THE DIRTBAG CODE

Over the course of my time as a dirtbag, I’ve come up with a sort of personal code. For years, it’s lived rent free in my head. but I’ve never taken the time to sit down, contemplate it, write it out, and make it something tangible.

It’s not all-encompassing, but I think it is pretty comprehensive.

I’m guilty of not always knowing how to follow my own rules, so don’t take these as absolutes, by any means. I just think having a set of guidelines allows me to stay focused; I believe they’ve helped me along my journey in being a good human - which is what I think all of us (or at least most of us) truly want.  

So here it is:

Take what you like, leave what you don’t, add what you need.

1.     Don’t Die.

This is self-explanatory; you can’t continue to race, explore, or adventure…or you know…live…if you die.

Avoid dying at all costs.

2.     Always Look Cool.

And no, I don’t mean embrace fast-fashion or wear the hottest new streetwear for your summit bid. Don’t chase style; the newest tech and flashiest running shoes are tools in your pursuit, and they should be used as such. However. Our mentality is literally hardwired to our physical performance. If you look fast, you feel fast. If you feel fast, you are fast. But beyond this, I’ve learned that if you look cool and collected (as in, like a cucumber) – you play a harmless trick on your mind and extreme arduous effort feels easier.

Plus, those mirrored extra wide sunnies and neon 2” split shorts really tie the room together, man.

3.     Safety Third.

The mountain will kill you and won’t even feel bad about it. Same goes for the desert. Or the forest. Or the ocean. Or I-295. Pretty much anywhere you’re exposed to any level of wilderness, this holds true. Pay your dues and spend the time and effort to learn how to help yourself out of danger. Expect to self-rescue because hope is not a plan. This isn’t a call to building an underground bunker stuffed with canned peaches in case of nuclear holocaust or a zombie outbreak, but investing in some basic survival and first aid training could save your life out on the trail (see Commandment 1).

Basic map reading skills (to know where you are and where you should be going), knowing how to find water, carrying a few extra calories, and learning how to lance and wrap blisters, control bleeding, and how to avoid hyper/hypothermia is a good start.

4.     Less is More.

You don’t need much to get out the door, onto the trail, and into the dirt. A pair of shoes and the clothes on your back will work in a pinch. You can even forgo the shoes if you’re careful about it. And if you’re far enough into the backcountry (and are bold enough)…you can ditch the clothes too.

There are certainly some things that will make your adventures easier, faster, or more fun, but you’ll find that the more you know the less you need. This takes time, effort, and experience, but eventually, you can shed more and more of your “stuff” and carry only essential “gear” – the stuff that really adds value to your pursuits.

Travel Light – Travel Fast – Travel Far

5.     Endure. It All.

Now including rollover minutes! Everything is transferrable; everything you do in an outdoor adventure is a microcosm unto itself, really. It’s a whole life of experience, compressed into the distance and duration of a trail. I know I’m not the only one who’s ever said this, but it’s worth repeating.

Don’t stop the adventure simply because you’re having a bad experience. I like to use the Emergency Room rule as a litmus test: Life, Limb, or Eyesight – otherwise, keep going.

And remember to pack out the truths you uncover through the hardships out there on the trail. Bring them with you – they will serve you in ways you least expect.

6.     Practice Gratitude.

Training, racing, and adventure is profoundly and fundamentally a selfish pursuit. You may find benefits from it – it may even bring out the very best in you, allowing you to show up better for others later. But at the end of the day, the pursuit itself is selfish. You spend countless long hours putting in the work prepping and training and racing and chasing after lofty summits. That time away is your time, and it’s beautiful. But because it’s your time, it cannot be used in service of someone or something else. And more often than not, there is someone who is actively helping you succeed (Ahem…Always say thank you to the aid station volunteers!).

Practice being grateful, loving, and kind to those who support you on your journey…even your competition. Their grace and love and support allow you to be selfish. They deserve to be respected and honored for their commitment.

7.     Participate in your Tribe.

It’s easy to forget just how much work goes into keeping the vast wilderness open for recreation. It’s often done behind the scenes in garages and basements full of big plastic totes (and all the excel spreadsheets) leading up to big race logistics movements. Or in the dedication of a full weekend crewing an aid station. Or on weekends with power tools and a bagged lunch to keep the trail clear and that bridge standing. Or in local community meetings, vying for, protecting, and securing the public access to the trails we hold so dear in our pursuits (otherwise, they’d all become parking lots and shopping centers).

