CENSORED!

Wow. I don't even know where to start with this week. I didn't run a single step, but there's so much to share still! Lucky you! It was actually a pretty good week. I hardly worked and I got out for 5 days of hiking. I slept in my own bed. I got to be with my dog all day and even had more nights with John...which I'm sure he was excited about since I made sure he did his homework. Haha. If only every week could be like that. I had taken Wednesday off to make a second attempt at the Warner Trail, but since that was out, I was left with an unnecessary day off. I considered picking up the open 24 in Tamworth...until I saw my potential partner. Yeah, no thanks. I'll just use my earned time. Haha. I had SO much free time and spent so much of it out hiking or at home working out. Maybe I should resume buying lottery tickets for that 1:302,575,350 chance at living this life on a permanent basis. Somebody has to win so it might as well be me! Haha. I can't even tell you how much better I felt all week after starting intense workouts again. Like night and day. But...I'm saving all of that for the next blog post. Haha. Nice tease. My life would not be complete without my drama magnet sucking something in. This post will be about what happened last week in regards to my Dirty Girl Trail Race vs Tin Mountain. I feel like I need to get this off my chest, even if the thoughts don't flow well. This kept me up until 3am last Thursday thinking about it so it's time to tell the story.

I was having such a good week, and then boom. Tin Mountain decided to fuck with me. For those who haven't followed my blog religiously (how dare you not?!), I've been putting on the Dirty Girl Trail Race for the past 5 years at the Tin Mountain Conservation Center. In exchange for free use of the facility, I have been giving them the proceeds from the race. They have NEVER taken an interest my race except to pass along complaints via my contact there that I cleared the trails with a rake. Well, no one ever told me I couldn't do that. Seems logical to maintain your trails to where they're actually visible. But whatever, the point is, they've never cared, never said thank you, never helped with volunteers (which I'm always short of), never an acknowledgement of the race in any of their social media or subscriber emails. Nothing. My only, and very limited, interaction with them has been only negative. I've almost pulled the plug on the race there in the past due to my frustrations. Every year I spend 5-7 hours of my time clearing the trails. I even created the current trail across the road after the poorly made, original one was eroding down the side of the trail. I'm not trying to sound like a saint, but you can bet I was extremely pissed off when the director wanted to sit down and have a meeting about MY logo because she had some "concerns". The troll who complained about my logo being "demeaning towards women" because it looked like a sex object last year decided to take it further and contact Tin Mountain to complain. And as the director told me, she had never even seen the logo until then. This has been the logo in some form or another for THREE years, and she had never seen it. And now, she wanted to meddle. I was FUMING. But after I calmed down a bit, I went ahead and came up with a new logo just in case. But one that will make a fucking statement, so by the time I walked into that meeting, I was actually feeling more positive about it. That didn't last long.

The offensive logo

I had taken a poll on the race page with an explanation of what was going on and then asked to choose, "I like the current logo" or "The logo is offensive". I had 6 people vote that it was offensive and 145 vote that they liked it. I had comments stating that the logo is one of the reasons they did the race in the first place. The logo is play on words with the race name. And I purposely asked for her to be in boy shorts and running shoes. Not really that much different in skin-showing than what all the top women runners wear. Damn. Wait a second....is Shalane striking a similar pose as my logo?! Preposterous! Banned!

Knowing how difficult the Tin Mountain people have been, I had a strong feeling going in there that this woman wasn't going to change her mind. I had a very difficult time playing nice so I told her flat out that I was angry about this and I thought that it was hypocritical. A woman is only supposed to be portrayed as strong? Well, why can't a woman be portrayed as a sex object if she so chooses? Actresses, models... some pretty powerful women choose to be sex objects for their careers, but that's not ok? I know I may be stretching that a bit, but I feel like I have a point and felt like this was censorship. What shocked me the most, though, was how the director said she didn't care what the majority of the racers thought. She said she didn't even care what the woman who complained thought. She said that she just didn't like it. Like I said, she had her mind made up before I ever walked in there. She was worried about it hurting Tin Mountain's reputation. Funny, how when she never even knew about the logo, nothing negative came of it. Well, I can certainly tell you that her meddling, not my logo, has made Tin Mountain look bad.

Once I realized arguing would do nothing, I just told her I would change the logo. I would rather do that than move the race abruptly on my racers. (Instead I would make that change for 2020 and announce it on the FB page.) Plus I had the new course made up, and this actually would give me a chance to make a statement, as well. I still can't believe as an all-women's trail race, I've come under fire and am being censored because of an attack by other women. I made a FB post announcing the changes, and made it clear as to why. I called out Tin Mountain in that post and I don't regret it. I assume someone sent my post to the director because I got another email from her yesterday asking if we could meet again. Backpeddling. She wanted to discuss how we can move forward in a more positive direction. Hahaha. Oh honey, you blew that chance by not thinking about what your emotionally charged decision might cost you. Your reputation has just been tarnished and not by a silly logo, but by your actions.

However, I never responded to her email. I probably won't for a few days. I'm not having another meeting them. It would not be productive, so I'm waiting until I can come up with a good response and reason for declining a meeting. Oh and something I left out. (Sorry, this hasn't flowed well at all haha). During the original meeting, she stated she wanted to make the use of the property more formal and have me sign a lease agreement for the first time ever. She said the rental cost is about $300 for a non-profit. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on there! Soooo, Tin Mountain is breaking our verbal agreement that's been in place for 5 years and will be making me a paying customer. Hmmm. Interesting since that now means... they no longer get the proceeds. Shooting herself in the foot constantly. And I wonder how much Tin Mountain meddles in the business of other non-profits who rent their facility. Probably never. If the race does still happen, the proceeds will go somewhere much closer to my heart....John's school. (They will actually go to The Community School even if we move the race for 2019). Man, none of this should have happened. There was so much positivity with my race. So many happy women!

This whole ordeal made me think about how my friend, Amy Rusiecki, and I, both female race directors, have in 2018 come under attack by other women who perceive some sort of slight on them. Completely different scenarios, but still an attack on women by women. How is THAT productive to this new feminist movement that has erupted? It speaks hypocrisy to me and a step backwards. (You can read Amy's blog post about her issue with the VT100 here.) She wrote how she was bullied and harassed. I was also harassed by the original complainer of the logo and banned her from the FB page after repeatedly asking her to stop posting on the page. Bullying?! By women?! Are you kidding?! Amy ended up changing her awards structure. I don't fault her for that one bit. Her race has a much greater reputation to uphold over mine. She can't just move the course. She needs all of the support of many volunteers. She had way more at stake and sometimes you do give in if you know it will actually be to your benefit. In her case, I think it was. In a way, though, I gave in, too. My gut told me to end the race right there and just stand up and walk out of that meeting, but all I could think of was how sad the women would be if I abruptly moved the race. It's a special race for so many of them. I wanted to give them one final chance to race on this beautiful course in this beautiful place. I agreed to change the logo for them. I won't wave any white flag for myself, but I'll do it for them. Doing it for the women. Wasn't that what all of this was about in the beginning? How have we come to the point of women taking other women down? Think about that next time you write #metoo or go to a women's march. Are you participating in knocking people down or are you boosting them up? If it's the latter, then by all means, carry on, but if not, stay the fuck home and save the hashtags for dog photos.

Two women who stuck together for every step. When one of us could have moved ahead in the end while the other began to struggle, we stuck together and supported each other right through to the end of the 3-day stage race, holding hands. Women supporting women for no other reason than to simply have each other's backs...

Amy and I finishing the Ragged 75 3-day stage race together in 2017