Despite taking nearly 3 years and thousands upon thousands of miles logged on foot to go from never having run longer than a half marathon to finishing a 200 mile multi day event, the decision to pursue ultra endurance had nothing to do with running.

The decision was made on an easy morning 5K through the jungle in Sayulita, Mexico with my pops, just days after losing everything I had been working on for years. A devastating rock bottom which took with it my business, my relationship, really my entire life as I knew it, all which was now obliterated. Ash & bones. I felt like a hollowed version of myself and was filled with anger, confusion, and a deep sadness which felt more like mourning than anything else.

I was 25 and my ego was tied to appearance and materialism, hanging my entire identity on being an entrepreneur building my business and making money. Well now I found myself with no business, no money, and really no belongings as I had upped and left quickly to protect myself from making an angry and emotional decision that could have landed me in prison. She can have my things.. He can have my business.. A tough decision to make when you hear your woman's voice coming from your business partner's bedroom.

There was certainly something metaphysical about my path to the mountains and ultra endurance. It was inevitable I'd find myself toeing the line for a pursuit that borders the line of extreme and completely ridiculous, I just needed to reach my boiling point that would set it all in motion.

My dad moved us to Colorado when I was in 1st grade, but he had me backpacking and skiing from the moment my mom would let him. I grew up wild and free, learning from the rolling stone that is my father who pushed my brother and I hard in the mountains and at home. So much so, that for the better part of my teens and into my twenties I rejected it in favor of being a college football playing jock and weight lifting guy. Although, I didn't lose my respect for mountain athletes or "hard men" doing hard things. The warrior ideal has always resonated with me and I was drawn to Navy SEALs, world class athletes, high power CEOs, men who had "done something" when I had never done anything, at least in my mind.

As a self improvement nerd I had of course read David Goggins' book, listened to Cam Hanes talk on Joe Rogan, and even read Finding Ultra as per recommendation from my pops, but I remember it clicking vividly when I watched a video on YouTube about Chadd Wright running the Cocodona 250. Iron Man events and marathons and even 100 mile races seemed like testosterone bro Twitter canon, but what Chadd was doing didn't make sense to me. Humans are able to do something like that? It felt super human, even divine for someone to endure such suffering.

I was living in Scottsdale and my screen printing business was slowly killing me while I felt a thundering storm brewing in my life. I didn't know why at the time, but I felt myself to be too soft for what I felt was on the horizon. For some reason felt it was in my best interest to go buy a new pair of running shoes.

I had been lying to myself for years that I was just like Goggins or Chadd or Jocko or Andy Frisella, but I knew deep down I was nothing like any of them. I mean yeah I had played college football and trained MMA for years, so physical fitness always felt like a good response to any kind of adversity, but I knew deep down I needed to become something more, because so far I was failing myself, and something had to change. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.. So I simply started with day one.

A clip from that day. I thought maybe it would be good to catalog, like this time might be different…

I slowly gained some momentum as I'd wake up at the crack of dawn to hit my run before a 15 hour shift making cold calls in the day and printing shirts at night. As I'd reach flow, I started to get the earliest visions of my brand I wanted to build, In Harm's Way, imagining how fucking sick it would be to someday make shorts, sunglasses, even shoes and wear them while I was out training. I wanted to just keep motion as I'd always build a couple weeks of consistency, then my lack of strength of will would crumble beneath me as I'd lose the fleeting sense of being "motivated". So I pressed on with something to prove to myself and with a hunch that something was about to take a major turn for the worst and I needed to be ready.

~~A month later my world came crashing down, at the snap of someone else's fingers I had nothing and felt as if I was nothing. Ironically, we had a family vacation planned with my parents and brother over Thanksgiving to Mexico although I was in shock at what had just unfolded with no idea about what was going to come next.

As my dad and I jogged through the jungle and I shared with him the details of my tragedy, a spark in my belly began to catch flame. Something has to be done, I cannot go on like this another moment. This is a defining moment in my life, but in which direction is up to me!

"I think I want to try and run a 100 miler." I let out half embarrassed. And so began my running journey that had nothing to do with running and everything about the complete destruction and shedding of the old me, to give way for the new me to be forged.

Year 1. 2024

I knew nothing. I lived for the first 2 months of 2024 out of different hotels in Orange County with my new business partner as we scrambled to build some cash flow. I leaned as hard as I could into running and "hustling" out of ego. I was angry, my heart was filled with negative motivation and it burned red hot. Everything I did was fueled by some sort of "I'll show them!" I even prided myself on going "grizzly mode" which meant I didn't eat or drink water as I pushed the distances I was able to travel. I didn't have a car so I'd go as far as I could out the hotel door and try to make it back, sometimes having to call Jared in for the air lift out because there was no way I'd make it back to where I started in Irvine from where I'd run to in Newport. We started to rebuild the business, gained some cash flow, and somehow found ourselves back able to afford a nice spot on the top floor in Irvine.

I'd caught wind of Max Joliffe who was also in OC, well before he won Moab, and I'd begun poaching his routes through the trail system that connects Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, which I've always just called El Moro.

I was starting to push my distances and had upgraded to not holding my phone, but rather putting it in the weird side pocket of my built in compression running shorts and eating a protein bar or two. I'd hold a bright blue soft bottle of water sometimes. Eventually I chafed through that pair of shorts and felt that it was time to upgrade to a proper running vest seeing that I wanted to attempt to run from the tip of Balboa up to Huntington Beach and back soon, which would be about 30 miles. When I finished that effort all I cared about was posting the Strava screenshot to my Instagram story to try and give a middle finger to whoever could get it.

