Jason Gockel
Job: Teacher
Primary Outdoor Sports: Running & Climbing
Average Weekly Mileage: 50+
Favorite Beverage: Coffee
Sunrise or Sunset: Sunrise
Go-To Trail Snack: Watermelon Sour Patch
Favorite Camp Game: Gin Rummy
Post-Adventure Meal: Burger and Fries
Hot Take: The Beatles are Overrated
Three Words to Describe Yourself: Laid-Back, Excitable, Hungry
“I’ve always run for the past 10-15 years. I’ve always gone out for 3-4 mile runs a couple times a week. The idea of doing 8 miles was daunting. Then, when Covid hit and the lockdown happened, everything shut down. So I just like ‘Let’s go for some longer runs and see what happens.’ Before that, even like doing a half marathon, I was like, ‘No way I could do that.’ But as time went on, I just started running longer and longer.”
“Typically my goal in running is to have fun and also try hard sometimes. I’ve never really paid attention to time and pace. Sometimes, I do speed runs, speed workouts. But, I feel like my biggest goal in running is just to get outside in nature and see new things.”
“For the most part, I enjoy moving at whatever pace I feel like moving that day. Sometimes it's fast. Sometimes it's slow. Sometimes it’s fulfilling and fun to focus more on how far or how high or how fast I’m going, but I don’t want it to be that. I don’t care that much. Right? Well, I care about running. I don’t care as much about being good at running.”
“My favorite running terrain is technical terrain for sure. I just feel like when I’m running on technical terrain, there’s a higher level of risk. Right? So running down a technical trail, you have to be super dialed in. You got to be really focused on the trail and where your feet are going and where your feet are going to go next. I just feel a lot more present in that moment when I’m really zoned in on the trail. I’ve always liked a little bit of risk. I wouldn’t consider myself a big risk taker, but I do enjoy a certain level of risk. That just makes it a little more exciting for me.”
“When I go into the mountain alone, I feel like I’m riding a line the whole time. I need to keep myself in a position where I can stay moving and get myself out if I need to. Right? So if I’m out in the mountains alone, I’m not gonna go all out if I’m 15 miles from the nearest road because if I get hurt or if my body decides to shut down, then I might not be able to keep myself moving and warm. There’s just a balance to be had. There’s times to try hard and times to hold back some.”
“The Pemi Loop is one of my favorite runs. I feel like we got to put run in quotation marks because the trails are so gnarly there that a lot of it is really hard to run. It's like 1,200ft of descent down a trail that is more like a boulder field over the course of a mile. That loop is awesome. I love that loop. I’ve never felt good at the end of that loop. And one of my goals is to do that loop and feel like it did not beat me. It’s rugged. You encounter it all. Mud. Super technical trails. I mean, every time I run that route, I roll both my ankles multiple times. Last year, it broke my sunglasses. Broke my body. I don’t think of it as beating the route or the loop. I don’t know. I just haven’t figured out how to do long days in those mountains yet.”
“I feel like running or any sort of exercise or just time out in the wilderness is essential for my mental health. I just feel like it reduces all my stress and anxiety and just kind of helps me to feel more grounded on the day-to-day. Sometimes I’ll go on a 4 hour run and I couldn’t even tell you if I was thinking about anything during that run. You know? I’m just moving along, looking around. I’m not really worrying about anything.”
“When I got sober, I didn’t know what to do with my time or my life. Right? Because my entire existence, what I did and thought about was centered around drugs. So when I stopped using drugs, I had all this space to fill and it was that time that I discovered some of these outdoor activities. I developed this connection with the outdoors.”
“There’s something spiritual about being out in the wilderness. It’s just a reminder that I’m very small in this gigantic world that we live in. Before I got into recovery, I just lived a very self-centered life. Right? Being fortunate enough to spend a lot of time outdoors in the great wilderness is just a good reminder that there's things that are a lot bigger than me in this world.”
