Alright, we're trying something new. This Das Z Letter is a "living object". That means I'll be updating and adding to it over the next few days, but the link will stay the same. So if you've subscribed to Das Z Letter, feel free to bookmark the link or keep the email in your inbox and check back from time to time to see what's new.
The Hoka Days
So far, my bikewritecation in France has not gone as planned. Lots of biking, no writing. But I don't see the lack of output as the problem, rather the lack of the deceleration of my life. But that will change from today on. Yes, it will.
I had already seen that the first three days of my bikewritecation would be turbulent. After a rather long trip to my home base in Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains on Monday, I had two packed days at the Hoka Athletes Camp in Argentière near Chamonix on Tuesday and Wednesday. I was there on behalf of Alles-Laufbar.de to do some interviews and to attend the presentation of a new shoe. There were also some group runs, shared meals and a "Women in Trail" press conference. I told you, it was packed.
The atmosphere at the Hoka Athletes Camp was very relaxed. Everyone was friendly and you could do your own thing without getting on each other's nerves. For the athletes, the stay at the Hoka Chalet was a kind of training camp that was interrupted by the press event. But there was still a constant coming and going, every 10 minutes a new runner stumbled down the mountain and joined in.
The three interviews I did were interesting and I discovered a lot. I interviewed Katharina Hartmuth, Judith Wyder and Jim Walmsley. The conversations all took place in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. That's not always the case in interview situations, which are a bit of a "work assignment" for both sides. Check out Alles-Laufbar.de more often in the next few days, I'm sure you'll find something there.
To test the shoe in question (it was the Hoka Tecton X3 - want to hear more about it?), I took part in a small 5k run, looping the trails around Argentière. To be honest, I didn't think much of it, I was eager to test the shoe and knew from previous test runs at home that my scrap knee could handle a few kilometers. As it turned out, the knee didn't make a sound for half an hour. My cardiovascular system did. Running is pretty hard if you're not used to it (anymore), especially uphill.
Don’t call it a comeback.
I'm glad I took a chance on this run. Even though it was as unsatisfying as the last few weeks: the knee is irritated afterwards, never really bad, but bad enough to signal to me that it is still broken. I will spend the next few days thinking about this "liminality of being injured" and come up with a new master plan.
![[+] The Liminality of Being Injured](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!l2nP!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fba64e087-e05e-42c1-b180-dc96691fac13_3092x2792.jpeg)
It's just like I said in my last Das Z Letter, "The Blunt Truth About My Running Hiatus": Taking a break from running is okay for me. Not knowing if my conservative therapy is the right way forward is not.
But back to the Hoka Athletes Camp. The big conclusion after 2 days with some of the best trail runners in the world is satisfying:
There is no secret sauce.
They are all cooking with the same ingredients, trying to solve the same problems, facing the same challenges. And even though Christophe Aubonnet, Hoka's Director of Advanced Product Development and co-founder, spends hours philosophizing about the technological features and outstanding characteristics of his shoes and prototypes, it takes the will and heart of a Jim Walmsley to win races and set records with them.
First Day Off
The first day I have to myself is not really alone. My friend Henning is here with me in Saint-Gervais. He also took part in the Hoka event and is hanging around for two more days before he flies back home. The good thing is: Henning is one of the most pleasant people to spend time with. It's always relaxed with him, whether we're talking nonsense, both staring at our laptops for hours, or cooking / eating together. So I can relax and slowly immerse myself in the world and vibe I left home for.
The Synergy
Today is the birthday of my wife Lisa. Lisa is in Munich. I'm in France. Do you understand? Yes, it's not supposed to be like that.
But it says a lot about the relationship between Lisa and me. No, not that we each do our own thing and only see each other twice a month. I had that, I didn't like it, I don't need it again. No, what it says about us is that we manage to reconcile our own needs with those of the other person. Not as a compromise, but as a synergy. Knowing that the other person is doing something that is good for them gives us strength. Knowing that we can do what is good for us without the other person feeling bad about it also gives us strength.
Of course I would have loved to take Lisa with me on my bikewritecation, but she is fighting on other fronts than I am and has to take care of herself. When we see each other again, we will both be recovered and strengthened and bring all this back to our family.
