Finding My Stride

8/1/25

There are days I feel like I’m just now starting to understand what running is to me.

Not what it gives me, but what it means. The more I run, the more I come to believe it’s not about the goals, the data, or even the finish lines. It’s about finding my place in the movement of things. It’s about rhythm. Ritual. Return. I’ve said this many times before, but it’s my lifestyle.

The older I get, the more I crave the feeling not of running faster, but of running deeper. Of getting closer to something ancient and internal. Maybe even sacred. I always come back to ancient and sacred.

A few years back, while sitting at my Airbnb in Chamonix between runs while prepping for UTMB, I did A LOT of writing. Mainly short stories and descriptive writing from within. I once imagined a story about an old trail runner. I want to share it now, because somehow, it’s stuck with me all these past few years, and as I find this new stride, something resonates.

The Man Who Ran With A Pipe

He ran with a pipe tucked in the chest pocket of his flannel.

Not lit, not for show..just there. The bowl faced left, the stem right, its shape worn smooth by time and habit. People used to ask if it was ceremonial, or if he smoked it post-run like some kind of mountain ritual. He’d laugh in that quiet way people do when they know something you don’t and aren’t in a rush to explain.

“No,” he’d say. “It’s just mine.”

He’d been running these trails for fifty years. Maybe more. Before Strava, before Hokas, before electrolyte tabs and personal brands. He moved like a man who had nothing to prove and everything to remember.

Some said the pipe belonged to his father. Others swore it was from a friend who died in Vietnam. One guy at the shop claimed it was carved from the root of a lightning-struck tree in the San Juans. Nobody really knew. The stories kept growing, like moss on stone.

But what mattered was this: he ran with it. Every morning. Every season. Through dry scree and snowmelt, through years that took more than they gave. When his knees started to go, he slowed down. When his breath shortened, he paused more often, but he never stopped. The pipe stayed in place. Steady, worn, companionable.

One autumn, after the first frost, he didn’t show up for his usual loop. Days passed. Then weeks. Finally, someone found him, off-trail, sitting beneath a lone pine on the north ridge. Legs outstretched. Back straight. Pipe resting on his chest like a compass needle pointing home.

No one cried. It didn’t feel tragic. It felt like a closing chapter. Like something finishing the way it began. Quietly, on foot, and in the mountains.

They buried him under that pine, with the pipe in his hand. Someone carved a small stone marker that read: “He Found His Way”

I think about that story when I’m running alone, when the trails are quiet and the miles feel less like work and more like prayer. Because that’s what running feels like, sometimes. A way of speaking to the part of me that doesn’t use words. It took hundreds of miles and lots of time alone in the mountains to realise.

I don’t know exactly what I’m chasing anymore. I used to think it was speed. Or success. Or some sense of proving myself. But now I think it might just be meaning. And maybe meaning doesn’t live at the finish line. Maybe it lives somewhere in the middle, where breath and motion align, and something inside us finally says: Yes. right here. This is who you are. That’s what I mean by stride. Not perfect form. Not splits, but truth in motion, and if I keep showing up, I think I’ll keep finding it.

Perhaps the pipe wasn’t a relic. It was a reminder that you carry what matters with you, even when the world forgets.