Fail ye Well

Fail Ye Well: A Goodbye, A Beginning

For the past few years, I’ve been training for “This Thing” — and no, I’m still not telling you what it is. Maybe I’ll give it another go when I’m 90. Who knows?

When Mary was taken from us, I was in the middle of preparing for it. The training was brutal — not in the “good kind of hard” way, but in the “my body already knew something was coming” kind of way. Since then, I’ve tried, twice, to pick it back up. Last year, I didn’t even make it out of the starting blocks — zero training. This year, I gave it another shot. And then, on a random Thursday at work, I had a moment of clarity:

I don’t want to do it.

I don’t want to hike the Grand Canyon again. I don’t want to suffer through nearly 200 miles. It no longer feels like adventure — it feels like anxiety. And for the first time, I allowed myself to accept that.

So, I pivoted. I did some digging. And to my surprise, I found something that actually excites me. It’s around 100 miles, just as tough, potentially hot as hell, and scary in all the right ways. But here’s the difference: I feel joy when I think about it. That spark I’d been missing finally lit back up.

Am I training perfectly? Nope. But in the past four weeks, I’ve done two big runs. One of them wrecked me for the first 40 miles — and weirdly, that’s when I knew I was ready.

I’ve decided to leave Mary where she belongs — in the Grand Canyon and on the trails of Mt. Humphrey’s. In our laughter, in our tears, in the silly moments I’ll never forget. We’ll never get those days back. And maybe it’s time to stop trying to recreate something that can only exist in the past. For so long, I believed that not finishing the goal we made together was a kind of failure — that I was letting her down, or giving up on myself.

But the truth is: it will never feel the same. Because she won’t be there — not before, not during, not after. And that changes everything.

This new challenge lets me build new memories with new people, while carrying her spirit and grit with me. She’s been showing up in little signs along the way — the craziest being a hummingbird that followed me for a stretch of trail in the middle of nowhere. I think she approves.

So yes — I’ve failed again at “This Thing.” But somehow, it feels like a win. I’m closing the chapter on an old dream and opening a new one, with fresh energy and a clear heart.

We start on October 5th. I’ll tell you what we’re doing the day before, on October 4th. Until then…

Fail ye well.