Rickey Gates can run. He ran 3700 miles across the US in 2017. He ran every single street in San Francisco in 2018—a project that he has taken on here in Santa Fe and is about halfway through. These days he’s also running The 50 Classic Trails of America, with two friends. Together they are seeking out the most iconic single-day runs in the country, and are selecting trails that paint a broad picture of the ecology of the United States, with the final goal of turning it into a beautiful coffee table book.
I love running into Rickey (no pun intended) around town, and am always met with a warm smile and some positive words of wisdom. It was so fun interviewing him.
You can find our Q+A below.
What food reminds you of your childhood?
My mom’s Pumpkin Walnut Chocolate Chip bread. It’s a dense, Christmas-time bread that she’s been making for nearly 50 years. Despite growing up amidst an immense amount of wealth and affluence in Aspen, Colorado, our family didn’t have a whole lot of that kind of bread. Every Christmas, my mom’s mom would send her a couple hundred bucks which my mom would use to buy ingredients for this holiday bread. She’d spend a few days baking several hundred of these breads in little 3” bread tins, then send my four siblings and me out on the streets of Aspen with a wagon full of bread to sell to shop owners and tourists for $3/a piece. The money that we pulled together from the earnings got divided up equally amongst us to buy each other Christmas presents. She’s 77 now and still makes Pumpkin Walnut Chocolate Chip bread diligently every Christmas. It’s amazing to me that it can taste identical to how it tasted forty years ago.
When was the first time you realized food came from the earth?
In high school, I worked for a non-profit in Aspen called the 10th Mountain Division Hut Association. This organization erected and maintained huts deep in the Colorado backcountry. In the winter, one could ski from hut to hut, in the summer, hike and bike. My job was to maintain the huts and the trails between the huts. My mentor was this guy, Scott Messina, who’d worked for the organization since the early 80’s, and he still puts in some miles through winter for them today. We were out on the trail one day when he showed me a little, orange mushroom pushing up alongside a piece of granite. He put down his pack, and we spent the next hour gathering chanterelles to take back to the hut to cook up with some salt, butter, and a splash of white wine. Twenty-five years later, I can walk through a forest of mixed conifers and aspens and be almost certain that I’ll find some chanterelles. It’s such a magical experience—being in a place and feeling the presence of food before seeing or smelling it.
You are being exiled to a desert island. What three foods do you bring with you and why?
Hamburgers, ice cream, avocados. Let’s face it, I pay attention to calorie count. I want my desert island food to make me happy AND sustain me.
What do you eat when you are on your long runs?
Trader Joe’s sells these bags of almonds, cranberries and cashews. I can go days just eating those. It feels like complete nutrition to me: sugar from the cranberries, fat from the nuts and a pinch of added salt. I’ve never once been on a long run and gotten sick of them. Also Hi-Chews. I save them for later in a long run. Individually wrapped, several different flavors. I always make sure that I have one left in my pack when the run is over. It makes me feel like I could have gone a little further.
What has food taught you about love?
My wife and I met working in a restaurant nearly 14 years ago. It seems that food has always been a central part of our relationship and simultaneously indicative of the different types of people that we are. She loves following recipes, I prefer putting together whatever I can from the ingredients that I find in the fridge and pantry. She measures, I improvise. Yet, somehow we are able to be in the kitchen at the same time. I think we learned early on that there are a lot of ways to go about doing things, and if you give your partner space and listen to their needs, a beautiful meal can result.
What do you eat to recover, rest, mend, or heal?
I try my best to listen to what my body is telling me. Sometimes it’s super easy—the body is screaming “I need salt! I need fresh juice! I need a fat!” Other times it is more subtle… like when it just wants a cup of tea. It doesn’t demand it. It just waits patiently and hopes that I am listening.
What food is so wrong and you don't want it to be right?
My Blake’s Lotaburger order—Burger NM Style, seasoned fries, and a vanilla shake for the win. I mean seriously—just add up the calories—I have—it’s over 2,000. But I earned it. Or at least I can tell myself that I did.
What is one of the most memorable meals of your life?
I backpacked through South America for five months when I was 19. There’s an island in Lake Titicaca called Isla del Sol where I walked for a few days with my backpack and not a lot of food. Hungry, I stopped by a large family party where they had a 20 gallon pot of stew. I asked if I could buy a bowl of it, and they insisted I have the bowl for free. When I started picking around in the stew, I noticed that the pork was skin-on, with some of the hair of the pig still on the skin. Twenty-five years later, I still remember the hair on that piece of meat. I guess it stays with me because of the difference in how we receive or obtain food in the US versus a more traditional society. I can still taste that stew—the potatoes and onions and of course the fatty pork, hair and all. To this day, I think about that stew and how fortunate the people are that served it to me—to be that close to their food.
How does eating alone make you feel?
I traveled continuously from when I was 20 to 38. I loved eating alone. I loved meeting new people and being alone is so often an invitation for conversation. I’m married now, with two small children. Now when I eat alone, I love the solitude, the quiet. I suppose my relationship to food and to solitude will continue to evolve with every year.
Any food questions you get asked a lot that you'd like to answer?
When I ran across the country in 2017, I did so without any external support. People are often curious how I sustained myself for those five months. Truth is, it was always easy, even if it wasn’t always pretty. I ate a lot of gas station food, which I found that a lot of people throughout the country do. In some places, if you’re lucky, you have a Dollar General. I tell people “get the engine burning hot enough and you can burn anything”. I think about when Doc puts a bunch of trash in the DeLorean in Back to the Future II. But the truth is, it’s not sustainable. I lost nearly 35 pounds on my run across the country—from 165 to 130. I was genuinely unhealthy. But I wouldn’t have done it any differently. I wanted the experience of doing it on my own—being self sufficient. I’m only sorry that so many people in this country have such poor access to healthy food.
Find more of Rickey on his Instagram or website.
If you’d like to run with Rickey, he has some wonderful retreats coming up: Santa Fe Fastpack—a running/hiking hybrid through the high country of Northern New Mexico from May 26-30, 2025. Bus Run Bus—a running road trip from San Francisco to Seattle from June 28 to July 5. Hut Run Hut—a hut to hut running trip from Aspen to Red Cliff (Vail) at the peak of autumn foliage from September 21-26.
Who should I interview next? Send me an email at ginarae@substack.com
Lots of love,
Gina Rae
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