Today we head home. After about six weeks exploring France and Spain with Morgan and Marshall, we’re ready to get back to the cats and our friends, but this has been an enlightening summer. We’ve learned that we can survive traveling with a baby, we probably have way more things at home than we really need, we’re forming an international network of friends, and we discovered some pretty amazing parts of the world to run around in the mountains.
The point of the trip wasn’t just to be out here to train for and race the World Championships, but because that happened at the end of the trip it sort of felt like that was the culmination of everything. Just because that race didn’t go how I’d envisioned doesn’t mean the rest of the time here felt like a waste. I’ve already written about the Chamonix and Arêches chapters of the trip, as well as a sort of pre-race hype post that has aged poorly because I didn’t really get a chance to enter the fray before my day was over. I don’t feel like I need to do some detailed DNF report, there’s not much more to say. What I do feel is all the carb-loaded muscles just sitting in my legs doing nothing, yearning for the burn and drain and ache that they never felt.
So I suppose it makes sense then that my mind is already dreaming of what’s next. What can I do to get that release I was anticipating, and how can I get it as soon as possible? I have some ideas spinning around. A lot depends on how soon I can run again on this knee. All I know for sure is that I can’t end the year like that. I need one last ride, and the World Trail Majors seem like the way to get it.
One final note: we’re coming up on nearly a year since I started this Substack. Big thanks to everyone who supports it by subscribing, commenting, sharing, etc. It’s fun for me to write these and cool to know that some people actually read them. I never intended for this to be a form of income, but as it has grown I’ve had opportunities come up and when the right offer of support comes along I take it. I’d like to thank Precision Fuel & Hydration for not only being there for all of my training and race nutrition needs, but for also supporting my writing as the new presenting sponsor of Chasing Trail. I can honestly say that PF&H has completely changed the way I fuel for races and has played a large role in my progress as an athlete. I’ve also gotten to know the team behind the products well over my time working with them and I believe in their mission.
I want to be transparent about this agreement because I don’t want this to feel like annoying advertisements or forced product pitches. I’m not going to tell you to go try Precision, lots of things work well for different people. I’ll just tell you that it’s what I use because it works great for me, and I’ll occasionally tell you a bit about how I use it. My writing will continue being what I want, when I want. I’ll use some specific names of my favorite PF&H products when I naturally reference them in my writing, because my nutrition is a core part of my training and racing. In the next year or so, I’ll write one article that focuses on my approach to fueling and hydration. I’ll also write one article about something strongly related to Precision (I have some ideas on this, but it’ll be a surprise). Other than that, things will stay the same, but now at the end of each one of these articles you’ll see something like this:
Excited to see how you close out the year + congrats on the partnership
Precision is numero uno!! 🦅