Sounds of the gentle pounding of shoes on dirt and labored breathing fill the thin, mountain air. With seemingly no one else around, a pack of runners stampedes down a long dirt road. Winding through the forest, there is a sense of belonging. The symphony of footfalls echoing around them evokes a shared feeling of purpose and fulfillment.
It evokes something else, too. They hadn’t expected it, but the farther they ran, the more they looked around at the landscapes that surrounded them, the more they realized they weren’t just training. They were a part of something much bigger.
In late May, I left my home in hot and humid central Texas to find some cooler air 1,000 miles west and 7,000 feet higher in elevation. My pilgrimage took me across farmland in west Texas, through the vast deserts of New Mexico and up into the peaks of the San Francisco Mountains, where I found a mecca of distance running: Flagstaff, Arizona.
Every year, hundreds of runners make their own pilgrimage to Flag, as it’s colloquially known. From the world’s absolute best to high schoolers with big dreams, runners flock to the mountain town for the altitude, cool morning temperatures, extensive networks of forest service roads and the community of smiling runners.
I went to Flagstaff for those same reasons. With my final collegiate season as a competitive runner fast approaching, I was determined to do everything in my power to reach the goals I had set for myself. I wanted to be stronger, fitter, faster. I wanted to push myself farther and harder than I ever had before.
So that’s what I did. Each morning, when my alarm rang with the rising sun, I ran. Down curving trails, up steep mountain ascents and through wooded forests, I ran. With 14 miles on the docket some mornings, I ran (albeit begrudgingly). Alongside close friends, some of whom I knew before and many more that I met along the way, I ran.
The training wasn’t easy. Altitude took quite a toll on my body. Living at 7,000 feet, where there is about 25% less oxygen than my home at sea level, I felt like I was breathing through a straw. Significantly less oxygen with every breath made runs sometimes brutal, gasping for air when there seemingly was none. But that’s exactly why runners go to Flagstaff. Over time, my body adapted, creating more red blood cells to carry oxygen more efficiently. What had been my struggle training in the mountains was becoming my strength.
At summer’s end, I had accomplished all that I had set out to do. I was stronger, I was fitter and I was faster. But there was one thing I had accomplished that I hadn’t set out to do at all: I stopped to smell the flowers. So often I had been so focused on training that I never took in my surroundings. I didn’t fully appreciate the perfect arena that the natural world had given me to practice the sport I loved.
Running in a place like Flagstaff will do that to you. With each step, I learned to appreciate the world around me. The pinecones littered across the forest floor, the soft dirt for my feet to land on, the deer that ran across my path all began to catch my eye.
As each mile passed, I began to truly understand not just the beauty of the paths, the mountains and the animals that surrounded me, but the necessity of making sure they were there for the next runner. My summer would end eventually. But there will be more summers, and more runners. I understood, more than I ever had before, the power and the necessity of conservation, of ensuring there would always be the opportunity to immerse oneself in nature in the way that I had.
I had gone to the mountains because I knew I wanted to run. What I didn’t know was how much it would change the way I saw the world around me.
Truthfully, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the connection I felt to nature through running. The very beginnings of the sport trace themselves to the connection between humans and the great outdoors. Once, as naturalist and distance runner Bernd Heinrich notes, humans ran to hunt down prey. They ran for survival. Since the beginning of human reliance on the land around us for survival, we have run. Running has always been an integral part of our connection to the Earth.
Today, the tie between running and nature may not seem so obvious. No longer do we run from predators or to catch our next meal. Now we run for health, for community, for a morning adrenaline rush or for any other number of reasons. And yet, nature still provides us with the trails we run on, the sun illuminating our path forward, the cool breeze we feel with each step and everything around us that makes running so special.
When my summer roommate, Walt, and I talked about our trip together, we both reached a conclusion on what had made it so special. At least for us, truly experiencing the beautiful places across our Earth was only possible through training. For us, the connection to nature feels deepest as we fly across its trails, through its rivers and down its mountains. With adrenaline rushing through our body, we don’t just feel on top of the world. We feel at one with it.
The gentle pounding of my shoes on dirt and my labored breathing no longer fill the thin, mountain air. I arrived among the ponderosa pine trees to run. The footsteps I left along the dirt roads that wind through their leaves tell a different story. They mark the hundreds of miles that showed me how much I owe to nature, and why the fight to conserve it matters so much.
Thomas Melina Raab is a student-athlete at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, where he runs cross country and track. He spent Summer 2025 as a Cause Marketing & Brand Partnerships Intern with The Nature Conservancy, working especially on elevating TNC’s sports marketing efforts. Thomas spent much of his internship creating messaging that wove together the worlds of sport and nature, an intersection he has grown familiar with during his time running.
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