I have more energy than I’ve had in two years. It feels like I’ve been just sitting around doing nothing for the past couple months, but looking back at my training I know that’s not true. I’m just so used to feeling constantly drained and exhausted at this point in the year that it feels wrong to have this much energy. I’ve been eating a ton, that’s probably contributing. Not burying myself training for a big late spring/early summer race probably contributes even more. I’m overflowing with the motivation and desire to lay down massive volume, but I’m holding back and playing it safe. For about two more weeks, at least. Then I’ll suddenly find myself with a lot more free time…

Software development has been my answer when people ask what I do for work since 2019. Sometimes I love coding. I’ve been on projects where I am excited about what I’m building. I’ve been challenged, I’ve learned to think logically and explain complex technical problems and solutions to non-technical people in simple ways. I’ve usually done a decent job at it. But there have also been plenty of times where it’s been boring, I don’t feel like I’m making a real difference, I’m just one of a large team of developers working on a feature that few people will ever use, and I’d rather be running. Over the past year especially, I’ve trended more toward resentment that I’m on a Zoom call instead of on a summit. Not exactly stressed out with the quantity of work, but with the timing of meetings disrupting my preferred schedule and tired of constantly hauling my laptop around the world to avoid missing weeks and months of work while traveling for races and sponsor commitments.

The decision to step away from a grown-up job and just go play in the mountains may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s been hard for me to come to terms with. There’s a level of comfort and security that comes from a job that doesn’t depend on staying healthy and competing against the best ultrarunners in the world. In many ways, the stress reduction that comes from that security has outweighed the stress reduction that would come from having extra time and flexibility to train, which is why it has taken until now to pull the trigger.

I keep coming back to the thought of how much I would regret looking back on this period of life and wondering what could have been if I had just given myself every possible chance to be my best. I want to bet on myself. Invest in my own progress. Trust that things tend to work out for the best when you chase your obsession obsessively. I can keep the door to software development open, or find something new that I’m passionate about if I need to when I’m ready, but for right now, this summer block for starters, let’s see what this whole full-time pro runner life is all about.

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It has been six weeks since my MRI. Six weeks since my last trail run where I wasn’t cautiously tiptoeing downhills, attentively listening to any little protest from my right femur. This week has been the first where nothing I’ve done has caused any femoral objections, either during or following activity.

Even the runs where I have been hesitant, at least I got outside finally. No longer am I confined to the saddle of a road bike or mountain bike, the trudging of the skis, the wedgie of the boost/alter-g treadmill, or the mind-numbing slog of the uphill treadmill hike. And at least I had all of those options open to me many of the past six weeks. It could have been way worse. The skiing and biking was pretty fun tbh. I’m counting myself lucky.

Really, what I’ve been doing the past month or so is how I had envisioned much of my winter training. More crosstraining, higher volume, lower intensity. Just hours of zone 1 and 2. I had thought that would be primarily on skis, but then Utah had the lowest snow year I know of us ever having and the motivation to overcome the inconvenience of skiing wasn’t there. But now, being forced into this crosstraining block, I’m in the mental gymnasium, flipping around and spinning my situation to convince myself that it will work out for the best.

The heart yearns for what it can’t have. This setback has reminded me how much I love running, and at a basic level how much I love outdoor activity generally. I so badly want to be up in the alpine playing on peaks, but that will make it so sweet once I get back to it. The fire is burning hot and motivation is high. That’s been channeled into enough biking and other endurance activities that I don’t think my base fitness has diminished significantly, although I’m not feeling very sharp right now.

Maybe I was getting too sharp too soon anyway. It would have been good for Madeira and early season goals, but the real focus has always been UTMB for this year. Europeans skimo race until April all the time and then get into running and usually beat all the Americans at UTMB… I’ve just accidentally (but potentially fortuitously?) put myself on their schedule, which has a strong track record of working.

The end is in sight. On this trajectory, I’ll be doing hour+ runs next week, possibly mostly back to real training the week after that. Keeping biking around for as long as I can, I stand by what I said about that being a good addition that has a place in the normal rotation.

One last thing. This was a wakeup call. The femur is a big strong bone, you don’t have problems there unless you’re doing something wrong. I’ve been reminded of important habits that I had been slacking on, and I’ve been reminded of my own mortality. This doesn’t last forever, but it can last a long time if you do it right. I plan to be in it for a long time.

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The good news is that we caught it before it became a stress fracture, we’re far enough out from the biggest goals for the year that everything should be fine for those, and I’ve actually sort of found that I enjoy the biking I’ve been doing as a result. My main lower-impact activities lately have been mountain biking, cycling, and ski touring. Salt Lake’s very lame winter has meant that biking has been quite pleasant. I rotate regularly between mountain biking on the unseasonable dry trails and road biking on some of the best canyon roads in the Wasatch, many of which are passable but still closed to car traffic, so we’re in the cycling sweet spot.

Anything new takes time to figure out. Biking is no different. The first week or two, I couldn’t sit on the saddle for longer than about 90 minutes before it hurt bad enough that I wasn’t having fun anymore. My neck and shoulders would cramp up. I struggled to understand how I was supposed to eat my gels without stopping completely. If I tried to go too long I’d start to notice a little pain in the front of my right knee.

By week 3, most of those issues had been resolved. My booty stopped hurting as much and I found that even up to 7 hours on the seat wasn’t so bad. That was thanks in part to getting nicer padded bike shorts. My original road bike was old and had problems shifting, the brakes were not trustworthy, and the back tire badly needed replacing. Rather than fix it up I decided I wanted to make cycling as enjoyable and safe as possible, and a nice bike off Facebook Marketplace did the trick well for that. The upgraded bike also fit me better and I dialed in the positioning to alleviate some of the neck, shoulder, and knee pain I’d been feeling. I think slowly ramping up the mileage and getting the specific muscles more accustomed to the biking motions helped with that as well. I borrowed some power pedals and got a COROS Dura bike computer to gamify workouts with insights into my wattage output. With practice, I’ve also learned how to eat while moving (it’s easier on the slight uphills) and I realized I can handle way more carbs while riding vs running, which has resulted in faster recovery. PF90 gels have been my hack for keeping energy high on even my longest rides because having a resealable container let’s me take in however much I need.

Here are some of my favorite rides from the past few weeks:

• Exploring the Needles District of Canyonlands via mountain bike. I had never been to this part of Utah and we turned this into a four-day camping trip exploring with the family and riding lots of dirt roads.

  

• A lap of Utah Lake with Christian and Michelino. This was my first longer ride in years and was a wake-up call. The guys I was with could (and did) drop me easily and it made me want to get better at biking.

• Connecting Salt Lake City to Wyoming. I’d actually wanted to ride this road out to the Southwest Corner of Wyoming for a while and we lined up a fun group to do it with. The roads out by the reservoirs were empty and it was awesome cruising along with Garrett, although after this ride my bike was falling apart and ready for a fix or replacement.

  

• I invested in my cycling happiness. If I’m going to be stuck on a bike for a bit, I may as well get myself a great setup and make it fun. I had been meaning to check out Butterfield Canyon for years and it was perfect timing with the snow barely melted and the road still closed to cars, grinding solo up to the pass and burning through my audiobook.

  

• My farthest ride ever, from my house to Ogden the fun way Once again, Garrett and I took on the Emigration → Big Mountain → East Canyon roads but this time we stayed north and continued up to the thriving metropolitan areas of Eden, Morgan, Huntsville, Liberty, etc. My cleat came off the bottom of my shoe and we luckily found a hardware store with the correct size screws in stock in the middle of nowhere within a couple miles of me realizing I had a problem. We finished in downtown Ogden, snarfed down some hot chicken and waffles, and barely caught the 3:08pm train back down to Salt Lake.

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As I write this now, four weeks since my last trail run, I laced up my Zegamas this afternoon and tried going for a little test run. I did the shortest trail loop I can do from my house. 1.9 miles, 200 feet of elevation gain. Alternating 3 minutes easy jogging, 1 minute walking. For the first time in almost a month. I’ve missed the running motion. No obvious pain, no lingering aching. Good signs of progress, but still a long way to go. Even as things improve and I ramp back into normal running, I’m telling myself I’ll keep some biking in the weekly rotation. It doesn’t need to just be a last resort method of exercise, I think I’m convinced that cycling has a place in my regular training program.

We were realistic and reasonable. The full High Route was insane, we weren’t ready for that. But break that route into its five component traverses and knock out two or three of them over a week? Maybe tack on a volcano summit? That was doable. We’d start with Ptarmigan, the section we were most excited about. Fast and light was the name of the game. The FKT was around 9-10 hours, but we’d be taking it easy, so we figured 14-15 hours, maybe up to 18 worst case. Turns out, worst case was spot on.

By the time the morning sunlight hit us, we had already crossed the first glacier of the day. Everything was going perfectly. It was more beautiful than I’d imagined. I really cannot overemphasize how stunning most (but definitely not all) of this route is. Maybe it’s my Washington bias but the North Cascades are very hard to beat. In contrast with the easily accessible, relatively tame Wasatch, they feel wild and remote, endless and massive.

