race report: high climbs and misdemeanors

welp, it had to happen at some point.

i'm just glad it took me 12 years to get here - and that it is not the sad story i thought it'd turn out to be.  

like seriously, i don't need you to feel sorry for me - i'm just glad this is the culmination of one batshit-crazy racing history.  

[so far.]

like in 2019, I was paying absolutely zero attention to the 2025 hardrock lottery as I was heckling racers at the Sawmill aid station during the 2024 Brazos Bend race.  one of my friends in steamboat, amy, was the first person to text me, which prompted me to panic text two of my other friends, Alex who I crewed/paced at Hardrock last year, and Joanna who you know from multiple adventures past, to save the date.  there was a part of me that wanted to run this course in reverse since my COVID-plagued effort in 2022 as it was the faster direction, and I wanted a minimalist race season like 2023 which basically saw just one race I could focus on without answering to anything else.  

i wasn't the only one from TX racing that year, and I know that training at sea level for a batshit insane race was doable with the altitude acclimatization system I was using (fun fact: this was the review that got me to buy in back in 2017.  Also I am not a schill for these folks).  

for those who have never been to SE TX, it's fucking flat.  I bought a single speed bike for my two mile commute to work because I didn't want to unnecessarily wear out my gravel bike's derailleur.  as such, training for a mountainous race with nary a speed bump would take some creativity and resources - 

• weight training: having done this since late 2022, I did about 3-4x sessions of kettlebell/resistance work per week to attempt to emulate the impacts of hill running.
• post-Good Friday training spree:  like in 2022, I had decided to not really up my training volume until after Good Friday.  I was up in central BC doing some timing work for a backyard ultra that enabled me to be able to find some forestry road-based vert, but after that I leveraged my flextime schedule at work and batshit-insanely cheap airfares to yield the following:
• May 9-11: 3x 15mi/3200' D+ back to back to back runs up in Steamboat with Amy
• Memorial Day weekend: 99km/5371D+ split between two days in Salisbury, CT along the tri-state area
• June 7-8: 92km/4559D+ split between two days in the Montreat/Black Mountain area of NC
• Juneteenth week: a whole week back in Lake City, CO where I was allegedly supposed to help out with San Juan Solstice 50, but got ghosted by race management and ended up bagging 96mi/27000' D+ over a week pre-scouting High Five 100 for Alex
• 4-9 July: hanging with Amy in Steamboat for some last minute vert/mild altitude exposure

Given how much money and time this was costing me just to train for this, plus the insane shit I was putting my immune system through in using so many airports and airplanes - I was hellbent on finishing this race and then never doing it ever again while living in SE TX.  

Well, I guess I got too complacent as I failed to hit the cutoff 10mi from the finish by 15 minutes.  It's hard to say where I went wrong with this race - there's definitely a school of thought that I didn't do enough prep (my longest run between Bandera and Hardrock was 58km) but conversely I was pretty much on pace to finish until the last 12h/25mi.  

in any case, this race report will be more cathartic and abbreviated than the rest.  i'm still having trouble processing how anti-climatic this was, but that's probably also due to the fact i've caught some bug coming home from colorado yet again (seriously, i've got a 4-7 record  in that happening since moving to TX) and am still physically/emotionally drained, despite riding the altitude-based performance bump more than a week after the race.  

the first 75 mi were pretty pedestrian and executed in line with my pacing goals of somewhere between 36-43 h-  

