“… to go far, go together.”

Talk offered as a ‘Wisdom Wednesday’ at Mountain Cloud Zen Center; August 20, 2025.

First, apologies in advance to those that have tired of hearing me talk about running. However, similar to a couple previous talks, this isn’t necessarily about running itself, but, rather, the experiences and insights gained through the practice, which, I maintain, are universal and complement our sitting practice.

As many of you will be aware, a few weeks ago, I, and my wonderful support crew, lead by my partner, Kayla (online from Australia), along with her sister, Leah, from Boulder, and my parents, Barb & Marcel, from Ontario, Canada, assembled up in the beautiful wilderness of Montana to attempt a 100-mile ultramarathon in the ‘Crazy Mountains.’ Through the course of the race, we would experience over 23,000 cumulative feet of climbing, 23,000 feet of quad-bursting descents, river-crossings, potentially temperamental and dangerous weather, and enough likelihood of Grizzly Bears and Mountain Lions to require runners to carry bear-spray.

True to its name of ‘Big Sky Country,’ there’s an incredible vastness to the landscape around the Crazies, as they’re called, with prairies stretching out to the west and peaks soaring to the east, with the pristine Yellowstone River carving a path south in Yellowstone National Park. In these settings, it’s clear why mountains and rivers feature so prominently in Zen art and teachings—the vastness of the landscape lends itself to a vast quality of mind; ‘Wild Mind, Wild Earth,’ as David Hinton describes it. Zen Master Dōgen teaches that mountains are expressions of awakened reality; they are preaching the truth just by being. And when he says that “mountains walk,” it’s not a lesson in geology, but a pointer to fundamental ‘interbeing’—the mountain doesn’t exist in isolation; it ‘walks’ in relationship to the sun, the clouds, the rivers, the sentient beings who experience it.

And just as the mountain walks in relationship, I ran in the Crazies in relationship to the landscape and my crew. And this is where I want to linger this evening—on the essential role of the team in this arbitrary, but very real challenge. There’s an often overused African proverb, particularly co-opted in business, which certainly applies here: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Perhaps we reframe it simply as: If you want to get anywhere worthwhile, go together.

At 6am on a Friday, a couple hundred of us, along with our crews, lined up in the soft morning light; the sun not yet peaking out from behind the 25 pinnacles of the Crazy range. The start line was smudged by a member of the Apsaalooke (ap-SAH-loo-gah) or Crow tribe, for whom the Crazy Mountains hold deep spiritual significance, viewing them as a sacred place for seeking dreams and spiritual power. This weekend, the power of endurance was going to be needed; once we crossed the start-line, even the fastest among us wouldn’t be stopping until the next sunrise on Saturday.

As we got underway, the start of a parallel and intertwined adventure began—runner and crew—one body, with a collective goal of maintaining physical and mental states, such that we could keep moving forward in relationship with the wild earth.

For these longer efforts, the crew typically meets up with the runner at a handful of designated points along the course. Once there, they set up a mini-camp and prepare food and drink, and gear for the next stretch. Not only logistically important, but psychologically invaluable; their presence on the trail ahead is a wonderful motivator and helps break up the race into distinct segments. There’s a tremendous sense of care that comes along with showing up at a crew-point and having the team collectively focused on the wellbeing of their runner—anticipating their needs, while also maintaining a positive and supportive attitude, despite their own challenges along the way … particularly on this course, where navigating the backcountry roads was itself a harrowing adventure.

Added into the crew’s challenge, beyond the logistics of tracking the runner, staying up through the night, and maintaining enough mental acuity to care for the team, is the fact that three of my crew members were also pacers, meaning they joined me for stretches of the race.

Around mile-43, my sister-in-law, Leah—herself a trail-runner—joined me for a 20-mile ‘jaunt,’ with over 6,000-ft of climbing, taking us into the dark of night. It was anticipated to be a beast of a segment … and it did not disappoint.

At the start of the biggest climb, up and over Conical peak, I remember glancing up at our destination, going over the only accessible crest of the mountain and having no idea how that was going to happen, having already had something like 12 hours on my legs. But, Leah took the lead and fell into a steady rhythm, which I obliged; first through the alpine forest, past the tree-line, and into the rocky switchbacks snaking their up the wind-blown peak.

The descent on the other side was punishing for the legs, but the landscape was truly stunning: snow-capped peaks and mountain meadows full of wildflowers, and a pristine river carving its way down the valley, defining the path forward.

The most difficult section came on the second big descent. A prior knee-injury started to flare-up for Leah, and we had entered a stretch that we had been warned about at the race-briefing: a steep and narrow trail with loose rock, perched on the side of the mountain, with a precipitous drop to our left, made psychologically worse by the abyss of darkness in the valley below. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there are only a few points along the course where a runner can drop out, so the only options are to carry on, or return to the previous aid station, and there was simply no way we were backtracking. I had taken the lead on the descent to help find the footing, and during one particularly harsh section, I heard Leah behind me softly say “Grant, I’m scared.” A disarming moment of vulnerability. Concern about the terrain and an ailing knee had taken hold. And so our collective challenge became about getting each other down from this mountain and to the next crew point.

The last several miles of the segment felt like an eternity, our pace slowed considerably. I was starting to get rather concerned about Kayla and my parents at the next stop … it was now the middle of the night and they had to hike-in a mile to the meet-up point, and were now waiting for us for several hours past the projected time, and so surely they’d be concerned about having somehow missed us, or that something had gone quite wrong.