As has held consistent throughout this journey, it was divinely timed that that spring my dad's friend Paul had signed up for the High Lonesome 100 lottery and gotten selected. All of the sudden everything about the mission I was on became much more real and achievable to me as Paul, a regular guy I knew who simply made a decision to do something hard, tapped on me to help crew and pace him for his race that July. So I amped up my training as I knew I'd have a 40 mile section with him which was equally my proving ground as it would be his.

It wasn't until I ran 40 miles in preparation for HiLo from Balboa to Seal Beach and back with only 2 protein bars and utilizing water fountains along the way that I learned my body begins to shut down and cramp without proper fueling. Maybe grizzly mode wasn't the proper method..

High Lonesome in July was where my understanding of the sport and community finally began. They made us scrape our shoes clean in a bucket of water and disinfectant at check in and I realized how bald my Hokas were compared to everyone else's brand new pair of racing shoes. I had been running in the same pair for a year and it never occurred to me that I might need some tread for the 10k vert I was going to be pacing through.

Helping us crew Paul was his coach, Anthony Lee with his long dyed red hair and the biggest quads I'd ever seen, whom I spent a good chunk of time with just chatting about all things ultra on the back of my dads truck bed. He made me believe that this journey I was on wasn't crazy and that I actually did have full ability to execute if I simply put in the required work.

My section with Paul began at midnight on Monarch Pass and after hotboxing the truck and chugging a Red Bull, I got my first taste of what Goggins calls "taking souls". The act of seeing another runner's headlamp in the distance and slowly stalking them down, only to overtake them and steal and absorb their energy as you pass. We stole at least 10 souls that night and I was absolutely hooked.

As we finished I remember telling Paul that after this, nothing would ever be the same for him, this was forever his. I attached enormous existential weight to 100 miles, to me it was the closest thing I'd ever experienced to enlightenment, a complete self overcoming through willpower alone. It wasn't about the race or finishing time, it was about the raw and visceral experience of overcoming suffering deep in the mountains. To me, it was about the aesthetic of moving minimally and efficiently through the terrain, radiating the warrior ideal and accepting that self destruction may lie on the other side, but potentially also glory.

I left that experience hungrier than before. I immediately signed up for my first race, a 50 miler in the Pacific Palisades near Los Angeles, put on by Keira Henninger in October with 8k feet of gain. I had seen that the start of Max Joliffe's rise had come from his finish at one of KH's races and I'd begun seeing him out on the routes I'd poached off his Strava, flicking a little shaka his way each time we passed. He still to this day has no idea who I am and maybe gave me as much as a single head nod in all the times I'd hoped he'd stop and tell me how sick I was and that we should run together. Besides Anthony, he was the most elite athlete I'd ever seen in real life and I felt that maybe if I performed well in this next race, I'd gain some recognition as some sort of prospect just as he did.

So I went out and placed 3rd overall in my first ultramarathon ever. For nearly 40 miles I was in the lead, mainly because a 50k also started at the same time and I was trying to keep up with the front runners of that race the entire time by accident, AND I skipped the first aid station to gain an edge. Needless to say that despite the praise I was getting at each subsequent aid station for how far ahead I was and how I "had it in the bag", I inevitably blew up and started dry heaving and cramping because I didn't even know eating salt was a thing and likely had less than 100G of carbs all day. I was also a bit disappointed when nobody gave a shit that I had just taken 3rd in my first race. I kind of just crossed the finish, got the same medal as everyone else and drove home. I laid in bed and drank victory Coors Lights the rest of that weekend, too sore to move.

Year 2. 2025

I signed up for arguably the hardest 100 miler in North America, the Ouray 100 as my first. There was something destructive and irresponsible about choosing Ouray's 42k vertical for a first go that energized me. I wanted to do the hardest thing I possibly could, I wanted to find out who I was on the other side of something that seemed, at the time, impossible. I had been locked into a schizophrenic training and working regiment that now only deepened as the mission in front of me grew to be astronomical in size and loomed like a dark and ominous cloud in the distance. I decided it was time to professionalize a bit and tapped in with Anthony to be my coach as he had won Ouray several years prior. Immediately I started to learn how shit my intra-run nutrition had been and I started to stack weeks of vert and volume, lapping the sandy hills of Laguna Beach to pile it up. I gained strength of will through back to back huge efforts, even logging a sub 3:30 OC Marathon less than 24 hours after a 25 mile and 5k vert effort. I strived for 100% adherence to Anthony's program, trusting completely in the process that if I finished the training, I'd finish the race.

I attributed extreme existential weight to Ouray, I had a feeling that it was where I was going to die. I had a vision that high atop the San Juans I was to meet God and it was there amongst thunder and lightening we were to dook it out in a battle for the ages, just me and Him, to the death. Through rock bottom I had been slowly and actively shedding the old me, and this heightened state brought with it deep contemplation into myself, my spirituality, and my relationship with the energies of the world. There was a dismantling of my understanding of everything that was happening, the naivety of my young 20s turning to curiosity for new perspectives and I began actively searching further past the dogma I was brought up in. I found Neitzchian philosophy and internalized an understanding of the will to power, feeling my bow to be pulled tight with an incredible tension and I started to strive to emulate some model of the Ubermensch ideal. The quest I was on was now far beyond running, entrepreneurship, or any wrath I held onto. It had morphed into a war between the man I was to become and the man I was before which brought with it all cards on the table, questioning everything. My battle I was to have with God on the mountaintop I learned was actually a battle I was to have with myself.