• mi9 to cunningham gulch: i didn't want to push the pace with a smoky start to the day, but still ended up and over in roughly 2.5h.  this would be the last time I would see my crew til mi 49 at animas forks, but i kept my stay here short to swap out wet shoes and ingest a breakfast burrito, and refilling my hydration with some maurten carb mix.  
• mi 30 to sherman: they only had tailwind on course for hydration so i knew i would be white-knuckling the carb situation until i could get to my drop bag at sherman for more maurten mix.  i had paced this section with alex last year so it was pretty uneventful as i was running it at exactly the same time of day (albeit a day earlier and in reverse).  while i didn't have my crew, it was also nice to see various media folks on this stretch like summer/sarah from moab.  the high desert between pole creek and sherman was particularly painful with its undulation but at least i knew some of the folks who passed me, like jamjam, and hilary also from moab.  i had made it a goal to hit sherman inside the range of the 10th lady as one of my medic friends told me she'd wait until then, but i didn't actually see her despite getting in before the 9th lady.  
• mi49 to animas forks: up and over handies prior to sunset was my goal here as the only headlamp i had on me was not suitable for the technical terrain involved with descending.  i was boosted by seeing jen/ricky from my east coast running days, working burrows right after sherman, but noticed i was ever so slightly getting passed by more and more runners behind me.  i made it back on CO-9 just as it got dark, but ran my way into the aid station aided by headlights of vehicles and without needing to turn my emergency headlamp on.
• mi 58 to ouray: as alex would be my chauffeur back to denver on sunday, I had her as a pacer first.  it was a slow grind up engineer pass marked by no ability to run in the wind; as such even more folks started passing me  but i was in a race with myself.  i was able to start running again on the descent down to engineer pass, but i stayed down there for an extended time to ingest some mashed potatoes- infused ramen as i had noticed my stomach was starting to develop an aversion to maurten product.  it was probably ten minutes before i got off my ass and started chasing the pack again and rolled into ouray just past 3.
• mi 75ish to telluride: alex mentioned joanna wanted to see her friend maria at kroger's canteen for sunrise in 75 mins, and i made that a goal despite how unrealistic it was to trudge up 7mi on camp bird road, to a steeper pitch at kroger's.  joanna had no poles but was still able to scramble up to kroger's with relative ease, while i tip toed around patches of snow and loose dirt.  it was around 8am by the time i got up there, well past sunrise, and having ceded my position to even more folks, including jamjam who found a second wind after i last saw him right after handies.  i knew the descent down into telluride would be long and relentless, so i didn't stay at krogers for too long after i had my shot of vodka, before tumbling down for a ~10am arrival at telluride.  

i was 3/4 of the way done, but the next 18mi would be the longest 18mi of my life.  amy is probably the better person that could speak to this as i was barely coherent shortly after departing telluride, and i had lost all sense of time and space.

now thoroughly done with maurten, i had emptied my entire vest of their product with no suitable replacement for their caffeinated gel.  i don't think i actually ran for the next six hours, and ascents were characterized by hiking 5-6 steps before stopping to catch my breath.  amy desperately tried to massage my quads every so often while frequently reminding me to eat and drink.

by the time i hit chapman gulch, i was tripping extremely hard and was under the impression i was doing the race involuntarily.  the complaining - even by drunk toddler standards - was incredibly ludicrous, and i had trouble discerning where i was going.  i had swapped out my headlamp back at telluride for my waist light as i had trouble seeing shadows in the dirt, but this was not suitable for going up kamm traverse in the dark as i couldn't see where i was going.  curiously there was a red light at the top of grant swamp, but amy had me blow right past it in a desperate attempt to keep pace.

mentally i was gone by now, and was fully subscribed to the belief i was here against my will.

we got to KT 15 minutes after cut off, but my first words to the staff there without realizing i was actually done, was that i needed some sleep.  it took me probably another few minutes before i actually realized I had run my first DNF.  

all that being said, i am still grateful for the silver linings that came out of this:

