Morgan

The behind-the-scenes MVP

In 2017, I moved to Utah with a couple of roommates, who were about the only friends I had in the state. Desperate to meet new people, I remembered that my mom had mentioned that her gym friend had a daughter living in the area who was around my age and had climbed Kilimanjaro. For my mountain-obsessed brain, that was all I needed to hear. I asked her to please get her friend’s daughter’s number and send it my way. A few texts later and Morgan was on her way to pick me up to join for her weekly Taco Tuesday hangout with her pals.

Looking back now, I’m a little surprised I did that. I’m not very outgoing and feel pretty uncomfortable in groups of new people. I must have really wanted to meet someone who wasn’t my roommates. Pushing through the nerves and discomfort, I managed to act normal enough that Morgan agreed to hang out with me again. It helped that her taco friends were into rock climbing, and at that point in life I was climbing several times a week, so we had something to talk about. Morgan had never been climbing though, so our next “date” was hitting the local 5.7s and teaching her to belay. “Date” is in quotation marks because I pretty quickly was interested in being more than friends, but I couldn’t tell where she was at. Morgan had tons of friends, and many of them were guys, and I could feel myself getting pushed into the friend-zone with everyone else. I had to do something to stand out.

Morgan’s first time wearing crampons en route to Shasta summit.

So I invited her over to make dinner together and specified “just the two of us.” We went on a little hike where she told me she was allergic to toothpaste (not true we’ve now learned), and I jogged in place on the summit to stay warm while she sat shivering on a rock waiting for me to put my arm around her or something (I didn’t pick up on the clues). Aside from one early minor speed bump where she didn’t text me back for a week after we played tennis together, it was smooth sailing from there. I started getting the hints and we spent time together every single day for months. That turned into dating, dating turned into engaged, engaged turned into married, and now, eight years later, we’re getting ready for our first kid to be born.

Honeymooning in Banff, unprepared for how cold Canada can be in August.

We’ve had so many amazing adventures and travels together. A few highlights that stand out over the years are:

• Morgan’s 100 mile epic at High Lonesome.

• Climbing Mt. Blanc together the week before CCC and the day before learning she was pregnant.

• Our first big peak together, Mt. Shasta, and the sleep-deprived drive home after.

• A three-week West Coast van life excursion before summer internships in Seattle.

• Sellaronda bike tour in the Dolomites and hiking Seceda immediately after.

Possibly the longest my beard has ever been, on the Grand Canyon segment of our van trip.

While running has taken us many amazing places together, I’m not sure that people realize how selfish you have to be to train hard for ultrarunning. Some people reading this will get it, but many probably just see races and don’t think about the hundreds of hours of training that are behind them. Those are hours not spent hanging out with Morgan, or cleaning the house, or going on any vacation that doesn’t have prime trail access. When I’m home, I’m sometimes useless and want to just lay on the couch. I used to think it wasn’t that selfish because running made me happy and reduced my stress and I was a better person because of it, therefore it was in Morgan’s best interest for me to run. Maybe there’s a little truth to that, but it’s gotten to a level where it’s far beyond what I need to do to just clear my head and get outside and be happy. I think we’ve made a breakthrough lately though—Morgan started calling this whole running thing a partnership.

Morgan in the early days setting up a little makeshift aid station for Finn and I mid very long run, with an extra cat cheerleader.

Doing this without full investment from a partner simply would not work. The life stress it would cause would slowly wear me down and I’d be faced with a lose-lose choice. Luckily, Morgan has always been my number one supporter and has really embraced the Crew Queen title on race day, and recently I’ve felt her support more than ever. Leading up to Transgrancanaria, she got the flu. She’s been getting sick more than normal during her pregnancy and after a terrible experience where I got very sick a few days before Madeira 85k last year, I’m now hyper-aware of germs leading up to races. We slept in separate rooms in the Airbnb to try to isolate as much as possible. She wore a mask when isolation wasn’t practical. She rested up and took care of herself, while also not complaining and still helping drive us around so we could do point-to-point runs to scout sections of the course.

I’d say Morgan has sort of gone from helpful cheerleader to equal partner in my running life. I had a conversation with my friend Jacob yesterday about this change in relationship dynamic. Jacob put it this way: “It’s like you’ve been trying to start a business and you used to just go out drinking with friends all day and calling it networking, but now you’re grinding on spreadsheets and putting in the hard work and the business is starting to take off.” I think in this analogy Morgan is also in there grinding on the spreadsheets with me.

For years my training was me doing whatever sounded fun each day. I’d wake up and feel like hitting a peak, or jogging with friends, and it was a party. It had the side affect of getting me somewhat fit, but that wasn’t really the end goal. In the past year, I’ve shifted the focus a bit and while I still have some fun and run with friends, the goal has been more on fitness. I’ve been willing to put in some pretty not fun days and it has been paying off on race day. I think it helps that we have some sponsor support too and there’s financial incentive, so Morgan feels like it goes beyond just me having fun (although in another way it is extremely fun to finish a big race and feel like we nailed it). I’m starting to understand why Courtney Dauwalter always uses “we” instead of “I”.

Little known fact about Morgan: she’s an internal auditor by day, and a part-time baker by very early morning several times a week. She also makes award-winning chocolate chip cookies.

When I win, we win. Sharing success (and failure) is bringing Morgan and I closer together and she takes her role very seriously and is a pro at it. She goes above and beyond, thinking through the logistics at every aid station on race day, spending more time studying courses, splits, and nutrition plans than even I do. She’s studied up and learned the elite fields (I’ve caught her before stalking the Strava profiles of my competition lol). She knows how to read me and make adjustments to the plan on the fly, when I’m too focused on the task at hand to form coherent sentences.

I just looked through a lot of photos of us and idk what to do with this one but it was too good to not include somewhere. The glory days.

We’ve been talking about what’s next recently (more to come on that soon), and she’s made it clear that she’s all in. Ultrarunning is an absurd sport, and if you’re going to do it, you may as well embrace the sheer ridiculousness of it and do it right. With a baby two months away, that might mean she takes some full night shifts so I can sleep and recover. It could mean asking for help from friends and family so I can get in a weekend long run. It definitely means having additional crew members at the next race to help with the baby so Morgan can thrive as Crew Queen.

Proudly showing off what size fruit the baby was that week.

Wow, just writing all this out has further convinced me of how selfish I am and how lucky I am to have Morgan. I feel her love through these acts of service and want everyone to understand that she’s the critical piece of the equation that makes everything keep working. The past has been fun, the future is exciting, the present is Morgan and I on the couch snuggling our cats.