I’m Getting a New Hip Today

Tomorrow morning — actually, by the time you read this, today - I’m having my hip replaced.

I've been dealing with this for six years. Six years of knowing this day was coming. And one of the hardest parts, after absorbing the diagnosis, has been figuring out what it means for someone like me - someone who loves running. And adventuring. Who loves what her body can do.

Here's what I've learned in the last six months of coming to peace with this: resistance to an unwanted reality doesn't protect you from it. It just keeps you in it. It costs you the future.

I spent time fighting this diagnosis. I needed to. I figured out how to run in ways that would let my hip last as long as possible.

But I also spent a lot of energy fearing the loss I imagined. And eventually, the loss I imagined started to become real. I couldn't finish races. Then I couldn't run at all. And lately, hardly walk.

And here's one sure thing about ultrarunning: we don't actually know what's coming. We never do. Mile 40 doesn't tell you what mile 80 will look like. A nauseous stomach at mile 60 doesn't mean you won't cross the finish line. We learn - the hard way - the only path to the finish line is through whatever is between you and it. And that you can handle what comes up when it comes up.

That trust in yourself isn't something you magically have before the hard thing. It's the thing you build on the way to the finish line - and it carries over into every other part of your life.

So that's what I did. I stepped off the cliff I'd been hanging onto and into the unknown. And I'm trusting that I can figure out how to fly.

The question that helped me get there - one I use for every hard-to-accept situation, and the same one I ask my clients when they're spiraling about a missed training block or a bad race - is this: “How is this perfect?”

Not forced positivity. Not "look on the bright side." It’s getting past the first “I don’t know,” and genuinely asking: what is this situation giving me that I wouldn't have chosen, but that could turn out to be exactly what I needed?

For me, the answer became clear: this is the path back to the trails. Back to adventure. Back to what I love.

And I know that ultrarunners - more than almost anything else - are people who move forward into uncertainty. Who take the next step without knowing what's ahead. Who trust themselves to handle whatever comes up, because they've done it before, in the dark, alone, when everything hurt.

I don't know exactly what running will look like on the other side of this. But I know who I am as an ultrarunner. I’m not there to try. I’m there to finish.

This is just another version of that.

I'll be documenting what this journey is teaching me - and how you can use it to finish more reliably, run stronger, and enjoy it more over the next few episodes of the Unstoppable Ultrarunner podcast - how I made peace with an unwanted reality, what happens to identity when the thing you've built yourself around gets taken away even temporarily, and how to look toward a future that looks different than the one you planned.

I’m glad you’re here. If any of this resonates - if you're navigating your own version of an unwanted reality right now, on the trails or off them - use this as an example of what’s possible.

Let’s all keep moving forward.