And yet I miss her terribly. Especially today, her birthday. It's not often that we spend time apart, and we've never had a separate birthday. The fact that this doesn't make me feel like a "bad husband" and that Lisa doesn't signal this to me in any way, again describes the synergy I meant above quite accurately.
Being for the Sake of Being
On the French front it looks like this: After a short transition phase, I finally managed to immerse myself in writing. One of the two reasons I retreated to Saint-Gervais. It feels good to just write without knowing what it's for. Actually, I know very well what it's for.
For myself.
Similar to running, the greatest value is in the process of writing itself, not in the result. In my book Runhundred I use the term "running for the sake of running". The same goes for writing: "writing for the sake of writing".
As for my sporting activities, I'll admit that I'm still a bit tired from the back and forth between Saint-Gervais and Argentière at the beginning of the week. The last two days I just did short rides to explore the area. The day before yesterday I rode part of the UTMB race course from Saint-Gervais to Les Contamines and yesterday I just rode up a mountain pass. It always looks super cool in pictures of real cyclists. It is, if you can get your head out of it. When you look at the speedometer, it feels like a never-ending story – or rather a never-ending climb. Going downhill, it becomes a high-risk sport from 0 to 100. You could have fried an egg on my disc brakes.
And today? I have no idea. That's what I was looking for. To have no idea. No plan. "Alles kann, nichts muss", as we Germans say, albeit in a different context. The feeling of being free to decide what to do, when to do it, or simply not to do anything at all. I just love it.
This is What I Came For
I was lying on the couch, empty from cycling and full of food, when a thought came to me that I wanted to write about. I got up, walked over to the kitchen table where my Macbook is, and started typing. The words just came out and the text was suddenly there. Just like that.
This. Exactly This. This is why I came here.
My Running Attitude
I have been thinking about running today. While cycling. It's easy to think about running while cycling, because it's very similar, but it's not running.
I climbed the Col Des Saisies at a breathtakingly slow speed. It felt a lot like hiking while trail running. For the two non-runners reading this:
if you are not Kilian Jornet, you are not running up the mountains, you are hiking. But not all hiking is the same. You can do it with vigor and emphasis, or you can really hike, that is, hike like a hiker and not like a runner. So today I was the hiker among the cyclists. It was still challenging, but in a pleasant way.
Anyway, back to my thoughts on running.
For many years now, I've tried to constantly reflect on my running attitude. ‘Mindset’ would be a better word, but I hate it. What I try to do is to identify and address any negative or even toxic elements that might show up. It's not always easy. Mostly because my ambition and tenacity – actually super nice qualities for a runner – get in my way.
At the moment, being completely out of the running game due to my injury, and knowing that I will surely have to start from scratch when I resume running again one day, has a refreshing, almost purifying effect on my running attitude.
Hundert-Meilen-Layout
Besides cycling, writing and philosophizing about my next running life, I have been working on the layout for the German version of "Runhundred".
A few weeks ago I described this project as follows:
“I knew from the beginning that I would also publish the book in German, but I quickly realized that a 1:1 translation would not be enough. I wanted my story to be told just as honestly, engagingly and profoundly in German as in the English original. This wish ultimately led to me writing the book a second time, so to speak. A lot of work, but it was worth it.”
(From “My Western States 100 Story” Das Z Letter)
Right next to the new language and the new title, the new layout has contributed a lot to the fact that "Hundert-Meilen-Herz" feels completely different from "Runhundred". The book is much more pictorial. With more than 100 photos and illustrations, all placed in the appropriate chapters, you can now dive much deeper into my Western States story.
I show a lot of myself in this book, both figuratively and literally. If Western States hadn't been what it was for me, life-changing, I might have been a little more reserved. I'm glad I wasn't.
The layout is the last piece of the puzzle, and it goes to press next week. It feels crazy that the release date, which seemed so far away just a short while ago, is now next month on September 24, 2024. I have a lot of experience with projects of all kinds and sizes, but time definitely flies the fastest with book projects.
I'm looking forward to the final (s)print!