Find a way to give back and contribute to these works and the people who do them. Volunteer your time, sweat, attention, and service. It’s the only way we can keep these places wild and free.

(But also, pay your trailhead fees. They’re important and are usually no more than a bougie cup of coffee).

8.     Care for the Earth Mother.

Despite what our modern ethos and egos may tell us, we are not disconnected from nature. We are not somehow separate from or higher than it. Our organization of “civilized” culture and complex machinations of society are just an extension of the evolution of the natural world. It’s evident in other species as much as our own. We are one with and an integral part of our wild environment.

This world is our home, do your best to take care of it. It’s the only one we’ve got. 

9.     Surender.

To the pain. To the beauty. To the awe. To the process. To the community. To the weather (yes, even the damn rain). You can’t fight these things.

The only way is through.

10.  Seriouslessness.

The pursuits of a dirtbag are often functionally futile. You spend a lot of time, calories, water, and some money to run a trail and across a finish line, or climb to the pointy part of a really tall rock, or to float down a river, or to just walk to a flat spot and practice being homeless.

These pursuits require attention, care, skill, and mastery, especially if you want to achieve “greatness” (whatever that looks like). But your survival, the survival of your family, the survival of the species, or the survival of the planet isn’t dependent on them. Time will continue to be a flat circle even if we never once set foot on another trail again.

You are a “Conquistador of the Useless” (Lionel Terray, 1963). 

Don’t take yourself so seriously.

*****

Want to hear the best trail joke I’ve heard to date? I’m gonna tell you anyway –

PCT Hiker: “What’s the difference between a through hiker and a homeless person?
JMT Hiker: “I don’t know, what?”
PCT Hiker: “Gore-TEX”

*****

Did I forget any? We aren’t limited to only 10 rules, you know…

Let me know what your personal code (or your favorite trail joke) is in the comments below.

-Dirtbag.

TOILING IN OBSCURITY:

The CrossFit x Ultra Experiment

When it comes to the “traditional” endurance runner, most people conjure up images of salt stained, tall, stick thin dudes and ladies wearing too short shorts with long, unkempt hair and a physical repulsion to the gym. And for most of my early life into the first few years of being an adult dirtbag, this was me.

But, as it turns out, unbeknownst even to me at the time, I am an anomaly.

I LOVE strength training.

Perhaps too much.

In fact, it’s essentially all that I’ve done for fitness over the last few years. Leaving the trail left me with a lot of unfilled time that I would have otherwise been out, grinding gravel beneath the lugs of my trail running shoes. So I did the most reasonable thing possible - went to the entirely opposite extreme. I started picking up and putting down round circles as often as possible. I wasn’t particularly good at it at first, but I found that the engine I had built out on mountain single tracks transferred pretty well and I could lift for a really long time, and in time, I’ve come into my own in the weightroom.. Sinking my teeth in and committing wholeheartedly to the effort, I found myself rocking new training gear and equipment, chalking my hands, and even letting out the occasional “power grunt” (I know, I know…but there’s some unknown science behind this…it really works!). I’m no world’s strongest man competitor, I won’t win any upcoming Arnold Classics, and I’m a long way off from ever even thinking about competing in the CrossFit Games. But I’m proud of the progress and mildly addicted to the process.

For eight years or so, I used a “Functional Fitness”, one size fits all, periodized, linear training program. It was effective, I felt strong, and I convinced myself that I’d be able to translate the “gainzzz” I had found in the gym to the mountain.

And, for a brief time while I basecamped in Greenland, I attempted to find the trail again under this guise. I ran for about a month outdoors as the sun slowly crept behind the low mountains of the Pittufik valley. It about as well as I could have hoped. I made progress over the course of the month – increasing my distance steadily as my pace increased to near what I was running in 2016. I felt strong, if a little heavy, I had only a few minor muscle or joint aches that threatened injury, and I was running again!

Then I froze.

Literally.

With the dwindling arctic sun suspended in a permanent twilight, I went out for a very easy 10 mile run and my neck gaiter LITERALLY froze to my face. It took me 15 minutes sitting in the mudroom of the dormitory with the radiator on “full” to thaw the ice enough to peel the merino wool from my cheeks (and I’m fairly certain at least 1/3 of my mustache was ripped out in the process).

