超马教会我，我的婚姻该结束了

Published October 6, 2026 05:00AM

About the Author

Allie Kolaski, Ph.D., is a licensed counseling psychologist and executive director of Women of the Wasatch, a northern Utah-based women-centered trail running group.

The first time I ran a 50K in 2018, my fingers swelled.

Maybe from the salt. Maybe because I only learned about electrolytes this spring after eight years of running. All I know is that, at the end, my wedding band felt uncomfortably tight.

I didn’t grow up running. As a kid, I mostly played the classic East Coast team sports. Softball, field hockey. Hours in the pool for summer swim team. By high school, I landed on the crew team. I loved rowing, so, so much. When everyone in the boat is in sync, you can feel it balance precariously on the water. Gliding. Flying. Connected.

I wasn’t talented enough to make a varsity college team, but I walked on my freshman year at Princeton University. I stayed on the team for a year before bouncing around in other athletic pursuits. Teaching spin class, hours of television on the elliptical. Ask me if I’ve watched all the seasons of Grey’s Anatomy (I have).

After graduating from Princeton, I found myself working a job where my exercise came outdoors. Climbing, hiking, mountain biking—or trying to mountain bike, in my case. Years spent exploring hidden corners of the American West. It was a hell of a time, being that free. I was far away from the elliptical.

While adventuring, I also found the man I believed would be the love of my life. For our first date, we drove south to sleep under the stars at Castleton Tower near Moab, Utah. I called a friend the next week: “I think he’s the one.”

We got married in that same Moab desert. It was beautiful, and hopeful, and we were surrounded by love. That was 2017.

In 2018, I stood on the start line for my first ultramarathon.

“What’s the Worst That Can Happen?”

How I ended up at the start line of a trail 50K, having never even run a 5K, seems like an important aside.

While I’d loved my years of unrestricted adventure, my first year of graduate school put an end to flexibility. I was stressed and short on time. I needed a sport that I could sneak in between the demands of life and that didn’t require a new set of fancy kit. Running seemed to fit the bill.

In preparation for the wedding, I also felt that my casual outdoor hobbies wouldn’t cut it. Like many brides, I agonized over how I’d look in my dress. So, in addition to my casual running, I joined a local gym, lifting weights and learning about functional fitness. Trying to be my best in time for the expensive photos I hoped I’d share with grandchildren.

A few months after getting married, I was looking for fresh motivation. I learned that the head trainer had attempted a local trail 50K a year prior, but only finished one of the two required loops.

Well.

I mean.

What’s the worst that could happen?

I was running more anyway—a park lap or two a week—as graduate school continued to push in the walls. I signed up and roped in a friend to train with me.

I had one request for my husband for that first race. Be at the finish line. Celebrate with me.

The people who know me know well that I don’t enjoy being celebrated or asking for help. Compliments are best received when they are slid to me sideways and when I’m given space to view them in private. The potential finish line fanfare felt unusually exposed.

But it also felt important. Something I really never believed I could do. Even in training for the race, I refused the “runner” moniker. I wasn’t a runner. I hadn’t done X, or Y, or whatever other self-imposed standard. I was just trying to stay reasonably fit, finish 32 miles, and not die in the woods.

At the end of the race, my husband was nowhere to be found.

“I got lost,” he said. The Eagle Scout and mountain guide. “I was on the wrong trail.”

Sitting alone at the finish and watching the 50-mile racers come in and celebrate their runs, I spun my ring on my swollen finger. Eyes big.

Maybe I could go 18 more miles.

I ran another trail race that summer in Idaho. Then a 50K in Zion. A 60K. I snuck in several road marathons, a Thanksgiving turkey trot. I entered the Wasatch 100 lottery, and to my horror, was accepted. So much for a hobby I could fit easily into my grad school schedule.

Running Into a Brick Wall

The Wasatch 100 is an old-school ultra. The racers are still hand-selected out of a bingo ball spinner, and once you’re in, there’s no way out but through. Big mountains, big vert, wild temperature swings, and a coveted belt buckle at the finish.

With my acceptance to Wasatch 100, things got a lot more serious. I hired a coach and started running bigger mountain miles. I ran the Tushars 70K, weeping on the last climb in a thunderstorm, choking down a soggy waffle. The weekends turned into my time for back-to-back long runs. My closest confidants: my running peers.

Suddenly running required a lot of space.

For those who haven’t yet stepped into the insanity that is the 100-mile distance, many ultras allow runners to have a crew. While running itself is an incredibly individual sport (your pace, your body, your suffering, your decisions) the longer ultras recognize that maybe some of that decision-making past mile 50 should be outsourced.

I built out my team, and I asked him to be my crew chief. It didn’t go as I’d hoped.

Still a novice, I went out too fast. I didn’t take in enough salt. I wasn’t fueling well. And my feet fucking HURT. Hundred milers are stupid, and hard, and ridiculous. I texted my crew on the way into the third crewed aid station—Brighton Ski Resort—that this was the worst I’d ever felt IN MY LIFE. At the time, it honestly was.

When I arrived, I expected an inspirational pep talk, but I was just met with annoyance.

