A sense of where you are

Finding myself in the Marin Headlands

Throughout the month of December, we’re taking a look back at our year in running from the road to the trail. This week: A Northern Califonia pilgrimage brings a spiritual quest full circle.

A few days before the Tamalpa Headlands 50K, I got a note from someone on that cursed app we used to call Twitter. Essentially, he felt it necessary to tell me hours before one of the biggest races of my life that my training had been trash. In Marin, he said, runners knock out threshold workouts to the top of Mt. Tamalpais each and every Wednesday evening. As for my piddly little treadmill workouts, they made him “cringe.”

Well, then.

As the trail runners began rolling into Stinson Beach with their impressive calves and chiseled California features, I was already feeling the familiar pangs of imposter syndrome. Having experienced some of the trails earlier in the week – Dipsea, Steep Ravine, and especially Matt Davis – I knew I’d be in for a rougher ride than I had assumed. The trails weren’t nearly as buffed out and pristine as I had been led to believe. So much for the famed California Carpet. They were also much, much steeper than I had prepared for during training.

So yeah, all those 10-12 percent incline workouts on the treadmill maybe weren't as badass as I had believed. Maybe I was in way over my head. Maybe I didn’t belong here after all.

That feeling crystalized when we picked up my race bib from a local running store. You don’t know what it’s like to size up an elite ultra runner until you’re hearing them casually talk about the most epic 50K of your life as a training run. A training run, by the way, they intended to finish hours before you did.

In the final hours leading up to the race, I thought about all the reasons I had come out here in the first place. This race was a 50th birthday present to myself, but it also had the feel of something deeper and more profound than a cool travel experience. It had to be about more than time and competition.

My goal, then, is to simply go with the flow. If I can be fully present in the moment, mentally engaged with the task at hand, and physically primed to perform then everything else will take care of itself. Ego, pride, and vanity have no place in this race plan. To be successful on Saturday, my motives must remain pure and my intentions true.

If I can do all that, I have a feeling there will be a bigger prize waiting for me at the finish than any podium or swag bag could provide.

I was still feeling a little unsure about my prospects as we gathered in the corral before the start of the race. That’s when the RD asked us to raise our hands in the air, signifying that we were all part of the same group. That group included legitimate elites, badass locals, and a couple of people like myself who were experiencing an environment like this for the very first time.

In that moment, I felt part of a lineage of endurance runners who had been gathering in places like this long before there were races with aid stations and chip timing. We were all links in an unbroken chain dating back to trail running’s very origins in this country. And each and every one of us had something to prove, if only to ourselves.

All of us had our reasons for being out there. Each of us had stories. Some we told, some we kept to ourselves. All of us, it seemed, rooting for one another to have their best race, whatever that meant for each individual runner.

Only thing I’d change about this race was that white t-shirt.

For all intents and purposes, my race didn’t really start until around Mile 18 when the morning fog gave way to chilly rain. Facing two monstrous climbs that my legs simply couldn’t run – my dude on Twitter wasn’t necessarily wrong – I was faced with a choice: Suck it up and get to the top of the hill, or whine about everything that was going wrong.

With 1,300 feet of elevation gain over three miles into a rainy headwind staring me right in the face, I decided to keep moving. No time to feel sorry for myself or think about how I could have done things differently in training. Honestly, I wasn’t even all that upset. I mean, they don’t call it Cardiac Hill because it’s easy. Soaked and sore, absolutely. But broken? Absolutely not.

The last three hours of this race were as physically difficult as any race I’ve ever done. Every ounce of energy had to be allocated with care and purpose. That meant no let-ups, no feeling sorry for myself, not even a shiver acknowledging the plummeting temperatures was going to do me any good. Nothing but relentless forward progress.

If I had to describe my mindset during the second half of the race it would be, there, as in: I was all the way there. Locked in the moment, neither happy nor sad. Just … there.

After finally emerging from Davis with a small pack of runners, we discovered the aid station had been moved. A few hundred feet down the trail, a dance party was taking place in the woods. My son, thinking I’d be upset about not making my splits, was delighted to find me in a good mood. In retrospect, this was the key moment of the whole day.

I finished that race back where it had started, in foggy Santos Meadow some six and a half hours after it had begun. As I crossed the finish line in a ridiculous white t-shirt – I thought it would be sunny! – caked in mud, sweat, and snot, my son was waiting for me with open arms and tears in his eyes.

Not sure how he knew in his 10-year-old heart what I had just accomplished, but we’ve always shared a brain so I wasn’t surprised that he understood. (Nor was I surprised that he won the kid’s race.)

It took a few weeks of processing before the Tamalpa race experience began making sense in my own head. It was, I think, the moment when I fully cast aside all the baggage I had been carrying around about who I was supposed to be and fully embraced the person I had become.

Endurance events have a way of clarifying intent and providing purpose. They are purifying in that way, washing away the flickering embers of doubt and uncertainty and replacing them with a spirit that’s been reborn from the fire of experience. Along with the cool t-shirt and fancy medal, ultras offer the opportunity to move the needle of personal progress a few ticks in the right direction.

It’s funny that RP spent the year traveling from New Hampshire to California in search of PRs, BQs, and personal validation, yet the lasting lessons from2024 were learned closer to home. Next week: An injury, a reckoning, and a new path forward.