Legit

"Look at you, running at incline..." (said in a purposely condescending tone).

You know what's humbling? When your self-esteem is based on your achievements, and then you come to a new place and no one knows your achievements. Who wants to constantly be proving themselves? These days I just fly under the radar and wait for people to notice.

When a coworker said to me, "Look at you, running at incline..." I wanted to say, "Do you know who I am?!" Instead I said, "Who do you think I am?!" Small difference in words, big difference in meaning. I don't need to prove myself anymore.

Then I ran a half marathon every day for a week, just to see what would happen. Monday through Friday, those half marathons were run on the treadmill. Then people thought I was crazy. But when I finished without any major detriment, things changed subtly.

Then I started trying to coordinate with the coworker mentioned above. It looked a bit like this:
Coworker: Double Dish on Saturday? (The Dish is a 3.5 mile boring-ass hilly paved run around a big satellite dish near the Stanford campus).
Me: The dish is ugly and boring
Coworker: PG&E then?
Me: PG&E is boring
Coworker: Well where do YOU run then?
Me: Why don't you come run Foothill with me? 8 miles, hilly, not boring.
Coworker: Where?
Me: Dude, it's like 5 miles from work! You realize there are trails everywhere around here, right?!

So he joined me on my next 8 mile run through the woods on a trail called Los Troncos that DOESN'T have 200 parking spots at the base. 8 miles of single track that climbs interminably for the first 2.5 miles and then drops you slowly on a flowing roller coaster of single track that whips you around trees and on several-inch rims carved into the side of valleys and canyons. He showed up in road shoes with no water and barely kept up.

"I think I'm going to call you Troncos from now on, after the trail," he said.
"Don't call me Troncos, that means tree trunks. It makes me feel fat!"
"You know, Troncos, I thought we were trail running before on PG&E, but you could drive two cars side by side up that trail. That section at miles 4 and 5 was like straight up Sonic the Hedgehog action. When are we doing it again?"

For the next two weeks he bugged me every time he saw me, "Hey, Troncos, when are we running again?" "Hey, Troncos, when are you bringing me up there again?" We ran it one more time, and then he was able to follow the trail on his own without getting lost.

"Hey, Troncos, when are we running that trail again?"
"Why don't we run a different trail next time?" I said. "You realize that there's nothing but trail all the way up to San Francisco and all the way down past Santa Cruz, right?"
"Alright, where are we going next time?"
"Montebello."

So today we ran Montebello: coworker hacking up phlegm up every hill and carefully stepping down every hill as I coasted waiting for him. Back at work after a shower, I saw him again.

"Troncos, Troncos, Troncos. Who woulda thought that you're legit?"

That's right. Now spread the word, because I don't want to have to school everyone here!