What Went Wrong On My Run, Updated

A list of long-run mistakes and regrets

Welcome back, and thanks for being here.

A shot from early last week.

Summer feels like it’s in full bloom (well, not quite full bloom—the high-altitude wildflowers around tree line show their best color in July). Countless swallows nest in the eaves of our roof, flying back and forth in front of my kitchen window to take food to their chicks, and if I’m lucky, I sometimes spot a Rocky Mountain bluebird in the pasture. Butterflies flit around the trails. The marmots that live in our woodpile (four at last count) take turns sunbathing on top of the logs and darting across our driveway to drink from a creek. The meadow grass is bright green, filling in brown spots. The aspens are leafing out. The San Miguel River is roaring at its brim, heavy with snowmelt.

This is perhaps my favorite time of summer—the early part—before heat bakes things yellow, before invasive thistles sprout, before the streaks of snow on the mountain ridges melt away, and before wildfires threaten and smoke spreads around the West.

But as I shared in a bonus post with paid subscribers on Monday, I’m not enjoying this start to summer due to stress. I got myself overcommitted with a volunteer leadership position for a local organization on top of a couple of other timely projects that are taking up free time and jeopardizing both my ultra training and my writing project. I failed the #1000wordsofsummer challenge, managing to produce 1000ish words on only a few days, not every day. And my running felt like crap this whole past week.

That photo above looks better than I felt. I met a photographer early in the week for a photo shoot, because he wanted to show a fiftysomething runner for a publication. (I’ll share it when it’s public. Also, that photo was snapped by his assistant on my iPhone; the photographer’s photos with a professional camera will be higher quality.) I had to sprint back and forth numerous times, on different segments of trail, while doing my best not to trip. It was like a super-duper strides workout, and I felt like a phony because I rarely run that fast, and my hamstrings and knees were giving me grief.

Then I cut my long training run short on Saturday feeling extra low on energy, achy, discouraged, and wanting to get back home to take care of other things on my to-do list. I wanted to get shit done, but I also wanted to sleep.

When I woke up from a nap later that day, I still had an abnormally deep fatigue, plus a headache and an ache in my trunk, which I realized felt like covid symptoms. I took a covid test, which was negative, but I feel my body was fighting something.

In any case, this weeklong crappy-run streak—from which I’m now slowly emerging—made me think about how sometimes it’s appropriate to give up rather than tough it out. I really needed to rest. I also needed to admit that I can’t fulfill certain goals when I take on extra obligations that distract me from them.

It also made me think of a post I wrote about 18 months ago:

I decided to update the “What Went Wrong on My Run” list. If you have time, I suggest clicking through and reading the post above first for context.

What goes wrong on my run, long-run version

• dog vomit on living room window seat makes for late start leaving house

• wrestle match with the window seat ensues, stripping the fabric cover off the foam cushion, chunks of dog barf on my shirt and floor

• must clean floor, change running shirt, start wash, fold yesterday’s laundry while I’m at it

• it takes reading glasses, nimble fingers, and more patience than teaching a toddler to tie shoes to attach Salomon’s trekking pole quiver to the back of my hydration pack, threading a thin strap through a tiny hole and getting two little hooks to attach to two minuscule flaps

• even after all that, I forget to put the poles in the quiver and return to house to get them after I’ve already left the driveway

• being late, I might as well do a few errands on the way to the trailhead, like drop off giveaway stuff that’s been in my car for days at the town’s free box and pick up packages when the post office opens at 9

• post office sign says it opens at 10 on Saturdays, so I get to the trailhead at 9:15ish feeling as if I’ve wasted two hours already

• tourists clog the first part of the trail to the falls, and when I run past them with a spring in my stride to show I’m a badass local runner, not a tourist, my heart rate spikes and I can’t breathe and I have to walk like a tourist

• in my ongoing search for a gel I can stomach, I’ve brought a brand-new one to try, Precision Fuel 30g Carb Gel, which many ultrarunning influencers promote, so I open my first-ever Precision Gel and squirt the whole thing—like two heaping tablespoons—in my mouth, and instantly it hits me that the light taste and smooth-and-slippery texture are identical to a certain sex lube, so I stop in my tracks gagging and struggling to swallow

• I am hiking uphill more than running and wondering why not just hike the whole thing, am I meant to be a hiker and should I retire from running for good?

• three texts come through that make me pause and get out my phone, each a political message destined to “delete and report junk,” but since I’m looking at my phone, I reflexively check email and then I’m reading the messages that have to do with stuff I need to do

• my route plan is “keep going up until you have to turn around due to snow” then go back down and go up another trail or mining road until hitting impassable snow; my route plan feels pointless, until I look up and admire the view, and then I stop and take an extended break to look around, which very much is the right not wrong thing to do but adds to the slow average pace of my outing, which triggers an impatience to hurry up and get back home to get stuff done

The view of Telluride approaching the top of Bridalveil Falls

• a snow traverse on a switchback brings me to hands and knees, inching forward, ready to turn on belly and self-arrest with a trekking pole

• because I stubbornly crossed it going up, I have to cross it again going down while murmuring I hate snow crossings I hate snow crossings

