Member Spotlight: Mike Rose
Mike Rose came to Trail Roots in 2016 when he was looking for a complement and alternative to pick-up and competitive weekend soccer as an exercise outlet. A UT Chemistry professor, father, and husband, Mike is one of our most consistent members. He is no stranger to the early morning runs and is often the last to leave. He enjoys the big miles and big challenges and is always available to help out other runners. We love having him in the group and wanted to ask him a few questions about his journey with running and Trail Roots.
What inspired you to start running?
I’m not all that sure. My dad started running in mid-life; he was a super-early bird and woke up at 4:30 am every weekday. I remember him hot-gluing his worn running shoes back together — so people who run with me will know where I get my low shoe turnover frequency from. I’ve been playing soccer my whole life, since I was in 1st grade or earlier. Growing up, our parish had a 5K that I would run every year (with my dad for a few years until I was faster than him), but I never trained other than playing all the normal organized kids’ sports of the 80s. Through high school I played soccer year-round (HS and club), and I was never the fastest but I was that player that just never came off the field; I have a very medium-sized engine but a big gas tank. And I never did cross-country or track because those overlapped with club/HS soccer seasons. Anyways, fast-forward 20 years…….
Why did you join Trail Roots?
We moved from California to Austin in 2012, and I didn’t have much of an exercise routine. I was playing weekday pick-up games and Sunday AMSA league games. In 2015 I started running 2-4 miles on the Greenbelt occasionally for fun runs, then I started Googling around for other places to run/hike in Austin. I totally mooched routes off of Erik’s first Trail Roots website for a few months, then finally emailed him to see what the Trail Roots group was all about. My wife Felice was pregnant with our daughter Evey around that time, and I was traveling a lot for work, so I needed a more flexible form of regular exercise that was more travel-friendly and family-friendly. I’ve always loved hiking in the Santa Cruz Mountains, backpacking in Yosemite and Central/North CA coast, and just being outside in nature — so basically trail explorations + Austin = Trail Roots. My first TR workout was up Robert E. Lee (now Azie Morton) and doing Bluebonnet Loops. I couldn’t believe that the workout started AFTER making it up Robert E. Lee; I was like, “this Erik guy and these people are nuts”.
Also, some people may know the name Steve Moore (bad-ass Austin trail runner). He was the Chemistry Building facilities manager at UT; his office was right above mine from 2012 to 2022, before he moved up to Colorado last year. One day in like 2014/15 he started telling me about running these 100K/100M races on the weekends, and I was like — Wait, what? People do that? I was intrigued. The rest is history.
Has your training changed since joining a group?
Yes — because I never really had any training before. I was doing some power-lifting at Austin Simply Fit (highly recommend for big strength) and sporadically doing short track workouts, but I never ran more than 2-3 miles, and absolutely never on road. I ran short trails solo around town, so I’m very used to the solo jam. This probably sounds weird, but it’s actually been a very slow process for me of learning to understand and appreciate the value of group training. Running is not a team sport like soccer, where the goals (pun intended) are so tightly shared and absolutely imminent. It’s a very different type of teamwork that is more fluid and mental and long-term.
Not to harp on the soccer thing, but this is the best way I can put it: When I play soccer, I’m not a goal scorer. I’m the player who makes great passes, makes other people better, and has a lot of assists. It’s taken me a while to figure out how to do that with a trail running group. But doing stuff like that makes me feel good. And, of course, I’m still learning a lot from all of our super-accomplished and super-inspirational Trail Rooties at all levels, and of course Erik and Jacque and all the coaches.
“It’s actually been a very slow process for me of learning to understand and appreciate the value of group training. Running is not a team sport like soccer, where the goals are so tightly shared and absolutely imminent. It’s a very different type of teamwork that is more fluid and mental and long-term.”
— Mike
What do you love about trail running?
Oh gosh, I’m not even sure I know the answer to that question. It’s very primordial and instinctual. It’s just that special combination of being outside, being in nature, that feeling of freedom, being (a bit) away from civilization, and getting the heart pumping in whatever way feels good on a particular day — flats, hills, forest, exposed trails, wet creeks, dry creeks, easy, medium, hard — whatever feels right. I just feel like running through the woods is something that humans have been doing for 10s (hundreds?) of thousands of years, so like why would we NOT be doing this? It all just feels very natural to me.
What draws you to running long distances?
Probably two things: (1) Of course there’s the challenge of it. I strive on setting big goals (in running and life) and taking a long time to prepare and seeing if I can stick with my — I’ll say “vision” (because I prefer that word over “plan”) — of how to prepare for those challenges. As I tell my graduate students — as we get older, we gain the mental ability to spend longer times preparing for bigger goals. And as an experimental scientist, I am constantly aware of the unknowns that are lurking out there, as well as the potential opportunities that those unknowns present. And forcing actual results/data to fit in with a pre-determined outcome is a very dangerous liability in the scientific method that leads to erroneous conclusions. Constantly adjust, one must. “AAOR: Always Adjust to the Objective Reality” is another one of my self-talk mantras.
(2) The second thing is that it gives me A LOT of time to think. One of the great joys of my academic job is that my research success, career advancement and — honestly — fun is based almost entirely on consistently having new, good ideas for research and projects. I spend probably 75% of my solo running time thinking about molecules and orbitals and reactions and geeky chemistry stuff like that. I absolutely love it. Running on roads and streets and dodging cars and exhaust and street-lights and street-signs and all that other artificial stimuli is not at all a conducive environment for thinking creatively for me. Trails, on the other hand…..
