. Instead of boasting afterward, she wrote only on her Facebook post about it, “What did I do to deserve the win? Congratulations to all runners out there battling through the crazy wind—it was a tough day!”
I met her last April after I raced the Leona Divide 100K and wondered, who is this woman in my age group crushing all of us? (She finished four hours ahead of me in that race.) She lives in Los Angeles, works full time as a bank executive, and has two school-age kids. She told me last year:
“I started running in January 2016 when my older one was 5 and younger one 3. I decided to run because I desperately needed some alone time. I did my first 10 miles in my life on my 45th birthday, and I was about to die the last few miles. I signed up for San Diego marathon in June, finished in 3:58, and had a blast. I never stopped running ever since.” (Read my story about her here.)
Last weekend’s 100-mile championship took place on a repeat 1.2-mile loop, and my friend and storied ultrarunner Scott Mills, age 73, was there to bag one more 100-mile finish. He said that almost every time Stella passed him on the loops, “she would slow down, talk to me, and see how I was doing. Her character of humility and her personality are such that I just love her.”
How to handle a shitty race: I really enjoyed and recommend this Trail Network Podcast episode in which Hilary Yang interviews Katie Asmuth about Katie’s problems and disappointments at the Black Canyon 100K. Katie is a high-level sponsored ultrarunner, and she opens up about the pressure to compete at the very top of ultrarunning today, which can feel like “a hamster wheel,” and how she’s trying to still have fun through it all. It’s a smart conversation about troubleshooting mid-ultra and reaching (or sometimes recalibrating) goals. I admire both of their positive voices in the sport.
Finding different strengths: I subscribe to
newsletter by novelist and publisher , who runs and rows in addition to writes. Her last post resonated because she described feeling broken from injury and gradually learning to accept and work with the injury’s limitation. "When you’re injured, you can find different strengths. It’s not binary. You don’t go from strong to weak. You go (or can go, if you’re smart) from being strong in one way to being strong in another, different way,” she wrote. Read her full post here.The heart of the U.S. Postal Service: On my run Monday, I looped through town and heard, “Way to go, Sarah!” I recognized the voice of our town’s retired postman, Jim Looney, and I paused my watch to meet and talk with him on the corner. We exchanged a quick hug, and he asked about my Hardrock prep. I told him I’m getting back from injury and had just run up Tomboy Road. “That’s just great, that’s just great,” he repeated, and then we chatted about the big mountain lion sighting up the hill. I’m always grateful for run-ins with Jim.
A former dairy and hog farmer from Iowa, Jim worked at the post office for two decades until retirement in 2018, and he was so admired in our community that a filmmaker made this short documentary about him. I love this 16-minute film’s heart and how it portrays our town.
The film’s flaw is that the filmmaker overlooked Jim’s side as a runner. There’s nothing in it about the seventeen times he ran the arduous Imogene Pass Run that goes from Ouray to Telluride and hits 13,100 feet at its summit. When he worked at the post office, every time I met him at the counter to mail something, he would ask what my next race was and tell me a bit about his Imogene training.
Jim was known for bucking the USPS rules that make all post offices look the same; he put up bulletin boards and covered them with holiday cards and graduation and birth announcements of locals. (Sadly, those bulletin boards are a thing of the past now.) He greeted everyone by name and regularly gave out hugs for hellos, which felt heartfelt rather than creepy in this day and age. He’s a good example for us all and for the kindness we can spread.
Running amidst the trauma of war: The last few days’ news about our country’s mind-boggling shift way from supporting Europe and Ukraine to be cozier with Russia made me recall this inspiring feature story in the New York Times by runner Jared Beasley from 2022, which spotlighted Ukrainian ultrarunners doing a Bigs Backyard Ultra. From the story’s opening:
“The question was posed on Day 230 of the war, as Ukraine reeled from a barrage of cruise missiles: to run or not to run?
“On Oct. 15, there would be a race like no other: Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra Satellite Team Championships, a grueling last-nation-standing competition with no set finish line or time limit — no definitive end to the pain. To run in such a race would be to mirror the trauma the Ukrainians had been enduring since February.
“All 15 athletes were adamant, defiant; no man, no missile was going to take away their freedom to choose. They would run.”
Read the full article here (gift link).
And if you’re still struggling with motivation to run after those stories, I invite you to read this archived post with practical tips on how to get going:
Book report
Seven weeks into 2025, I’m on track with my goal to read at least one book every two weeks. Of the four I read so far this year, three were can’t-put-down and one I almost DNF’ed.
The three I recommend: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, Kala by Colin Walsh, and The Favorites by Layne Fargo. (My thumbs-down goes to the meandering Reese Witherspoon book-of-the-month pick The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan.) You can read my short reviews on my Goodreads page.
I’m due for a nonfiction title. Please leave any nonfiction recommendations in the comments below! And also, let us know what you think of the stories above.
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Sarah…love the running commentary. One note about your slight political comment regarding Ukraine. Perhaps the new direction from this administration is a better path forward for Ukraine. For the last three years thousands have died in Ukraine, the country may never recover. Perhaps it’s time to get the war to stop. The previous three years have not moved one inch toward that end. It was time for a change. Perhaps it’s time to trust a new path.
For nonfiction I recommend Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn; it's beautifully written and fascinating. And then if you're feeling stressed about the environment after that, I'd recommend Rambunctious Garden by Emma Marris for a shorter and more cheerful take on the same subject.