A 10-Year Flashback: Travel, Run…Blog?

Happy new year! I can’t believe we’re closing out a decade. That means this blog is almost a decade old.

On a run during the last week of December 2009 on the South Island of New Zealand.

This picture shows me 10 years ago, age 40, on a run in New Zealand. We were midway through a life-altering year of round-the-world travel with our two kids, then ages 8 and 11, living nomadically (staying in 83 places on five continents) on a budget with our stuff limited to one bag each. I was wearing a Boston Marathon visor that I got from running Boston in 2009, and I had a handheld water bottle because I hadn’t yet discovered hydration vests. The longest I’d ever run was a 50K. I had a first-generation iPhone, but I didn’t use the phone much and didn’t carry it on runs. I would’ve laughed if I had seen a prototype of Hokas; another four years would pass before I became a Hoka convert. In 2009, I thought running 1500 miles in a year was a lot, and now, 2000 miles a year seems relatively low. (In 2019, I ran 2170; here’s a list of my annual run totals if you’re curious.)

When our family returned to California in mid-2010, I mothballed our family travel blog and started this one. In the first post, I explained,

When we moved back home after our long trip, the cornball phrase “keep the journey alive” kept going through my head. Rather than push it away, I thought, “OK, but how?” This blog represents one way I’m trying to nurture my traveling lifestyle while we go about our regular, at-home lives. By that, I mean I’m trying to maintain a sense of adventure and willingness to try new things. A less stressed, more mindful way of going about the day. A commitment to plan and execute out-of-the-ordinary outings—be they day trips or long-term sojourns—that keep me feeling younger. A belief that it’s possible to go places and do things that seem nearly impossible and highly impractical. And an awareness that our time on Earth is quite limited, so make most of the here and now.

Over the past decade, I got really into the sport of mountain/ultra/trail running and blogged about those adventures on the trail; I ran several 100 milers and self-supported stage races, started coaching and wrote a book. I also covered the sport by frequently co-hosting UltraRunnerPodcast and writing for Trail Runner magazine.

Then, over the past year or so, I pulled back from the sport’s media coverage, and I became preoccupied with a different kind of journey and adventure: building and settling into a new home while transitioning to a new phase of life. I no longer podcast for URP or write for Trail Runner (though I still write a column for UltraRunning; here’s the most recent one). I gave up my Ultra Runner Of the Year ballot because I didn’t care to continue following the competitive scene closely enough to feel I deserved a vote. I’m not on Strava, nor do I follow others’ Strava accounts. More recently, I told GU and Ultimate Direction I’d like to step down from their ambassador teams because I didn’t want to compromise any independence and be compelled to do hashtag-heavy social media promo posts in exchange for free products.

All in all, I desired to make my relationship to the sport more personal and modest. I still love trail running and coaching, I still have a robust race calendar, but ultrarunning is not so front-and-center in my life as it was during most of the past decade. I want to write about topics other than running and be known as more than a runner.

Which brings me back to this blog and its 262 posts. Blogging feels rather retro in this era when most people simply post paragraphs in an Instagram caption. In November, trail-running pioneer blogger Scott Dunlap retired his blog. It got me thinking, should I keep this going? Who am I writing this for and why? Certainly not to earn money (this blog’s small bit of monetization through Amazon click-throughs generates barely enough for a new pair of Hokas).

Really, I just want an outlet for processing thoughts and sharing some stories, and occasionally some advice if it seems helpful. I may nurture a hope of publishing another book, but regardless of whether that idea comes to fruition, I want to keep writing. Anne Lamott once wrote, “Publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. … The act of writing turns out to be its own reward”—much like the act of running is its own reward, apart from a race result.

So I’ve decided to keep The Runner’s Trip running for one more year, to keep it alive for a solid decade, but I’m warning you that this blog may become even more personal and less practical, and I might increasingly write about things that have little to do with running. I’ll probably still crank out race reports (I’m sure the upcoming Running Up for Air timed event in Salt Lake City will be entertaining), but I also may write about my horse or our new chickens, or about scenes from this town, or perhaps about some photos from the early 1930s that I recently uncovered that show what true adventure looks like—I don’t know, I don’t have a plan. I just appreciate this forum as a place to journey through journaling, going places in paragraphs that I didn’t expect to explore.

If you decide to unsubscribe (as several have done, checking the box next to “content no longer relevant” as the reason), that’s fine, I understand. But if you keep reading, thank you. I appreciate any and all kinds of feedback, so I welcome your comments below on what you like to read, what resonates, or what makes your eyes glaze over.

Finally, I didn’t do the “10-Year Challenge” fad on Facebook/Instagram because I was paranoid it’s a plan to enhance facial recognition through age progression. But here’s a 10-year comparison that makes me smile so I’ll share it. I love the places I’ve been with my family, and I’m blown away by how my kids transitioned from kids to young adults from 2009 to 2019. My family—our foursome—is my rock, my primary reason for being, and I can’t adequately articulate my love and gratitude for those three who make me whole.

Our family 10 years ago—December 2009, in a rental RV on the North Island of NZ. Morgan is wearing the “K42” cap he got when we ran a trail marathon in Argentina two months prior to this photo.

Our family a few days before Christmas 2019. I still suck at skiing but am getting better.