I moved myself to Bozeman, Montana for two months leading up to Ouray and trained hard in the Bridgers. I started to put together some ridiculous routes where I'd run up to the highest point I could, then run back down and all the way back through the city to my brother's house where I had a room. Anthony had me sign up for the Old Gabe 50k which had over 10k feet of vert and I ultimately placed 6th, although I was starting to understand how little my placement meant to me and that because I'm 6'4 and 200 pounds, I'd likely never be able to compete with the top runners. My experience with running was starting to become just that, an experience in the mountains and on the trails where I cared little for the performance side of things and cared everything about the soul of it all.

Growing up I was a huge fan of Jon Jones. To me he was a modern version of Ghengis Khan, a trained killing machine and at his time of reign, the scariest man on the planet. I took two nuggets of wisdom from him; 1. It's okay to have butterflies in your stomach before a fight as long as you can control it and get them to fly in formation and 2. There is a method to the madness of blowing your load partying after a hard training camp to charge up a week or two before the fight. His methods include cocaine, boozing and driving which aren't my style.. I much prefer to release the tension through the use of LSD. And further, the use of LSD mixed with MDMA while at a brain melting EDM show, usually dubstep, and preferably Zed's Dead. So, two weeks before Ouray, I blew my load all over Dead Rocks and charged my chakras up with my friends and family doing my second favorite thing behind trail running, raving face.

As we toed the line of the Ouray 100 my attitude was that I fully wanted to and hoped I would die on the course. I don't know of any other way to prepare yourself for the mental and physical beatdown of such a monumental undertaking. My vision of the battle on the mountaintop was compounded under the lasers and mind melting bass frequencies coupled with my drug abuse. It was clear to me what I was here to do, I was now Ghengis and I was to lay siege to the San Juans.

I finished in just under 48 hours. My feet were trenched, literally peeling off, and a stench of putrid flesh had become all too familiar for me and my crew. Todd, the race medic, even took a photo of them for his infamous ultra feet Instagram page which I'm still unsure exists or not. I learned that Goretex shoes actually trap all the moisture inside which makes a lot of sense in hindsight and that there is probably a better option than Nike socks.

The war I expected was not what I was met with at all. Instead I had a profound presence of mind in the most beautiful places I had ever seen. I traveled by foot to zones you can reach no other way and saw them through the clearest lens with zero interference from the "outside" as my phone was on airplane mode and there was no possible way to think of anything else other than what I was doing. I heard recently that if you're bottling something up leading up to an event like this, you'll be confronted with it and it will come out on the course. Through time spent with other runners who would become lifelong friends, my now good friend and pacer Paul who was returning the favor from the year before, and my dad and uncle who got to experience sunrise with me on the third day at the top of Bridge to Heaven, the final 5k vert climb and descent that takes you down into Fellin and through the orange cones, I learned that the wrath I was bottling up and this war I thought I was fighting were all my own doing. It was a battle to the death out there, but the death was of my ego and the man I was before.

As I sat at the finish with my trench feet airing out, I drank a Coors Light at 8AM and was amazed as I opened my phone and witnessed the outpouring of love and support that my family, friends, and even people I didn't know had been giving me on this journey. It was a special moment, something you have to feel for yourself to understand. The absolute clarity and peace of mind of finishing something you staked everything on. Those cold blue sips of morning beer were bliss.

Year 3. 2026

I don't know what happened after Ouray, but the facade of capitalism and materialism began to melt away. I realized I've been slaving in the rat race for so long and searching for some other way, any way, that could help fill the void in my heart that had been gaping. As I've pushed deeper into my ultra endurance training I've found myself alone in places nobody could reach unless by foot, with nothing but silence in between my ears and the sloshing of my bottles and the crushing of dirt beneath my feet. I've always been an avid reader and consumer of information, but my searching has gone weirder and thus much deeper into self reflection on my own experience and into the thinking and philosophy of great minds who came before me. As the miles have stacked up, so have the books, podcasts, articles, and discussions.. Between training, contemplating, and building my business, I sometimes feel as though I work myself up into a frenzy, some kind of philosophical psychosis which is likely just the result of always doing too much and overthinking every aspect of it.

But something has flipped lately, after rejecting the Christianity I was brought up in and swinging the pendulum way too far into Neitzche, I found my way to Camus and Evola which ultimately has brought me to some absurdist understanding of Buddhism. I guess the way I see it now is that all of it is pretty much pointless, but I have to rebel as hard as I can against that and actively seek a state of Transcendence to ultimately escape Samsara. To give up in the shadow of the undeniable nihilism we're faced with isn't masculine.

I think the "LSD Trials" I ran on myself earlier this year where I dosed every Saturday after my long run for nearly 2 months may have helped me break through. It helped make sense of everything I've experienced as I've become a man throughout my 20s, and gain an understanding of the worldview I was forming through the process of building myself into the man who can run 200 miles, which has been a process of complete self destruction and a shedding of an old me in favor of the new.

I mention all of this to simply say.. I realized how gay it was to be so mechanical and chasing external validation through my achievements in running, and grinding so hard to make money for the sake of having money so other people knew I had money. After living in Orange County I had close interactions with men who were so completely shallow and devoid of life who's entire existence was to contribute to the capitalism cog machine.. And even though they appeared to have everything I wanted.. a big business, a lot of money, a big house, some semblance of status and power, I wanted to be nothing like them and thought them to be feminine, weak, and nothing to aspire to.

Through these realizations I was losing every bit of foundation I had for what I was doing all of this for and all that remained was an understanding that I am simply trying to self actualize and experience a state of transcendence because its the heroic thing to do as we're faced with the Kali Yuga, this age of darkness.

This journey has been an active melting away of my ego to reach the most raw and pure experience of existence I can achieve. I no longer care who sees, I don't want to be like anyone else (as nobody has any clue what the fuck they're doing anyway) and I'm not trying to become anything for anybody else to see and revel in.

