Years ago, before I was married and had kids, I flew out to Seattle, Washington to try to climb Mount Rainier. I joined a guided group, met the instructors, did a gear check, and headed up the mountain. It was late spring. The lower trails were bare and the weather seemed calm.
As we climbed toward our base camp, the snow started. First light, then heavy, then so thick you could barely see. By the time we reached camp, it was a full whiteout. The last stretch up to the tents was the steepest hill I’ve ever climbed. Whenever people talk about the Newton Hills in Boston, I think about that climb. Everything is relative.
It snowed the entire next day. We couldn’t go outside. The plan was to try for the summit the following morning, but the guides called a meeting that night. The storm wasn’t letting up. There was no way to go higher. We had to turn back.
The next morning we geared up to descend, but the conditions were still terrible. When everything is white, there’s no horizon. No depth. No sense of direction. On a mountain, that’s dangerous. One wrong step and you can walk into a crevasse or wander off-route and the side of the mountain.
Normally the guides rely on a GPS unit to mark the safe path down. But the device was broken. No electronics. No digital map. No reliable way to see the route.
Then the lead guide did something I’ll never forget. He pulled out an old metal compass. Just a simple analog compass. Then he unfolded a paper map with the safe route marked on it in Sharpie. Using those two tools, he navigated us slowly and safely down the mountain while the storm erased everything around us.
That same day, other climbers were not as fortunate.
I’ve never forgotten what that guide did. In a world built on digital everything, he still knew how to use the basics. And when the fancy tools broke, the basics saved us.
I think about that sometimes with running. We have watches that track every step. Shoes that promise free speed. Heart-rate zones. Lactate numbers. Training “systems.” All of it is useful. But sometimes it helps to go back to the simple tools.
For me, I stopped doing most of my training in carbon shoes. I found I was lying to myself about what pace I could really hold on race day. And every now and then, I’ll drop the watch or ignore the heart rate monitor and just run. I try to feel the effort, not measure it. I pay attention to my breathing, my legs, the rhythm of the steps.
It’s not the same as navigating a whiteout with a compass, but it’s a skill worth having. Knowing how to read your body. Knowing what the effort feels like without checking a screen.
Because when the numbers fail you — and sometimes they do — you still need to know the way down the mountain.
Best wishes on chasing your running goals,
George