So, fearing frostbite, I hid my running shoes in the back of my closet where they’ve sat collecting dust, dejected that they couldn’t fulfill their true purpose, while my strength training shoes were getting beaten to threads nearly every day.

I moved from Greenland to New Jersey and quickly found my new “third place” at a local CrossFit gym. I’ve been working with them for a little more than a year now and have seen incredible progress. I’m lifting heavier, working faster, and even mastering some complicated new gymnastics movements. All things I had never even dreamt of on my old programming – in the gym or on the trail.

There is some running involved, but usually nothing more than one mile. And even that was sparse and relegated to the access road on the backside of the training complex – far from a wild or scenic route.

As my revelation unfolded a little over a week ago, I found myself searching Ultrasignup.com for races that I thought I could compete in, with enough lead time that I could comfortably train up to running at distance and speed again, and were local enough to my current basecamp in New Jersey that I wouldn’t have to commit to flying into a race somewhere across the country. I found two, both run by a small race company that is focused on environmentally friendly events and seemingly, were staying true to the grassroots counterculture of ultrarunning that I’ve come to love.

I signed up for both.

The Climb it for Climate - Catskills 25K at the end of June, and the C’mon Armageddon 50K mid-October. Two ubiquitously East Coast mountain runs with ~5,000’ and ~7,500’ of vert, respectively, over the low, ancient Appalachian mountains.

Sitting here in my new, but very temporary basecamp in Pakistan, these goals seem lofty. Unmanageable, even. But I have a plan. Or at least the beginning of an idea of a plan.

Over the course of a few days, I set to work devising a way to incorporate serious run training that could also accommodate the pursuit of functional fitness – aka CrossFit. Borrowing a base plan from Ultrarunning.com and the weekly training from my local CrossFit gym, I modified and periodized the work, looping back on itself after the first, 25K race (which I’ve labeled my “tune up race” in preparation for my “A Race”, the 50K). I prioritized CrossFit and Ultra training equally for the first few weeks, slowly increasing the priority in favor of Ultra training as time moved on. I also included some “optional” days, where a workout or run is scheduled, but can be substituted for rest days or cross training (cycling, hiking, climbing, etc.), as well as days specifically structured for mobility, flexibility, and recovery through a yoga practice.

I have a few hypotheses about how and why this will work:

Hypothesis 1: Integrating CrossFit into my training plan will allow me to operate in different modalities, speeds, and levels of athleticism - simulating the nature of a long trail run. Road running is generally flat, with the occasional (relatively) small climb or descent. Trail running is wildly varied and offers unique challenges, both physically and mentally. CrossFit, by design, is varied in speed, duration, and intensity. The parallels, seem obvious, at least on paper, especially when I live somewhere as flat as the majority of New Jersey.

Hypothesis 2: Prioritizing strength development can improve muscular output and flexibility while increasing overall durability and resistance to injury. Failure to train anything other than our run is a recipe for something to break. I’ve dealt with this in the past and am still dealing with a painful torn labrum in my hip because of this very thing.

Hypothesis 3: LSD (Long Slow Distance - not the psychedelic), can be insanely boring. Exercising mental flexibility, solving real-time problems, and changing gears throughout the training week will help keep things fresh and interesting to avoid psychological fatigue and mental burnout – both of which have been incredibly difficult things to avoid in the past. Not to mention all the mental strategies for coping with pain and discomfort in an eight minute Workout of the Day (WOD) that translate pretty directly to the mental strategies you might employ between aid stations in a rugged ultra.

Follow Along, Or Join In!

If you’re interested, the beta for the program is HERE. CrossFit WODs aren’t available until the weekend prior to the start of the workout week, but the details of the work I have done will all be documented in my Training Journal every Sunday. Keep in mind that this is an experiment, and my training will remain slightly flexible (with a few exceptions for key workouts) and may be adjusted or modified as life unfolds in unexpected ways along the trail.

I’ve managed to rope a few friends into tagging along on this journey – I’m thankful for the company Cam and Nate!

If you’re want to follow along or having a program tailored to you, feel free to reach out and we’ll put something together.

Find Your Self. In the Dirt.

-Dirtbag.