Most people do the Ptarmigan as a multi-day backpacking trip. To have any chance at our proposed agenda, we needed to take a fast-and-light approach. Speed is safety when traveling with limited warm layers, food supplies, backup batteries for headlamps, etc. Each item in our packs was carefully considered and its necessity debated before it earned its place. Though we needed to move quickly, we also valued our lives and did not want to end up in the bottom of a crevasse. Therefore, a rope, harness, ice axe, and traction all made the final cut. The terrain posed objective hazards with certain unavoidable risks, but through careful decision making we aimed to minimize those risks (and avoid the more controllable ones) while accomplishing our goal as quickly as we enjoyably could.

That day on the Ptarmigan Traverse taught me something that applies to training. Building fitness also involves hazards that are within the control of the athlete. One risk that’s been in the back of my mind since my first tibial stress fracture in high school is overuse injuries. Athletes pushing themselves in training are periodically riding a thin line between maximizing their potential improvements and overdoing it. We have coaches who help guide us and we make plans that we think should be safe, but you only have to slightly overdo it to set you back a lot more than any potential gains you’d miss out on by slightly under-doing it. I’ll come back to this, but first I’m sure you’re dying to know more about how the Ptarmigan day went.

As it turns out, Jacob and I weren’t the well-oiled mountaineering machine we dreamed we might be. Donning harnesses and crampons, tying into the rope, and weaving through a maze of crevasses on glacier after glacier took a toll on us. At the crest of each mountain pass I was briefly relieved, knowing we were one valley closer to our finish. Until I traced the route with my eyes looking at the looming glacier on the wall of the next valley, knowing that we not only had to climb it, but also had to cross the miles of loose rock, bush, and ponds just to get to the base. We lost time on transitions. Our socks and shoes soaked through and after some hours we got severe cases of what we in the biz (me and Jacob) like to call bathtub feet. At first it seemed like a minor inconvenience. The increasing pain of wet bathtub feet drained our morale, our hungry bellies drained our food reserves, we were desensitized to the alpine beauty, but we continued pressing forward, still making decent progress. But my heart sank when we finally began our last descent and I saw…

You gotta love a good cliffhanger. The tough thing about overuse injuries is that they’re so preventable. All you have to do is not destroy yourself too much in workouts and long runs. Get decent sleep. Eat enough. Rest when you feel pretty tired. It’s not that hard. But as we traverse the constant passes and valleys of training, we sometimes neglect our bathtub feet. They don’t hurt at first, they’re just wet. It’s not really a big deal. Then they get slightly annoying, but they’re not really causing problems so we press on. Then, “all of a sudden”, they cause crippling pain and force a stop.

…thorny devil’s club as far as the eye could see. We had read about the terrors of this exit, and knew there would likely be some bushwhacking. We mustered our strength for one ultimate push. Our blistered, trench-footed stomps flattened the prickly foes and we battled like heroes for our freedom. Those bushes never stood a chance. We emerged near Downey Creek at the bottom of the valley and celebrated by consuming the last of our food, just as night was falling. I figured we’d be within a mile or two of easy jogging to the car, where more snacks and cold drinks awaited us.

Overuse injuries are frustrating. An athlete in tune with their body knows that something is up. It’s a sneaking suspicion that manifests itself in a slight twinge, a gut feeling that you should be eating more, or a temporary decrease in motivation. But we’re trained to push through discomfort, that’s how we progress. You don’t make it through the bush without getting some scrapes. Any good workout should have you pushing through a little discomfort by the end. Knowing when that’s a good thing vs when it’s detrimental is something we learn through experience, and sometimes have to relearn.

We spent the next three hours searching for what I’ve been told was once a trail. As of 2023, it was a dotted line on the map that looked like a decade of deadfall had descended upon it. Dense bushes, of both thorny and non-thorny varieties, had crept in due to lack of traffic and maintenance, invading the spaces between fallen trees and ensuring that those final dark miles took us as long as possible. There was also the matter of miscalculating distance. In my pre-Ptarmigan mind, we probably had a couple miles left. In reality, it was likely about 5 miles. But in the moment, it was endless limping on the sensitive soles of our wrinkled bathtub feet.

Jacob tried every coping mechanism in the book to endure the suffering, from playing Linkin Park on his phone speaker to crying many tears (sorry Jacob). Having a friend alongside me who was in a worse mental place than me actually helped get me through, because compared to him I was still doing alright. He also did a good job documenting the day on his Youtube channel if you want to go deeper down the Ptarmigan rabbithole.

Usually when I look back on mountain adventures or ultramarathons, the passage of time between now and when the suffering occurred tends to erase most of the pain and just leave behind the epic views or the alpine excitement in my memory. Ptarmigan Traverse stands out because the suffering of that exit is just as memorable as the awesomeness of the glaciers, if not more.

Recovery from injury takes time. While the exact amount of time can vary greatly, it is often the case that upon diagnosis I set expectations for the early side of the time range it would take “normal people.” 3-6 weeks? Ok, I can be good to go in 2-3. When that time arrives and I’m not finished healing yet, I’m disappointed. I know I do this but I can’t help myself. It feels endless, constantly thinking the end might be just around the next corner but only finding more obstacles to slowly pick my way through. Eventually it has to end, but why can’t we just hurry up and get there already?

It helps to have people to share the experience with. Other friends who are recovering from other things and are down to exercise in other ways. Biking, skiing, low-impact activities. By the time we’re on to the next adventure, maybe some of the pain and annoyance of the injury will be erased. Hopefully, just enough of that memory sticks around that we don’t have to relearn the lesson of overdoing it again any time soon.

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Since I last wrote, I:

• Ran the Arches 50k as my first of several training races, where I like to practice racing with less pressure and on tired legs as a solid effort long run.

• Did an ACG photo/video shoot the day after the race down in Moab, running back and forth pretending it was a warm summer day but putting on a down jacket between takes.

• Watched Marshall master the art of crawling.

• Traveled to Milan to ride the ACG Express. Nike really went all-out decorating a train that transported various audiences to The Wild (snowy trails above Lake Como). I shook hands, answered questions, met cool people including Jannik Sinner and Eliud Kipchoge, and wore lots of orange.

  

• Spectated a couple of Olympic events. Italy won the gold medal in long track speed skating. The Canada v Switzerland women’s hockey game was a highlight.

• Listened to Marshall master the art of saying dadadada.

  

• Laid down my biggest vert week since August 2025, with a little of that being on some sweet new skis that I’m looking forward to putting to work.

• Traveled to Palm Springs for an ACG team camp. Ate great food, ran many miles, smiled for the camera, tried products that I liked and that I didn’t like, let people know what I liked and didn’t like, spent time with teammates new and old, and the sports scientists set up a makeshift lab in the hotel for some testing. Now I better understand the way my body buffers lactate at various gradients, the amount of hemoglobin in my body, my current sweat rate and sodium concentration, the amount of tissue damage inflicted to my quads during a couple hours of running, and the rate at which my leg muscles consume oxygen.

Because of these things, and other unlisted things that also took up time, I haven’t sat down to write in over a month. As I sit writing this in the Palm Springs airport waiting to board my flight, team camp is freshest in my mind, so I’ll expand a little on a thought train I went down during that.

With a few tweaks, the lifestyle I enjoyed last week during team camp would be very conducive to reaching my absolute physical limit of performance. I acknowledge that what I’m about to describe is either utopian or dystopian, depending on what you’re into. It also requires extreme levels of financial investment. It is merely a thought experiment on the ultimate-dedication end of the spectrum.

Nearly the entire ACG trail running team spent the week at the Palm Springs Ritz-Carlton hotel. That means 30ish elite athletes, in a luxurious setting, with great trail access from the door, eating as much great food as we could. Add in the product, design, innovation, and science teams that were supporting this event, and you’ve got a recipe for some major fitness gains.

If you theoretically had the budget to keep all these athletes (plus their families) and staff in that setting indefinitely, what would happen? It might make sense for all of the ultra-focused athletes to focus on the same races, under the same coaching direction, to align on workouts and have a built-in training group. Each day, your responsibilities would be to train, eat, recover, spend time with family and/or socializing, and sleep. All meals would be prepared for you. Like specifically for you, factoring in your exact dietary needs based on your body, preferences, and workload. There would be a physio on standby for massage and bodywork. You’d test prototype innovations frequently, giving feedback and retesting updated versions until everything was perfectly dialed. As seasons change the home base would move, optimizing for drier conditions in winter and then shifting to higher altitude alpine trails in the spring and summer. You’d have sports scientists measuring various markers, helping you understand your results and adjusting your training, nutrition, and recovery accordingly. Does any of this sound familiar?

I don’t know a ton about cycling, but from what I understand this isn’t that far off how some of the WorldTour teams live. Sure it sounds sort of crazy, but I see the sport going in a direction where in the next decade it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there are groups of ultrarunners doing something similar to this. It also wouldn’t surprise me if those groups are laughing at the times that we currently think are fast at the world’s biggest ultras.

The idea of a co-located team being beneficial isn’t novel. We see it in the road marathon scene, in cycling, in many other professional sports. The biggest challenge might be finding a source of funding for this endurance experiment. You’d need athletes to be paid enough that they would be willing to drop everything to relocate to a mutually agreed upon location. The staff and equipment and accommodations and catering would be expensive. In the current trailrunning environment, what’s the ROI on this sort of investment even if you assume that it totally works and you have a team dominating all the most important races? I don’t know the answer, but I imagine that in some not-so-distant future the marketing value of that team will justify the costs of this extreme training ecosystem. I kind of hope that future is soon enough that I’m still around to be part of it to really see how high this body can fly.

