For a few years during my time at the Colorado College I wrote a column for the school newspaper called Conversations, featuring interviews with workers on campus. We would sit down and discuss various aspects of their lives, their day to day routines and interests and lives outside of work. I’d let the questions and topics just sort of freestyle along, the whole thing evolving naturally just like what it truly was, a simple, easy conversation. I sought out some of the little-known, unique details that made them who they were. Even the mundane, seemingly ordinary aspects of a person’s life can be rich and fascinating when viewed, or read about, from the outside. Connecting with the lives of others can accomplish many things: it can make us feel a part of the larger whole of humanity, it can inspire and inform us, it can be a temporary escape into another world, another life. And, of course, it breeds an empathy and compassion for others. That’s always a good thing.
After seeing for myself what an amazing place Portland is and experiencing the wonderful community of trail runners and generally good people I thought it would be fun to do something similar to Conversations on a local level. I know I’ve been inspired and impressed by countless folks in Portland in the last 2 years and so I thought I’d be worth interviewing some of these great characters and amazing athletes and sharing their stories with you. After all, it’s the mosaic of different people around us that make up the so much of our lives. Our friendships and relationships on all levels to the people around us are primarily what colors our day to day experiences. It’s crazy to think you could see somebody everyday, pass by them on the street, see them at the cafe or on the bus, and just never has any idea of the treasure trove of stories they have to tell, the myriad experiences they’ve had in their lives. They could had gone anywhere and done anything! And we’ll never know unless we talk to them… or have someone to interview them! These new profiles are called: Members of the Tribe. Local Portland ultra runner Stephen Petretto is Profile #2.
Stephen is an amazing guy, husband, friend, and runner…and he has a lot to say (this Members of the Tribe will be divided into Parts I and II.) I met Stephen this past spring through the Portland ultra running community and have been lucky to run with him and get to know him in the months since. He’s a super clean cut guy who doesn’t look the part of a rugged mountain runner who does tough 100 mile races like it ain’t no thang. Stephen is unassuming, kind, and laid back, and you won’t hear him brag about running four 100 mile races in a calendar year, or any of his other many accomplishments. One 100 miler is a major feat, let along running four in a year, including some of the toughest this country has to offer. You know that feeling you get when someone just seems totally confident and calm, like they’re content and have their routine down, like they’ve settled into a nice groove? That’s the feeling I get when I’m around Stephen. As I said I’ve been fortunate to spend time with him but I wanted to know a bit more and to, in turn, share this inspiring character with you.
Enjoy!
Willie (W): Hi Stephen, how’s it going?
Stephen (S): It’s going good Willie.
W: Excellent. So we’re just going to start out with name, age, where you were born and raised, what you do, where do you live, all those sorts of things.
S: Sure. Ok…Stephen Petretto. 33. Just turned 33 last month. Born and raised in….well, born in Corvallis, Oregon, raised in South Lake Tahoe, California. I work as a consultant at R.V. Kuhns, so I do general consulting and work in finance and I live in downtown Portland and have lived in the greater Portland area for the last…almost 6 years.
W: So you say you’ve been in the Portland area for almost 6 years…how did you end up here?
S: So I grew up in South Lake Tahoe and I moved to live with my Dad my last year of high school. He lived in Medford and that’s how I got kind of familiar with Oregon and then I went to school at Western Oregon in Monmouth and I interned and took my first job in Salem. I went to graduate school in Connecticut and every time I had to fly back to visit friends or family I had to fly into Portland and then I’d just drive down to see my folks or whomever. So pretty much the 5 years I was out there [east coast] I was always flying through Portland, flying through Portland, and then a lot of my friends were located in Portland after college so I’d come visit them or go to weddings in Portland. Over the few years leading up to wanting to come back to the west coast, you know, I just figured I’d look for jobs in Portland ’cause that’s where some of my friends are…I was 25 and I really liked the NW from my time living here in Medford and Ashland. I wasn’t really outdoorsy to that extent but I liked the way the culture and the people were in the NW and I liked the idea of living in Portland ’cause it’s a big enough city to feel like it has culture and activities and interests and there’s things going on and we’re near Seattle but it’s also small enough to feel pretty comfortable and never really overwhelming. I lived in New York for a while and that was just too much and too loud and too expensive. Portland was not very expensive by comparison to the east coast.
W: You lived in New York City?
S: I lived in New York for about 4 months and I lived in southern Connecticut for about 6 months during different internships…and that was too much. I loved living there, that was a perfect amount of time but it was too much in the city, it was too big.
W: So your dad is still in Medford?
S: Yeah my dad and stepmom are in Jacksonville. So they were living in Medford at the time but they bought a property in Jacksonville and built a house out there so we lived up on a big hill. My mother and my sister they still live in South Lake Tahoe where I went to high school and grew up. So that’s the split time. I’ve always lived in cities where there were mountains but never skied really and never really appreciated any of that stuff while I had it and then missed it when I was in Connecticut, missed just seeing it. The closest thing out there is an hour and a half away you go up to Mt Washington, or two hours away.
W: So do you ski at all now?
S: No. I’m not crazy about the snow, mostly just cause it’s a pain to drive in. But I like running in it.
W: So…you like to run?
S: I do.
W: How’d you get into running?
S: I hated running in high school or college or any time it was necessary for physical fitness class. I would always loath the day you had to do that mile and a half fitness test. I played soccer in high school and so while I was fine with running I didn’t really like it for the sake of it, I liked it in activities. Then when I got into college, I couldn’t play sports anymore, I just did recreational stuff. In graduate school I just basically put my head down and worked and then coming out of graduate school I was 25 and I took a job as a bond trader and I sat on the trading room floor. So I’d work 12 hour days and I would come home from work–and you’d eat all throughout the day and sit at your desk, it’s a pretty lazy environment–and just wouldn’t do anything. I was thinking about “I’m 25 and am basically not very active” and I just saw where that path was headed. One day I had a disagreement with my boss and was frustrated so I came home–at the time I was renting this apartment from this guy–and I said I was going to go for a run and I went out and put on a pair of used trail shoes that he had and a pair of cargo shorts and a cotton t-shirt and went downhill running for a mile and I was wicked out of breath–hands on the knees, head between the legs, huffing and puffing. I was like a 4 year old kid who runs around the block and makes it 1 block and is all tired because he sprints. I was like “Dude, I’m really out of shape, I should not be this out of shape at 25 already.”
I just started running like a mile or 2 miles just for that length of time, just slowed it down. I really liked it so I set a goal to run a 5k and I ran it 2 months later. I loved it, I loved the race environment, I liked the people. Everyone is all excited, all coming from different backgrounds yet for the same purpose. Every bodies goals were different but the same in terms of just finishing and it was a really neat shared experience afterward to talk about, even at the 5k level. That’s how I got into it and then I had a friend who ran a marathon and she was like “Oh, you could totally do it” and I said “There’s no way.” So I read a bunch of things online about training for one and slowly built up my mileage to where I could run 8-10 miles at a time and then a year later I ran my first marathon. I signed up for this kind of random small marathon in Connecticut with the expectation of using it as a training run for the Philadelphia Marathon 2 months later. I got to mile 17 and I was like “I could finish it.” It was a miserable experience cause I’d never been over 18 miles before…but I finished it just under 4 hours. I went out super fast thinking it was just going to be 18-20 [mile run] and then just pretty much walked and ran the last 6 miles. That was really a neat experience and all the people I met along the way.
W: So how long was that after the night run in the cargo shorts?
S: A year, just a little more than a year. I was consistent about it and was fortunate not to ever get injured during that time period. I wasn’t running back to back days, I would never run more than 5 miles, I built up to long runs…it took me 6 months before I even ran anything over 10 miles. But I got consistent with running 3 days a week, 3-5 miles, for 3 or 4 months and then eventually it was like just going a little bit further. I read these plans, these 6-7 month plans and I kind of stuck to it. Then I got injured after that marathon because I had no business running it that day.
W: So before that you had never really run in your whole life?
S: Nothing outside of soccer, just for fun.
W: Wow.
S: I did the 800 meter in middle school but just because my buddies were doing it.
W: How have you found the running scene here in Portland?
S: I honestly didn’t discover a running scene until probably 2 years ago when I ran my first ultra race. I had just done marathons and had never trained with anybody for the marathons, just ran with some friends.
W: How long were you doing marathons before you considered something longer?