He was mad that I was late. Mad to be up for most of the night. Annoyed by the rest of the crew. Gloomy. Distant. He went through the motions—taking care of my sore feet, finding my fuel. But I felt the simmer. It was a feeling I’d had so many times before in our marriage. When it was my turn, I was met with resentment.

It felt like I had run into a brick wall. It hurt worse than my feet.

My dear friend pulled me out of my chair at Brighton, and we got back on course. Her pacing section was short-lived, though, and I went on to DNF around mile 80.

I remember sitting in the dirt, crying big sloppy, overtired tears, waiting for my crew, and my now extremely frustrated crew chief, to pick me up. We never really talked about it again.

Taking Up Space

Despite the DNF, I kept chugging along. I ran another 50K, a few more marathons. In 2022, I graduated—finishing a Ph.D.

My connection with the running community deepened. It was no longer just a convenient form of exercise in a squeezed world. My time was structured around training; relationships had miles at their core. I volunteered, learned, wrote, and dreamed about running. If I had work travel, I’d look up run clubs. When I had free weekends, I’d sign up for races.

I became a Lululemon ambassador. I joined the board of directors of Women of the Wasatch, a local trail running nonprofit group. I ran 800 laps around a whale sculpture in a traffic circle. Gliding. Flying. It was so fun, and so full.

My world was big again. I was capable of extraordinary things. I was a runner.

He fucking hated it.

To be fair, running did take things. Saturdays disappeared. Vacations often included a race. Some of my deepest friendships belonged to a world he didn’t share. But I was still present in our life. I did the cooking, the cleaning, the dog walking. The finances. After graduate school ended, I also became the breadwinner. I tried to compensate by making sure nothing dropped.

He had his hobbies too, of course. Skiing, mountain biking, canyoneering. I tried my best to champion him. I packed food for his trips with friends. Stretched our budget to accommodate a new ski kit and heli-assisted trips in Canada. Made homemade gifts to celebrate checking off big lines.

Meanwhile, I’d come home from a long run and pretend I’d never been gone. I never expected him at a finish line. I’d sob on my runs, alone in the mountains. I was carrying so much. The mountains held it for me.

When I’d come home with bright eyes, I’d hit that brick wall. Gloom. Anger. Resentment. I squeezed myself into the space he left. I learned to expertly navigate the rocky trails and read upcoming terrain.

I tried to make the expansion of my life cost him nothing, but it was an impossible bargain.

Forced to Stop

In December 2023, on a trail run in Ketchikan, Alaska, I fell, sliced up my left side, and broke my ankle. Months of pain. Eight weeks in a boot. No running. The disconnection to my community was extraordinary.

Around me, it all began to unravel.

At first, I tried to replace running with other activities. I’d come to the start of run club, then drive to the gym to get on the elliptical, balancing on my walking cast. For a minute it was OK; I was entertained enough by the odd workouts people did at the local big box gym. But where there had formerly been so much sky, all I saw now was fluorescent lights.

Without the pressure release, other things came into focus. I was miserable at home. Tired of watching TV while he scrolled on his phone. Tired of feeling lonely. Confused about how the connection with this person I loved so dearly had become so dysfunctional.

As an ultrarunner, I had learned a lot about suffering. How to dig in and push through. How to disconnect just enough from the present moment, while keeping sharp attention on executing the plan. Just eat something! Pain passes. Relationships are hard; it’s just a rough patch. Don’t make decisions at the low point. Keep going. Keep going.

We get genuinely useful and genuinely dangerous lessons about enduring from this crazy sport.

But with a broken ankle, I couldn’t ignore the signals anymore. I was forced to stop even when I’d become so talented at continuing.

Over that year, running slowly returned. Never as quickly as I wanted, and not without big losses. I even donated an entry fee to the Wasatch 100, still too injured to participate in my redemption lap. But after losing so much, and as I exhaled into big mountains again, I found myself less willing to contort into the shapes that would fit.

I was exhausted. Holding up the infrastructure of a dying relationship. Containing my joy. Being met with resentment for the big, extraordinary things I could now envision. The anguish exceeded any late-night sore-feet whining.

When I started running, half on a whim, half forced by convenience, I had no idea.

Running gave me my community. Helped me build goals. Changed my relationship with my body. It showed me how big life can get. How much joy can fit inside of it. The trail world is full of extraordinary places and people and a truly unreasonable amount of glitter. Go watch a finish line, you’ll see the magic for yourself.

Running also gave me somewhere to put my sadness. Taught me how to suffer and endure. The trails and the mountains held my pain. And when I could no longer run, its absence allowed me to look directly at the life I’d become so skilled at persisting in.

On the last day of my marriage, I had a vision. A tiny, glowing ember still burning in the middle of a storm. I cared more about keeping it alive than keeping everything else intact. I refused to keep going.

And it was over.

In the months that followed, I got through the mess of divorce with glitter, mud, and a BQ. I lost friends and found new ones. I fell in and out of love. I was held up by my community, my trails, and the terrifyingly open sky. I was loud and sad and unapologetic and flying toward empty space.

It was another DNF, and I’m still not OK. But I had mistaken endurance for the point, when it never was.

Now at races, I don’t worry about my fingers swelling.

There’s room.