Missing the Start Line
Not being where I would usually be. Being where I need to be.
It is the final Sunday in July. And just as per last year, I’ll be setting the “publish” time for this post to coincide with my usual wave start time on the Escarpment Trail Run. This is the fabled 30k trail race that traverses the eponymous eastern Escarpment of the Catskills Mountains in my long-time home of New York State. Founded in 1977 by Dick Vincent, who remains its Race Director in his 70s, the ETR is known not only for its 5000+ ft of ascent, its gnarly and technical course of hand-over-fist climbing and the occasional jaunt along the very precipice, but for being just short enough that you can run it hard, the way you might a road marathon, as opposed to the walkable true “ultras” of 50 or 100 miles.
Everyone has their reason for wanting to take this race on, and I recounted mine in my post of this time last year. I could wax on and on about what makes ETR so special, but don’t take my word for it. You can read four-time female winner Michelle Merlis’s origin story on her Substack here, today’s first-timer Jamie Kennard (a former guest on my One Step Beyond podcast and a photographer of the race in the last two years) here. And you can read plenty more testimony from the build-up to today’s race at the ETR’s FB page here.
“The Escarpment trail run has zero finish medals or awards. In my opinion, the perfect race. Just one special day each July you get to set out to follow the blue blazes and have someone else tell you your time, an imperfect measure of the volume of space that something can hold in your heart.” Michelle Merlis, four-time women’s winner, Escarpment Trail Run.
Certainly, the Escarpment is an acquired taste. Some people – some very good runners - finish it once and swear never again. Not me. I have run the Escarpment every year since my debut in 2006, except for three occasions: in 2007 when I was injured, in 2016 when we were on the other side of the world, and in 2919, when I was leaving to climb Mt Kilimanjaro two days later and, although that departure date had been chosen to specifically allow time for the ETR and I was trained for it, I was also working flat out on the Pixies podcast and would not have gotten my work done in time had I not sacrificed that particular Sunday.
Regardless, including the two Covid years, I have run the Escarpment Trail Race 16 times in 19 years, by far and away the most I have ever competed in a single race. In short, this is not only a truly special race, my favourite race, a race that has frequently beaten me up but one on which I have had some of my best times and also, I would say, have run my best time, but the one event I set my summer holiday calendar around.
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…Except that, today, I am posting from London; my 9:25 am “publish” time is five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, and will likely find some of the local ETR runners still in bed, hopefully dreaming of the finish line rather than having nightmares about climbing Blackhead. No, this year, after 20 years of basing my summer around the Escarpment race, I have consciously chosen, of my own free will, not to enter. I have gone on holiday instead. You find me on the first full day of three-week in the south of England, this time with Paula, celebrating her retirement as a school teacher to finally take some time out and discover the city in which I grew up, a city with which I have fallen back in love this year thanks to the incredibly gracious generosity of another expat friend who has allowed me use of his house.
Nonetheless, for those who know me, the question remains: What gives? Why would I possibly sacrifice my favorite running experience of the year for two-three extra days of vacation in London, which is all I am getting out of the deal?
It’s an interesting question, and one I feel compelled to answer, if only for myself. (However, I know there are enough runners on my subscription list to make those Q&A’s public, and if you are not one of them, I hope you get something out of this age-related, life-debated post regardless.) And it’s best answered by asking myself further questions…
Is it because I’m injured?
No, no and no. I’m in top form right now, injury free since my first ever car crash fractured my sternum and put me out of a road marathon at the end of last summer. In fact, while the Escarpment frequently knocks competitors to the floor not just literally, but physically, it is also a monument to tenacity. Just two years ago, after fracturing my knee in December, spending most of the winter in a brace, and not even jogging a half-mile until April, the Escarpment seemed so important to me and I was so determined to prove that I could get back that I allowed that July 31st deadline to provide my incentive. Not only did I complete the race intact, but continued, if only just, my record of running the course competitively in under five hours.
Is it because I’m getting too old?
It shouldn’t be. While the field alongside and around me looks younger every year, and while the faster times at ETR are typically posted by runners with more spring in their step and less accrued fear in their hearts, one of the joys of tough trail races like this is that it’s as much about tactics and stamina as mere speed. Having consistently improved on those levels, generally running more steady and recovering more quickly as a result, I see no reason to retire just yet. Indeed, last year there were three finishers in their 70s.
Is it because I’m getting too slow?
Sadly, my fastest ever Escarpment is almost 100% certainly behind me. But that time – 3:55 - was achieved at the age of 53, after a solid decade of relentless effort at breaking that 4-hour invisible yet still all-too-tangible ceiling. (See the note under my video clip up top.) It is, to this day, the greatest athletic achievement of my life, and one reason it mattered so much to me was that it also seemed to matter so much to other people in and around the ETR. Being part of a tight community of repeat runners and volunteers, they knew of that goal, how hard I worked for it, and were happy for me. So while I have never troubled what we would call the podium at ETR if we had one, I am a damn good trail runner by any standards and especially for my age. Looking at the results from last year, when I put in a hard-fought 4:32, I see that there was only one 60-year-old male and one 60-year-old female ahead of me, and I was still in the top 1/3rd overall, so, no, I’m not getting too slow.
