In Celebration of the Working Class Athlete

The year was 1996 and at the time I was a toe-headed little boy sitting cross legged on the carpet of my second grade classroom floor. It was the time of the year where we talked about all of the cool things kids could be when they grew up like astronauts, police officers and doctors.  

All the standard options were presented to us, but six year old Erik didn’t want anything to do with those jobs. When I got home that afternoon, my parents asked me what my answer was that day when Mrs. May had asked me to share what I wanted to be when I grew up. To the comic relief of my parents my answer was, “I want to be a landscaper just like dad.” 

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As a kid, you don’t have any frame of reference as to what is good or bad, what is normative, you just take the life that you experience day in and day out and assume that is what life is. 

'My parents both worked incredibly physical jobs, but were also committed to the sports they loved.'

Both my parents displayed a life of hard physical labor. My dad was a landscape contractor and my mom was a mail carrier. I remember fondly the nights sitting on the bench seat of my dad’s work truck as we drove to the tennis courts after dinner. My parents both worked incredibly physical jobs, but were also committed to the sports they loved. Every night after work they would play tennis together, and every weekend my dad would swap the work tools in the back of his truck for surfboards and we would head to the beach to make the most of the days off. This was the life that I knew and wanted to emulate when I grew up. 

The next stop in the story is with Erik somewhere in his mid twenties. That blond haired little boy grew up to grow a great big beard, and convinced himself that he wanted nothing to do with the life he thought was normative as a child. Through my twenties I did everything I possibly could do to work as little as possible. I worked shitty part-time retail jobs to maximize my time doing my own chosen sport: Ultra Running. I had taken only one portion of the life my parents displayed for me, and wanted nothing to do with the “weekend warrior - working class” version they endured. “I am different,” I thought. 

If I put enough time and energy into running in the mountains eventually the small stipend I was getting from companies would turn into full-time contracts, and a real living wage as an athlete. 

For years I played the game I thought would lead into this new dream life. I promoted products on social media and averaged 20 hours a week running in the mountains. Still I struggled to get much more than some shoes, and small amounts of money for my writing or promotions. By the time my 20’s were coming to a close, I began to question why I was doing all of this in the first place. What is the point of spending a quarter of all my runs setting up the camera on a timer to get shots for the ‘gram or thinking of clever captions that would get the most likes once I was done? It felt like the work of being an ultra-running “influencer'' was taking away from my ability to be present with the places and movements that I originally fell in love with. What if no one knew what I was doing on a daily or weekly basis? What if I didn’t have to curate an online lifestyle for the brands that supported me, and instead I just did the things that I loved to do for myself? 

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“Everything is free now, that’s what they say. Everything I’ve ever done, gonna give it away.”

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I listened to this song on repeat, probably, for a full year while I was trying to figure out this shift in my life. Sylvan Esso covered it from Gillian Welch; a song originally dealing with the change in the music industry that was causing them to question why they were making music in the first place. I hummed the chorus of this song as I submitted my application for a swing shift warehouse associate: 40 hours a week of driving forklifts and moving boxes, and a shift in my relationship with balancing work and sport.

"I no longer had the ability to casually wake up, drink my coffee, and get my runs in. I had limited days off to put the big workouts in, so things had to be more focused."

Before, I had ample time to put in all the hours of running I needed, with plenty of time to rest and attend to the other parts of life: relationships, dishes, laundry, etc. Now with a new full time job, that balance took more creativity. I no longer had the ability to casually wake up, drink my coffee, and get my runs in. I had limited days off to put the big workouts in, so things had to be more focused. 

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There was plenty of “trail and error” that first year. Scheduling “A” races during the busy season of work meant I would show up to the races exhausted from the physical demand of my job life. Still trying to fit in my 20+ hour weeks of running meant I had no time for eating or recovery. I thought I was a real pioneer: the first person to try to be an elite athlete and accept my place in the working class. It’s not an image that is portrayed often on social media. 

Instead we idolize these athletes who are breaking records and running hundreds of miles per week, or are able to put in countless hours on the bike. We are amazed at their physical abilities, excited to see how well they perform on race day. But of course they can put that sort of volume in and not be a complete train wreck. That is their job. They don’t also have to clock in at the warehouse after hammering out a hard 15 miler. They can get back from their morning ride and do a load of laundry instead of sifting through their pile of dirty clothes for an acceptable shirt to wear for the day.

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In the midst of the trial and error, I fell into a few things that really began to make sense for me: The use of sport was more than just a means of competing and self improvement, but it was also access to community as well as a means of decompressing from the stressors of my working life. I started to schedule meet-ups with a group of people once a week to run our local trails and eat donuts after. This was the impetus of our running club the Reno Mountain Runners. 

Every Tuesday morning we would meet as the sun was rising for a sampling of the steepest trails around Reno, finding new routes, sharing stories from the past week, sharing hard mountain miles always ending back at the parking lot to a dozen fresh donuts. These early morning runs gave me a renewed stoke that would carry me through the rest of the week. In addition to that I found ways to turn my commutes to work into mini mountain bike adventures. I would piece some of our local trails together that would lead between my house and work. I got some bright headlamps so I could rip trails on my way home at ten o’clock at night - taking pages out of my coworkers books on how we squeeze in our sports. These mountain bike sessions by lamp or full moon soon became my way of decompressing from a full day of work. I began to find a rhythm that my love for trail running and mountain biking provided that gave me a sense of connection to people and place that I had been missing before.

"I began to find a rhythm that my love for trail running and mountain biking provided that gave me a sense of connection to people and place that I had been missing before."

We don’t see the image on our ‘gram feeds of the disheveled and exhausted individual who somehow fits in 15 hours of training that week while also working the mandatory overtime shift, sitting on their couch with whatever beer they had left in the fridge and trying to will themselves up to wash the ever growing pile of dishes in the sink. That is not a story that is often told on social media, namely because it is not really that sexy. Nonetheless, that is the actual reality for the majority of us.

One night, in the midst of my new found chaos of a life, I was sifting through a box of old photographs and found a photo of my dad holding my sister and me in his arms on a beach. The grin on his face, despite my sister's salty wet hair and me obviously trying to wriggle free, spoke of a person who knew where to find joy in life. He had likely worked countless sun-baked hours the week before to get to the weekend and this small place on the beach where we took this photo.

It hit me then, that I was no pioneer, I had just finally found my way back to the lineage and rituals my parents had set before me as a small child. In a time before we could convince people how amazing our lives were through a meticulously curated social media feed, my parents knew that in order to live the life they wanted in their free time, they would have to put in the hours of hard work to afford them, and our family, that freedom. 

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“I could get a straight job, I’ve done it before. I never minded working hard, it's just who I’m working for.” 

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Since that fabled night, my focus has shifted. My idols are no longer the full-time athletes who promote all the coolest brands, but rather the crushers who you probably don’t hear about. The ones that work a job day in and day out, but have figured out how to balance work life with their training to perform well on race day. They likely don’t have time to curate their ‘gram feeds, so what pictures they do post are perhaps too mundane to make it through the algorithm and pop ups on your phone screens. Nonetheless they represent, for me, real life for the majority of us. They might now be exciting enough to sell the newest cool pair of shoes, but they are our lives.

"My idols are no longer the full-time athletes who promote all the coolest brands, but rather the crushers who you probably don’t hear about."

Nowadays, my training rarely exceeds 15 hours a week. Most races I would toe the line for I am lucky if I can mix it up at all with the speedsters at the front. Nonetheless, I think I am happier now. I know that the work I put in is for my own satisfaction, I am more present in the time spent moving around in the mountains, and I am proud to be able to perpetuate my parents’ traditions of being a working class athlete.