• i am grateful i have friends who were willing to come down and act as rotating power of attorney during this experience, and got me to a spot where I was proud of my effort.  
• amy - i don't deserve you.  i know you were bored to death taking 12+ h to do my last 18mi, but you tried so fucking hard to get me moving and held the sense of urgency i should have carried.  you did the math on pacing, forced me to drink and eat and guarded me from my hallucinations.  you held onto me when i was losing my balance, and believed in me even when i didn't.
• joanna - i know you don't see it this way, but i am glad you finally paced someone successfully without any ungulates being murdered (long story) and i am honored that someone was me.  despite my results saying otherwise, you are not a jinx and my race experience was made better by you being there.
• alex - you inspired me to keep dreaming of the mountains despite moving away from the mountains.  thank you for keeping it real, forcing me spend some quality time in Lake City prior to your race, and pushing me to be the best version of myself.
• the relief that comes with knowing your best isn't good enough and that you've hit a point of diminishing returns, and that it's time to move on to other less-futile adventures.
• i will always love my mountains and alpinism in general because of how i was raised, but it's very apparent those kind of races are no longer suitable for my training capabilities and lifestyle at the moment.  it definitely stings that I was able to finish Hardrock while running Western three weeks before during 2022, but couldn't one-shot this while living in TX.  
• if i had to nail it down - i believe the lack of sustained downhill training wasn't really the issue as I was able to move - but rather it was the lack of oxygen that killed me on the 2nd day.  there is something about being able to run at altitude in a headwind that i can't seem to nail down
• the imposter syndrome at the start line was also hitting hard.  to an extent it was justified, but the nagging feeling i did not belong here really takes a chunk out of you over 91 mi.  
• it also stings that i couldn't rely on any texan running friends to help me out of this race because they're all flatlanders by the coast.  while they were all supportive, a part of me felt bad for deliberately excluding them from this adventure.  
• my wallet also hurts from chasing hills.  we have hills in hill country but they're just not aggressive enough.  
• the amount of money i spent on travel/accommodations for training runs is approximately 2-2.25x my monthly mortgage payments.  
• i would also argue that the increased frequency of being exposed to disease vectors at airports leading up to the race had something to do with this.  my altitude cough post-race evolved into something much more intense once I got to sea level again and i am still burning through lozenges like crazy. 
• a few months prior to the race - i preemptively signed up to work as a medic at the Cherokee 70mi the weekend after, fully knowing i needed time to recover and decompress regardless of the outcome.  frankly speaking at this point - i have so much more fun playing witch doctor and getting folks to not DNF at my post.  
• this is also an opportunity for me to go back to basics once i shift focus to running flatter races during astronomical winter - events which i had not appetite for doing while living in the rockies.  
• looking at my photos from Cherokee, where I was effectively sedentary - I think my stupid right-side lean has finally gotten the best of me and I need to get this sorted out before I commit to anything wacky again.  
• as cliched as it is - all the adventures i had along the way.
• the memory that'll always stay with me is the saturday prior to the race, with amy dragging me up little agnes/big agnes.  as we dropped down little agnes into mica basin and starting chasing the neighborhood bighorn sheep, she commented on the likelihood of finding sheep horn sheds, and i retorted this would probably not happen in my lifetime.  no less than 20 minutes later, her dog stella drags up a sheep vertebrae still hooked up to the skull and roughly 9-year old horns nearby.  after bagging big agnes we hiked out the deadhead and horns in a four mile long kettlebell workout, taking turns carrying the skull to lessen the gross feeling of a spinal cord grazing our legs while walking.  
• it's a big deal as we were able to snag a skull without applying for a tag, which itself is like hitting the lottery depending on the public land section you want, then hitting the lottery again once you're able to "find" a cooperative sheep.
• discovering new places with hills.  i had never been to asheville prior to this year and i am so glad i did - a perfect mix of hill-adjacent breweries with no rush hour traffic.....yet.  
• Connecticut - you're not too shabby either.  crazy how so many breweries are working farms with disc golf courses.
• the fact i was able to come from the coast and last more than 42h on this wonderful course.  i do not think i wasted this opportunity at all, and did not quit until my tracker was forcibly taken away from me.
• the darkest part of this is that this experience would probably be the indication my trademark anxiety which made me cool and strangely methodical under high pressure situations, but otherwise incredibly toxic to be around for extended periods of non-chaotic time.....is finally receding.
• don't get me wrong, she still comes out to play when i'm trying to speed-lance blisters and slap on some second skin for racers during a torrential rainstorm.

up next, because life is more than just bad days and bad days don't define us:

• amy and i have had the worst luck racing/crewing/pacing as of late, but it's alex's turn through the ringer at high five.  despite the lunacy of this all, hopefully third time's the charm for us.
• i'm signed up for tunnel hill 100 in november, and the plan is to just run this off the couch.  
• this would in theory be my WS qualifier for 2027 - giving me all of 2026 for other things to do.
• i jest, i'm on safety sweep duty right before at Javelina Jundred so i will have some miles under my belt.
• C&O canal would tentatively be my last race before my visa expires in 2027 and I move on with life.
• witch doctor shifts here and there, primarily in Appalachia.

“The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches, they gave you a bigger shovel.”

― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum