This year’s UTMB was so special for me, not because of any result, but because it restored my love for the game and the reason why I keep showing up and racing. The goal will always be to put myself in a good position to compete for the win, but if my game is off early and it’s not happening, that doesn’t change anything. I am still there to find out if I have what it takes to get it done and how fast I can do it. The primary battle will always be against myself.

My number one mistake of the day was staying engaged in the race too much. To the point where I was ignoring warning signs, refused to troubleshoot, and just keep pushing. I went into hunt-mode and stopped listening to what my body was telling me. I tasted blood and forgot to stop my own bleeding,

I ran Canyons to race a very competitive field on the Western States course. I think the most specific practice I could have gotten would have been to be able to stay engaged and battle for the podium because that is exactly what I want to be doing on June 28th, but any other expectation of how the day were to turn out was not something I came up with consciously on my own. No one came up to my face and told me I had to win, but the invisible feeling was there and these are the mental roadblocks I want to crack moving forward in my career that I know will make me better.

The big learning lesson from this one is that racing at the highest level requires the highest level of focus and attention to detail. I did not give this race and the people in it the respect it deserved and to be honest that was lowkey pretty lame of me!

I’m sorry to report that the blog is not 3 for 3 on Ws and that Oppenheimer was right but wow, how sick would that have been…

The reason I started this thing is because I did not want to make the same mistake twice in a race ever again. The hope was that writing those mistakes out and putting myself on blast to all 12 people (4 being me) who might read this thing would hold me to a level of accountability I historically have not been able to hold myself to.

When Craig Thornley walked up to me after I crossed the finished line and asked if I wanted to run Western States, I cried. Not because he handed me a Golden Ticket and my dreams turned to reality, but because his next words were “too bad”.