• enough of this slogging, I want to run, so I head back down to return to town, where I plan to tackle another trail up the box canyon, but my feet—heavy with the added weight of soaking-wet shoes from the snow runoff that has turned this rocky old mining road into a flowing creek bed—will not cooperate, as if my lower-body’s muscles refuse to engage

• shuffle shuffle shuffle I am shuffling downhill rather than running, my entire lower body preoccupied with soreness

• my hat brim feels tight as if my brain is swelling, and I acknowledge a pounding headache aggravated by not enough drinking or eating in the full high-altitude sun

• on the easiest, most runnable path, a full-blown bonk reduces me to walking stiffly, clutching trekking poles, as if I am in a hospital gown learning to walk again in a hallway with handrails

• there is no way I am going up another trail—I am calling it quits, cutting my long run short, going home to nap; something is wrong with my body—but part of my brain is arguing, isn’t this what you’re supposed to practice running through so you’ll be able to handle once again the weeklong challenge of the Grand to Grand Ultra, which involves back-to-back runs 50K to 50M in length while carrying a pack with all your food and stuff for the week, in the desert heat?

• and the other part of my brain argues, you’re right but not today, today I suck, today I can only go 12 miles, which took about three hours

• later in the day, groggy from napping and feeling like I accomplished hardly anything this day, I look at Strava and see that local runners did a group run nearly twice as long, with twice as much vert, in almost the same time as my run; maybe I need to take a break from Strava

What went wrong—or what wrecked—your long run? Please comment below.

I made several mistakes last Saturday that sabotaged a positive mindset, such as getting a late start, not hydrating and fueling enough, not choosing a better route, not buddying up with a friend, not turning notifications off my phone. I think the main mistake, however, was starting the run in the first place. I could have taken the rest day I needed and set myself up for a more successful training run the next day, or skipped that weekend’s run entirely.

Mountain lion update: I saw one

On a more serious note, encountering a threatening large animal truly is a “what went wrong on my run” occurrence. In last week’s “Face Your Fears” post, I described my fear of mountain lions and others’ sightings of them close to where I live and run.

That post now seems clairvoyant, because Monday, for the first time in three decades of running, I came upon one.

I took my two dogs out for a hike, with a little bit of running on the flat parts, on the trail network right next to our house—the trails I run every week. I carried a lightweight pack loaded with about 13 pounds to start to adapt to pack weight. We ascended the Deep Creek Trail’s switchbacks and moseyed along the main path next to an irrigation ditch, then diverted from the trail to traverse another less-traveled ditch path higher up, intending to do a loop back to my house.

I had my big dog, Daisy, on a leash because we’re working on leash training; Daisy is a Shepherd mix who likes to hunt and chase wildlife and has been getting into tussles with a coyote on our property. Our smaller, more timid dog, Dakota, was off leash.

About a half mile on the upper ditch path, maybe 100 feet ahead, I noticed a tawny-brown animal I assumed was a dog. Oddly, it wasn’t moving; it was hunched over, sniffing the ground, and the tall grass around it blocked a clear view. I didn’t see an owner with it, but I thought the owner might be farther down the path, behind the “dog.”

“Hello?” I called out loudly, to alert the animal and its possibly hidden owner that I was approaching with my dogs.

The animal looked up, and I did not get a clear look at its face because it turned around so quickly. But then I saw its thick hind end and its big, flat, wide tail hanging down, not a canine tail, most definitely the tail of a mountain lion.

I was disbelieving, until Daisy lunged forward—thank goodness I had her on leash, because she would’ve chased it and picked a fight—and Dakota started running ahead, until I called her back and she obediently returned.

The big cat, the size of a big dog, trotted away, no interest in approaching us, and within a few seconds it was out of sight.

I turned around and went back the way we came, changing my plan for doing a loop route, not wanting to cross the cat up ahead. I kept looking over my shoulder, but nothing was following us.

Did I really see that? Yes, and the dogs did too. Was it really a mountain lion? It must’ve been, because of its color and its thick tail that hung down. Bobcats are smaller and don’t have tails. Coyotes are grayer, with thinner tails that they hold higher.

I felt a mix of feelings—a bit of adrenaline, but also, a lot of relief that this wild animal did what every bear I’ve encountered has done: turned around and went the other way, not wanting to meet me. In that sense, my sighting was reassuring. I’ve heard and read other runners’ accounts of closer encounters with mountain lions that act aggressively, and last week’s post linked to some awful worst-case stories of attacks and deaths. But this seemed like a relatively safe encounter, a case study in coexisting.

I also felt some validation that I’m not imagining things, mountain lions really do live nearby, and I need to be aware and take precautions. I did not have bear spray with me on Monday’s dog hike because I was with the dogs, and these trails are so close to home and familiar. But I plan to make a habit from now on of carrying the small canister with me in my hydration pack whenever I go on these trails. I hope that bit of protection helps me maintain my confidence and enjoy these trails as always.

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Now this is summer! I took a non-run rest day Sunday and squeezed a riding date with my husband, before spending the entire afternoon at a community forum on a public lands issue. Writing this post helped me realize I need to chill out and be a little less ambitious to enjoy the season.

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