the VK + 1500 double
So you thought I was crazy last year for doing Broken Arrow a week after the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, and three weeks before the USA Championships?
I know I was crazy. And I may have only gotten crazier since.
If all goes my way, this year I intend to race the Broken Arrow VK — 6 days before the first round of the 1500m at the Olympic Trials.
I’ve been hesitant to put this decision out into the universe so publicly. You see, changing plans is entirely a possibility, as I still need to officially qualify for the Trials (although odds are good) and I need to show up to both start lines healthy and ready to go. But the more I’ve questioned my fear of sharing, the more I’ve realized that there’s always a possibility you’ll need to shift your focus, as an athlete and otherwise. What makes this any different?
The birth of this grand plan
It was a Wednesday and I was alone, running up the side of Mount Tamalpais. My legs were D-E-A-D from a hard track workout the day before and I felt that familiar burn of lactic acid in my calves as I plodded up the rutted trail. The California sun toasted my salty skin; it smelled distinctly like summer.
Running up the side of this mountain in the backyard of my new training base, my mind wandered to the Olympic Trials – a normal thing for track athletes to be thinking about, daily, for months in advance. The schedule for the Trials had been posted on the internet days prior, and I had been surprised to find the Women’s 1500m, my event, at the end of the 10-day meet – a different order than years past. I clambered over a little wash-out in the trail, feeling unexpectedly strong and agile for how tired I was and for how in-track-shape-and-out-of-trail-shape I thought I was, and that’s when the idea hit me: With the three qualifying rounds of the 1500 scheduled for the end of the Trials, I would technically be free on one of the best weekends of the year. Broken Arrow weekend at Palisades Tahoe. I’m not great at math, especially when I’m running, but it didn’t take long for me to count that there were 6 days between the VK (my favorite mountain running event) and the first round of the Trials.
My immediate response to my own audacity was, ANNA – NO WAY. You can’t do that! That would be crazy. You’ve put so much into training for the Trials. Who would do that?!?!
But damn, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I thought about it for weeks before I told anyone. Then, three weeks ago, right after I ran a 1500 PR at the LA Grand Prix, I half-jokingly brought it up to my dad on the phone. He’s a sensible man and I really expected him to laugh and then return to talking about the elite women’s 5k we were simultaneously watching, me from the stands and him from behind his computer screen nearly 1000 miles away in Wyoming. The thing is, my dad also knows me really well and hypes me up to no end. I could instantly tell he thought the idea to double was a fantastic one... So I celebrated my new track PR by letting my brain have a heyday with the idea, thinking it would all stop in a few days when I came back down to planet earth.
Days later, and I still had Broken Arrow on my brain. I was so nervous to bring it up to David, my coach. I felt like a teenage version of myself professing some deep dark secret, and despite being close with David, I was giddy with excitement and absolutely terrified when I finally mustered up the confidence to shoot him a text.
It should be no surprise whatsoever to anyone who knows David (or listens to his podcast, for that matter) that he hit me back with an abundance of positivity. But that didn’t mean he was sold on the idea quite yet. I was on the edge of my seat for several hours while he thought about it, but by the end of the day I had a message in my inbox that read, all-capitals, “CRAZY LIKE A FOX”. Needless to say, this went over my Gen Z head – I had to Google the phrase before I realized he was also in the this-is-a-fantastic-idea camp.
I wanted the thumbs-up from a few more important people, namely my friends at Brooks, before I really seriously considered the double as an option myself. I was met with excitement and eager anticipation everywhere I looked.
Refining my why
Am I scared? A little bit, yeah. But that’s kind of the point, when I really think about it. It’s that little bit of fear – the question of whether I can, whether someone can – that makes this idea so appealing to me. I knew the answer to my original question, who would do that?!, was no one. Which is why I also knew that I absolutely must try and do the double.
I have spent the better part of this first year as a professional runner doing things in an unconventional way. Not just haphazardly, but because I have prioritized my enjoyment of this whole “living thing” above all else. Because I think that whatever unconventional route I’m taking (e.g. doing track and trail at an elite level, training mostly with various non-professional friends rather than an organized pro team, deciding to post up in a new community I had never been to before… the list goes on) sounds like the absolute most fun and most exciting route to wherever I’m trying to go. (That’s not to say that people who follow the conventional path aren’t having any fun. I’m sure many, if not most, are living their dream. But that just isn’t my dream.)
Over the weekend, Lachlan Morton, a chart-your-own-path cyclist who has been a big inspiration to me over the last few years, won Unbound 200. It’s one of the premier gravel cycling events in the world that takes place in Kansas every spring. Lachlan reflected about his training and his win in an Instagram caption the day after the race.
“My hope was that regardless of the result I could be content knowing I’d done it in the way I wanted without compromising my simple enjoyment… I assumed this approach would impede, in some way, my ability to compete at the high level required. It’s so validating to know that wasn’t true.”
I have not a clue what it is like to win Unbound, but I certainly share this feeling. This post expresses a sentiment I’ve been trying to put words to for much of the last year. I do wonder, sometimes, would I be more successful if I specialized in either track OR trail? And then I start wondering, what even does success mean?
My trail friends would define “success” as defending my title at the Broken Arrow VK. Alternately, my track friends would define “success” as making the Olympic Trials Final and competing for a chance to represent Team USA in Paris. These are both goals that I train for, day-in and day-out. Accomplishing even just one would be enough to call this season of my career a good one. But I guess David was right (as always)… I am crazy like a fox. Because I don’t see any reason why I can’t chase both, simultaneously. Despite – and in spite of – there not really a script for that.
