Beyond the Trails: Finn and Jules

Behind the scenes on relationships with some of Utah's finest

Continuing this series of highlighting friends who have transcended running influence and have an important influence on my life, today I’d like to introduce the world to Finn Melanson (jk I’m sure way more people know him than me) and Jules Campanelli. You may know Finn as the host of the Singletrack podcast, Jules as one of the leaders of the Women of the Wasatch running group, and both as race directors of the Twisted Fork running festival. I’ve been lucky enough to have known them even before they were famous and have watched and learned from their journey together.

Finn and I met at a local race in 2019, the Corner Canyon 50k, which ended up completely changing the direction of my life. I was finishing up school and had been doing summer internships in the Seattle area, thinking my wife and I would move back to the Pacific Northwest after graduation. Trail running and racing was still quite new to me and I was “training” about 30-40 miles a week, always by myself. I wouldn’t describe myself as extraverted and finding people to run with hadn’t been a high priority to me, partially because I didn’t know any better.

The day I met Finn, post-race at the Corner Canyon 50k.

Naturally during these types of races you end up spreading out and forming little groups that run together during at least portions of the race. I found myself surrounded by Finn, Eli White, and Grant Barnette. They were friendly and we chatted for a few miles before the going got too tough, and we all ended up finishing with ten minutes of each other. They mentioned they had a group that ran together, got my contact info, and I felt welcome and excited about the idea of meeting up with them to run again. That started my introduction to the Salt Lake trail running community. It turns out their network ran deep and I soon found myself at weekly pancake breakfast runs, game nights, and regular training days with many new people, and I was having fun.

The combination of making friends and seeing more of the local trails caused me to start considering staying in Utah longer-term, and moving back to Washington no longer felt like the obvious choice. In fact, we ended up moving to Corner Canyon, the location of that race where I met everyone, soon after—in large part because it seemed so cool to me that such good trails could be woven throughout what felt like this magical little neighborhood on top of the hill, and also because I had Finn frequently whispering in my ear that I should.

One of the major goals I had when I started trail running was to qualify for and participate in the CCC UTMB race. In 2021, Finn and I shared that goal and it was the first time that I had been signed up for a big race with a friend and plenty of time to train for it together. That summer it seems like just about any significant run I did was with Finn. Having a reliable training partner with a great attitude made the miles fly by. Even wildfire smoke couldn’t stop us, we put in some massive long runs in terrible AQI conditions and came away with red eyes and sore throats and probably did more harm than good, but made some lasting memories.

A smoky summit during one of our best training runs together over that 2021 summer. I’ve never been dropped so hard by Finn as I was going up the final climb on Box Elder peak that day.

In the lead up to that first CCC, I also discovered that Finn has this hidden talent for subtle inception. He’ll plant ideas in your mind without you really understanding how they got there, and those ideas will motivate your actions. In this case, he assured me he had “done the math” and come to the conclusion that I could and must break 12 hours at CCC. He’s good at picking goals that are within reach, but tough and require honest focus. My pacing strategy, crew checkpoint estimates, etc. were all based off that number that Finn had given me, and this was just the first of several races that this would happen for. And as usual, he was right.

I have a series of photos on my camera roll across the years on this date, at this restaurant, with Finn holding up the number of years he’s crashed our anniversary dinner. For better or worse, it wouldn’t be the same without him.

2021 was also the year of the fateful Rim-to-Rim adventure. Running from one rim to the other of the Grand Canyon was actually pretty straightforward and uneventful, but after we had a big decision to make. Because of the logistics with car shuttling and the group we were with, which included a bunch of Morgan’s Women of the Wasatch friends and my high school friend Reece from Flagstaff, we basically had the option of either driving south to hang out in Flagstaff for a couple days, or following the girls to camp out on Lake Powell. With a literal coin flip, Lake Powell won and Morgan was excited to get to spend more time with her pals on the lake. What we didn’t realize was that amongst those girls was one Julia Campanelli, who had just completed an overnight Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim and was in the process of falling asleep in a camp chair by the fire when we pulled up.

Finn and I coming up the north rim of the Grand Canyon, mere hours before he met the love of his life.

Some gravitational force captured Finn and he immediately plopped his chair down next to Jules and began to chat in only the way that a future successful podcast host can. The conversation must have been riveting because she stayed awake for at least another hour or two. That kicked off a relationship that, three years later, paved the way for me and Morgan (but mostly me) to feel more comfortable about having a kid of our own after watching them go through it and seeing their excitement and preparation.

Morgan and I have been together over 7 years now and one thing that was kind of tricky at first was that we didn’t really have any couple friends. I had my running guys, and Morgan had some of her friends, but there wasn’t a lot of overlap. Finn and Jules were one of the first that we were both friends with individually and together. They quickly because our go-to adventure buddies, traveling to races together, exploring new mountain ranges, and playing Settlers of Catan until we all hated each other.

Adventuring in the San Juans together. I believe this was a consolation jog to help Morgan, Finn, and Jules forget about their crushing defeat in that morning’s round of Catan.

During that time together, I noticed a couple things about Jules. First, she was always grinding. She kind of reminded me of my mom in that it’s rare to see her just sitting around doing nothing. Productivity is key to happiness. Even on flights out to races, she’d be the last to board the plane because she wanted every second of wifi she could get to finish reviewing work for a “scalable deployment to production” (you can always count on her to drop some good corporate tech lingo). When she’s not working she’s thinking about her startup flower arrangement business, planning a Women of the Wasatch board meeting, starting a trail running festival, or organizing logistics for Finn’s next week-long race, in addition to now caring for their daughter and two needy cats. It’s inspiring to see how well it’s possible to do at so many things at once, and if you ever need to guarantee something is done right, you talk to Jules.

Paparazzi captured this image of Jules en route to boarding a flight to the 2022 Canyons 100k, unwilling to stow her laptop in the overhead compartment.

Another important thing to know about Jules is she’s got one of the most distinctive, contagious laughs and she’s not afraid to use it. It’s an open-mouthed, full-bodied laugh that we’ve often picked out of a crowd from a considerable distance. If you haven’t had a chance to experience it yet, you really should spend some more time with her. One of the lowest, saddest points I’ve ever seen her at was when she was around mile 30 of the Tushars 70k. She had gone into the race with some ankle issues from rolling them previously, but had trained hard and really wanted a finish. I don’t remember why (maybe Finn was running an aid station?), but for some reason I was on-call for DNF duty when she was reduced to a hobble after re-spraining the problematic ankle deep in the race. I picked her up from the side of a forest road and even though she was quite upset about how the day had gone, it didn’t take long to hear that classic laugh and see her turning the sadness around. Having people like that in your life who can find the good in any situation and bring happiness has been amazing for both me and Morgan.

An example of Jules caught in the act of spreading laughter and happiness on a rainy day, ironically also in the Tushars mountains a couple years after that rough day on the 70k course. Even Finn can’t avoid the contagiousness.

It feels like something is missing to end this without mentioning all of the pacing experiences Finn and I have been through together, but I think that will need to wait. Suffice it to say that we’ve had some mid-race ups and downs together but no matter the outcome I’ve never regretted a run with him and I usually come away motivated by his example. Few people have done as much for the Salt Lake area trail running community as Finn and Jules, and their impact extends well beyond the local area. Morgan and I certainly wouldn’t be where we are today without them, and we really like where we are today. We’re lucky to call them friends.