The real reason you’re tired all the time: It’s not your workload. It’s your open loops. The text you haven’t answered. The apology you owe. The decision you’re avoiding. The conversation you keep postponing. These run in the background of your mind all day, draining your battery. Close your loops. Watch your energy return. Mental clutter is more exhausting than physical work ever will be. – Scott D. Clary
I don’t follow Scott D. Clary, or two people that quoted tweeted it. This was a random post on my X feed — the kind I usually ignore — but something about it caught my eye today. It’s hardly...
Sometime in late 2024, I found myself on my phone a lot. My son, Jack, was only a couple months old and my phone usage had increased dramatically. As a newborn, Jack was not the kind of baby who could be put on his back to sleep. He wanted to be on someone, always.
Anne and I would trade off naps. We’d settle into a chair, get comfortable and let Jack sleep for a couple of hours. When it was my turn, sometimes I’d watch a movie or read a book, but often I’d be on my phone, scrolling endlessly.
I didn’t like this new pattern. There’s something different about phones. I feel productive while using a laptop or desktop...
Last fall and winter were busy times for me. In September, I drove Betsy across Canada in time for the WAM 100. In the weeks following the race, Derek and I spent three weeks together exploring Vancouver and the surrounding areas all while diagnosing a transmission issue in the van. At the end of this period, I arranged for Betsy to have her transmission rebuilt while Derek and I moved all my belongings down to Arizona in his truck and trailer. Between November and February, Anne and I split our time between Montreal and Southern California. To top it off, I drove a fixed Betsy down the west coast from Vancouver to Laguna Niguel, CA for Christmas. It was tiring.
I signed up for the Whistler Alpine Meadows (WAM) 100 miler in the spring. The event had returned from a two year Covid hiatus was now a Hardrock 100 qualifier. With almost 9000m (29k feet) of vertical gain, this wasn’t entirely a surprise. Even though I would be in Montreal for the summer — and would have to train — I knew the course well from the 110km race in 2019.
Being a tough, steep race, requiring both strong hiking and running skills, WAM was my kind of race. Plus, it would be an excuse to return to Whistler, somewhere that has become rather special to me in recent years. Anne and lived in the village for 6 weeks...
This wasn’t supposed to be my first 100 miler. For years I’d intended to run the Fat Dog 120, a 120 miler. I’ve never learned the history of the extra distance, but being one of the best known races in BC, I’ve wanted to run it ever since I got into ultrarunning. It’s special to me because it ends in Manning Park, a place I’d visited as kid, done numerous training runs as an adult, and is home to the northern terminus of the PCT. After a strong year of training throughout 2019, I registered to run Fat Dog in August 2020.
I ended 2019 feeling more excited about ultrarunning than I’d ever been. I was looking forward to...