When we finally made it in, both Leah and I were physically and mentally depleted. I was at a point of low-faith in my ability to carry on for another 37 miles and thousands of feet of climbing. But the scene at the crew stop was heartening: Barb and Marcel were bundled up, trying to stay warm; our dog Maple, curled up in a camp chair beside them. Kayla, my next pacer, was dressed for the trail and bouncing around the aid station campfire, eager to carry me forward. Everybody sprang into action: they had warm clothes, dry shoes (we had crossed the frigid river twice), and hot soup ready. Stopping simply wasn’t an option.

And so after a brief pause to recharge supplies, Kayla and I set off into the darkness for 15 miles together. Kayla was exactly what was needed for this challenging stretch; she hid her own exhaustion and was somehow excited to be on the trail in the middle of the night. She pushed me to run all terrain possible and was keeping me on a consistent eating schedule (as an aside, it becomes very difficult to get down enough nutrition in the later stages of these races—the body deprioritizes production of saliva and shuttles blood away from the stomach to the necessary muscles, and so it becomes about managing a caloric-deficit as best as possible. In total, the effort will cost around 22,000 calories, and I’ll have taken in, at-best, half of that, although likely many fewer.) With Kayla leading the way, we were moving pretty well and it was bringing me back to life. During one stretch, we paused and turned off our headlamps. The darkness was staggering; simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive—no light-pollution, with a ‘new’ moon in the sky, and no other headlamps in-sight. Just the crystal clarity of the cosmos above, and two shooting stars!

But, this relative ease and sense of wonder didn’t stick around; I started really struggling on the ascents; the feeling of deep exhaustion was all-consuming. The mind was doing all sorts of calculations about distance and vertical and time remaining, and I really couldn’t fathom having another full marathon—around 26 miles—still stretching out ahead. I said to Kayla on a particularly challenging climb, “I don’t think I can physically make it to the finish.” Her reply couldn’t have been more perfect: “Well, that’s too bad, because you’re going to.” It was exactly the fierce compassion that was needed. I thought, “Oh, OK, I guess I will.” There was something so liberating in that moment about dropping the decision to carry on, and letting Kayla and the crew dictate. That’s not to say it all of sudden became easier to keep putting one foot in front of the other, but there was a brilliance to Kayla’s approach—she kept reassuring, “Let’s just get to the next crew point and we’ll assess; no need to consider right now.” Indeed, she knew the skillful approach was not in the mind, but in the body.

I must say, however, that there was a moment of concern for Kayla’s state, too … about halfway through our segment, in the middle of the night, in, truly, the middle of nowhere, Kayla turned around and asked excitedly, “Do you smell McDonald’s French Fries?!” Oh no, I thought, hallucinations have set in.

About 22 hours after crossing the start-line, there was a hint of light outlining the mountain range; we’d made it through the night. In one high mountain field, we came across a heard of cows enjoying the dawn, making an absolute racket … Muuuuuu!! I was appreciative of the practice pointer: come back to Mu; come back to just this; just this step. And so it was, those steps that brought us into the next crew stop. And there, reliably so, were Barb & Marcel, Leah, and Maple, waiting for us with renewed spirits in the morning light and new food options to to keep me nourished. A salty soup hit the spot.

There were 22 miles remaining; one 15-mile section and a final 7-mile stretch. The saving grace for these 22 miles was that I had understood from the race-briefing, that, at this point, the toughest terrain was over and it’d be relatively smooth sailing from here on out. There’s a phrase in Zen, which comes from Genjo Koan: “Not knowing is most intimate.” Well, not knowing is also most helpful. Had I known what waited for me in these next 15 miles, I would’ve thought it physically not possible and may have called it quits. With something like 28 hours on my legs, the down-hills, in particular, were becoming quite challenging. Turns out this segment was nothing but a series of significant ups and downs over high-mountain prairies, fully exposed to the intensifying mid-day sun. To say this was a slog is to put it mildly. Every time a new climb came into view there was an element disbelief … “I don’t know how.” The one aid station in this segment had a couple runners being treated by medical staff for heat exhaustion.

Driving me forward was knowing that the next and final crew point was were I’d pick up my dad, Marcel, for a seven-mile road-run into the finish line. There was no way I was going to forgo that opportunity to run it in together.

As soon as the station came into view, there was Kayla, happily standing in a cold mountain stream, waving me in. Marcel was suited up and ready to roll, after having spent the past 32 hours(!) navigating the wild backcountry and supporting this crazy effort.

We set off on what felt like a pretty good run; I was thrilled to be actually running, because the last time Marcel paced me in Leadville last year, I could only muster a brisk walk. Recognizing that I was literally ‘running on empty,’ Marcel did what was needed and liberated me from decisions—he’d offer, “We’re going to run 1.5 miles and then slow for a drink.” And so, in these bite-size chunks of running, Marcel managed to get the finish line into view for us. There, waiting, was the rest of the crew. Nearly 34 hours after crossing the start-line, we ran across the finish-line together.

There’s a great quote from Charles Bukowski: “Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live.” And so, exhausted and a little bit more crazy, we returned to our camp, with the quiet satisfaction and expansiveness that comes from having done a hard thing together.