A fun personal story from a friend of Routes and local community member…
Moving to a new state amid a global pandemic was not ideal. Leaving my family and friends to pursue this new adventure with my boyfriend of two years was already a leap out of my comfort zone that I didn’t think I was entirely ready for…or capable of. That I arrived as Colorado shut down and mandated masks didn’t help. Soon, I secured a traveling job that put me at risk of infection and kept me from exploring my new home. Then I received an email that crushed me.
“It is with deep regret that we must cancel the full marathon and relay for this year….”
I had been training for a year to do the Niagara Falls International Marathon with my best friend…and having to take the deferral to 2021 felt like all the work I’d done didn’t count. It seemed like life was dumping disappoints on me, and I needed a positive goal to focus on. I registered for the Valkyrie Trail Marathon in Cheyenne Mountain State Park to give me something to work towards ⎯ a challenge to distract me from how left out I felt as all my friends’ lives moved on without me.
Months passed and I couldn’t shake this feeling of being utterly untethered. There would be pops of color when friends and family came to visit and then it would all dull back to the same gray of my everyday life. I ran to keep myself from admitting that it felt like I had made a mistake. I couldn’t understand how I could be so torn between such a beautiful state, holding the possibly of the life I always saw myself living and still wanting to move back to a state filled with humidity, mosquitoes and all my loved ones. I don’t know that I’d ever felt so lonely.
September faded into winter and then spring, and the Saturday before my race I flew home from a work trip in Seattle. That Thursday my dad and sister flew in to spend the weekend with us and to cheer me on.
We hiked some of the course and at the Garden of the Gods and made tamales from scratch. A blink later, it was Saturday morning. My dad and sister left early for their morning volunteer shift, helping to set up the start/finish line and the aid stations.
My boyfriend and I drove to the state park blasting Pusha T’s “Untouchable” on repeat. I felt recharged on the weekend’s positive energy and ready to go. My sister, dad and boyfriend were going to post up at the aid station I would pass four times throughout the race, and every time I saw them the whole table of volunteers erupted into cheers. It carried me through.
I finished my first trail marathon 24 minutes under my goal time while enduring some major stomach issues the last 5 miles. I was exhausted and so grateful for the whole experience.
It wasn’t until we got back home late that afternoon that the true magic of the race unfolded ⎯ after forcing down lots of fluids, cooling down and reliving the race mile by mile for my family.
My dad handed me a mask with a sharpied phone number and said, “I made you a friend. Here’s her number.”
Little did I know, this was the turning point I had been needing.
Another volunteer assigned to the table started chatting up my incredibly quiet dad, and today, she is one of my best friends. She helped me build a strong and supportive sense of community here in Colorado, and I have finally found where I fit. Within the running community here, I’ve found my people and everything that was missing.