This breakthrough was complete after my dad sensed I was having some sort of rupturing occur and shared with me Jack Kerouac's On The Road, and The Dharma Bums. Everything came to a head as I lost myself in Jack's travels and his understanding of the human experience, the outdoors, and spirituality. I envied his way of life, literally homeless and feral completely detached from the lie that is the American Dream, free to do anything he wanted with zero regard to the status quo. I developed some archetypal attachment to the Dharma Bums and decided it was time to break away from my mechanical and egotistical existence, a complete rejection of how I'd been operating for the past 8 years.

Not only had I immediately entered the lottery and gotten selected for a bigger and more audacious goal in the Bigfoot 200, I had Scout Mountain 100 beforehand as prep and to qualify for Hard Rock, AND I had also signed myself up for a legendary run of EDM shows throughout the summer with my brother, which might have been Kerouac's influence subtly seeping through before I fully understood it. So in May, looking at the needs of my racing and raving schedule and the 7500+ miles we were to drive through August, it fully occurred to me that I'd need to build out a rig.

What is a rig? It depends on who you ask, but simply put, its a mobile camping setup that allows you to travel fully and live out of your vehicle. Its most helpful for "stealth camping" on the road to and from destinations, and for being able to have quick access to objectives by sleeping at trail heads or close by. For some, thats a Mercedez Sprinter, for others its a Scout truck bed insert, and for me it would be a Ford E350 XLT Passenger Van that I found for $5000 in Las Vegas which was previously owned by a halfway house to transport addicts to and from their appointments and other travel destinations. The transaction with Derrick, a towering black man with a lazy eye and an office overflowing with paperwork and McDonald's cups on the floor, could not have been more sketchy, but ultimately my girlfriend Anna and I were able to drive it off the lot and back to California and the title did show up in the mail a few weeks later.

Scout Mountain 100

Somehow in less than a month, with the help of Anna and after a few blow out arguments, we had the V1 working version of my rig. With zero prior experience ever working on a vehicle we had gutted the interior, cleared the stench of cigarettes from the buildup of butts, dirt, drug paraphernalia, and other trash hidden in the walls, installed an insulated subfloor, and built a bed system. I slapped on some new trail tires, got help from a buddy to change my oil and switch out the wipers and headlights, and the Dharma Van was to ready for the open seas. A Memorial Day sale helped us fully kit out everything we needed like a stove, cooler, and more just in the knick of time as we were set to depart.

What's more is my business partner and I moved everything we had into storage as our lease ended, he moved to South Korea, and I was embarking on a spiritual quest with no end in sight as the van became my permanent living arrangement. What's even more is that my girlfriend was excited to join me for the first leg which included a journey through San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, and Pocatello, Idaho where she'd crew her first 100 AND I was picking up my padawan Zach in Salt Lake who was to join me for a month as my "intern" to pace Scout Mountain, travel the country, rave face, and learn sales and business from a guy who was now homeless.

Naturally, I gave our journey archetypal symbolism and we were the dharma bums embarking on the open seas in our pirate ship, searching for who killed Zed (We had 7 nights of shows with 3 Zed's Dead sets queued up). Anna came up with a rule that she needs a shower at least every fourth day which I reluctantly agreed to and it became the running joke that we always stole (pillaged) our ice. I'd run up a $150 grocery bill, but I'd be damned if I was paying $7 for a bag of ice. We also poached camping in the van all along the way. We slept under the Golden Gate Bridge, on Lake Tahoe, in paid campgrounds and in front of people's houses all for free. What can I say? It's a pirate life for me.

As a Texas boy, Z had never been camping before and I made him sleep out on a tarp with me in our sleeping bags our first night in Idaho while Anna slept in the bed. The next night, the night before the race, I made him do it alone. Welcome to man camp.

I finished in 34 hours, well past my sub 24 hour goal which was on pace until I blew up 50k in. I slogged my way into aid like a zombie, the first time seeing my crew all day, beat down from the sun and going out way too hard with some made up time goal in my head. I realized then through a 50th place Ouray finish and how bad I felt currently that I no longer gave a shit about my place, time, or the optics of it all. I had also actively paid for the Cocodona 250 entry fee while running the first stretch of Scout, somehow managing to input my card details into Ultrasignup while actively in another race, since it was my last day to pay for and accept my lottery selection. At aid I gathered my composure, soaked up some calories and some love from my lady who now was starting to understand what this whole ultra thing was about, and I continued on from what was, at the time, my lowest point I'd ever experienced in a race.

I picked up Zach 60 miles in and we had the time of our lives punting hills, talking shit, and suffering in the heat. I told him multiple times how bad I wanted to quit and how this race really didn't mean much to me, but never once was it taken seriously. On the last major climb of the race, up Scout Mountain, we befriended a firefighter from Chubbock, Idaho which we thought was funny because Z was from Lubbock. The bonds I've formed with other men through a shared profoundly excruciating experience, even if only for a couple of hours, are more meaningful and last longer than with most people I've known for years.

I finished strong, logging my best miles deep in the race after Z blew up puking and cramping on top of Scout Mountain after a 35 mile 10k effort, far beyond anything he'd ever done before, as I raced to the next aid to let them know he needed to get ATV'd out. He was fine, welcome to man camp.

As I crossed the finish I was met with a hug from race director and legend Luke Nelson and I let him know how hard the course was. He told me "you're welcome" and that's something that will sit with me forever. Z was safely there to greet me with major stoke and Anna kissed me with a little more sparkle in her eyes than she ever had before. I understood then that this is what it's all about and we three proceeded to get shit faced drunk at a hotel for the next two days to celebrate, our first proper beds in weeks.

