Owing Nothing

Last week, on the heels of being out west supporting Nora at Western States, I had an idea. I would run my own hundred miler in 2027.

I got excited. Anyone would.

In that excitement, I reached out to a handful of trail running brands and pitched them a story. Guy leaves his corporate job to drive a Zamboni. Same guy who helped put gravel cycling on the map. Now he's got a plan to run a hundred miles and tell the world about it, because he thinks the story would land well with the rest of the middle aged people out there wondering if they still have something in them.

For a hot minute I believed I was going to light the world on fire. I pictured promoting these brands and my own story at the same time, somehow finding the Almanzo storyline again in a new category. I have ideas. Lots of them. That's rarely been the problem. The problem is what I do with the excitement once it shows up.

In the days that followed, I threw out my back. Badly enough that getting off the floor took planning. Then I slipped into a bit of a depression, mostly because I couldn't move, and a body that won't move has a way of taking the mind down with it.

While I was mostly flat and waiting on my back to return to my body, the responses started arriving. To my surprise, not all of them were no. None of them were yes, either. Two of the three brands I heard back from wanted to know more and left the door open. One was clear in its denial.

I've built things my whole life on doors left open. I know what that posture usually means. It means come back later with more proof, more audience, more of something I don't have yet and may not want to build just to get it.

What happened to me in that same stretch of days was a quieter arrival. I landed in a simpler place, at roughly the same time the brands were landing in their maybes. I decided I'm better off on my own. Owing nothing to anyone. The way I've done it for most of my life, and the way Almanzo got built in the first place. Thirteen people on a gravel road, no sponsor, no ask, nothing but an idea worth showing up for.

The idea of being a sponsored athlete, running in donated gear, is a fun fantasy. The reality is selling things on contract, whether the product deserves to be sold or not. That's growth for the sake of growth, and I've spent enough years watching that pattern up close, in bike shops and on the road for a company that measured everything, to know what it costs a person.

Don't get me wrong, having another entity along to help offset the cost of things would be great, but I simply can't do it according to someone else’s ideology.

I'd rather run my own hundred miles carrying only what I chose to carry. If a brand earns a mention along the way, it'll be because I ate two of their hot dogs and liked them, not because a contract said I had to. That's the only kind of endorsement I trust anymore, mine or anyone else's.