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Even if he shared the recipe, would the result be the same if that person made it using canned tomatoes, dried basil, and store-bought garlic powder? Or if they didn’t hand-make their pasta each day? Do they have the knowledge, experience, and skill needed to execute the recipe and produce the perfect lasagna even if all of the ingredients and tools were set out in front of them?

Listening to a couple of podcasts lately got me thinking about this. First, Tom Evans on the Freetrail Trail Runner of the Year recap episode briefly lamented having shared some of his training staples like uphill weighted hiking, as it may have allowed competitors to close the gap on him as they imitated something that had given him an edge. Then, Finn asked Rachel Entrekin about her take on Tom’s perspective on a recent Singletrack episode. Rachel went far in the opposite direction, saying that she was an open book and didn’t see why she’d ever want to hide anything from anyone, and that she wanted to share advice freely to help other athletes, including competitors.

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I think I can see a bit of each side of this. It’s great that there are some people out there sharing generally accepted training theory so that others can learn how to safely push their own limits in ultrarunning. Sometimes what is shared and what trends gain traction with the public could be helpful, like the focus on fatigue resistance that seems to be all the rage these days. Other times, it could be detrimental, like DBo interpreting weighted hiking as uphill and downhill reps in a weight vest despite Corrine’s pleas for him to not do weighted downhills. ;)

It’s also one thing to give your friend the recipe or teach an intimate cooking class, and another thing entirely to have an influencer come and film a viral behind-the-scenes TikTok showing exactly how the lasagna is made. Including specific training ideas in a niche book about uphill training theory vs having articles, podcasts, and social media reels published about it right after winning UTMB, in Tom’s case, may feel different.

But the exact recipe for ultrarunning domination is still unknown. There’s not a clear one-size-fits-all formula, and right now one of the best parts of competing at the top end of the sport is that you’re facing athletes who have taken a huge variety of training approaches to get to where they are. Pro ultrarunners are constantly engaged in a process of trial and error, fine-tuning their approaches with each race. Even those working with coaches are, in my experience, often doing so collaboratively and their training program is significantly shaped by the athlete’s feedback. They all have their own variation of a secret recipe for the best lasagna they know how to make.

That opens up another can of worms and this might be where my lasagna metaphor breaks down a bit. Who owns the recipe? Is it the chef who’s on the front lines every day, making micro-adjustments as he tastes the sauce and serves his plated dishes to the world? Is it the mentor of the chef who gave him the original lasagna recipe that he’s now adapted to his personal style? I don’t have all the answers here but I’d think that the chef should at the very least have a strong say over whether or not his personal recipe is shared.

Although having the recipe, ingredients, and tools at your fingertips won’t necessarily mean you can replicate the perfect lasagna, I wouldn’t expect the chef to divulge his secret recipe. I certainly wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. Leave sharing recipes to the YouTube cooking tutorials, the recipe book authors, the Italian grandmothers, and the teachers at culinary school.

So let me tell you a bit about how the team is shaping up for 2026. Here are some key players:

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Family

My parents have inspired and supported me since the beginning, and they continue doing so. From helping babysit Marshall, to flying across the world to cheer and crew me at my big races, my parents and sisters are an essential part of the team. Morgan’s family has also been there to help in very similar ways and it’s so much fun having families who are so invested in this venture. Morgan, obviously, is the absolute best and none of this would ever be possible without her. The #1 crew captain, First of her Name, Caretaker of Kittens, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Marshall. Marshall is a perfect little guy and I’m so excited for when he is old enough to understand how cool our lives are.

Friends

I’m going to include a lot of people in this category, and because I don’t want to accidentally leave anyone out I won’t name specific names. But “friends” includes crew, pacers, and competitors who have shared highs and lows with me in training and racing, workout buddies, podcasters, dinner/game night attendees, best-in-class photographers, mentors, cheerleaders, hype-people, etc. Having a strong local (and increasingly global) community that I feel connected with has been one of the best parts of diving deeper into trail running.

Coaches

As of December, I’ve started training under the guidance of some new coaches. I had been bouncing training ideas off of a group of experts at the Nike Sports Research Lab (NSRL) all summer leading into the World Championships race, and now I’m all in. Brett Kirby and Brad Winn are sports scientists (sorry guys, I’m sure you have fancier official titles that I’m leaving off here) who immediately impressed me with their knowledge, experience, and the attitude with which they approach training. It feels like there are no barriers that could get between them, an athlete, and a shared goal. We know what we want to achieve, we’ve identified what it will take to make it happen, and we can do whatever it takes to execute that plan. That’s the vibe I get.

Joanna Parsonage and Katherine Boere are also part of the NSRL and each have their own specializations. Joanna is a strength and conditioning expert, while Kat is a neuroscientist and accomplished trail runner herself, who brings a mental strength and terrain-specific skillset to the coaching squad. Colleen Little is a PT for Nike athletes in the local area, and she helps fix me up when I have problems and has also been a great guide for strength training.

Sponsors

As you may have picked up from the previous section, Nike is a huge component of my team. It’s an honor to be a member of the All Conditions Racing Department. I’m surrounded by incredible people on all sides: fellow Racing Department teammates, the product and design teams who work with me to make sure everything I use is perfectly dialed in, creative teams putting out cool media, the NSRL for testing. And of course, Lucy May is an all-star team manager who puts up with my frequent messages and has made this partnership work so well. Nike Trail’s incorporation into All Conditions Gear means additional resources and focus on developing the best possible gear for high-performance trail running, and I’ve noticed a significant difference in the energy and support. The ACG Ultrafly and ACG Zegama are the shoes I’m currently using most (both dropping in 2026).

Believe it or not, Precision Fuel & Hydration is not just the presenting sponsor of this Chasing Trail newsletter, they are also the source of 99.99% of all carbs and electrolytes that have entered my body while running since mid-2023. Chris “Minty” Harris has spent hours listening to me plan and recap nutrition and heat training strategies, taking careful notes, offering insightful suggestions, and producing helpful case studies. I’m a simple guy, and PF90 gels and 1000mg electrolyte packets have been my key to success.

Having Kodiak onboard as a partner has helped me focus on eating more, better food outside of training. I can get in more protein and make sure to eat a full breakfast when it’s food I’m excited to eat, and there are few things that I’m more excited to eat after a long run than Kodiak’s Dark Chocolate Pancake Mix (my secret is adding one egg, chocolate chips, and a little bit of ricotta).

Accurate training data is necessary to collaborate with remote coaches and to assess progress. COROS is my partner for that. I love the Apex 4 and Heart Rate Armband and use them daily. I also use COROS to track sleep and recovery to make sure I’m training in a sustainable way.

LEKI makes some of the best poles out there. I use the Ultratrail FX.One Superlite poles for training and racing. They’re lightweight and I love how they attach to the hand harness glove things so you can put extra power into each push and don’t have to worry about dropping them.

Others

I know that there are more people in my life that help me. I try to be conscious of the friendship and support that I receive, because it has enabled me to be chasing my dreams. Some others that come to mind are: catsitters, childcare helpers, my actual day-job that I haven’t quit yet and manager that puts up with all my travel and working weird hours, brand/marketing partnership managers, inspiring athletes and personal heros I look up to, race directors who help support travel and put together amazing events, followers/fans/subscribers, masseuses, audiobook narrators and authors and media and meme pages who inform and entertain me… ok if I’m listing meme pages I need to call it good here. Lots of people help me in lots of different ways. I appreciate it. Thank you.

I enjoy the sort of training that leads to accumulating vert. It’s the sort of thing I can imagine myself prioritizing even more in the next few years. Beyond just stacking up numbers, what a vertically-focused year really means is putting yourself in the mountains more often. Slowing down, using poles, taking in the alpine while you ascend steep grades.

While that sort of activity took a backseat during late spring and early summer as I prepared for Western States, the year was bookended with quite a bit of it. TGC, World Champs, and GPT100 training all involved significant time on verty terrain, where I measured volume in hours and thousands of feet. Here are some kinda fun stats:

• Only 5/52 weeks this year had less than 10,000ft of gain, generally because I was either recovering from a race or an injury.

• Along with that, my lowest week was 915 feet, the week after hitting my knee during World Champs.

• On the other hand, only 7/52 weeks had over 30,000ft of gain, meaning that the vast majority of weeks were just decent honest work without anything special.

• My two highest vert weeks each included summits of Mont Blanc (which happened on a Sunday and Monday and therefore counted across two different weeks).

  

• Consistently knocking out 20k-ish weeks is all it takes, and if the purpose of my goal was to normalize vertical gain, mission accomplished because at this point that sounds pretty doable.

• Almost all of that vertical gain was outdoors, on foot, with descent. Not all. About 30k was biking or skiing, and about 10k was on a treadmill without the descending. My goal was just about the vertical gain so I’m good with how that worked out.

While this goal was not front of mind most of the year, after GPT100 it took center stage. I often struggle with motivation to train after the final race of the year. Weather gets worse and my mind and body are ready for an off season. And I’m a believer in the off season, it’s important and I took one. But then I relied on this goal to motivate me to get back on the horse and lap Mahogany Mountain on days when I otherwise would have done a little neighborhood jog. Friends came out and joined me. I finished off my final climb to get to a million feet by carrying Marshall up the St. George cinder cone at the end of my run that day.

Going forward, I fully expect to hit a million feet again next year. Without a big early-season ultra on the calendar, I’d like to have a much higher percentage of my vertical gain come from skiing, assuming winter really hits the Wasatch eventually. I’m not going to make a specific goal around vert or mileage or any training stat for 2026, but I do want to continue with these vertical habits I’ve created. They’ll serve me well for my bigger objectives.

