“I started running when I was about 11 years old, around a track in the middle of nowhere in the Texas desert. I distinctly remember deciding to run when all of my friends walked and chatted. One day it just clicked that we were supposed to run and I wanted to run. I did and never looked back.
I tried my hand, at least once, at every sport my schools offered but it became quickly apparent that running was the only thing for me. I would dread time on the court but look forward to ‘conditioning’ around the track. I was quietly competitive and felt oddly at home while running. I competed in track and cross country throughout high school but decided to take a break at university and not follow any paths to athletic scholarship. I’d had enough of the stress of track racing. Instead, I focused on reconnecting with the mountains and became completely obsessed with landscape photography and climbing hills.
Soon after, I took the giant leap of moving to New Zealand where I further entrenched myself in the outdoors and tramping epics. Somewhere along the way I came back to running. I never stopped completely but I had taken my foot off the accelerator for a few years while I focused on meeting my fitness needs through steep walking through tangled forest and open tops. I found myself working on NZ’s Great Walks and wanting more exercise than my job provided. I rewrote my relationship with running on the trail without any of the former competitive pressure.
After a few years of weighing my time more heavily toward tramping than running, I desired a more even split when I gained the opportunity to move to Fiordland. Something about realising the dream of living in Fiordland and working deep in the mountains I craved stirred a desire to become what I envisioned as a mountain runner. I conjured an image in my mind, meditated on it day after day, and through some fairly intense running discipline in a challenging mud-filled environment, I became what I had seen.
From this point on, I have intertwined my identity with that of an endurance runner. The older I get the more it suits me and the greater my love for running grows. I love the consistency of the practice over the pull to race. I don’t run to race, I simply run to run. Running is my constant, my mainstay, my anchor when I feel afloat. It is a deeply personal practice of creating space and doing the work.
I run simply because I believe in it and from it, I reap rewards in everything I do. Running is an enabler and a teacher. It enables me to express the fire of my spirit moving fast across high hills on brilliant days and teaches me discipline and humility on the grey, challenging days.
I run because it is not easy and I have learned the value of doing hard things. I run because I have made a pact with myself to do something every day that makes me a better human. Long may we run on.”
Crystal @inpursuitofthewild
(Te Anau)
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Portraits of Runners + their stories
@RunnersNZ