S: I’d run one or two marathons a year is what my deal was because that’s what I heard was physically ok–you shouldn’t do more, it’s like a standard you read. I didn’t really experience any group or cultural dynamic with running. I was doing two marathons a year basically from 2005 to 2010–some years I did more. I had done like 12 or 13 [marathons] and then in 2010 I did my first distance over a marathon–I made up a 50k [31.5 miles] and I had people join me throughout the different sections of the 50k to run with me just ’cause I wanted to go that far. What I found is that if you slow down and add in an element of regular, constant hydration (versus long runs where you allow yourself to “bonk” because you don’t care) and treat it like an actual event and you’ve been doing marathons for a little while, then you can go a little further. And yeah it’s harder, as it should be. I felt like I could do a couple more miles, but…”what’s beyond that?” and it was like “Oh, a 50 miler…” I needed some more time.
So that answers the marathoning questions…
W: So what came after the made-up 50k?
S: After the made-up 50k I went down to Southern Oregon for a Michael Franti concert and I was hanging out and I was thinking about doing a 50 miler.
W: (Laughs) Thinking about it at the concert?
S: Yeah I was talking to some friends about it, a good buddy of mine who was actually the best man at my wedding and he was like “That’s crazy! You shouldn’t even be doing marathons.” Which was fine, he was also like “Go for it, just be careful.” Anyway, somebody goes, “oh look, there’s Hal Koerner,” and I said “I don’t know who that is” and they explained that he was a local legend in southern Oregon as far as running goes. So I thought “Really?…I should ask this guy what he thinks.” So I said “Hey Hal” and he didn’t hear me but somebody turned around and said “Are you looking for Hal?” and I said “Sort of.” She said “That’s my fiancé” and I was like “Oh, who are you?” She said “I’m Carly.” So that’s Hal’s now wife and that’s how I first learned [more about the world of ultra running.] I knew about the 100 mile distance because I had read the Dean Karnazes book but I didn’t know there were thousands of people doing it, that there was a whole other culture and subset of runners where it was very common to do that distance. It wasn’t easy but it was more regular. It wasn’t abnormal like I thought the book was. She [Carly] told me she ran Western States [100 mile Endurance Run] and had just done it a few weeks earlier and it was her first experience doing it. I had heard about that race and was convinced that I had to do the 50 miler so I could sign up for States and go through that process because that’s what you’re supposed to do. I was all intrigued and she talked for 20 minutes and was super gracious and then introduced me to Hal and he spent 10 minutes talking to me. That was my introduction to the sub-culture…
W: At the concert?
S: At the concert, yeah, before it started, before Franti went on. He [Hal] introduced me to a few people and then the next day they were helping out at a little local race so I went and joined in and said hello and that’s what introduced me to trail running, as it were. I had done the Pike’s Peak Marathon [trail] but all I knew about that was from Runner’s World. It was known as a really difficult marathon and I had never run in Colorado, I had never…
W: So where did that one fall in your marathon running days?
S: That was one year before. Before the [made up] 50k but at the point where I felt really comfortable with the marathon distance.
W: So at that point you were starting to get into mountain running?
S: I think just more difficult marathons. I wanted to go to different cities like New York and Chicago and Philly and then I was like “This Pikes Peak thing would be crazy hard!” but I had never trained for mountains. I figured if I just trained for a marathon, but a little bit more, and then I would just slow down on the mountain. I loved the experience of meeting people there that came from so many different backgrounds–some were running it super hard, some were running it for the time, some were doing the double with the “ascent” the day before. I met all these crazy folks and just thought it was insane. I thoroughly enjoyed finishing the race and being in a running subculture where it’s not thousands of people clapping at the finish line like in New York and its not lined with people, it’s where you go above the cloud line at 14,000 ft. People were so helpful in the race, they weren’t just handing you little Dixie cups of water, they were checking on you. I remember sitting on a rock on the course at the halfway point on [the top of] Pike’s and someone came up behind me and asked “Are you ok?” and I said “I’m fine, just appreciating it.”
I think that the friendly atmosphere and accessibility of the sport was very appealing. Carly [Koerner] was super encouraging. She was like “You totally can do it.” I was blown away that someone could be so generous with their compliments.
W: How much of it was wanting to get into nature? Was there an element of wanting to specifically do that?
S:…
TO BE CONTINUED…
Willie McBride is a native of Chicago, IL but has been living in and exploring the American West since 2000. He attended the Colorado College, majoring in English with a focus on Creative Writing, solidifying his love of writing and his need for mountains. An avid hiker, climber, and trail/ultramarathon runner he now resides in NW Portland, close by the trails of Forest Park. He started a personal/group training and coaching business called Animal Athletics (AnimalAthleticsPDX.com) with fellow ultra runner Yassine Diboun in spring of 2012 and the two provide top-notch services to aspiring outdoor athletes of all abilities.
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