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1. Building little fish farms (circles of rocks) in the Tolt River to watch the fish my dad caught swim around.

2. Getting pushed around in the jogging stroller by my mom over to where all the blackberry bushes were, then feasting on berries.

3. Holing up in a tent at Island Lake in the Cascades while it was dumping rain and reading Harry Potter books with my dad for the entire day.

4. Making a deal with my dad that if I could even just hit the rim during my basketball game, I’d be allowed to stay up as late as I wanted playing Age of Empires.

5. Going to Boy Scout camp and making safety sticks (basically wooden staffs) but then another kid smacked me with his safety stick ironically and I had to get stitches.

6. Planning my family dinner nights (every Thursday night was my turn to make dinner) and my favorite meal to make was Papa’s Mac, which was basically just a really basic cheesy pasta casserole.

7. Sneaking out of a church youth dance thing with a couple friends to go across the street and get candy from 711.

8. Purposely losing the Boy Scout Pine Wood Derby model car race by tightening my wheels up so much that they barely moved because whoever got last place got to pick a prize first for some stupid reason. I think I got a massive bag of Starbursts.

9. Winning the Leavenworth winter puck sweeping race. I don’t really remember much about the contest, I just remember that the prize was a big Bavarian sausage and I walked around town snacking on it and trying on funny hats at the hat store.

10. Building snow caves to sleep in near Snoqualmie Pass and being so sore after all the digging. We filled ours with glow sticks and it was surprisingly warm.

11. Creating the largest bonfire I’ve ever seen out of driftwood on Shi Shi beach. Each log took 3-4 people to move into position and once it was going it transformed the chilly night into summer.

12. My British soccer coach yelling at us for not playing well during a big tournament and wondering if I should just quit soccer after the fifth time being called a muppet.

    

13. After XC Kingco champs race, finding a bunch of extra grape juice from the team tent and Jack and I each tried to finish a whole bottle. That much grape juice has some crazy effects on the GI system.

14. A five-day expedition to climb Mount Olympus (the Washington one), with Greg and Reece (and others). Greg tried to convince us that if we got struck by lightning our fingertips would fly off. I led the rock pitch to the summit with trad gear, which was my first time really trad climbing in the wild.

    

    

15. Driving in circles around the roundabout with Steve in the car when I wasn’t supposed to be driving anyone else yet because I didn’t have my 6 months (amount of time you had to wait after getting your license before driving others) and blasting Danza Kuduro then looking over at the sidewalk and making eye contact with my mom who was out on a jog. Busted.

16. Climbing Mount Rainier for my first time in a whiteout and we just called it good at the crater rim and weren’t able to cross the crater to tag the actual summit.

17. Responding to my first Search and Rescue mission after joining King County SAR. It was a body recovery at Snoqualmie Falls and traumatized me for a little bit. I stopped at Chipotle on the way home but I couldn’t eat my burrito. That was my first time seeing/being near a dead body that I remember.

18. Curling up in a freezing sleepy hypoxic ball in my damp old rental puffy on the summit of Cotopaxi waiting for the clouds to clear and the sun to come out. It took too long and we were getting too cold, so we started heading back down and of course all the clouds cleared out like 20 minutes later so we never got the view into the crater.

19. Living in Argentina with Garret, we set up little soccer goals in the backyard of our place and played 30mins of soccer every day as soon as we woke up. Loser had to pay the winner as many pesos as the goal differential. I always won, then usually would go buy us both freshly-baked facturas for breakfast.

20. Kayaking in the big University of Washington fountain in the middle of the night. We carried those kayaks over a mile from our house to the fountain, jogging with them over our heads. Didn’t have to carry them back though because the cops showed up and impounded the kayaks.

21. Getting back an F on a big exam which meant I was failing my first and only class ever (Calc 3 I think, and I’ve got some excuses for how I got to that point that don’t matter anymore), and deciding to drop it knowing that meant closing the door on being a Chemical Engineering major.

22. Watching all of the seasons of Arrow on my dad’s iPad while we waited out storms on Denali, hoping the clouds would clear enough to keep the solar charger going. We spent over two weeks on the mountain and the pack plus sled was by far the heaviest load I’ve ever had to carry.

    

23. Getting tacos with Morgan and her friends the first night we met. I’ll always remember that her friend Amanda had a pet hedgehog.

24. Jacob pulling a large rock down on me during a scramble in the Enchantments after telling me “look dude there’s nothing I can do about it, this is going to fall on you.” He was right, it had to happen and I couldn’t get out of the fall line, but that was a close one that luckily ended with just some minor scrapes.

25. Getting Curry Pizza after a long adventure loop through the canyons of Capitol Reef. I was absolutely starving and the butter chicken slice was some of the best pizza of my life.

26. Reece eating a gallon ziplock bag full of bacon during our 12-hour ride around the White Rim trail. That’s all the food he brought and he polished it off in the first half so we ended up needing to ration out my baguette to get us through.

27. Biking alongside Morgan on the Lake Sammamish trail while she did her final 22-mile long run training for her first marathon, the day before our wedding. Possibly one of the more impressive runs I’ve seen her do. Too bad that wasn’t race day.

28. Meeting Finn, Grant, and Eli during the Corner Canyon 50k race and chatting most of the morning away. I ended up finishing less than a minute ahead of Finn, who immediately connected me in with the rest of the SLC trail running friends after that. It was also my first time running through what would become my home turf and neighborhood for the past 5 years.

29. Borrowing Morgan’s puffy jacket because I was freezing climbing Mont Blanc with her. She was locked in and I was in survival mode trying to stay warm. We stopped in the emergency shelter at about 13,000ft to get out of the wind for a bit and that helped.

    

30. Marshall’s purple little face trying to figure out how to take his first breaths while the doctors smacked his back to try to get him going. He was fine, just took a few tense minutes before we got to hold the little fella.

It’s been good. Each year keeps getting better. Hopefully we stay on that trajectory for many more years.

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Not really. I have some plans that conflict with me being able to race Hardrock this coming year. I feel bad now that one of the few precious Special Consideration picks was used on me instead of someone else who could commit to the epic journey that is Hardrock. I let the race organization know a few weeks before the lottery that I had a conflict and wanted to withdraw myself from consideration for one of those picks. My only intention being in the lottery this year was to start the (sometimes very long) process of accumulating tickets.

I can’t imagine how busy and chaotic the weeks pre-Hardrock-lottery must be for the race organizers. The selection process seems to be a bit of an imperfect system, and due to what I’ve now been informed was a clerical error on their end, I was selected anyway. We’ve cleared that issue up now and we’re all good. While I appreciate the vote of confidence from them and I really hope to get another entry to this race in the future, next year will not be my year for it. So Tom, Jimmy, Dylan, Ludo, etc. you can all breathe a huge sigh of relief ;) Sorry to miss the party.

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I’m still finalizing the races that I’ll be lining up at next year, but more on that soon. I just want to reiterate that it’s not lost on me that getting into Hardrock is a unique, rare opportunity and that this might be stupid to pass up. It could be years before I have another chance to run Hardrock, if that chance ever comes back. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or thoughtless with this move, many hours of thinking have in fact gone into this decision. I’m taking a risk and hoping it pays off in the long run.

• 41 articles published

• Over 3,000 regular readers

• 1 presenting sponsor (thanks Precision F&H!)

• Most read article: Western States recap (over 11,000 reads)

• 36 posts sitting in my Drafts folder that may never see the light of day, but have been productive to think through anyway

For anyone looking for tips on how to grow their audience, what I’ve found works best is to win Transgrancanaria and Western States, and write about the experiences. Post-race reflections usually tend to be some of my favorite articles to write, especially when they go well. Interestingly, I’ve had a little bit of a hard time writing a recap for the GPT100 race that I recently completed in Australia. I’ll take the next few paragraphs to give it a shot though.

The GPT100 checked all my pre-race boxes. The course was hard, I had to practice racing through the night, I dealt with hot and cold, dry and wet, I made some mistakes that I’ll do my best not to repeat, I got a Hardrock qualifier, I moved to the top of the World Trail Major standings, I saw 100 miles of beautiful Australian peaks in the Grampian mountains, and I connected with the local wildlife and community. On paper, it was a total success. So why does it feel like I sort of just got the job done? I think it’s because even though I won and am proud of it given the circumstances, I didn’t really get the most out of myself.

I love that ultrarunning pushes me to extreme limits. GPT100 pushed me in many ways and took more than 6 hours longer than any other race I’ve ever done, but I was so alone at the front of the race that I was missing having competition to help me get the most out of myself. I was cold and wet, my feet hurt, I had a big buffer, and it was too tempting to ease back and relieve some of the discomfort. I feel slightly dissatisfied knowing that I gave in to that temptation and there was probably more in the tank that I didn’t touch.

With that said, I don’t regret racing GPT100 at all. I knew going into it that it wouldn’t be the same level of competition I’ve seen the rest of this year, and I was ok with that because of all the other benefits it offered. It was still an amazing trip with the family and we all really enjoyed it. The Grampians are a magical, unique area—a part of Australia that is well worth a visit. This is still a young, growing race and now that it is included in the World Trail Majors I’m excited to see it attract deeper talented fields in the coming years. The race organization is top notch and the elite athlete support is a case study in how it should be done. It deserves to be recognized with some of the best iconic global races and I believe it will be.