An Off Day Among Off Days
"On vacation, the day off is king" (you can quote me).
I didn't do anything today. Really nothing at all.
Actually, I just lay around all the time, sat on the terrace or went for a walk in the village. I listened to my completely irrelevant prose audio book (another Fitzek) and occasionally exchanged a few messages with Lisa.
At noon I spent an hour cooking a curry, but only with the ingredients I had left over. Shopping would have been too much of an effort. I even took a nap after lunch.
Oh yes, I also stretched. But nowhere near as purposeful and result-oriented as I usually do. It was more of a feel-good stretch.
Why am I telling you all this? Because it's special. At least it is for me. I don't have many days like this, and even when I encourage myself to do nothing sometimes, it doesn't feel like today. Most of the time my head keeps buzzing, even when the notebook is closed and the cell phone is out of reach.
But I don't want to complain. Especially not because I totally have it in my own hands. But slowing down takes time and space. I've learned that in the many quiet days here. It takes a while for the mind and heart to adjust to a slower travel speed. To decelerate. And it needs an environment that reflects as few elements of everyday life as possible.
I think I'm just learning how to take a real vacation. That seems to me to be a successful model. I'll keep an eye on that.
Over Col and Dale
Today I did my longest bike ride ever. No, that's not true. Maybe the most hours in the saddle? Not that either. Maybe the hardest? Could be.
Cycling is different from running. It can also be very demanding, but I find it easier to "endure". Maybe it's the airflow, maybe it's the fact that apart from the thigh muscles, the sitting bones, and some tension in the shoulders, relatively little hurts. I can't imagine feeling as miserable on the bike as I did on some (ultra) runs. I'm sure it's possible, but I definitely don't have enough practice.
Yesterday I downloaded a ride over two mountain passes (there were actually three) onto my little bike computer and just went without thinking about it. I just followed the red line on the little screen. On some of the climbs I wondered if they would ever end (I hadn't set up a helpful data screen for climbs - rather untypical for the Levelhead). I also wondered about a never-ending descent (I almost rolled all the way to Annecy). And when I passed the first pass for the second time after 4 hours in the Stattel, I was just as surprised. But I didn't question it, after all there was the red line and that was all I needed that day. Following the red line was all I needed to do.
A nice metaphor that can also be applied to life. If you have a clear goal, if you have a plan, if you have a path in life, then many questions don't arise. This makes many things easier, but above all it focuses the limited energy we all have on the essentials. Or on what we consider essential. It makes our flickering lives a little less flickering. And we can all use a little bit of that.
At the end of the day, however, I was still completely destroyed. The red line won't save you from that.
Home is where the 💙 is
The decision to return home to my family a few days earlier than planned was spontaneous, but not unexpected. I miss Lisa, Harry and Toto very much and my heart is pounding when I think about holding them in my arms tonight. All three of them. Even Harry, who doesn't like such raids very much, unless you have cat snacks with you.
My bikewritecation feels round. I've biked a lot. I've written a lot. I also finished a tax return, the layout for "Hundert-Meilen-Herz" and a new drop for my running brand Willpower. So I was also a bit "productive" even though that wasn't the plan.
But the most important thing is that I recovered. There were many hours, sometimes whole days, when I did nothing at all. I experienced many idle moments where I could just be.
How much of this will I take with me? I don't know. Fortunately, I still have a few days of vacation left, which will make the transition and return to "normal life" (what is that anyway?) easier. But most of all, I'm looking forward to spending time with my family. Wow, I'm really homesick. What a wonderful feeling. It shows me where I belong.
The end.
I see that you have good weather also to stay in the Hoka Camp. Nice region. It is interesting that you have no problem with your knee at the run, but with other problems, perhaps of the heat ?
I read recently a book of Damian Hall: In it for the long run, and his description his first UTMB! Do you know him?
Greetings, Gabi
It´s really enjoyable to read your daily updates, much like a diary you share with us. Interesting thoughts to follow, and the pictures of the landscape of the area re-awaken my desire to travel to Chamonix again, hopefully next year. The pictures transport the special energy that the mountains reflect so I get to visualize all the nice places there. Thanks for sharing your journey so openly.