The Dharma Bums

We dropped Anna off in Salt Lake and Z and I found ourselves alone just the boys for the first time since the race. Instantly the conversation became far more crude, full of slurs, and approached Scout territory which was unthinkably offensive. Our journey over the next month took us to Colorado to hang with my dad, up to Montana to hang with my brother and all our friends, to Washington to experience the Cascades and hit the Beyond Wonderland festival at The Gorge, back to Denver for Dead Rocks and The Hangover, and ended with sad hugs goodbye as Z flew back to Texas and my brother and friends drove back to Montana. This section had been heavily REDACTED as it requires its own writeup in of itself, but to say it was anything less than transcendent would be an understatement. We plundered and pillaged, camped 20+ nights all around the west coast, created memories that will last a lifetime, and formed a bond that few people could understand. Needless to say I was charged up for what would be the biggest undertaking of my life soon to come.

Anna had met us for the show run in Denver as her and I were intent on moving to Boulder after this journey came to an end, so we flew back to California, packed everything her and I both owned, and drove back to Colorado in a moving truck, only to leave again for Washington in the van 3 days after moving into our new place.

Bigfoot 200

I didn't feel any of the usual butterflies in my belly in the days leading up, or the morning of the race. Anna and I had spent the night stealth camped on a pullout way up on some road near St. Helens. I slept soundly and was woken up in the dark of morning to the pitter patter of rain on the roof of the van which became heavier and more violent as a storm passed through. Just lubing up the course I thought to myself. A series of unfortunate events had been building up over the weeks leading up and the morning of was no exception. Small things like driving off with Anna's shower system dragging behind us and ruining it after just buying it, big things like a customer of mine late on a couple huge payments that affected my budgeting for travel, and today it was the e-brake I had never used which now had us stuck in the middle of the road as we were trying to head down to get some phone service. After 5 cars piling up behind us, and a construction guy trying to help me shimmy it loose, I finally found the latch that was able to release the brake and off we were to use up some final 5G before tapping into Bigfoot for the next 5 days. I always shut myself off from the outside world to fully enter the arena. For me, the experience I'm seeking requires total immersion and no outside input or lifeline. I don't even listen to music during a race, the only sounds I want are from the environment and the war inside my head that I always find myself fighting, no matter how many times I learn it's all fabricated.

The only way I can explain a multi day race is that of being trapped in a cage. And inside that cage is excruciating suffering both physically and mentally for at least the next 4 days and 3 nights. If you want some symbolism around it, imagine theres a starving tiger in there with you who speaks and sounds like a mix of an ex girlfriend and the most annoying sound you've ever heard in your life who knows all your deepest secrets and insecurities. And when I say the most annoying sound you've ever heard in your life, I literally had the sound of a Tesla electric motor buzzing in my ears for 2 days as I started to hallucinate due to sleep deprivation. To escape that cage you only have two options. Finish, or quit. Quitting is the easiest possible route and sings to you like a siren song from the moment you start while finishing seems so far away that it actually does not feel like an option at all.

As I kissed Anna goodbye for now and towed the line, I could feel the door to that cage slam shut behind me. I was going to solo every mile without any pacers, and Anna would be alone for days and nights between crewing me. I worked my way to the second line of runners standing behind some guys I'd seen make videos on Instagram as well as both Aaron and Brody who would take 1st and 2nd and everyone already knew it.

My kit was the best I'd ever assembled, and it damn well better be after the thousands of hours perfecting it. The kit consisted of:

• Solomon Aero Blaze 3 Grvl Shoes

• Arc'teryx Synthetic Ultralightweight Mid Sock

• In Harm's Way Linerless Vert Shorts

• Free balling, no compression liner

• Arc'teryx Cormac Crew LS

• Hyperlite PEMI 15L

• Smith Sending Shades

• In Harm's Way Performance Bandana

• In Harm's Way Champion Hat

• Leki Shark Grips + Trekking Poles

And my nutrition kit:

• 2 bottles of 2 scoops of Tailwind

• 3L water bladder

• 2 90G Precision Gels

• Baggie full of salt pills

• Baggie of assorted candy

Anthony and I's plan was simple.

• 70-90G carbs per hour

• 750ml salt per hour

• 1L water per hour

• Solid food at aid

I was going to move in phases through the race, essentially not racing until 100M in, aiming for 18-20 minute miles that entire time to not go out too hard and fry myself for later in the race. Again, I'm 200 pounds, I've accepted I'm not here to win any races, but rather experience and interact with a state of transcendence and to finish at the strongest of my ability. Its actually insane to me that Aaron won in 47 hours and basically had 2 days of rest before I'd finish.. I have an insane respect for those guys and think they're some of the hardest mother fuckers on the planet.

Candis the race director (hot btw) gave us the schpeal and we all verbally signed off on liability as we repeated the whole if I get lost or die thing they have glorified into ultra canon.

And we were off. I chose to stick to the top 1/3 or so of the heat, I wanted to get out ahead of any pile up of people and settle into my own groove a few miles in. It would be 37 miles before Anna was able to crew me, so I chose to have a drop bag at the mile 12ish aid station which just consisted of my standardized nutrition kit and extra bags of Dude Wipes which proved to be a key piece of gear. The first 50k of Bigfoot works its way through the blast zone of Mt. St. Helens, weaving through a beautifully hellish desert of ash and igneous rock, rivers of sleet grey slicing through and the sun beating down overhead during a midday race start. I sweat a shit ton and a guy at the aid station said at first he thought my hat was air brushed, but he shortly realized it was caked in all the salt I had been popping.

I reminded myself to focus on being present, here and now, and to run my own race. Don't get caught up in how far there is to go and don't get caught up trying to keep up with the pink haired influencer chick as she pranced across the rocks. I'm locked inside this cage for at least 3 more nights, we've only just begun.

I quickly learned how heavy my 3L bladder + mandatory gear was going to be in my pack, I'd honestly not prepared enough for this and could feel the swelling on my shoulders and back beginning to chafe. I also learned how quickly that 3L of water goes between the furthest distances between aid I'd ever experienced. For context, Scout Mountain 100 had 11 aid stations, Bigfoot 200 has 12. I knew this was going to be a survival test more than a race, but it started to become real as I pumped my bladder full of water I had to stop and filter from a creek.

I rolled into mile 37 aid a couple hours into the night as Anna helped me do a full clothes change and solid meal. I had a 5k+ punt for the next section through the night and was drenched from the day of running. I started to feel a sense of overwhelm take hold of me and I entered an incredibly low head space as I set off from aid, only now beginning to understand the profoundly absurd thing I had signed myself up for. I cursed as I kicked a few rocks, felt a little nauseous from the amount of liquid calories I had been taking in, and the devil on my shoulder started to tell me I wasn't ready for this. I continued to move, but got passed by 3, 4, 5 people which really started to piss me off. I hate getting my soul taken by another runner, especially in the night.

As I fumed in frustration at what I had gotten myself into, we started to ascend. One thing about me is I love to climb as it is my strongest skillset when it comes to trail running. I have almost never had my soul snatched on a climb, I'd even say it might be close to 0 times, and I knew if I locked in right now, I could turn my headspace around and gain some ground. So I started to punt it up the hills. I can get in a powerful stride with my Lekki poles and utilizing a mix of short bouncy steps as well as deep long powerful hiking steps to vary between muscles being utilized. I have a hell of a gas tank on uphills too and I started to blow past people sucking wind on the way up. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing a headlight in the distance and grinding your way to overtaking them… 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 souls were snatched on that climb as I told myself I would become the leader of this group which was bunched up together and I felt a jolt of energy overcome me as I came up on new backs of heads I had never seen before and voices I had never heard before saying "nice work". I was gaining ground and had done a complete 180 in my attitude and headspace. I felt like I could compete and I started to identify other runners who I was in open competition with, even though they didn't know it. One such guy being a dude from England, Leroy Valentine, who I couldn't shake on the downhills and I felt he was such a strong runner that as long as we were close throughout the race, I was doing great.

I had not planned for any sleep, but as I rolled into the next aid we were 50 something in and it was early in the morning. I understood now that this was going to be a dog fight to the finish so I decided to sleep with Anna in the van bed for 1 hour from 5AM to 6AM before slamming a bunch of bacon she had cooked and setting back off.

I cried a lot during this race. I had never broken a tear before, during or after any of my events, but something about this one broke me down. It came in waves, a feeling of complete overwhelm would have me cry out of fear, even pain and sadness and a feeling of gratitude would have me cry out of happiness thinking about my family and my girlfriend. I think because this type of event, the multi day 200 miler, was my pinnacle and the thing I had so long ago felt was superhuman, it had me stuck between a feeling of euphoria and of being a fraud. Nothing about me had changed since this all began, or so I felt. My life wasn't any better since this all began, or so I felt. But indeed everything about me had changed, my life infinitely better.

As I approached the 100 mile aid, the fucking halfway point, I battled some extraordinary demons. My vision was clouded by a dense nighttime mist and the sleep deprivation was starting to settle in as the twisted bark of these PNW forests made figures and faces. I felt the full spectrum of anger overcome me as I cursed everyone and everything that I felt up to that moment had been actively working against me. I tripped and weaved through dense forest, testing what it looked like if I turned my headlamp off only to see not 2 feet in front of me. I rolled into the halfway aid, a crewless stop and a sleep station that for some reason was blasting 80s rock music at full volume. Everyone who came through groaned and tried to sleep on the ground or, like me, curled in a ball for 30 minutes on the casting couch they had dragged into camp. The horrifying sound of my iPhone alarm woke me abruptly, as I'm trained to like a dog from years of abuse. I scarfed down a microwaved double cheeseburger and set off for the next section which had 7,000 feet of climbing. Good.

A few hours in, my hip blew up and my race was over. Or so I thought. I had DNF'd from the Dead Horse 50M a few months after Ouray and had been dealing with a hip injury for almost a year since. I lined up for Scout fully accepting that I'd likely injure myself in the attempt, but miraculously had not felt a single bit of hip pain despite feeling it's instability the morning of. In the weeks following of recovery and in my build up further for Bigfoot, I was again truly injured. Not only was I dealing with this, but my dad had stress fractured his hip running the Colfax marathon and received 3 new screws through his pelvis just weeks before. I was in my head about, my family and girl were in my ear about, and all signs pointed to not lining up for Bigfoot. I called Anthony and we actively sought out the Destination Trail cancellation policy which was well past the date for any kind of deferral. Nearly accepting defeat, he and I came to the plan that I'd go get an MRI and we'd go from there.

As it turns out, I'm incredibly stubborn. After sleeping on it for a night I made the bargain with myself that if today's training run has to stop for any kind of hip pain whatsoever, I'm done. And low and behold, I made it through one day. Then two days. Then I stacked a week. I let Anthony know I would not be getting an MRI and everyone who cares about me rolled their eyes as I told them I was fully on for Bigfoot.

