The Hardest Part of the Journey
It’s not the start or the finish that defines you, it’s what you do in the middle.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
It was 2:00am this past Saturday morning, and on the calendar this particular day was a 4 hour long run in Umstead, a state park in Raleigh, NC. I rolled out of bed, shuffled to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and then turned on the coffee machine. A single light on, just enough to navigate the early morning hours while also not needing to squint my eyes from the harshness of the lights which reminded me why I was up so early to begin with.
Ah, that first taste of coffee in the morning … it is something that as I've gotten older is a must have before the day gets going. If you enjoy coffee like me, you are probably nodding your head in agreement. As I sat down on the couch and took those first few sips I started thinking about the Middle Part … the place in the journey where our dreams often die.
See, one of the things I've learned over the years in training for ultra marathons in some of the most remote and beautiful locations around the world, is that the middle part is the most important of the process. It's the part in between the motivation of getting started and the accomplishing of your goal. It's where the work really happens, often alone. As I get deeper into the training block for my upcoming race at the Grindstone 100km next month, I find myself firmly in this part of the journey.
Before leaving the house I do a double check I have everything I need, toss it in the back of the car, turn on some LoFi beats, and slowly exit the driveway. The trip out to Umstead is a 2 hour straight shot West from my front door. The drive is fairly boring, passing through the heart of North Carolina's farming community. On this particular drive, however, the road would be silent … dark, tunneled vision driving.
The stillness of this drive gave my mind permission to go deeper into what I'd been wrestling with all week … this idea of the Middle Part. That stretch of the journey where the truth gets exposed. The beginning of any new goal is intoxicating, often fueled by the rush of excitement and possibility. The finish line is magnetic, pulling us forward with the promise of pride and the relief of achieving the goal. But the middle doesn't give you either. The middle is quiet. It's the early morning alarms when no one is awake clapping for you, the solo grind when no one even knows you're working, the stretch where results aren't visible yet and quitting feels reasonable.
And I think that's exactly why it matters the most in the journey. The middle is where we meet ourselves. Not the version of you that signed up when it sounded exciting, not the version daydreaming about the finish line, but the raw, unfiltered you … the one who has to decide if you meant it when you said you wanted this.
This is where resilience is built, where discipline replaces motivation, and where you learn the difference between being interested in a goal and being fully committed to it. The middle is what separates those who only dream from those who finish. It's not just the hardest part. It's the most sacred part of the journey. Because if you can survive the middle, you'll never question if you deserved the finish.
As those thoughts flowed through my now caffeinated mind, the first signs of life emerged as a car approached in the opposite lane. And just like that I was snapped out of the thought, refocusing on the run I had coming up in another hour.
This year has looked a lot different for me as far as my racing goes. Last November when Dakota was born, I took a break from racing in order to be closer to home for her first months. During that time, I've continued to run, just without a clear goal race to train more intensely for.
That all changed this past June as the lead up to the Western States 100 got under way … my social media filled with stories and posts from runners who would be toeing the line at the world's oldest ultra marathon. It is this race, and the documentary UNBREAKABLE: The Western States 100, that got me into the sport back in early 2020. It's without a doubt the #1 race on my ultra bucket list, as well as tens of thousands of other runners around the world, as made evident each December when the lottery results are announced.
The WSER uses a lottery system that provides roughly 360 runners each year an opportunity to race 100 miles from Olympic Valley, just outside of Lake Tahoe, down to Auburn, CA. It is this race that continues to pull me forward in the sport each year because in order to get into the lottery, a runner must first complete another race that is a qualifier. These are typically 100 mile or 100km distances around the world.
That being said, the lottery is very competitive. Each qualifying race you complete, you receive a lottery entry. Each year you complete another qualifier and your tickets double in the lottery, until you are selected. This process can take up to 10 years before you are selected. I'm in year 3 of pursuing this. The Grindstone 100km is a WSER qualifying race, and is the reason I am training for it. Hopefully that all made sense!
