Cheering runners atop Hope Pass.
by Kristopher Cargile

So You Want to Run a Stage Race?

Friends, this post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase via one of these links, I get paid a small commission which I use to cover the costs of operating my website and to occasionally finance reading about stage racing on obscure running blogs.

It was a cool, clear August morning in Buena Vista, Colorado–home to the start line of the much-fabled TransRockies Run–a 6 day, 200 kilometer jaunt through the rugged Colorado Rockies. A few hundred runners were anxiously filing into the start chute for the sold-out 2015 event. For many of these runners, the race is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure and this moment represented the culmination of months–even years–of dedicated training. A tactile electricity filled the crisp mountain air. Go time.

For me, the event would profoundly change the course of my life in ways that would take me years to fully comprehend, all while solidifying the multi-day run as something of a minor obsession.

The multi-day requires mastery of endurance on a slightly different scale than other events. Some are designed to maximize suffering, while others aim to provide luxurious comfort to participants. Either way, it takes a special kind of person to invest countless hours of training, vacation time, and financial resources into days of consecutive marathon-distance runs, often hundreds or thousands of miles from civilization.

Consequently, there’s a distinct subculture of stage racing in trail running, its members racking up dozens of finishes in the harshest of environments. Think blistering-hot deserts, suffocatingly humid jungles, and oxygen-depleted mountain tops. The motivation of these athletes is no different than in any other endurance endeavor–some are seeking answers, some are testing their physical and mental limits, and others finding enlightenment in the suffering. Occasionally, its far less complex, as elite Saudi Arabian runner Mo Foustok explained to me during the 2015 Atacama Crossing in Chile’s Atacama desert: “It’s just how I travel and get to see the world”.

What all of these folks share, however, is a collective of wisdom, gleaned from countless hours of not only running, but also training, planning, traveling, eating, drinking, failing. And in the true spirit of trail running, this knowledge is passed on to anyone willing to ask and listen keenly.

If you’re thinking about pulling the trigger on your first stage-day race, here are a few tips that will help you get to the finish line, hopefully relatively unscathed and with your feet intact.

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Duncan Ridge Trail
by Kristopher Cargile

How to Be a Better Trail Running Parasite

Marc Peruzzi’s article attacking trail runners and hikers last month on Outside Online has understandably grated some nerves in trail running circles. A link to the article shows up in running-related Facebook groups on an almost hourly basis, and a plethora of “open-letter” style responses are popping up (much like this one). And despite Peruzzi’s claims to the contrary, that’s exactly the type of reaction that clickbait articles like his are designed to elicit. In the era of BuzzFeed and the highly unfortunate, yet ever impending death of print journalism, well, it’s easy to cave in to such tactics.

But–and bear with me here, runners–you shouldn’t be angry with Marc. Despite a litany of unsupported assertions, a healthy dose of elitist condescension, and a marked lack of offering any sort of constructive solution, the man has a point. His heart is in the right place. All trail users–including cyclists–could do a better job of working to preserve the places that we so dearly love. For me, my local trails are sacred, like a second home, and I feel invested in their care. And I care for them, even if it is on my own time. Could I do better? Absolutely I could. We all could, maybe even Marc himself. Does that make us parasites? I guess that depends on who you ask…

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Working on a windy day at Playa Colorado in Nicaragua in 2019.
by Kristopher Cargile

How to Start a Career as a Location Independent Technologist

Friends, this post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase via one of these links, I get paid a small commission which I use to cover the costs of operating my website and to occasionally rent episodes of Silicon Valley on Amazon Prime.

Editorial note: I am using a lot of jargon in this—very, very long—post. This is intentional. Some are subtle hints, some will hopefully give an introduction to things you’ll be running across in contemporary IT work. Have fun with it!

When I finally committed to the notion of leading a full-time nomadic lifestyle, I completely underestimated the impact it would have on my social life. I’d been working as a part-time, location-independent consultant for almost two decades. Through a series of very bad decisions on my part in 2018, most of my close friends had distanced themselves or walked away from me altogether. What did I have to lose?

Not much, actually.

But making friends in your forties is challenging. It’s even harder when you’re consistently transient. So I did what anyone else would do—I turned to Facebook.

I stumbled on a handful of groups centered around things like vanlife, camping in your pickup truck, and being a “digital nomad”. It was a relief to find so many kindred folks from all over the world in one place, virtual or not. Not the same as meeting someone in person, but still a great start.

One of the recurring questions in all these groups is, “What type of work do you do?” There’s a lot of overlap, and “digital” type work certainly seems to be a common characteristic. But a lot of people are just figuring out to how get started and are looking for advice.

I offered some work-related advice in one of these groups and there was more of a response than I expected. After just a few seconds of banging out a comment, I realized that the answer wasn’t exactly Facebook comment material.

So, without further ado, here is my wholly incomplete and thoroughly biased guide to Starting a Career as a Location Independent Technologist.

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Contemplating life at Playa Amarillo.
by Kristopher Cargile

Letting Go Of Home

“All conditioned things are impermanent. When one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.” — Buddha

Simple as the Buddha may have made it sound, getting right with impermanence isn’t so easy. Accepting the true, transient nature of life means accepting loss at its grandest scale. Acknowledging that the most basal of our pursuits—comfort, happiness, love, life itself—have no final destination is a serious dose of reality.

It’s easy to interpret this nihilistically, particularly in the face adversity or grief. But impermanence doesn’t mean that these aren’t worthwhile pursuits. Life has meaning if you choose to give it meaning, whatever that meaning might be. And I believe that this is what the Buddha meant when he talked about impermanence—when you accept that the journey is what matters and begin truly living in the present, the bumps along the road are less painful because you’re not focused on them.