110 miles and 25k vert in, my hip felt like I had torn it, broken it, driven a flaming fork through it. I still had easily 3500 to go on this section alone and multiple days of racing ahead of me. Damn. That's it, that's my race, I've done the best I could. This is out of my control. I leaned on my poles for a bit and the group I had been crushing on the uphills all passed me. I thought back on all the work I had done, what all of this meant to me, and honestly now what this meant to other people who believed in me, supported me, and were invested in me. Fuck. That. And I came up with the motto "Get through this section, get to aid" as I willed my hip pain away, as I willed my feet and stomach and head and ass chafe pain all away. I gained back all of my ground I had lost and ended up behind this asian lady who I had been leap frogging all race. I let her take point as I suffered through and somehow, miraculously again, I made a full recovery and no longer felt any pain in my hip. I passed her and several others and made my way to Anna and the aid station, my first time seeing her after another night and 40 more miles.

Anna was having her whole own experience with all of the other crews, something so beautiful about these types of events. There is the shared experience of the runners and then there is the shared experience of the crews and volunteers. She had unknowingly befriended Leroy Valentine's family all who were here from England as well as another woman who was solo crewing her husband and had been at Dead Rocks the same time as us the month before. My pirate ship in all its glory has god awful suspension and Anna even hitched a ride to the next aid with Kynnie, our new rave mom. She was having the time of her life and I felt gratitude for everyone who was taking good care of her.

The next section brought with it my first real experience with sleep deprivation hallucinations. You hear about this with multi day events, they even talked about it at the pre race meeting, but I brushed it off as something that happened to other people. The section started off chatting with Jose, the 46 year old who was currently undertaking his second race in the Triple Crown (Tahoe 200, Bigfoot 200, Moab 240 in the same year), that was silently competing with me during our previous section. "Hey man, you were really pissing me off during those climbs back there, I couldn't get rid of you. I'm Hunter, what's up?" And I formed another friendship that would prove pivotal in the night to come. He told me that after this was all over, he'd be hanging up his cleats and focusing on his family. He said it was hard for his kids to understand why dad was so tired on the weekends and didn't want to do much outside the house. I empathized with his relentlessness and the dedication required to be here, but I only partially understood as he was doing 3x as much as me this year. I showed him my In Harm's Way hat and shorts and he promised to buy some when it drops in the spring and I ended up passing him to spend the rest of my day in the scorching sun, alone.

"HEY!" I heard as I jolted to look behind me and could not identify the source. I passed what appeared to be someone taking a mid day dirt nap, but they were laying in the sun which didn't make much sense. I squinted my eyes and the sleeping runner was replaced with a downed tree as that very runner sprinted off ahead of me moving and laughing like a jester. As he scurried off, faster than I imagined someone this deep into the race could move, I stopped to dunk my hat in a creek crossing to try and cool off. As the water trickled down the back of my neck I heard someone press the start button of their Tesla and the electric hum of their motor began to ring through my head. A man with a beard was sitting up in the distance, leaning against a tree and staring at me. He actually resembled Jesus. I ran up to him and stabbed through his face with the point of my pole yelling "FUCK YOU!" at what I learned was some knots in a tree.

I took a handful of Hot Tamale candies Anna had tucked in my run belt and threw them back, savoring the sweetness and knowing they'd bring me back to life as I could feel my energy levels dipping. Every inch of movement was now bringing with it extreme foot pain, like stepping on shards of glass with every step. I pressed onwards, establishing what Zach and I had coined a "death march" type movement where I can actually cover some good ground with what looks like an incredibly labored fast hike slow jog type of thing. I made it through another section as I rolled into aid, which had taken me the entire light of day as our third sun was soon to set.

I've never felt like I was going to die on a run before. Sure, I've redlined doing speed work and have blown up twice in races dry heaving and about to pass out. But I'd never experienced the culmination of 2 hours of sleep over the course of racing 150 miles through 3 days and nights where every section felt like it was uniquely built to bring with it a new, terrible obstacle. Not only did I KNOW my feet were trenched after the 3 river crossings followed by 4,000 feet of climbing sharp rock, but my heart was beating out of my chest from over exertion and what was now caffeine abuse. At the beginning of the section I had buddied up with Jose from earlier and a 22 year old kid name Hans who I'd seen at aid looking like a crazed bloodshot eyed lunatic. I was down horrendous and saw them hiking at a slow enough pace that I felt was what I needed at that moment. "Hey dudes, I'm not doing so good, mind if I hang with you? I'll be mostly quiet back here." And we marched on at a 25 minute pace yapping about each other's lives, training, and why we were doing this to ourselves. Hans had even raced Ouray with me and wore crampons the entire time for some reason, which he said he deeply regretted. We actually wandered a bit off course and got lost as we were buddied up soon with 2, 3, 4 additional pain caved refugees that needed some guys to suffer with. Misery loves company.

Through delirium and because my feet hurt so bad, I decided to not take my shoes off for the river crossings that came with this section. And because I had unfortunately rushed through the previous aid because I was starting to believe I could finish, I did not look at what this section was to bring. 4,000 feet up Elk Peak that summited with an all fours scramble at 4am on my fourth day is what directly followed the 60 yards of creek we just crossed. I was freezing, then 1000 feet into the climb I was hot, then I had the numb pins and needles I had felt in my feet during Ouray. Trenchfoot, bad. I could feel the skin tearing slide of the pads of my toes and the entire rest of my foot move under my weight. As the grade got steeper, the skin stretched further. My heart rate increased as us three stooges continued to punt. I'd never checked my Gaia app more as we had been lost and now found, but the aid station ahead was only just after this ridge 50 different times. Jose was getting pissed at how much more we had to go and I added to it by asking to stop twice so I could sit and fake a butterfly stretch so I didn't have a heart attack which might've been a real threat. At one point I thought we lost Hans, telling Jose we should wait, but he was feet behind me the entire time and assured me we hadn't left him.