I’m planning to keep this thing rolling for the foreseeable future. I want to continue documenting the process of trying to balance a happy, sustainable life with my family and pushing my limits to progress in the sport of trail running. And sometimes mixing in ideas about the professional side of the sport, reactions to interesting things I read or hear, or whatever other random topic is inspiring me to use my brain for some critical thinking. Here’s to another year of Chasing Trail!

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The ability to travel to some of the most beautiful places in the world and run through unique foreign landscapes is one of the things I love most about the fortunate career path I’m now finding myself on. I want to explore as many places as possible, and I want to bring my family (and friends) along whenever possible. Australia is a completely new place for me. The Grampians range has a recently completed trail through its entirety that happens to be exactly 100 miles from start to finish, through rugged, technical terrain. It’ll be a long, slow, tough adventure. For context, the current course record is just over 24 hours. I plan to have minimal crew and no pacers, with the intention of treating this as a learning experience for my primary goal of 2026: the full loop around Mont Blanc.

Doing new things can be scary. I’ve never raced longer than 14 hours and 40 minutes. I’ve done 100 miles, but 100 Western States miles does not equal 100 Grampians or Alps miles. I want the experience of racing through a night, of encountering weather and having to adapt to changing conditions, of experimenting with different types of nutrition strategies that might work better for longer periods of time. If I can push myself to move efficiently through demanding terrain for 20+ hours, my theory is that I’ll have worked out some of the kinks and be more prepared for UTMB next summer. This is less about physical preparation, more about psychological, logistical, and emotional preparation.

But wait, there’s more. The GPT100 also happens to be a Hardrock qualifier, so assuming I finish I can start collecting lottery tickets for that. It is the second-to-last event in the World Trail Major series, which I’m a big fan of and have already completed another event in the series by racing Transgrancanaria earlier this year, so this race will give me a shot at winning the series title if things go well. And last but not least, we’re taking advantage of this trip out to Australia to stick around the area for a bit after the race to do a scenic road trip along the famous Great Ocean Road.

That’s what I had written before actually coming out to Australia and seeing the Grampians for myself. I was sitting on this article because it didn’t really feel right, didn’t feel complete or something. Semi-emotionless words about logically why I was doing GPT100. Now I’ve gotten a little taste of what I’m in for.

The feelings while seeing this course are kind of similar to how I felt seeing the World Champs course. Which was basically like, “oh wow this is going to be really hard.” But this time I’m in for 100 miles of it, and much of it will be in the dark, likely alone. That might sound like I’m complaining, but I’m stoked. I think this will be possibly one of the crazier adventures I’ve been on. I’m weirdly having a hard time getting my head into a race mindset, it really feels more just like an epic journey taking on a challenging but aesthetically pleasing line straight down the middle of the Grampians.

If I can survive this route and come out in one piece, I’ll probably have a good day. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. That sort of thing. I really don’t want to smash a knee again or anything like that, which is super possible on a course like this. The plan is to be cautious and just enjoy the ride, keeping an eye out for snakes and for learnings that can help me in future hard things.

This mountain range makes me wish I knew more about geology. It’s a tectonic work of art. A standalone range of 400 million year old sandstone, forced skyward out of an ancient riverbed, and gradually carved by wind and rain into mind-boggling formations. Organic, fungal rock, like someone dug up a 30 ton truffle and petrified it. Hot, exposed stone is contrasted against spongy, oozing, vibrant green moss. Burnt trees from last year’s bushfire give way to new life as saplings and ferns emerge from the charcoal. Off either side of the ridge you’ve got these endless expanses of flat Australian bush, teeming with kangaroos, wallabies, emus, cockatoos, kookaburras, and all sorts of other funny-sounding critters. Suffice it to say, there are endless natural wonders to take your mind off the daunting distance.

I also underestimated how cool the Australian trail community would be. The race organization has done an impressive job of setting me up for success here, giving me every opportunity to see isolated sections of the course and chat with local legends who know the area extensively and are happy to share their knowledge. At the risk of stereotyping Aussies, they seem to have more of a connection to nature than we do in the US. Little things, like stopping to identify the birds, or point out unique rock formations, or putting their hands out to feel the wet bush as we run through. I’m glad I arrived with enough time before the race to scope out the course and start forming a connection with it. Having memories from social runs on segments of race courses always helps when I hit that part during the actual race.

Obviously I haven’t run the race yet, and who knows how that will turn out, but I’m already glad we came. Morgan and Marshall have been through a lot of travel and interruptions to normal life this year to support my running, and I love having them along with me. It’s hard to know for sure, but Marshall seems to really be enjoying the kangaroos. And I know for a fact that Morgan is.

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Just a disclaimer though- I’m not an expert on this. I’ve had some experiences that have taught me some things. Everyone’s situation is different and a lot of what I’ll say is pretty general. I’m not saying anything here that’s specific to any of my contracts, but I’ve talked to a few agents, athletes, industry insiders, and seen a decent number of contracts for myself. These are some patterns I’ve recognized.

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Your Why

First, and most importantly, if finding a sponsor seems like an end goal for your running, stop and think for a bit. I’ve frequently heard people with the attitude that once you are a sponsored “pro runner”, you’ve made it. There are multiple issues with that idea. The biggest one might be that if you are running more to secure a sponsor and call yourself a pro than for the love of hitting the trails and competing, that motivation disappears once you find a sponsor. You’ll stagnate as you try to rediscover yourself as a sponsored athlete and find new inspiration. Improvements in results come naturally with a love for the sport and passion for training and competing, and given enough time and enough improvement in results, opportunities for sponsorship present themselves. While following this natural progression takes patience, it allows athletes to form a sense of internal value that isn’t tied to relationships with brands. The single best thing you can do if you want to be a pro runner is put that desire aside, enjoy your training, race competitive races, and patiently try over and over again until you’re getting top results.

Getting Noticed

As I’m writing this, I’m realizing there’s a lot of different directions to take and that this article might weave and wind a bit, so if you care about this topic, bear with me. Real quick, let’s talk about what I mean when I say “race competitive races,” because this is a big one. No matter how many local trail 50Ks you dominate in your hometown, you won’t get noticed by a big brand until you see where you stack up against a deeper, more recognizable field of competitors. This can be a challenge because it often means traveling, at least domestically, to the most competitive events in your country, if not internationally. I understand that this requires personal investment and that travel isn’t cheap. The good news is, whether that race pays off or not in terms of landing you a sponsor, these races are worth traveling for and are often very scenic, special experiences in their own right. With that said, if I was an up-and-coming American ultra runner, these are the types of races I’d be eyeing (in order of likeliness to get brand awareness):

1. Golden Tickets. American brands love Western States, and Golden Ticket races are your path to Western. Even if you don’t care about racing Western, they draw a deep competitive field and a podium finish at these races will be noticed.

2. “by UTMB”. Whatever your feelings are towards UTMB as a global race organization, they tend to get decent fields at many of their events for a similar reason that Golden Ticket races are competitive- people want an entry to race UTMB, CCC, and OCC. Understanding the UTMB qualification system can be tricky, read about it and put it on your bucket list to make it to Chamonix someday, it is worth it. UTMB Majors, which currently include the Kodiak ultra for the American major, are deeper than other UTMB events, though there are a handful of classics that are still deep, like the Speedgoat 50k.

3. The Classics. Maybe someone will debate me on which races should be included here, but think about the high-profile American races that don’t fall into the categories above. Run Rabbit 100, Chuckanut 50k, Way Too Cool 50k, and The Rut all come to mind.

4. World Trail Majors/Other International Classics. This one really should be near the top of this list if we’re going in order, but I figured it’s also the category that most people will struggle to pull off. The travel is more expensive, it requires more time away from work, etc. but they are beautiful and these are some of my favorite types of races. Think Transgrancanaria, Ultra Trail Cape Town, Lavaredo- and if you’re going, do the most competitive, marquee distance (feel free to reach out if you need help figuring out which one that is, or read their websites carefully).

Finding the Right Fit

Alright weaving back around to where we were, another issue with having “being a sponsored runner” as your goal is that there is a wide range of levels of sponsorships. Not all runners with a sponsorship are doing the sport professionally, in fact many aren’t getting much more than some free product. Currently within trail running, shoe companies are considered the primary sponsors: the ones with enough resources to invest in you that you could actually see yourself running full time, or at least cutting back a bit on work to focus more on training. These are the partnerships that can allow for breakthrough performances as your work-life balance shifts so that running becomes included on both the “work” and “life” sides. Not all shoe brands are equal in their abilities to support their athlete team. Look for bigger, better known brands if you want to be more confident in them having a bigger athlete marketing budget. However, if you love the vibe of a smaller, more niche brand and align well with their values, these can also be great fits, but they seem to be harder to come by.

If you’ve been trying to find a job lately, you may have noticed that just submitting your resume to an online application feels like sending it into the void, generally with no response. Reaching out to brands can feel similar. And, like getting a job, personal connections are hard to beat. Figure out which races/events the brand you like sponsors, and be there. Win those races, catch their attention, and talk to people wearing the brand’s gear after the race. Ask them to help you get in touch with the athlete manager. Ask friends who work at or run for companies you like for potential contacts. If you feel like you’ve got the results to back it up and you’re just missing a connection, consider reaching out to an agent to help you make connections. If all else fails, send a LinkedIn or Instagram DM, or a cold email, but don’t be offended if you don’t hear back from these methods.

When you reach out, include information about yourself and why you’re a good fit for that particular brand. Companies want to work with passionate athletes who are fans of what they do, and once you’re working with them you’ll be obligated to use their products, so make sure you like them first. Here’s a quick story about how I was introduced to Precision Fuel & Hydration to get a feel for the type of connection and amount of persistence it can take:

I puked a lot during my A-goal race of summer 2023. I had no fueling or hydration strategy and was using whatever gels I could find at the lowest price. I met Eric Lipuma, a PF&H sponsored athlete, and asked him about his fueling strategy. That was my first exposure to Precision. A couple months later I still hadn’t learned from my mistakes. I raced again and puked again, once again using an assortment of whatever I could piece together on a budget. I was staying in a house with Brett Hornig that weekend and he was using Precision and gave me a taste of one of his gels. It was good, and I knew I needed to change something, so I bought a bunch to use for my next race that year, which was the Grindstone 100k Golden Ticket race. That race went well, I didn’t puke, and I got a Golden Ticket. I asked Eric Lipuma for contact info for the PF&H athlete manager, reached out via email to tell my story and ask for support, and didn’t hear back. A month or so later, I was in Hawaii to cheer on my mom at the Ironman World Champs race. The Precision team was there too, including the athlete manager. I went up to their booth at the race expo, introduced myself, met the athlete manager, and got an invite to a happy hour event later that week. I attended and left a good enough impression that the next week I got a reply to my original email, and we started discussing a partnership that has since turned into a great relationship (and a lot fewer stomach problems).

My stories for how I got connected to my other brand partners are generally similar.

Know Your Worth

Now let’s say you’re through the door. You got a reply and a brand you like is interested in chatting. After an initial conversation to see if there’s a fit with the team, you’ll likely be asked what sort of support you have in mind. You should know that very little in any given contract is set in stone. From what I’ve seen, there is often a template used as a starting point that can be largely customized. This is where it can be very helpful to come prepared, and where I’ve learned a lot since my first experiences doing this. Here are some steps I would follow if I were doing this again now:

1. Try to take as much of an objective look at myself as possible. What tier of runner do my race results put me in? What sort of other value can I bring to a brand? Do I love content creation and have a popular YouTube channel, or a strong social media presence, or love product testing, for example. What is the market value for comparable runners? This is the tricky part. In most of our contracts, we are under NDAs and can’t disclose specific details of our compensation, so it is hard to know what athletes across different tiers are making.

   Also, when I say “tiers”, this is a made up categorization that has no measurable definition at this point, and everyone across any of these tiers is a great athlete. Maybe the closest objective measure we could use is UTMB/ITRA index score, but then there’s debate about where the cutoff would be for those tiers and the biases of these index systems. Despite the nuance, you can be fairly confident that a multiple-time UTMB/Western States/World Champs winner is going to be the top tier. The middle tier might be Golden Ticket race winners and podium/top-5 finishers at the biggest races. The lower tier might be Golden Ticket earners, top-10 placements at biggest races. I’m just making these up, and there’s a wide range within each of these categories, so let’s keep it really general. On the low end of the bottom tier we might be talking around $10k USD annual base pay, and on the highest end of the top tier we might be talking closer to $700k+ per year base total across multiple sponsors, but the majority of pro trail runners might fall somewhere in the $25k-$75k/year range.

2. After getting a feel for your current market value, think about time. What contract period would you like to see? Sometimes it makes sense to test a brand out, do a shorter (1 year) contract, and see what happens next cycle. Oftentimes brands will want a longer term relationship (2-4 year contract), which can also provide the athlete with security. What sort of trajectory are you on in the sport? Do you have a feeling that you’re already competing at your potential, or are you on the rise with plenty of room to grow? Over the contract period, where do you optimistically see yourself as an athlete by the end? Does the contract seem fair for an athlete at that potential future level? Are there ways to adjust the contract during the period if you level-up as an athlete? The answer to this last question is usually yes, and sometimes it requires a bit of creativity, but things like a healthy bonus structure, rollover clauses, or option years could help future-proof a contract, but it seems like this varies considerably from brand to brand.

3. Finally, consider your costs and what it would take to feel fully supported. What is preventing you from competing at your highest level? What categories of expenses can you justify for brands to support? For example: travel, coaching, nutrition products, and massage/PT might be more common expenses. But outside the box, if you were to go fully all-in, these might also include childcare, private healthcare costs, a solid enough base payment to cover rent/mortgage and primary life expenses, etc. Even if you don’t think a brand can/will pay the amount you come up with through this exercise, showing them what your situation is and how they could help will at least let them know what they could do to let you unlock more of your full potential as an athlete. Partners can also support in non-monetary ways, like providing access to a sports scientist, nutritionist, additional product, or race crewing. Good partners know that when you win, they win. They’ll want to help you do that as much as possible.

Once you have one good partnership with a sponsor, additional partnerships become easier. You’ll know your market value for that first company, and you know what obligations you have for them. You can reach out to other companies and scale both the pay and level of obligation depending on what you’re looking for with them. If you’re a big fan of certain brands or products, use them in racing and training and let the brand know about it. Set a baseline floor pay amount for yourself that you can use to filter out partners that don’t want to make a serious investment in you, and negotiate hard to get above that floor with partners who are a good fit. If you’re not stoked about the agreement, don’t be afraid to walk away. More opportunities will come along with time.

The stereotypical trail runner is just doing this for the love of the game, not for money, and comes at brand partnerships with a bit of a dirtbaggy “I’m just excited they’re taking a chance on me” kind of attitude. Some of that is good, and we are lucky to be able to make money doing something we love, but the more we all realize our worth in this rapidly-growing industry and ask for fair pay, the more all athletes are rewarded.

Your Responsibilities

All contracts come with obligations. Race results, team camps, product testing, media shoots, social media posts, hosting community runs, etc. Some are easy, natural, and fun. Others are challenging and can be stressful or cause interruptions to training or family life. Maximize the ones that sound fun and authentic, minimize the ones that don’t. Try to negotiate out anything that causes stress, or make sure you are well-compensated for that stress. If the stress will negatively impact training or performance, it’s not worth it. This sounds obvious but it can be hard to have an honest conversation about what you will and won’t do when there’s the pressure of being on a call with a potential sponsor that you want to keep happy. That’s where changing the perspective from “I’m lucky to be talking to this sponsor” to “I want this partnership if we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement” is valuable. Ask for a day to get your thoughts together then continue the conversation if needed.

Communication is key. Quick responses keep things moving along. Follow up if you haven’t gotten an update for a while. Be respectful and professional. Once you have a contract ready that you’re happy with, get it signed and live up to your side of the agreement. Continue communicating with the athlete manager or marketing point of contact openly throughout the contract duration. Let them know if there are projects you’re excited about that could be a good fit for them to support beyond the original scope of the contract. Ask for feedback and check in regularly with them, especially making sure to reach out well before the contract expires if you’re interested in renewing.

Final Thoughts

I kind of like this stuff. I think in an alternate/future life being an agent or at least an unofficial mentor type person within trail running would be fun. I do think we’re hearing more about agents in trail these days, but this definitely still isn’t the norm for most pros and if you like advocating for yourself and don’t mind the learning curve, I don’t think an agent is necessarily worth it. There’s a lot more I’d like to write about all this and resources I could share, but some of that feels like the sort of thing that would be better to do once I’m less involved in the competitive side of the sport.

The process of finding products and brands that match your vibe or work well for you, getting results using those products, and then working to form a partnership with the companies making those products is pretty cool. When done right, it should be a win-win relationship that allows the athlete more freedom to pursue their goals to the fullest, while promoting products they believe in. Sponsorship isn’t the goal, it’s a tool.

The man got some exciting news one spring day. He had secured a reservation at an exclusive establishment in Spain, famous for their traditional paella. Amongst foodies, this was the location to get paella. So he spent the next few months furthering his education on paella, sampling Spanish saffron from La Mancha, analyzing the grain length of bomba rice, and even studying the background of the head chef to better understand everything that made this paella so special. He skipped meals to save money for the transatlantic flight, the journey out to the restaurant, and the expensive meal itself. He wanted to be able to feast like a king when the time was right.

In the final days before his reservation, the man hardly ate. It was important to ensure that he was hungry enough to finish the entire platter of paella and savor every morsel. At long last, as he strolled nervously down the path to the door of the restaurant, his stomach growled. Delicious aromas of roasted garlic and slow-cooked meats wafted from the kitchen. The long-awaited day had arrived.

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A welcoming host showed him to his table. The entire staff were expecting him and his reputation as a foodie preceded him, so they were excited to serve him a meal they were confident that he’d love. The menu was set, and soon the first course was delivered: patatas bravas with a creamy salsa roja. These bite-sized potatoes were a simple appetizer, but cooked to perfection. Crispy skin, savory but not overly salted, with a kick from the red sauce that had his mouth watering. Though he was ravenous and had a large dish of patatas bravas in front of him, he paced himself. He knew the paella was coming and the last thing he wanted was to fill up on potatoes before it arrived.

By the sixth potato, his mind had started to drift, daydreaming about the steaming platter that would carry the next course. One moment he was chewing, the next he couldn’t breathe. What was happening? He panicked, trying to clear the blockage in his windpipe. After several attempts, standing and pressing himself down on the back of his chair, the large chunk of potato flew out of his mouth and he gasped for air. He felt the gaze of everyone in the silent restaurant burning through him, concerned voices asking if he was alright. His face flushed. His life revolved around food, and he couldn’t even handle eating a potato. Why did this have to happen here? Why now?

He tried to put the moment behind him. The gracious host cleared the patatas bravas. After a few minutes, the main course was served. The paella looked better than he had allowed himself to imagine. Every sniff brought new flavors to his nose. But his throat hurt from having potato lodged in it, and he was anxious about taking a bite. He cautiously took a nibble and his fears were confirmed. He couldn’t even enjoy the unique flavors because of the excruciating pain associated with swallowing. He tried and he tried, and each nibble tore at his raw throat more than the last. He asked for the bill (which was, of course, full price) and, ashamed of the full platter of paella left behind, exited the restaurant, avoiding eye contact with the host, chef, and fellow guests.

He came hungry for a feast, and departed with his tail between his legs, still hungry but with his throat too sore to eat. Dreaming about the day he could enjoy his next meal.

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The point of the trip wasn’t just to be out here to train for and race the World Championships, but because that happened at the end of the trip it sort of felt like that was the culmination of everything. Just because that race didn’t go how I’d envisioned doesn’t mean the rest of the time here felt like a waste. I’ve already written about the Chamonix and Arêches chapters of the trip, as well as a sort of pre-race hype post that has aged poorly because I didn’t really get a chance to enter the fray before my day was over. I don’t feel like I need to do some detailed DNF report, there’s not much more to say. What I do feel is all the carb-loaded muscles just sitting in my legs doing nothing, yearning for the burn and drain and ache that they never felt.

So I suppose it makes sense then that my mind is already dreaming of what’s next. What can I do to get that release I was anticipating, and how can I get it as soon as possible? I have some ideas spinning around. A lot depends on how soon I can run again on this knee. All I know for sure is that I can’t end the year like that. I need one last ride, and the World Trail Majors seem like the way to get it.

One final note: we’re coming up on nearly a year since I started this Substack. Big thanks to everyone who supports it by subscribing, commenting, sharing, etc. It’s fun for me to write these and cool to know that some people actually read them. I never intended for this to be a form of income, but as it has grown I’ve had opportunities come up and when the right offer of support comes along I take it. I’d like to thank Precision Fuel & Hydration for not only being there for all of my training and race nutrition needs, but for also supporting my writing as the new presenting sponsor of Chasing Trail. I can honestly say that PF&H has completely changed the way I fuel for races and has played a large role in my progress as an athlete. I’ve also gotten to know the team behind the products well over my time working with them and I believe in their mission.

I want to be transparent about this agreement because I don’t want this to feel like annoying advertisements or forced product pitches. I’m not going to tell you to go try Precision, lots of things work well for different people. I’ll just tell you that it’s what I use because it works great for me, and I’ll occasionally tell you a bit about how I use it. My writing will continue being what I want, when I want. I’ll use some specific names of my favorite PF&H products when I naturally reference them in my writing, because my nutrition is a core part of my training and racing. In the next year or so, I’ll write one article that focuses on my approach to fueling and hydration. I’ll also write one article about something strongly related to Precision (I have some ideas on this, but it’ll be a surprise). Other than that, things will stay the same, but now at the end of each one of these articles you’ll see something like this:

After surviving a plane crash in the arctic and being hunted by wolves as he tries to find civilization, the main character is finally surrounded by the pack as the sun is going down and the situation is bleak. He arms himself with whatever sharp object he’s got left and repeats the poem that’s been a theme throughout the movie:

Once more into the fray
Into the last good fight I'll ever know.
Live and die on this day...
Live and die on this day...

We don’t know for sure what happens, but it’s safe to assume he gets eaten by wolves. It’s an intense ending (and movie in general). But the way that he faces this final battle is interesting to me. He’s gotten familiar with facing overwhelming odds, and if this is it, this is it. But he’s ready to face the wolves head on and fight. He knows that it’s likely he’ll die, but the fight will also make him feel alive, and it’s really his best option at this point. This is a dramatic, over-exaggerated comparison, but that’s a bit how I’m feeling heading into the World Champs race in just less than a week.

I’ve had a long year already. Just in terms of running, I’ve fought some good fights at TGC and WSER. I’ve thrown myself into the fray against stacked odds and somehow not just survived, but also come out on top and healthy. While it’s comforting to know that’s possible, each time I go into the fray I know that, more likely than not, I’ll lose. The sport is too deep and competitive now at these top-tier races for anyone to really have more than a 50% chance of winning, so the reality is that everyone will probably lose. That’s what keeps this game so exciting.

The good news is that in this case, losing does not equal death by wolves. In many ways, losing doesn’t even equal not winning. More and more, I think losing is not feeling like I gave it my best. Both during the lead up in training and on race day, if I set myself up as well as possible for success and fought as hard as I could, I see that as a win. And it is something I can control. “Live and die on this day.” Not “live or die.” I race to experience intense feelings, good and bad. It makes life feel deep: the lows might be terrible but the highs feel higher. In order to get the most life out of the experience, you have to push to the point where you’re dying a little.

I don’t know what will happen on Saturday. This course is gnarly. Team USA is stacked, and so are some of the other teams. I probably won’t win. But there’s a chance. I do know I’m ready to enter the fray. Ready to treat it like it’s the last good fight I’ll ever know. Ready to live and die on that day.

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I take for granted the ability to run, to move through rocky, steep terrain, without really having a conscious thought about it. At some point that I don’t remember anymore, those steps were new and difficult. We become better at what we repeat, and we build muscle memory that allows our brains to focus on other tasks while we mindlessly go through the motions. Usually, that’s great. If I had to think hard about every step, I wouldn’t be a very good trail runner. But it also causes routine and boredom and a lack of appreciation for simple motions.

There’s a lot I’d like to write about right now. We finished off the Chamonix chapter of our Europe adventure. Maybe the highlight was managing to fit in two back-to-back Mont Blanc summits with good friends from Utah on perfect, sunny mornings. Now we’ve moved a couple valleys over, to a quiet little mountain town called Arêches near Beaufort, France. After just about a week here, I’m already feeling like there’s a fine line between a paradise and a prison.

The town is home to endurance legends like Francios D’haene and (much of the year) Jim Walmsley, and is in a cirque surrounded by thousands of feet of beautiful mountains in every direction. Basically, it’s a trail runner’s playground. Waterfalls, flocks of sheep, alpine ridge lines, and seemingly unlimited combinations of ways to link together epic routes. However, there’s not much else. If you’re healthy, training, and into trails (or skiing in winter), it is a paradise. If any of those are not true, I could imagine going stir-crazy.

I’ve had the chance to connect with Jim for many of my runs out here and it has been really cool getting to know him better. I love hearing about the decision process to move here and the tradeoffs you have to make. It seems wild to me that as an American, if I really wanted to and Morgan was on board, we could actually just move our life to a place like this. In many ways, it feels like a purer, simpler, more natural way for humans to live, and makes the thought of Utah’s traffic, fast food chains, and Amazon overnight delivery seem dystopian. I get the impression that Jim’s more of a private guy and I want to respect that so I won’t go into much detail, but this is a special opportunity for me to learn from the best and I’m very excited to be racing Worlds together in a couple of weeks.

To connect this back a bit, these past couple of weeks in France have been good for getting me out of my routine. A plan and schedule are helpful sometimes, but had me feeling like things were stale. I needed a shake-up and I got one. That comes with positives and negatives. The pros are currently far outweighing the cons and I love that running is enabling me to have these sorts of experiences. I’m not relearning hand-eye coordination or anything, but I am getting a new perspective and enjoying the journey.

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First, I’m excited to be part of the launch of the All Conditions Racing Department, which is essentially what was formerly known as the Nike Trail team. With a big Nike ACG (All Conditions Gear) launch party and lots of product/brand meetings, many of my days here involve meetings giving feedback and brainstorming. Usually I’m not a big fan of meetings, but when you sit down and the questions are things like “what challenges do you face as an athlete that we can support you with?” then I’m much more interested. We’ve had some creative ideas come out of these sessions and lots of cool stuff coming that I’m excited to put to the test out in the wild. I feel honored to also get the chance to support and crew one of my teammates, Anthony Costales, at CCC on Friday, as well as cheer on all the other teammates and friends I’ll have out here competing in UTMB races.

Next, I’m here to climb Mont Blanc. When I first laid eyes on Madame Blanc back in 2021 I got all hot and bothered to go climbing. I didn’t give myself enough time to responsibly fit that in before my race, so I swore if I ever came back I’d give it a shot. In 2022, I had my second opportunity (or so I thought). Rockfall and low snow levels made the route extremely dangerous that year and it was essentially shut down, so I postponed yet again. In 2024, I came out with all my gear, weeks before the race, determined to summit. Morgan and I pulled off a fantastic morning together, reaching the summit just after sunrise, and it was absolutely perfect. But I want more. Originally, I thought an FKT attempt could be the move, but with questionable reports about route conditions and a desire avoid any serious training interruptions I’ve changed my mind about that. I still plan to climb Mont Blanc at least once in the next few days. It’s a special mountain and standing on its peak makes the UTMB races around it feel even more personally meaningful.

