From the AZTR, with love and gratitude

I can’t sleep.

This is unsurprising. I never can sleep through the night in the weeks following an ultra. Instead, it happens in sweaty 2-3 hour blocks, several times a day, while my body systems sort themselves out. I’ve learned not to fight it. Yet, this time I know there is something else gnawing at me… a huge effort that didn’t go how I’d hoped.

Yes, I am proud to have completed the AZTR 800. Yet I also feel humbled and unsatisfied. The early heat curb-stomped my competitive ego into the dust. I was effectively out of the “race,” or where I thought I fit within it, by the afternoon of day two. That was a tough pill to swallow for someone whose heart gets filled by throwing down the gauntlet with his badass friends.

Even the idea of finishing was too much to contemplate in those early days. I had to let all that go in the name of simple survival. I spent most of the first six days slinking between shade patches and strategizing how to ride through some of the most beautiful places on the trail under cover of darkness. I missed most of those sunrises and sunsets climbing out of some deep hole or the shadowy side of a mountain. All of this was antithetical to why I toed the start line of this epic adventure. But it was my reality for half the time I was out there.

It’s ok. I'll learn from it, and get over it.

Fortunately, there are other, more important, reasons I do these things. Their names are friendship and community. This community. Your love. That is what kept me going. And I’m very grateful it did.

So, charge up the iPhone and head for the throne because it’s time for an epic love dump…

The Elk of Happy Jack

What a moment – passing through your presence at sunrise. As a fellow creature of the North, I heard your bugling as a battle cry – calling me forth to defend our honor. You shifted my gears from recovery to racer. And race I did, for my last 3 days on the trail. That change in mindset was important for me to experience out there – to feel, act, and ride like a warrior again.

Love,

Matt (Rootbeer Hero)

There is one love for which I yearn but fail to feel…

The Arizona Trail.

I saw your seductive beauty.

I felt your callous indifference.

You taught me the hardest lessons.

You hurt me beyond words.

We will lock horns again.

Our embrace has just begun.