Curated: Issue 1
The Bannister Method, Zegama is Zegama, 1,800 Meals in a Month of Silence, Attention Cottages, and a few more things worth sharing.
Good morning.
Some of my favorite newsletters are those that lovingly collect and organize Internet ephemera. Curated is simply that—a few things that moved me in the past month.
To celebrate Global Running Day, I’m releasing Issue 1 a day early. Let me know what you think about the format. What inspiring, funny, thought-provoking stuff did you see out there? Please share in the comments.
Run lightly,
-mike
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May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. Every spring, when social media lights up about the anniversary, I return to a short blog post by Seth Godin. I think about the words often in my own pursuits, running and otherwise:
It's easy to get hung up on, “as possible.” As fast, as big, as much, as cheap, as small. The Bannister Method is to obsess about “enough” instead.
I can’t recall where I ran across this tweet (Threads is more my jam), but it hit. There is, of course, a pinch of privilege baked in. Still, the choice—to find corners of our experience worth liking—is almost always available if we exercise it. “Exercise” is the operative word, because it doesn’t come naturally. Humans are wired to spot threats, not delights. But give it a try. What can you like today?
With crowds of thousands lining its iconic climbs, Zegama is the foil of folksy American trail racing, bringing to mind the raucous spectacle of Tour de France mountain days.
Zegama is more than a race. It’s a cultural event, a spiritual awakening, even a way of life. It’s the course, an aesthetic loop over everything from butter-smooth singletrack to what many would consider an un-runnable ridgeline that goes up, over, and down the verdant, often rainy and foggy, Aizkorri massif.
Last minute update! The Golden Trail Zegama video dropped. It’s worth a watch to get a feel for this one-of-a-kind event. I experienced the thrill of running two Golden Trail races last year and they are primo.
As former Senior Global Executive Chef for Whole Foods Market, Derek Sarno knows food, but says cooking 1,800 meals—three a day for over thirty people—at a silent retreat was the hardest thing he’s ever done. Take in the big batches of plant-based goodness, and running-relevant meditations like this:
If I could exhaust my body to a point, I’d have no choice but to settle my mind, and that is when I’d be able to deepen my practice and merge the meditation with the cooking.
Does anyone love gels? I used to work at a sports nutrition company and even I have mixed feelings about the stuff. What I can say is, learning to eat and drink on the run helped me have a breakthrough race in May. Noticing how I feel when I fuel well has oozed into daily life, giving me a healthier relationship with food.
Unlike the capricious effects of eating throughout my life, the goo allows me to feel the miraculous transformation of food right into body. It doesn’t cause a shock; it doesn’t leave anything behind. It feels like space travel, it feels like the future.
🟡 Read: The Sublime Clarity of Goo
Lately, I’ve been fantasizing about having a writer’s shed. But I think what I’m really imagining is what Alan Jacobs calls an “attention cottage.”
We think we should be living in the chaotic, cacophonous megalopolis and retreat to our cottage only in desperate circumstances. But the reverse is true: our attention cottage should be our home, our secure base, the place from which we set out on our adventures in contemporaneity and to which we always make our nostos.
🟡 Read: The Attention Cottage | Then get lost looking at writer’s sheds
As I wrote about last week, Substack has been a revelation. The platform makes it easy for perfectionists like me to just frickin’ publish. Plus, it’s opened up a community of folks with something different to say about running. Raz Rauf’s Running Sucks is one such gem.
Montana’s classic Governor’s Cup and I are both 50 this year. My memories of the race go all the way back to the early eighties and I can’t wait to line up again this weekend. Gosh, running gives me the feels.
🟡 Read “Dear Governor’s Cup” on Instagram
30 Days of Noticing
Here’s a little “bonus content” (lucky you). When The Half Marathoner author, Terrell Johnson, asked readers if they’d be up for a May running challenge, I jumped:
I write about noticing often, as if it’s easy to do. It’s not. As with “liking more things,” noticing is a muscle that must be exercised. How does a person remember to notice in the first place? For me it starts with strategically-stuck reminders.
BLUF*
I titled this section “30 Days of Noticing,” but May has thirty-one days. By the middle of the month, I’d run out of steam. Trying to notice something every day had become a burden. Still, I stuck with it (almost) to the end. On May 31, I unceremoniously wadded up those notes and pitched them in the trash.
Favorite Moments
I won’t belabor the point about the tug-of-war between effort and flow, trying and not-trying. Instead, let’s relive a couple moments from the month.
Like the time I found a baseball…
May 5
A standard baseball costs about six dollars. On summer afternoons in the Kingdome, ten year-old me learned to assign a higher value. A game-used ball carried cachet. So, when I saw one in the middle of the jogging path that runs behind our local semi-pro ballpark, I counted myself lucky. Reaching down, I remembered I’d have to run three miles home with a baseball in my hand. Up and over the fence it went. I hope a ten year-old kid finds it.
Then returned three weeks later to a scene straight from Mayberry…
May 26
Ran behind Legion Field today and could not believe it. Two kids, ten or eleven years-old, scouring the tall grass and stuffing their jacket pockets with baseballs.
Or how my shoes kept me grounded during a trail 30k…
May 11
I noticed the grip of my shoes. On sand and dirt and jagged rock, they grabbed hard and released easy. Grab, release, grab, release, one hundred and eighty times per minute. When I felt heavy, I thought about the grip, then felt light and sure. It’s good to feel sure when so many things can go sideways.
Then there was the bear encounter…
May 16
Our daughter’s birthday has me thinking about Lisa and growing old together. I ran by a sweet little rambler with two carved wood bears out front. A husband and wife bear. I wondered who was inside the house. Then I thought about the wood sign in front of Lisa’s grandparent’s house: “An old grump and a nice person live here.” What will be the carved wood something-or-other we put in front of our house? As I type—no shit—I look down and realize I’m wearing my “Two Bear Marathon” shirt.
And the day I had to shelter from a spring storm…
May 20
I asked Chat GPT, “What is the thing between hail and sleet?” Graupel is what it’s called. Today, on the rise from Davis Gulch toward Waterline Trail, it started to graupel. Can I use that as a verb? It started to graupel (!) hard enough that I took refuge under an old evergreen—back against the tree, moving around it to stay opposite of the sideways-blowing graupel, for which my thin t-shirt was no match.
The Finish Line
For years, Lisa has asked after my run, “What’d you see out there?” Sometimes, I have a thing to report. More often, I’ve spent the hour not registering any particular thing. But I love the question, and as I move toward more mindful running, maybe noticing will become more natural.
Running Lightly is building a community interested in the soul beneath the surface.
Thank you for the shout-out! The running community on here has been a revelation. Maybe see you at the meetup tomorrow? https://lu.ma/6rjtl1az
Wowee wow. I'm officially obsessed with this series. Can't wait to put your Attention Cottage under our chokecherry tree, lovingly gaze out, and wonder: What will next month's Curated bring?