I’m also here to train and prepare for the World Championships race in Spain next month. I’m surrounded by great steep terrain and it’s easy to be motivated to put in big days in the mountains here. There are many other amazing runners to train with and plenty of fresh trails to explore. I can double-dip and use this as an opportunity to scout out sections of the UTMB course as well, which I’d love to come back and race next year.

Last but certainly not least, I’m here to have an adventure with my family. Morgan and Marshall are along for the journey and it has been so fun having the whole gang together in this amazing place. In some ways it’s a challenge to have a baby out here and we were a bit intimidated, and we miss the support of family and friends back home, but we’re also proving to ourselves that we can be independent still have a great time on our own. Marshall gets more interactive and alert each day and has started laughing a lot, so it’s nice to feel like I’m hilarious. Morgan supports me in my training and recovery and has also been able to find time for her own runs, yoga sessions, town walks, morning cafes, and dinners with friends.

It’s a huge relief and a really fun time being in Chamonix without the pressure of racing looming over me. I love racing here, but I had begun to feel a bit burned out after years of it, and I think this is exactly the reset I needed to get me excited about racing here again next year. Enjoying the area without any of the usual stress. Piling on the vert with the legs feeling good. Eating plenty of French breads and cheeses. Not a bad life.

This is being filtered through about two decades of memory, but it seems like just about every weekend from age 5 to 15 was spent fishing with my dad. Our white whale, the ultimate dream of any Pacific Northwest flyfisher, was to hook into a steelhead. These powerful fish grew much larger than your average rainbow trout, thanks to a unique journey out to the ocean to feed, much like salmon. We were so obsessed that one weekend we even attended a steelhead fishing convention of some sort. I vaguely remember a wooden lodge full of fishing nerds swapping stories about their most impressive catches. Each season when the steelhead run was on, we’d head out to the Snoqualmie or Tolt rivers and try our luck.

One day, we struck gold. I say we, but my dad was way better than me at fly fishing. He was certainly more patient. He spotted a lone steelhead lurking in a deep pool under some overhanging branches near the shore of the river. He floated a Muddler Minnow right past its mouth over and over until finally, probably out of annoyance more than hunger, he got a strike. The steelhead ripped up the river and stripped out line so fast I thought for sure it was bound to snap. Somehow it didn’t. He fought that fish for what felt like hours. In reality it was probably closer to 45 minutes. I sprinted up and down the river, chasing after it. At one point I tried to jump onto the fish in the water, my little kid mind imagining the glory of wrestling the beast into submission, filling up my waders and soaking myself. I actually got my arms mostly around the slippery thing. If we’d had a net with us, it would have been game over. But fearing that the fish, far from exhausted, would flail around and I’d end up with a hook in my hand (which likely would have happened), my dad called me off and I let go. After a few more minutes, the line tangled around a log, snapped, and the white whale swam free.

Nearly 20 years later, that fight with the steelhead remains etched in my brain. I’ve let work, running, family, friends, etc. take over the time that I used to dedicate to fishing. I don’t regret that, but today was a reminder that there’s a place for keeping old passions alive. I set a 5:30am alarm, met my bud Mike in Little Cottonwood Canyon, and we ran up to Red Pine Lake. I whipped out my collapsible fly rod, caught two rainbows and a cutthroat in the span of about 15 minutes, then continued on to summit Pfiefferhorn, a classic local 11,000ft peak. We were back out to the car just in time for my first meeting of the morning. An efficient, action-packed, perfect little morning adventure. Mike even managed to snag some banger pics.

The goal of fly fishing is to imitate nature so realistically that the fish think they’re eating an easy meal. It forces you to observe feeding patterns, the types of insects in the area, the most active time of day, the deepest pools of water. You’re rewarded with the satisfying splash of a fish on the line. You can draw it up to the surface, admire its unique colors, free it from your trap fairly quickly and non-invasively, and allow the fish to continue on its way.

So often while running I’m focused on the trail. I’m head down, locked in. I’m covering the distance from Point A to Point B. I’m training for a larger goal. But taking the time to stop at a lake or stream and tune in with nature before continuing my journey reminds me why I’m out here in the first place. I imagine that (in an alternate reality where I’m artistic) doing a watercolor painting on a summit would have the same effect. Very little of the time we spend running is racing, so enjoying a solid portion of the training in whatever way resonates with you keeps the process pure and sustainable.

1. One of the biggest obstacles top athletes face is being too cool for the “Wannabe Mindset.”

2. If you don’t believe that doping is actually performance-enhancing, you’re not worried about whether your sport is clean.

These two points are fairly unrelated, but I thought both were interesting, so I’ll jump around a bit here. I recommend listening to the episode for context and to hear Allen and Jack’s full conversation, but rather than rephrasing what they said, I’ll share some of the paths my brain went down while listening to it during my Saturday run from Deer Valley to Snowbird to watch my friends race Speedgoat. Hopefully this gets some wheels spinning or starts a conversation. I think Allen’s take on doping is the more controversial of the two, so let’s save the best for last and start with the concept of the Wannabe Mindset.

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The Wannabe Mindset: a blessing or a curse?

Allen has coached many of cycling and triathlon’s top athletes. He’s seen it all. When asked what common obstacles elite athletes face, he brought up the idea that some people think they’re too cool to be “wannabes.” The way I’d define wannabe in this context is: an athlete who isn’t satisfied with where they’re at—they want to be someone or reach a point in their sport or career they haven’t yet achieved.

This wannabe mindset is framed as a good thing. By staying hungry and always striving for more, top athletes push themselves harder and see more results. Athletes who’ve reached the top and get complacent may start feeling like they have it all figured out, like they’re too cool to show insecurity or admit they want more, leaving space for the competition to catch up.

This got me thinking about how much of a double-edged sword that perspective can be, in sport or life in general. If a never-satisfied attitude is the very thing that drives success and greatness, it could also be what prevents happiness. This idea stuck with me enough that I’m sitting here, days later, still thinking and writing about it, because I relate to it. Every time I accomplish something I once thought would exceed my expectations, I’m amazed and proud. For a minute. Then it’s on to finding the next potential source of amazement and pride. Each time, it has to be bigger and better, exceeding expectations by the same margin just to feel the same sense of satisfaction.

Trail running is a privileged thing to be able to do. We don’t need to go make ourselves suffer, covering these long distances as fast as possible. If we’re choosing to spend our time and resources doing this, it likely means other parts of our lives are pretty good. If you’re like me, you might already have everything you truly need. In theory, it should be easy to sit back and enjoy that. In reality, that feels like such an unproductive, meaningless way to live. It’s like in a race: if you’re not moving forward, you’re being caught. Sink or swim. It’s not even about others catching up, it’s about needing to feel internal progress. Maybe that’s a superpower that allows athletes to push limits, or scientists to expand human knowledge, or entrepreneurs to grow businesses. Or maybe it’s an affliction that leads to burnout, or depression, or damaged relationships. There are arguments for both sides, and it’s probably one of those things where the answer is something like “it can be good in moderation.”

Does doping matter?

The only moment in the episode that really shocked me was when Jack Burke asked Allen Lim, who coached known dopers during the prime doping era in cycling, whether he thinks the sport is clean now, about 15 years later. Allen’s immediate reply:

“It doesn’t matter.”

How can it not matter if a sport is clean? If clean athletes are competing against those using performance-enhancing drugs, isn’t that unfair? In many ways, I still think the answer is yes. It is unfair, it does matter, and it should be addressed. But Allen’s rationale was fascinating, and I’d never considered his perspective before.

His argument is that doping only matters if you believe it’s truly, holistically performance-enhancing. Sure, some athletes might pull off a great race, season, or even career while doping. But the entire time, they’re making sacrifices that can compromise their physical and mental health, perhaps to the point where a clean competitor actually has the advantage.

That led me to do a bit of research into the drawbacks of doping. Every drug has side effects, and so-called performance-enhancing drugs are no exception. For example, the main goal of blood doping in endurance sports is to increase red blood cell count, which improves oxygen delivery to muscles. But thicker blood increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, or pulmonary embolism—especially while at rest, like during sleep. Other banned substances, like stimulants and hormones, can disrupt sleep, which impairs recovery and increases stress. Long-term use has been linked to organ damage, mood swings, and behavioral changes.

That’s enough to be concerning, but the mental side effects of doping seem even more crippling. Imagine standing on a podium and knowing you cheated to get there. Wondering if you’d be good enough naturally. Feeling like you didn’t really earn it. Paranoid of getting caught. While dopers wrestle with that stress, clean athletes can draw strength from knowing they have the self-belief, integrity, and discipline to play fair.

I’ve written previously about doping after reading The Secret Race, which left me convinced that trail running urgently needed widespread anti-doping controls. I still believe that, but regardless of controls, people will find ways to cheat. That book detailed life in the early 2000s pro cycling peloton, when doping was rampant. What stands out to me now from those stories is the isolation and secrecy those athletes endured, often hiding their habits from even teammates and family.

Clean athletes, on the other hand, can focus on the process, the love of the sport, and the long-term journey. Dopers are constantly dodging tests, securing supply, managing doses, and dealing with feelings of guilt and shame. That stress must significantly affect performance, especially in a sport like trail running where doping is still stigmatized and not seen as inevitable the way it was in cycling during the Armstrong era.

Thoughts? Comments?

Do you ever struggle to feel satisfied with your accomplishments, even after reaching a big goal? Why do you think that is?

Do you feel like the drawbacks of doping outweigh the performance enhancement? If so, are clean athletes the ones at a competitive advantage?

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