In 2017, at the suggestion of Dick Vincent, who was coaching me to get under four hours, I did a final training run over the last mile of the Escarpment course, noting ways I could pick my path to shave seconds off the notoriously hard finale, when energy is low and confusion and uncertainty high. I brough my Go-Pro - also revealing its age in this clip - and filmed my steps, narrating as I went. Watch, above, at your peril.
Is it because I’m bored of trails?
God, I hope not. In fact, while I trained this winter, away from the trails, for a spring road marathon, only two weeks later I happily I hiked with a friend up Slide Mountain, the Catskills’ tallest, and only a week after that punished myself anew with a hot Sunday spent climbing/descending and occasionally running on the famed Devil’s Path, an even tougher part of the Catskills than the Escarpment. Though it took my quads almost a week to recover, I loved every moment of it. Trails remain my happy place.
Is it because my running focus has shifted?
Ah, now we are talking. As that last paragraph intimated, I have been consumed with a different athletic focus: marathon running, trying sporadically over the last few years, and failing each time, to requalify for the Boston Marathon. (Covid and car crashes have played a part in that failure but are not excuses.) Those qualifying times to line up at the oldest most esteemed, and only elite road marathon in the world, are brutal. And while they get more lenient with every five-year advance in age, they also get routinely tightened: since 2012, the base qualifying time for 60-64-year-olds, my current age bracket, has been reduced from 4:00 to 3:55 to 3:50. Yet so many people still qualify for a field capped at 30,000 that the actual qualifying time is reduced by a computer-generated number once the entries are all received – anywhere up to almost 8 minutes in the last few years.
In other words, while I ran a BQ at my marathon in Lake Placid this spring with a time of 3:48, and even won my 60s age group, I almost certainly need to run at least five minutes faster than that to get into next year’s Boston. Determined to do so, I will try again at Sacketts Harbor up by Lake Ontario in early September, on the very last weekend of potential qualification for next April.
So yes, my attentions have been elsewhere. I am truly “happier” on the trails, and probably a better trail runner than road runner. And it is difficult to excel at both at the same time. The Escarpment Trail Run has a storied history, a fabled community and means the world to its regulars, including myself, but it means less to outsiders. A road marathon is universal, a solid benchmark pitched at the far end of what a human can run competitively, and a great way to compare one’s long-distance time against runners worldwide.
And it’s not like my fellow ETR runners have an issue with one over the other: when I wrote to Dick confirming I’d not be seeking an entry this year in ETR, that I was going to take the extra days in London and figure that the marathon came first, then, being a coach for many a road runner and a former speedster at Boston himself, he acknowledged that from a running perspective, I probably made the right decision. “It is nice to be playing with house money when you enter a marathon,” he wrote.
Do I have different life goals?
This too is a compelling question. Despite all my backhanded self-compliments above, it’s tough getting older and getting slower, and many a runner’s ambitions shift with it. Richard Askwith wrote a book about it, The Race Against Time. Boff Whalley, author of two great books on running himself (and another former OSB podcast guest), posted on FB recently about his move away from the delights of fell running to that of orienteering. Many of my compadres in the Catskills can be found hiking our wonderful mountains with a vengeance now they feel they can no longer run them that way. My friend Ken Posner, who occasionally posts on Substack here about his transition from setting records on massively long-distance running courses to hiking barefoot, now takes on the likes of the John Muir Trail unshod, another incredible achievement, but a fresh challenge all the same.
I have desires to pursue an individual, unique challenge of my own, especially while I still have the legs and the stamina to hopefully fulfil it. It does not have to be a run. It could be like yet another of my One Step Beyond guests Olie Hunter Smart, who in 2017 walked the length of India, solo, from the Himilayas bordering Pakistan to thes southern tip, despite having never visited the country before, and even carried the film equipment to document his journey, despite having never made a film before either! We humans can prove ourselves creative with our endurance faculties when we put our minds to it.
As this all confirms, while I have spent so many years basing my calendar about the Escarpment Trail Run, I am not naturally drawn to “streaks.” I am peripatetic in my travel, my work, my athletic endeavors. There is always something else to do, to take on, to see, and increasingly, less time on earth to do so. The Catskill Mountains, they have been around for 40,000 years, and I fully expect that they, and the Escarpment Trail Run, will be there next year. So will I, I hope.
In the meantime, here in England, there are sights to see, places to go, Park Runs to be enjoyed, football matches to watch, concerts to attend, and pints to be sunk. Today, from 2pm UK time onwards, I will think of everyone I know – and all those I don’t – who are out on the Escarpment Trail punishing themselves for hours on end, yet nonetheless ending their feat of endurance with a big fat happy smile on their face. And during the period that most will be hitting that finish line, and enjoying the delightful post-race scene you see above, I plan to be in an Islington pub with partner by my side, pint in hand and my mind thoroughly engaged, instead, on the England-Spain Women’s Euros football final playing out on TV in front of us. Cheers.
I always enjoy your running posts, Tony, and this was no exception. Having been at it for less time than you, I haven't yet had to make as many of these choices, but I recognise them as very real ones on the horizon.
I hope you were happy with the Euros result!
Cheers to free will, Tony! I missed you out there today. Glad to report I made it to the finish. Now I’ve got two years to train and try and catch your 53yr old time (don’t worry, I won’t touch it by a long shot!)