Every Trail on SoMo: The Kickoff!

I’ve officially kicked off my Every Trail on South Mountain adventure, a fundraiser for The Cairn Project and personal exploration of a body that has been recovering from chronic illness since 2020! The official kickoff happened on a Wednesday, a day held sacred in my week. I’m fortunate to live near amazing friends who save almost every Wednesday evening to get together on our favorite mountain for an hour and enjoy one another’s company. I am truly so grateful for this time to support and lift up one another, share funny stories and learn more about people I care about.

 Since August 20th, I’ve completed 6 of the trails in South Mountain’s vast network of rocky pathways. So far, my friend Kristin has joined me for every sweaty mile. When we start to feel tired or a little overwhelmed, we remind each other how strong we are and how far we’ve come, even since May when she and her husband, another run buddy, Mija, returned to AZ after a few years living out of state. This project is deeply personal, but I am so lucky that Kristin, Mija and my friend Jenny are just as excited to see me accomplish this project and have already joined me on several trails.

This past Friday, after a long week of working (for all of us) and childcare (for Jenny!) my friends lifted their run vests and hiking packs onto their shoulders and we started up Holbert Trail, a popular trail on South Mountain. At its highest point, Holbert connects to National Trail, the longest trail on the mountain, running nearly its entire length. Most people end their hike up Holbert at Dobbins Lookout, a great spot to take in views of the city and the surrounding mountains, but the trail itself extends a bit further up the mountain. From the parking lot at the main entrance, we hustled through a mosquito-laden wash to reach the start of the trail. Reminiscing as we often do about adventures in our past, we tried to recall the last time we had been up this trail.

Initially, I agreed with Kristin and Mija that the last time I had been up there was around 2021, when they were training for The Javelina Jundred. I paced my friend Kristin 20 miles of that race in October that year, the biggest run I had done since my stress fracture and since my illness started in 2020.

As we reached the first little saddle of the trail, though, a forgotten memory pushed its way forward into my mind. The last time I was up here was not with friends in 2021. No, it was maybe a couple of years ago, and I was alone and sitting right in that spot, holding back tears as my exhausted body refused to take another step. I was completely depleted in the way that basically every bout of exercise had felt since 2020, and I could not continue upwards any further.

In 2021, I was still undiagnosed, bouncing from doctor to doctor, alternating between hopeless panic that I would never feel better and gaslighting myself that I simply needed to work out harder, sleep a little more and eat better. It wouldn’t be until the following sprin,g after another failed go round of training for the Crown King Scramble, that I admitted defeat. I was so physically exhausted, my body was not tolerating the training at all, and rather than true fitness, I was running on a mixture of dogged determination and delusion. Shortly after, when I met a specialist who would finally lead me to an explanation for some of my biggest symptoms, she looked me dead in the eyes and demanded, in short, that I knock it off.

Oh, the sweet relief I felt, the permission I had secretly been needing to take my foot off the gas and stop pushing. The proof that I was sick, not just a lazy glutton who couldn’t commit to a lifestyle that would wind back the thread of her unraveling. I could rest. And I did. But despite the harm I had been doing to my body by bulldozing over every whisper, every scream she emitted, I wasn’t prepared for the reality of stopping almost all exercise, and with that, the truth of what my body was dealing with hit me hard. Would I ever be able to do these things again? Would I ever enjoy running, dancing, lifting weights, hiking or anything more than light intensity? When I made that last fateful trip up Holbert, stopping to turn around at the midway point, I really believed I never would.

But there we were, Friday, hiking right past that spot, laughing and taking in the sunset, playing “I spy” with our little 2-year-old companion riding on Jenny’s back. It really is unbelievable how quickly a body can change from one state to another, not just in the undesirable direction but the one we look forward to the most.

Today, I still don’t know what the future holds for me. I can’t predict if I will be able to complete this project, if this is the best I’ll ever be or if that recent trip up the mountainside was simply a stop on my recovery tour but I was honestly struck, in a way I haven’t yet been, how much healing I have experienced in these last 6 months and that, is something to be grateful for.