What is your favorite trail to run with Trail Roots?
The “....with Trail Roots” addendum is an interesting qualifier to this question, and informs my answer. As for running with my cherished Trail Rooties, pretty much anything at 5:30am. Running trail in the dark and the marking and all that is a total pace equalizer, so I get to run with folks (most faster than me) that otherwise I don’t run with. Or at least it’s equalizing until we’re like 3 miles out from trailhead at 6:40a, and Erik’s like “Hey uh guys, I gotta start really running now”. So many funny, interesting, ridiculous and thought-provoking conversations I’ve had with the 5:30a Trail Roots University (TRU) crowd.
As for general trail running around Austin, this answer is more specific: My good friend, Forest Ridge. It has all the good things; ups, downs, flats, runnable downhills, non-runnable uphills, mandatory hiking segments, beautiful views at the top etc etc. And it is a bit elusive because it’s closed part of the year for the Golden-Cheeked Warbler; that gives it an extra mystique. I never get the Warbler-season permit because otherwise I would just run there all the time all year long. That makes me broaden my trailhead horizons a bit.
As an early morning runner, what motivates you to get up and out the door?
It’s all about decision-making. Make a decision and stick to it. Like mortgage payments. You’ve already decided to do it every month when you bought the house, so that was the hard decision and everything else is just going through the motions. And very importantly, as I sometimes have talked out loud to Jacque and also no one in particular, “Don’t think too much” is one of my self-talk mantras. We as humans are blessed with incredible minds that let us do incredible things and think incredible thoughts. But sometimes all that intellectual ability gets in the way of our doing very basic things that don’t actually require much thought at all. Get up. Go. Run. Don’t think too much. I had this realization at about mile 30 of my first 50K that I ran — Wild Hare 2018, I think. The folks who’ve done the longer ultras know this feeling — it’s when all the bullshit fades away and the essential things about life become very, very clear. To be honest, that almost meditative experience also released me of a lot of my neurotic competitive, outcome-based instincts and expectations. This realization transferred my mind and training approach into being much more process-grounded than results-focused. For me, races are now just an experimental indicator of the effect of changes, possible improvements and tweaks in the process of training that I decide on — or at least that’s what I think 90% of the time, HaHa.
Also, my daughter Evey (she’s 6 now; was not even born when I joined TR!) is getting older so on weekends there are softball games and soccer games on Saturdays and Sunday church events and things that we have to get to mid-morning. So I have to work backwards from that if I want to get 3 loops in or whatever. It does lead to some very odd start times posted on my Strava.
Another early-morning motivator is the fact that I’m literally 100% Gaelic according to DNA tests and all that. I have absolutely no genetic preparation for running in the Texas heat or — God forbid — under the summer sun after 9 or 10a. I would die. I am so humbled and impressed by people who are out there logging miles at 10a or 2p let alone those TR crazies who are out there for the summer Tues 6p work-outs — I might have a heat stroke just even thinking about that.
Do you have any races or goals that you’re working towards in 2023?
I have some serious unfinished business at January 2024 Bandera 100K. My January 2023 Bandera 100K (which would’ve been my second Bandera 100K) was blown up by catching some horrible stomach bug 3 days before the race — I had to bow out. That was and honestly has been a difficult mental challenge during this year 2023; it really challenged my running philosophy and thought process and again made me more process-grounded than race-focused. Being honest, I will not meet my goal of completing a Western States qualifier race in 2023 — work/family logistics and my lack of heat/altitude tolerance for summer races has precluded this, so it turned out to be a bum year for getting my WS raffle ticket. I’m thinking my first 100-mile “experiment” will be in early 2025, and I will rely heavily on the advice and experience of others to make this happen.
What advice would you give people who are new to running and want to join a group?
Well, first of all, if you live in Austin you should obviously join Trail Roots because that is where you will find the coolest, most accepting, friendly, and very broadest range of runners and running ability anywhere in Austin. And by the way, I must mention that this all starts at the top. Erik has created a culture in Trail Roots that values newcomers, celebrates people’s diverse motivations and accomplishments, and — my being a Gen X curmudgeon, I don’t use this overused term lightly — has created a supportive “community” where people can make connections and find people to run with and train with who the have all sorts of things in common with — not just running-related.
Secondly, I think running in a group is quite interesting because it makes you realize what your inherent strengths and weaknesses are. That is incredibly informative, because in a vacuum I think we all tend to train to our strengths, not our weaknesses. And it’s much harder mental and physical work to train to weaknesses than strengths. Case in point, I can run fast 400s and kill Marshes work-outs, but I am on the struggle bus in any of the Tempo runs and on flats. So over the years, seeing this comparison in group run format has informed me to work more on steadily increasing my aerobic base and flats efficiency than is naturally interesting or an inclination to me. And I work less on power-running up or down hills and the like, because I know at mile 40 I have that in the bank when I need it. But by comparison to other ultra-runners, I slow to an absolute crawl on the flats. It’s all a moving target.
Lastly and probably most importantly, you get to make connections with people whom you find out are as crazy or crazier that you! It is all very humbling and at the same time motivating. I have always said that I’m a soccer player by trade, and a trail runner by habit and circumstance. But as the recent years roll by, I’m becoming less and less certain of this every year.