My dear reader.

Around this time last year I was asleep in a motel bed in Tucson, Arizona.

Fresh off my failed attempt at breaking the women’s self-supported speed record on the 800-mile Arizona Trail, all I could do for two straight days in that motel was eat and sleep and eat and sleep.

The story of how I wound up trying for an FKT (fastest known time) on the Arizona Trail, despite the seeming impossibility of such a goal for me, that story started, as many do, with a feeling of intense and inexplicable desire. I had such a deep yearning to try for that record. A feeling of want that I couldn’t explain, couldn’t justify, even to myself. And then I continued to think about it, about trying for that FKT, every single day for five years.

Five years, it turns out, is quite a long time to want something. I tried to stop — to stop thinking about it, stop wanting it — I tried and I tried. It would be so much easier, I told myself, if you did not want this particular thing. A speed record? Me? From late 2019 onward I was caught between being wholly unable to imagine myself as the kind of athlete who could ever attempt this and equally incapable of letting the dream go.

The pandemic came, and I still wanted it. I lived in a 20 square foot van for a few years, and I still wanted it. I moved to Massachusetts, and I still wanted it. I published two books, and I still wanted it. I adopted a puppy, and I still wanted it. I hiked another 1500 miles, and I still wanted it. I had a mental health collapse, and I still wanted it. I quit social media, and I still wanted it. I got married, and I still wanted it. I adopted a second puppy, and I still wanted it. My endometriosis got worse, and I still wanted it. I built up all the other joys of my life in lovely ways, and I still wanted it, still wanted it, still wanted it.

Well fuck, I finally said to myself in September of 2024, five years into all that interminable wanting. Now what?

I was sitting next to a crackling fire on the autumn equinox when I asked myself that question. I was holding a blank index card, and on the front of it I wrote:

Babe, do you want to be stuck still wanting this same exact thing for another five years? How would you feel if you never tried? What’s worse: failure or regret?

And then, right before throwing the paper into the fire as both a blessing and a prayer, I turned it over and on the back I wrote three more words:

Let’s fucking go.

And so, I went.

Well, first I trained (and trained and trained). Then, I went.

On the morning I started my hike I knew that of everything I had attempted thus far in my life, this would be the one with the highest possibility of failure. Probably 98%, I guessed.

I say that not because I was self-defeating but because I was honest. Trying to break such a stout record right before my 40th birthday, which required hiking 45+ miles a day for 17 straight days, on a trail that it took me 44 days to hike back in 2017, and given that the farthest I had ever hiked in a single day at that point was 32 miles, once, as part of a three-month, 1600 mile hike seven years prior — yeah.