Mostly Quiet
The Shakori 40-Miler was last weekend.
Mid-week rain left the fairgrounds prideful with mud and saturated under fields of tufted grass. It was not the mud-fest of a previous running, but neither was it bluebird conditions. The 40-milers, congregating under “Without Limits” banners for the 7am start, looked ahead of them with blank yet furtive stares; a tedious day lays ahead.
I was at the race supporting EC Athlete, Darrin Mann, alongside his wife Beth. Our race plan was pretty simple: head out at a comfortable effort, don’t fight against the mud, and if things are feeling good at the halfway mark, crank it a bit.
From the gun, a few guys jetted out to the front. Darrin let them go and settled into his longhaul effort like a commensurate craftsman. The guy impresses me to no end. A total tactician, capable of granular pace-control, as I watched him glide up a muddy slope and around the first bend, I was filled with respect.
Getting to this race was not easy on Darrin.
Beth and Darrin have a 2-year-old, Jack. In the first 2 years of motherhood, Beth not only completed her education but she seamlessly segued into her career as a Perinatal Nurse. Darrin supported Beth through this process, sneaking in the ultra training where he could (stroller commuters raise your hands!) .
Written out in this way, Beth and Darrin’s story might sound alluring—romantic even; a family coming together to support one anothers’ badassery as they strive for the life that they want for Jack and for themselves.
And don’t get me wrong, I personally find Beth and Darrin’s life very romantic. But I am resisting heading down that track of thought because of how the trail media space feels so overwrought with confessional romanticism at this time. Something would be lost.
For those of us who take in copious amounts of trail running literature and videos, we have likely noticed that the last 10 years has brought a very effervescent—perhaps hormonal—style to content creation. Often created by vloggers directly before, during, or after an activity which produces endorphins, and through one thousand cuts in the form of Youtube vlogs, Instagram reels and the like, our trail running zeitgeist has undergone a shiny update; accessorized with crusader tropes and maximalist muzak.
In isolation, this content appears to model a positive, healthy lifestyle. What’s wrong with that? But as a system of culture-generation, the rapidly economizing trail media space is now fully capable of reaching toxic levels of positivity, exclusivity, and self-importance.
It is an inarguable fact: Beth and Darrin are a real ultrarunning family.
So while we can garner wonderfully positive things from this decentralized, confessional, non-journalistic style that currently prevails, it can still disappoint us—embarrass us even—that an accurate portrayal of Beth and Darrin’s way of living, training, and racing is not just unvalidated by the trail space, it is implicitly crowded out.
During his preparations for Shakori 40, Darrin’s son caught a cold and he missed training. After a couple key workouts, Darrin reported lacking power in his stride and feeling achy from being up all night with Jack. Sleep deprivation leads to increased injury-risk. Heart rate variability goes down. Simple tasks feel a little harder; aging bodies hurt a little more.
What does a real trail running family look like? So many beautiful and underreported things. It looks like humans navigating the mundane, unutterable annoyances of modern life and parenthood in private. It looks like juggling opposing work schedules. It looks like hard-earned joys and brief respites. It looks like frustration with nowhere to turn; a compounding fatigue akin to peak training. But while Joey Speedster’s peak training is the talk of Strava, less representation is given to the progressively overloaded parent.
As we waited for him to come around the 4-mile loop, Beth and I talked about these things and it struck me: she sounded exactly like an athlete describing a 100-mile…suddenly Darrin appeared from the woods and he was hauling it!
He turned the corner, into the makeshift tent-village, shifted up one last gear, and soared under the banners to finish his tenth and final lap of the Shakori 40. It was his fastest of the day.
Beth was thrilled for Darrin to be done. I was thrilled for Darrin to be done. Darrin was thrilled for Darrin to be done! We hugged. We took some photographs.
And then we went mostly quiet.
Backlit by a fleet of drooping “Without Limits” banners, Darrin stood there, thinking. There was something sweet and strong and beautiful there. Maybe even a deeply symbolic thing.
But I cannot find the words to do it justice.