Where Did All Your Energy Go?

You have a job. Maybe a family. Friends, bills, a house that requires attention. A full, normal life that has nothing to do with ultrarunning.

And then you have this other thing. The thing where you get up before the sun to run twenty miles by lunch. The thing where you plan vacation around a race in a place most people will never see. The thing where you've DNF'd, gotten back up, and signed up for another go at the distance.

Nobody sees both sides of you at once. Your coworkers don't see you power-hiking a steep, technical climb at mile 70 in the dark, middle of nowhere. Your training partners don't see you leading a high-pressure work meeting.

You live a double life - and like any secret identity, it costs energy to hold both at the same time.

We willingly accept that cost. But that doesn't mean it isn't real. And most ultrarunners discount it.

One account serves both lives

Your energy isn't split into two separate accounts - one for "real life" and one for ultrarunning. It's one account. Every ounce of effort it takes to be excellent at your job, show up for your family, and manage everyone's expectations comes out of the same account as training all-in for a hundred-mile race.

You don't get a fresh balance when you switch from work mode to runner mode. You're pulling from what's left.

So when you miss a training run, face a long run with dead legs, or arrive at the start line more tired than planned - it’s tempting to see that as a personal failure. Not enough discipline. Not enough desire.

But it's not. It's simply a math problem. You spent most of the account on everything else life demanded first, and running got what was left over.

Why this feels like your fault - and isn't

Because this sport rewards toughness at all costs, it's easy to internalize a training or performance gap as weakness. If you were tougher, more disciplined, more committed, you'd find a way.

That's the story a lot of runners tell themselves.

But you're not weak. You're doing something genuinely hard: sustaining a career in an extreme endurance sport in the middle of an equally demanding life - through good times and bad - without either one falling apart.

That's not a character flaw, or poor time management. That's just a lot on your plate - the life of someone who's living it, not sitting on the sidelines watching it.

Making one side the villain

"Life" isn't always tidy. Sometimes it's a family member going into hospice. A mandatory work deadline set months after you got into the lottery for that once-in-a-lifetime race. A spontaneous family trip that doesn't leave room for your training block.

We don't run ultras in a bubble-wrapped life. We run them in the middle of a real one.

When the tension between real life and ultrarunning life gets too tight, your first reaction is to pick one side over the other.

Often that means running gets sacrificed - because it's optional, indulgent, something to feel guilty about wanting.

But just as often, it goes the other way - and life becomes the obstacle. The job that "keeps you from" training. The social obligation that "should" be a long run instead. Resentment builds toward the very things that make the rest of life good.

This "one or the other" strategy doesn't work long-term. And it's not necessary.

You don't have to choose between being an ultrarunner and being everything else you are. The two aren't competing - they’re drawing from the same account, because they're the same life.

The real work isn't picking which life is right. It's tending the balance between the two - some weeks tipping toward ultrarunning, some weeks toward the rest of life - without writing either one off.

What actually changes things

Everybody's dealing with this. I am, and every one of my clients is - sometimes through incredibly hard, real life circumstances.

The runners who sustain this double life well - who show up to races with imperfect training and do their best with what they have instead of resenting it, who train hard without life falling apart - aren’t the ones with more hours in the day, or the mythical dirtbag lifestyle.

They're the ones who've stopped treating support as a sign they couldn't handle the combination of real life and ultrarunning themselves. They can. They've just realized handling it alone was never actually the requirement.

They've dropped the idea that not balancing it perfectly means something's wrong with them. And they've dropped the idea that getting support means they couldn't hack it alone. Getting support when you need it isn't weakness. It's strength.

My clients tell me this a lot: that our work together keeps them grounded when life gets chaotic. That it makes an ambitious goal still feel achievable, even mid-crisis, instead of something to let go of. That having someone in their corner who understands what they're carrying changes what's possible.

This is part of why I coach clients on a one-hour video call, every week, for six month blocks. Not an email plan handed to you once and left to execute alone, and not support that disappears after the first few weeks - real, ongoing support for the real version of this life, the one where training blocks collide with a rough month at work, a sick family member, a bad week. Support that adjusts as your life changes, instead of needing life to hold still.

You don't have to choose between the two lives you're living. Balance isn't something you arrive at once and keep - it’s something you keep adjusting, week after week, no matter what life throws at it.

That's possible for you, whatever life looks like right now. And you don't have to figure it out alone.