What the Desert Taught Me About Showing Up

Long run lessons from an unplanned route, a surprise hill, and a man who just ran 50K.

I did not plan for it to be a hard day. What the desert taught me about showing up though, is that the desert seldom follows your plan.

Nine miles on a new route, solo, in what I assumed would be mild March weather. Low 70s and sunny. New Mexico does this thing in early spring where the air feels generous and the sky goes on forever, and you think, this is going to be a good run.

And then the hills showed up.

Not one hill. A sustained, rolling, relentless kind of hilly that you do not fully appreciate until you are already committed and there is no good way back that is not also uphill. Classic unplanned route energy.

The Hill That Surprised Everyone

Somewhere around mile four, a man came into view. He was doing a run-walk, moving carefully, and as I passed him he called out, “Are you doing hill repeats?”

I laughed out loud. No, I told him. Just got surprised what the desert taught me by the route.

Turns out he had run a 50K two days ago and was out doing a recovery run-walk. The hill had caught him off guard too. A man who just covered 31 miles through trails, and this particular stretch of New Mexico road still made him take notice.

We shared a laugh about it, the universal runner experience of a hill that has no interest in your training plan, and then we both kept moving. That exchange stuck with me for the rest of the run.

What Showing Up Actually Looks Like

Here is what I have come to believe about long runs, especially the ones that do not go according to plan: they teach you more than the perfect ones do.

The perfect run feels great in the moment. But the unplanned one, the hilly, too-warm, wrong-turn kind of run, that is where you find out what you are actually made of. Not in a dramatic way. Just quietly. You keep going, you adjust. You notice things.

On this particular day I noticed a lot. I noticed white blossoms on the trees I did not see last week’s training run, perfect against the blue sky.

As always, view of the Sandia Mountains doing what they always do, sitting enormous and steady at the edge of everything. And then I noticed a construction project I recognized from the road, Sandoval Flats, a project I had worked on in a previous chapter of my life from the administrative and accounting side of things. To see it standing there, real and built and growing, made my heart genuinely happy. You do not always get to see where your small contributions land.

First Miles in New Shoes

I should mention that I was also breaking in a new pair of shoes on this particular adventure. The Altra Experience Flow 3, which I will talk about more in a future post. All my running shoes the last seven years are Altras. Every single pair.

Maybe they will sponsor a back-of-packer someday. A girl can dream. 😄

Testing new shoes on an unplanned hilly route is not exactly the protocol most coaches would recommend. But the shoes held up, the feet felt good, and sometimes that is all the data you need for day one.

Three More Miles with Good Company

That evening I headed out for three community miles with the Rio Rancho Run Club. After a solo nine miles on surprise hills, there is something genuinely restorative about running with people.

Someone brought their puppy. Brie 🐾 will soon be joining us too. That is how the run club works — all paces, all distances, all four-legged guests. There is no gatekeeping on Tuesday nights. Just people showing up and moving together.

Twelve miles total for the day. Not where I imagined being at this point in Boston training, but moving in the right direction. Slowly and surely, which is the only pace that has ever actually gotten me anywhere.

A note worth carrying into this training season: the plan I follow is Jeff Galloway’s. Jeff passed away recently, and the running world lost someone who gave countless people, including back-of-packers like me — permission to show up and call themselves runners. Running his plan feels different now. A little more intentional. A little more grateful.

What Long Runs Actually Teach You

In case it is useful, here is what I keep relearning on the long ones:

The route does not have to go according to plan for the run to count. Some of the best training days are the ones that surprised you. Hills you did not see coming build strength you did not know you needed.

Gratitude is a training tool. When the run gets hard, noticing what is around you, the mountains, the blossoms, the man who just ran 50K and is still out here moving, shifts something. You remember why you showed up.

Community miles are never just miles. There is something about running with other people, even for three easy ones at the end of a long day, that refills something. I always leave feeling more like myself than when I arrived.

And the body, our body, knows more than we give it credit for. On days when I am not where I think I should be, I try to remember: it is still doing the work. It is still showing up. That is worth being grateful for.

Boston is coming. The hills are ready. And apparently, so am I.

Still growing. 🌱