This is something that I’ve personally struggled with. I’ve experienced—and caused—a profound amount of pain and loss over the years, and viewing that solely through the lens of change has been nearly impossible. At some subconscious level, a big part of my decision to pick up and leave my old life is probably a feeble attempt to own that pain.

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by Kristopher Cargile

Getting Started With Keto

Friends, this post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase via one of these links, I get paid a small commission which I use to cover the costs of operating my website and—if I’m lucky—to buy grass-fed butter for the coffee of my friends that otherwise couldn’t afford it.

Confession: I’m something of a nutrition nerd. I find great joy in experimenting with different diets, macronutrient silliness, supplementation—primarily to see what effect is has on physical and cognitive performance. My friends frequently joke about all of the “dirt flavored” food I eat. Sometimes these experiments are successful, sometimes they’re a wash, and sometimes they’re a complete bust. Like that time I ate only tacos for a month.

I began studying ketogenic eating after years of hearing stories from friends—mostly endurance athletes and high-performing entrepreneurs—about their success using it to hit race weight, fuel through incredibly long events, and to boost brain function. A multi-year stint in CrossFit predating my running career had the concept of “fat-adaptation” on my radar, but it was something that most folks I had interacted with simply didn’t understand. I decided to double down and run my own experiment.

After 45 days of eating around 20 grams of carbs and 100 grams of fat per day, I had dropped twenty-five pounds of fat. My runs were getting faster, my brain was on fire, and I had more energy than I had in years. For the first time in my life, I was developing a visible six-pack.

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Me at the summit of Springer Mountain
by Kristopher Cargile

Becoming a Nomad – The First Ninety Days

“The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life. It’s so easy to make it complex. What’s important is leading an examined life.” — Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia — 180 South

Today marks ninety days since I made the decision to get rid of almost everything and embrace a nomadic lifestyle. It’s been an enlightening experience to say the least. Mostly in that–after more than two decades of intense focus on business and unchecked consumption–picking up and leaving it all behind has been a lot of work.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

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Me standing on the Imagine mural in Central Park.
by Kristopher Cargile

Finding True Purpose Through Running

Pablo Picasso once observed, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” In all fairness, there’s some debate about who actually said this, but the notion of Pablo sipping tea, hands stained with paint, waxing prophetic in Castellano feels romantic to me, so we’re going with that.

In any event, I’ve been thinking about purpose a lot lately.

Twenty eighteen was unquestionably the single most challenging orbit of my entire forty-three years. And it’s got some serious competition: emergency dental surgery when I was 2 years old; a 1985 cycling accident that nearly took my right arm and required two excruciating surgeries to fix; a massive overdose in 2007 that killed me for just over 3 minutes and left me in a coma, followed-up by a divorce in 2008 that sent me spiraling back into several more months of powdery, self-destructive depression. The list is longer than I care to admit.

The concept of bone fida true purpose didn’t exist in my universe until another round of addiction landed me back in the hospital–twice–and finally in-patient rehab in early 2018. Despite my deep affinity for learning, it’s apparently not always my strong suit.

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A dozen homemade biscuits in a box.
by Kristopher Cargile

Eating Healthy on the Road

Crossfitters are fond of saying, “you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.” Regardless of what you might think about Crossfit, they’re right. Sure, you can work out enough to justify an absurd number of calories, but this still doesn’t make all those donuts you ate on the way to work healthy. In fact, all that sugar is probably wreaking havoc on your training. Not to mention your pancreas, brain, adrenals, abdominals, genitals, and wallet.

Intrepid travelers already know how tough it can be to eat healthy on the go. Air travel and hotels are like a black hole, junk food supergravity drawing you slowly into a singular abyss. Traveling light and border crossings make carrying food a logistical challenge, sometimes impossibility. Pair that with the lack of cooking options in most hotels, and it’s easy to go completely rogue. Even a cheapo butane camp stove and a styrofoam cooler are big luxuries when all you have is a motel-grade Keurig and a microwave.

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Laz coaxes runners at the start of the 2018 Barkley Fall Classic.
by Kristopher Cargile

Hacking Motivation

A race director friend told me that the average ultra-distance trail runner stays in the sport for about four years. I’m not exactly sure where that number came from, but it seems reasonable. Injury, burn out, family commitment, work, loss of interest–we’re all at risk of losing that spark that helps push us to the finish.

For me, an injury last year spawned a cascade of events that completely destroyed my motivation, not just for running, but for life in general. It was a dark time, and it took more than a year for me to crawl back out of the hole that I’d dug for myself. I lost everything in the process, including my self-respect. I was totally defeated.

Breaking from stagnation has been one of the most difficult challenges I’ve had to tackle. That experience led me to start researching the science behind motivation. There’s quite a bit of psychology at work here, but the good news is that once you understand it, you can start stacking the deck in your favor.

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A bunch of sticky notes on a wall around a sign asking about thankfullness.
by Kristopher Cargile

Why I Became a Nomad

About six months ago, I started renovating my house in Atlanta. Groundbreaking was the culmination of years of daydreaming about becoming a fat-cat real-estate investor, and I’d spent the previous six months or so doing legitimate research and running the numbers. I had a high level of confidence that–once up and running–my quaint new AirBNB would generate just enough revenue to allow me to finally cut the cord and hit the road nearly full-time. All I needed was about $75,000 and another six months to finish all the work.

Problem. I didn’t have $75,000, and my credit score–while not completely in the toilet–was low enough to invite more than a casual chuckle from bankers. During the ensuing six months I would most certainly die from starvation, since my recent year of “soul searching” hadn’t been paying very well and I’d blown through most of my savings. So, naturally, I did what any other rational person would do–I got out the wrecking bar and started tearing down the walls of my 100 year old kitchen. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

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