Interview with Timothy Olson – Trailrunner

I try to be in a state of 'flow' for all of my runs, and I think a lot of that has to do with my practice beforehand. Sometimes I just get up and go for a run and I kind of like what I'm doing with my breathing and stuff out there, but when I have the space and the time, I try to start my morning with some breath awareness, doing a little bit of breath work and a hold and, and then setting an intention for the day. And with the PCT it was just bigger. It was just a lot longer and really expanded like crazy. A lot of things come up when you run like 15 hours a day.

At times I was in a lot of pain and I was really tired and hurting. I was kind of riding that red line: Is my body going to break down? The lack of sleep, the lack of anything that would repair me. There just wasn't time and space for all that.

My body was continuously recovering and adapting. And it was really challenging. But I think coming into that flow state was super helpful for me, because I didn't start worrying like: "Oh, I have, you know, 2000 more miles to go", or "I have another state to go through".  You just try not to think much about how big this task actually is. I couldn't really wrap my mind around that.

This year has been more unique than most, as I've been a full-on dad. After the PCT, my wife gave birth to a baby and is in the middle of doing a Masters degree program. When I was on the trail, they helped me a lot and were there for me. This is my time to give back and give Krista, my wife, the opportunity to go to school and do things that are really important to her. And me take a little bit backseat on my running and focus on my family. Yes, I've been doing a lot this year, but, my oldest son just turned ten this year and we homeschool here. We have a homeschool coop here in Boulder with some other families. I think it is better for my kids to spend more time in nature and to follow their own learning and curriculum than what I see in the United States School systems. Me and my wife, we teach a class on mindfulness meditation for other homeschool kids here. Tuesdays, we have a little group of kids come here, and we take them for a hike up on the trails, to show them, life skills, trail skills and mindfulness skills. So kind of incorporating all the things that I love in life. We're getting to hang with my family, but then also getting to connect with their friends and then also share the things that I love. And that is how I spend most of the days right now. I have a ten year old, a six year old and a now one year old. So my life is very consumed with my family, with children.

It was a really low time in my life when I was making a lot of bad choices. And a lot of that, I think, stems from my upbringing. I didn't grow up in the most healthy situation. There was trauma and different things that now I have kind of got to go back through, different exposure therapies like being outside in nature and going for long distances and breathing exercises. Other therapies that have really helped me to learn to love and integrate my whole self. And I think growing up I had a lot of anxieties, and I was ashamed a lot as a kid that I learned I had a really big inner critic and I felt a lot of unworthiness.

I continued to go down the drugs and alcohol spiral and just tried to numb myself and not really wanting to live. And I think, I've always been attracted to sport. Growing up, I was really into basketball and had people that I looked up to in basketball

I think one of my biggest changing points was when I decided to go to massage school. That was in 2009 and that’s where I also started trailrunning and ultrarunning. Even before that I was running, cleaning out my system, detoxing from drugs and alcohol and trying to recondition my life. In massage school, I got connected with these different meditation teachers. And when I went for runs I would listen to some of the teachings and started meditating.

Every morning I still start with the meditation. Sometimes the kids will join in for all of it, but a lot of times they're normally just playing in the morning and they will eat dinner or eat breakfast, and we'll just sit there and I'll do like a few minutes of meditation or some breath work. And even my little one year old girl will be climbing over me while I'm doing the meditation. So I still try to take a little time for myself. And then during naps, of course, to do things for myself.

And then, we put on retreats, we call it 'mindful retreats', where I introduce mindfulness meditation, breath work and other practices that really help for self-actualization.

So that's something I teach. Also, we do a monthly group run here where I lead a meditation and group run for the local community. I'm in the midst of doing a certification for breath work, which I already teach and stuff but I figured I would be better to get certified. People like certification sometimes.

But back to the question: What does running have to do with meditation? That's easy: I always use running AS meditation because it gets me into nature and really connects me with it, and often I just stop and am filled with awe and gratitude for nature and really see it as a safe place for healing.

And then, when sitting in meditation, I realized that a lot of times the running was beautiful and helps, but a lot of times I was running away from my problems and running until I was completely tired. So, I just kind of held both of those up. The running was awesome and the training was healing my body and helping my body in tremendous ways.

When I'm out on trails, that breath really helps me. That I'm not just always thinking about all the loops in my head and things that humans do. I'm human and have those roots, but I can kind of quiet those and really be present and in nature. That helps me a lot.