DIRTBAG REVIVAL

At some point along the way, I had lost the trail.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been lost. I’ve taken the wrong exit on the highway and had to fumble with Google Maps to find my way back to a route I’ve taken every day after listening to my favorite playlist a little too loud and going into “auto-pilot” mode. I’ve ambled down a trail for five miles in the wrong direction before realizing I needed to turn around; that I had made the wrong turn - that the goal for the day had to be completely scrapped. I’ve circled the grocery store eight times looking for “clothes soap” because my mind couldn’t recall the words “laundry detergent”. I’ve wandered through the mountains in the Sierra Nevadas, postholing in hip deep snow – dehydrated and under-fueled – betrayed by my own ego and humbled by the callous nature of the mountain wilderness. There are infinite reasons for me to have considered myself lost before, but never like this.

Somewhere, in the last 8 years, I’d lost something far greater than where I was on a map.

I had lost myself.

I’d lost the things that make me feel at home both in the real, physical sense as well as in the supposed “comfort” of my own mind. It was as if I’d been approaching a mountain summit and in the blink of an eye, with the next step, I was transported to the heart of a foreign city. Stumbling aimlessly. Adrift. Battered by the hundreds of people mulling their way down their own paths. A mere annoyance of a tourist in their eyes, a lost scared child in my own.

I could point to all of the life changes that I’ve been through in the last eight years and say “There…see! That’s why!”. But that’s too easy. And ultimately, it doesn’t help the issue at hand – I had no direction. In fact, I no longer even had a compass. Finding fault, laying blame, or trying to console myself about how complicated or unfair or unpredictable my life had been wouldn’t bring me any closer to rejoining the trail.

The realization happened suddenly, without any warning, and in the most unexpected context. I was at work, “killing time” by reading the fiction novel “Vaster Wilds”, the 2023 New York Times Bestseller by Lauren Groff. The story features a young girl escaping the horrors of the starving and diseased Jamestown Colony in early America, in pursuit of freedom. She navigates her way through the wilderness of the eastern coast of North America, facing the terse realities of the natural world. Worse yet, she struggles with the inner torment of her mind.

I was a little over halfway done with the book when a quote struck me. It was as if the words had leapt off the page and punched me square in the jaw. I re-read it several times, absorbing the words one by one. Letting them soak into the very essence of my understanding.

“And though her lungs burned hot in her chest and her broken head pulsed and her joints and feet screamed, she ran again. And after some time running, the running became sweet to her, the pain silenced itself, and she no longer felt her body at all, only the goodness of the run.”

I knew this feeling. My mouth contorted and soured with the taste of blood – the taste of pennies – from lungs that struggled to cope with the demand of oxygen not readily supplied and too quickly consumed by aching muscles. My eyes winced from salt from beads of sweat lingering too long on my forehead and finding their escape into the crease at the corners of my eyelids. The lactic acid built in my legs until they were leaden. All while I sat firmly in an ergonomic office chair, surrounded by the modern convenience of air conditioning and running water – having not even moved an inch. Where did this come from? Why now?

From 2012 to 2016, when I still lived at the midway point between San Francisco and Sacramento, California, I had relished these feelings. I was attempting to race ultramarathons competitively, training with a coach, and even placing at a few smaller venues. I spent my weekends and vacation days in remote backcountry settings as often as possible. Literally “working for the weekend” when I knew I could escape to the bright sun, baked granite, and fresh glacial streams of the High Sierras.

But I stepped off that path. Afraid of an injury. Scared of the new responsibilities in my life. Working toward new, different goals.

Afraid, perhaps, of succeeding.

I’ve spent that time “off trail” developing in new and unexpected ways. None of the time being lost has been “time lost”. It has led me to know and understand new things about myself, and about the world I exist in, that I would never have been able to understand otherwise. I’ve found strength and resilience in ways that I never would have known if I had stayed singularly focused on the trail ahead. The detours in life are sometimes essential.

But the detours I have taken have also led me further away from the person who I had grown to know as my “self”. They’ve taken me into the depths of despair and isolation. They’ve left me largely shuffling through my days, thankful that yesterday was gone, waiting for today to end - just so I could wake up the next morning to wish that day was over too. They’ve taken me away from a community of people - a true tribe that offered any who would toil and suffer alongside them a place of welcome and belonging. And they’ve taken me from the nature of my very spirit - a wild, adventurous soul that finds solace and respite by moving in and through the natural world.

It’s time to wake up stiff and achy in a too old sleeping bag cramped into the back of the car or slung in a hammock between two trees, still caked with mud from the adventures of yesterday, boil water to brew coffee on the flattest rock I can find, and to do it all again today. It’s time to get back to my home. It’s time to find the trail - to find my Self - again.

-Dirtbag.