As I pull into the dark parking lot just before 5:00am, I notice that no one else is here … the quietness briefly interrupted to the sound of some crickets off in the distance. I do some activation drills, load up 4 hours worth of Precision Fuel & Hydration gels and electrolyte tablets, turn on my headlamp and head off into the darkness.
Running at night with a headlamp is very isolating. Your field of view is narrowed to about 2ft to the left and right, and about 10ft out in front. The rest of your world is darkness, a lonely place that was tough for me to get used to in my earlier days of training for ultras. I remember some of those runs in Pacifica going up Montara … I used to think every predator would want to eat me, "what a dummy for making myself so visible with that headlamp in a sea of black."
As the years have gone on, I've replaced those worries with thoughts about life. And on this run, those thoughts were back at the Middle Part. I couldn't get it out of my head, but at this point I started to think more about the brutal honesty of what it actually takes to get through it.
The Middle Part isn't just about showing up … it's about accepting a hard truth that most people refuse to face.
In life, no one will ever truly care about your desire to succeed. No one cares how much time and work you put into becoming great … it's all irrelevant.
At the end of the day what people see is a winner and a loser. You either accomplished your goal, or you simply did not.
And everything leading up to that … the heart, the work ethic, the dedication, it all remains solely with you. It's a byproduct of the contract you signed with yourself. To go through hell. To fight in the trenches even when you are seeing no immediate validation. Which will happen. If success came with the snap of a finger, everyone would be running 4 minute miles and driving Ferrari's. But that's not the way the world works.
When you make the decision to be different. To give up temporary comfort for something greater, you've committed to the ride of your life. And when the time comes, and you cross the finish line first, or you realize success in whatever capacity, you can smile at the world as they look at you like some miracle … completely oblivious to the price you paid for this. But you know. And there is no greater gratification than that.
It's been said that it takes ten thousand hours to perfect your craft. Ten thousand hours of walking away from immediate satisfaction to enter this sentence of solitude and dedication. It's where you weed out mediocrity. It's where you carve out your place in history. And if you are waiting for someone to come along and just make that happen for you, it'll be a long wait my friend. Because it's your flame, and if you don't keep it lit, it will die. And a flame can be a fragile thing. Weakness, doubt, uncertainty, failures, they all want to put it out. And if you are not bigger than your body, they will.
Trust me, you'll fail. Time and time again. It may not be until your 100th attempt that you even begin to see success. But if you don't have the foresight, and that persistence to see past the bumps in the road, you will never know.
That relentlessness … it's how you separate yourself from the people who feel sorry for themselves and watch the world from their bedroom window. But that's not what you signed up for. Nothing good falls into your hands, it's why every day is so important.
Think of every hour as a piece of paper. By itself, very little weight, very little significance. But committing to the grind, every day causes each piece to stack up and before you know it, you've transformed yourself and your ability. And that's what people don't see. That stack being built, piece by piece.
What they see is the finish line as it's crossed one by one. They see 30 seconds. They didn't see ten thousand hours.
But you did.
It's why you hold your head high. It's why you smile to yourself when people talk about you "being born with talent".
It's these thoughts that I wrestled with over the course of those hours in Umstead. The awareness of the Middle Part has become critical to me achieving some of my biggest goals over the years.
The realization that you are in this stage of the journey is important if you are going to achieve what you set out to achieve. Of knowing that those 2:00am wake ups when it would be so much easier to just stay asleep, are what's needed to build the path required to get to the end of the journey.
With a little over a month until race day I'm as locked in on the goal as I've ever been … finishing the Grindstone 100km. This distance excites and terrifies me equally. I've struggled over the years of completing this distance without suffering greatly. I guess in some ways, I'm in the Middle Part of figuring out how to fix that.
But that's the truth about every big goal. The question isn't whether you'll hit the finish line … it's whether you'll keep showing up in the middle when no one's watching.
One month to go.