02: Sadie Dupuis

The musician and Wax Nine label head discusses swimming epiphanies and Backxwash-inspired 7-minute splits

I’m Arielle Gordon, a music journalist and (very) amateur runner. Running Up That Hill is a newsletter in which I try to connect those two things by interviewing folks in the broader music world about their running habits, tips, and tricks.

I’ve been a massive fan of Sadie Dupuis since I saw her band Speedy Ortiz absolutely shred it at the extremely sweaty Brooklyn DIY space Palisades (RIP) in 2015. Her insatiable energy and dynamism carries through on her pop-forward endeavors as Sad13, whose 2020 record Haunted Painting traverses breezy electro, slanted math rock, and brooding melancholia. Playing 18 instruments and tracking across five different studios takes stamina, perhaps gained through years of serious running. Sadie also runs the excellent Carpark Records imprint Wax Nine (that just so happened to release one of my favorite records of last year); the Wax Nine Journal, which she edits, is currently accepting pitches for 2021.

When did you get into running?

My high school enemy bet me I wouldn’t last a week on the track team, so of course I joined, and wound up joining cross country the next season, and was a track captain my senior year. Not that I was especially good at running, or that I am now!

Can you describe a typical (or average) running schedule for you in a given week? 

I’ve gone on and off running since I started sixteen years ago - sometimes I take a few months off and don’t run at all (like right now - I’ve felt iffy running during the pandemic so barely have unless I can get somewhere really isolated, which is hard in Philly).

At my most active I run 4-5 days a week, which will be one medium-length run (5-7 miles), one long run (10 or more), one or two easy runs (generally a relaxed 5k), and then some form of speed training. I’m pretty prone to injury so cross training is important for me. I like using an elliptical if I can find one, swimming, as well as yoga and light strength training.

This paragraph is making me feel so nostalgic for physical activity; the most exercise I’ve had this week was trying to teach a dog to walk nicely on her leash! One thing that’s nice about running on and off for so many years is I know I can leave the practice and return to it when I’m ready or when it feels safer. 

Do you try to run on tour/ on the road? What’s that like? 

It’s one of my favorite things to do on tour. We rarely have time to experience a city beyond grabbing breakfast in the morning. Waking up before my bandmates to clock a few miles around a downtown gives me a pretty cool cursory sense of what’s happening in a city, even if it’s only architecturally. I’ve had some amazing runs in other countries taking in incredible statues and cathedrals. It’s also a good excuse to check out beautiful parks and trails.

Beyond tourism, I get a ton of body pain exacerbated by sitting in a van all day, and running (and the stretching that comes along with it) helps mitigate some of that.

It does make me anxious to run alone in cities I’m not familiar with; I’m always juggling with that insecurity and try to ask locals for advice on where to go. 

What’s the longest distance you’ve run? 

I did a 20 mile run on the Erie Canal Towpath training for my first marathon in 2019. It was beautiful and felt amazing! I caught the flu a couple days before the actual marathon...then I tried to run anyway hopped up on cold meds… which was obviously stupid, as everyone I know and love told me, and not something I would try again (especially post-Covid!). I got pretty sick around 13 miles in and injured myself, at which point I dropped out. I had to be in physical therapy for almost six months before I could run regularly again. It was really heartbreaking since training went so smoothly!

But I was back at it for the first half of 2020, and I still plan to finish a marathon someday. It’s hard to balance that kind of training with touring, though, so probably in an “off cycle” year. It’s easy to find an hour in the morning to run before you get in the van but less easy to carve out four hours for a really long run. 

What’s the run you’re proudest of? 

I really love running with Speedy’s FOH Annalise Arboles. She took me to Discovery Park in Seattle which has beautiful trails, and at its peak overlooks the Puget Sound. I’m most “proud” of runs where I can try something different (like scale an escalation I wasn’t expecting) and take in a nice vista. I’m such a baby that I need to be tricked into incorporating difficulty in my training, but when the payoff is a gorgeous view it feels rewarding. 

Although - I did a trail run this summer listening to Backxwash for the first time, and all my splits were, like, sub 7 minutes. I haven’t run that fast since I was a teenager, especially on a trail, and I wasn’t TRYING to run fast at all, I was just so psyched on her music I couldn’t help myself. So that made me feel pretty cool. 

Do you have any running goals?

I’m so competitive and goal-oriented in most sectors of my life - part of what I like about running is that I’m not great at it and don’t have to be. I do generally set goal paces and try to keep to them. I use Runkeeper to make training plans and I like seeing my friends’ routes and hitting “like” on their runs (all three friends who use it). 

What, if anything, do you listen to when you run? 

It really depends on the run but I do have to listen to SOMETHING or it’s impossible for me to keep a good pace. And god forbid I’m in a gym on a treadmill - I need to be listening to music, reading something AND watching TV. It’s horrible. The few times my phone died when I was still many miles from home were torture runs.  

For a short run or interval training, I like checking out new things, adjusting my pace at the start of new songs. For medium length runs - 45 minutes to a couple hours - a long engrossing podcast or audiobook helps me pass the time. Really long runs, I just want to be comforted with something I’ve heard a million times before. Menomena, Autolux, Stephen Malkmus, Santigold - these are some teen classics I still like running to because the tempos are pretty consistent, the drums are awesome, and there are lots of little headphone details to latch onto. Of more recent stuff, I clocked a lot of miles to Yves Tumor, Allie X, and Caroline Rose for similar reasons. 

What, if anything, do you think about while you run? 

I try not to, other than focusing on posture and form. It’s the best activity to drown out my constant intrusive thoughts!

If you could go on a run with any musician, dead or alive, who would it be?

When Speedy was on tour with Against Me I know Laura was running a lot, and I was running a lot, and we never went together and I regret that. So when and if it’s safe to run with other people again, my bucket list of running buddies includes Laura Jane Grace. Also, I just read that Nick Hexum runs marathons, so him too for obvious reasons. 

Were you running while working on ‘Haunted Painting’? If so, what were those runs like? Did it help at all with the creative process? 

Oh man, my therapist has heard an awful lot about this! I’m not super physically active when I’m creatively active. I think funneling energy into exercise drains me of the ideas I’d put into writing, and vice versa. I haven’t figured out a good way to actively pursue both at the same time even after so many years of doing both. So I basically demoed and recorded all of Haunted Painting during that six month running hiatus I mentioned up top. I do wind up writing music when I’m swimming, though, and came up with a bunch of ideas for Foil Deer that way. Being in water, even when it’s more passive (showering or bathing) gives me a lot of melodic inspiration.

Follow Sadie Dupuis on Twitter.