So I really had to check in with myself and ask why I was doing it. And it was definitely moments where I'm like: Is this worth it? Because I'm just suffering and I didn't want to come out here and just make this a big suffering fest. And so there were times where I really had to put the fastest known time out of my mind and all of the publicity and my sponsors and thousands of people who were following me. And that I could fail and, and all those things. 

Even having my family out there was really challenging at times. My wife was, you know, eight months pregnant, and I wanted to be there for her. Every night she was having a lot of emotions come up. She really pushed herself and went out of our comfort zone and I really wanted to honor that. And I really needed to be there and hold space and show her love and come back to real life. You know, this trip would not have been worth anything if we were fighting. And so even though it was a priority of going after the FKT, sometimes my family was a top priority.

When the kid would have come earlier than expected we would have stopped the whole project. We had originally planned to do the project the year before. And so we weren't planning to be pregnant during this time.

There was this one really special moment, when I was in the Sierras, and it was right before John Muir Pass, which is pretty high point on the trail and a very iconic spot. The night before that I had a really long hike. The days out in the Sierras were really hard. I didn't get to camp in a tent or the RV for that five days. So I just brought this bag with me. I was like a burrito out there, in this tinfoil safety blanket wrapped state. So that's what I slept in.

And that particular night, I was by a creek and it was a really hard day. But I was feeling content and just happy with the day. And then in the middle of the night a storm hit like crazy. At 12,000 feet. And I put my head out of my little burrito bag and the whole sky was, I saw just amazing electric.

It was three in the morning, and the clouds were colorful. It was really interesting, just a really crazy storm and the clouds were all swirling around.

There is this moment where I wanted to go back in my sleeping bag pretend that it all wasn't happening, but then I realized: No, I'm out here and I'm the only person that can take care of myself. And yes, I only got 2 hours of sleep but I need to get out. My stuff wasn't waterproof enough, so I needed to get out of the storm because it could be really dangerous.

It was just this really surreal moment where you realize: You just got to listen to nature. And it has a very different timetable than you. It wasn't going to wait. I chose to be in nature. I chose to do this really wild thing. And included in that are these hard moments. It really opens you up and really exposes you to the depths of your soul.

And I guess another moment that was really, like, transformational for me was in Oregon. I had just met my team and they got me my night gear and some food. Some tacos. It is nice to have like a little snack before you got out. I knew I was going to go through the night and have to sleep in the middle of nowhere.

So I was in this really quiet and peaceful spot, and I heard a little crack. I could just sense something was there to my right and I looked over with my head lamp. And all of a sudden I see these eyes, it was this silhouette of a big creature and it looked black to me that I thought it was a bear. It was huge. And I'm like, I want to see it again. So I went to go and look at it.

I caught its eyes, and then I caught the full silhouette and was the hugest mountain lion I've ever seen. I was really scared. And I look over at it and it nods at me, nodded at me and continued walking down its path, going that way. And I just continued walking on the trail in the opposite direction. And it was just like two ships passing in the night. I had this moment of just so much fear and like, I'm going to be eaten right now… and this is probably the fifth or sixth time I've seen a mountain lion on the PCT, probably 15th time in my life. But this one was the biggest. It was the king of the forest. And for some reason it was just allowing me to pass through. It was like in the last few days of the PCT. I felt so connected with nature and in that moment, I knew that I was on the right path.

I mean, there's definitely spots to get lost. And I got lost, but sometimes you can take the wrong trail and there's some sections that had like rocks slides. And so you got to kind of really navigate through those. And then, there's so many downed trees [due to the pandemic] Yeah it was really disheartening at times of how hard the trail was. In the Sierra section specifically, there were times when I was four or five days without seeing people and hundreds of miles. And a couple of days before the last, the last little stretch to Canada, it was a 108 mile section there that no one could reach me by roads or anything. So my coach actually went with me on that section and we just hiked and slept in middle of the woods for those couple of days. But it was such a beautiful time. And some of my favorite times were those really quiet times.

I had a Garmin tracker so my team could locate me if I got hurt or injured. There was an S.O.S. button on there, for emergencies. And then we tracked it all via my phone GPS so we could get the official record. There were definitely times when I was going after the FKT and trying to push myself. But sometimes I'd take myself out of the moment, not worrying about how many miles I was covering that day or what an injury was like…  I had some, I had a really bad injury that I really thought I was going to stop the whole record attempt.