Our souls were taken by the mountain as we saw the out and back required to summit Elk and at the top Jose curled up in a ball on the ground and said he preferred to sleep here over aid. "Bro, let's go." And we all stumbled down and into the ever elusive aid where I practically collapsed into Anna telling her I was in the worst shape I'd ever been in my life. Upon removing my shoes my feet had the all familiar stench of putrid flesh I'd known so well the year before, but because I'd been here before and remembered what medic Todd had told me before, "Your feet want to feel" I took my shoes and socks off to let them air out and told Anna I was taking a 3 hour nap. After a couple times suffering panic attacks and full body cramps laying in the van bed, my alarm went off at 730AM on the fourth day to Hans and Jose long gone. Fucking savages, what an honor.

As was par for the course, the next section brought with it a new obstacle which was now hundreds of downed redwoods trees, but after surviving the third night and getting some sleep and a couple meatball subs for breakfast I had full confidence I was going to finish. Get through this section, get to aid had gotten me through what was now the worst I'd ever felt, twice and I was starting to feel the levitation of transcendence begin. I was in control of myself and had learned quickly and adjusted to the different problems arising all race. I was beginning to radiate a golden aura, and then it would all crash. My energy would feel like it was bottoming out and I'd slurp more sugary Tailwind which now had my entire mouth covered in sores. I'd resorted to Hot Tamales as my main carb source and couldn't wait to eat solid foods at the final two aid stations. I reunited with Jose and Hans on an out and back they were well ahead of me on, and they assured me of the hand made pizzas that lay just beyond this hill. They weren't lying, a trained Italian chef was hand making dough and firing up pizzas, made to order. I got a pineapple bacon because I thought it was the best of both worlds, carbs and fat, and I wasn't wrong as I darted out of there focused to pick up my pace as I started to taste the finish.

The dark of the fourth night, Monday night, settled in and three of my four batteries for my light system were out as the final flickerings of my headlamp still remained. I was trudging through what had been coined the "green tunnel" and I could feel the backwoods Washington folk riding bears and pumas approaching, ready to steal me back to their cabin as soon as my light went out. Fuck that! I pulled out the emergency bivy zip-lock bag I had kept from Ouray and assembled the mini bulb light and battery which dimly lit my way to the next aid which I was full on sprinting to at this point, terrified.

I felt a wave come over me as I approached the final aid. I hadn't been passed by a single person since I ate pizza with hours before and I refused to have my soul snatched on the last section going into finish. I told Anna I was going to move quick through this aid, I had only an 11 mile mostly flat section on road, and I felt a fire in my belly that told me this was my opportunity to truly dump everything I had left in me, to leave everything in the arena. So I rushed through the final aid, getting a bit frustrated that Anna didn't understand how fast I intended to go and queued up Word Scramble by Subtronics/ Zed's Dead/ Tape B to play out loud on my phone speaker over and over, the first time I had ever listened to music during a real ultra. I think I ran a 7 minute mile over the those 11 miles, or so it felt, I don't know, my watch was long dead. But everyone had gone to bed expecting me to finish at around 3 or 4AM, and I finished just a bit after midnight.

Those last 11 miles I was so ready to be done, so completely over the race and everything to do with running, and so happy to know I was going to finish. Multiple times throughout those 200 miles I had promised myself I was pulling out of Cocodona only to regain stoke and excitement a few miles later. I nearly sprinted until the last mile of the race, stopping to gag on my own spit and to take short little painful pisses on the road like I was leaking oil. I wanted it to be undeniable in my heart that I left everything out here, that I squeezed every ounce of effort I had, and had nothing remaining in the tank. Confident nobody was going to pass me and wanting to give the lady ahead of me her own moment of glory, I slowed to a walk and pulled my phone off airplane mode. As the explosion of spam messages lagged my phone, I swiped to my brother's and then my mom's text threads where they had been sending paragraphs for the last several days, none of which I'd seen. I teared up in gratitude as I do again now writing about what it means to me to have everyone's support that I do. Before the race my dad had given me a bear claw with an arrow head, attached, a totem of his energy that he wanted to me to have with me through this experience. I knew I had charged that goddamn thing fully as I crossed the infamous track + country flag finish to the announcer announcing the wrong name and Anna fast asleep in the van, not expecting me for hours.

At first I was disappointed because I didn't get to hug her in triumph and I also didn't get the video of me crossing the finish, but as I walked over to choose my buckle I couldn't help but laugh at how little I cared about which one I got and who would ever see it. I realized that of course this finish was what it was, there wouldn't have been any other way to end it that made sense. I chose the buckle that had some scratches on it that looked like H's, took a mugshot for the before and after and walked over to Anna who had the van doors open as she slept with her alarm set to go off in 15 minutes.

She cried when she realized she had missed the finish, but I told her I didn't care and I meant it. This entire thing wouldn't have been possible without her as she had supported me for 4 days and nearly 4 nights as I ran around in the woods with a bunch of other sick fucks searching for meaning. She couldn't find a hotel anywhere near us in Packwood for us to shower and sleep so after a Dude Wipe wipe down I limped over with swollen feet and potentially a broken ankle to get in the van bed. We curled up together as my crotch was chafed and on fire only to have another night of full body cramps and panic attacks, my body and mind completely in shock. Equally exhausted, Anna slept like a baby as I thrashed around like one.

The next morning she took the wheel as I laid in bed and we were off to Seattle to get a hotel. Everything we had just gone through slowly began to process and I couldn't help but sob from happiness as I realized what had just been accomplished. I called to tell my family all about it, thankful to be on the other side and excited for what was next.