The day before the race, I went out for a nice shake out run and not surprised living in the Pacific Northwest, it's raining and blowing winds up to 40mph. I think to myself, "Of course this weather is happening to me, the last 4 races I've run have been terrible weather races, but I'm so damn lucky to be running in my backyard (the Gorge)." This past winter in Washington/Oregon it has been one of the worst but finally after 6 months of training in brutal weather, I was ready to tackle the many trails I train on. Since we had all our bad weather (snow, record rainfall, tons of wind), I didn't once set foot on the Gorge 100K course since about October 2016 (also when registration for the race opened up). Not ideal but I had a general knowledge of the course's topography and layout. The Course: Course profile The Gorge Waterfalls 100k is an out-and-back 62 mile, ~12,000ft of gain race that runs along the Gorge #400 Trail, passing 7-8 amazing w
We had a race! When was the last time I was on start line and in person race with other competitors? Answer: November 2019 at TNF 50. So it’s almost been 10 months since I lined up with friends both old and new. Cray cray. Well, let’s dive into the Race Report. First and foremost, I’ll skip the whole lead up to the race as my taper was pretty standard. You can see my strava for what I did ( https://www.strava.com/athletes/4815645 ). Okay, so all was pretty good until all my crew bailed on me due to life circumstances 2 days before the race. I just rolled with the unexpected. Not to mention the crazy wildfires burning all over the West Coast, and within a few miles from my parent’s house in Vancouver, WA, I was definitely ready to race and release all this built up anxiety and stress. Thankfully, my good friend, Eric Yan was running the race as well so we planned on driving out to Idaho together. It was approximately an 8 hour drive from Portland and we made the drive Friday morning. O
One week ago, I set off on another 100 mile date with Mt. Fuji 100 mile, aka Ultra Trail Mt. Fuji. It was my second trip to Japan after finishing the race as well in 2023. The previous year was a three year wait as I was supposed to run the race in April 2020, but we all know what happened there. A short recap of 2023's race is that it was a major learning experience of Japanese trail running culture and for the race itself, I puked so much and dug deep for an 18th place finish for first American in 23:33. Here's a very well done video of the 2023 race here . Back to the present, I arrived in Japan on April 20th after a full day of travel and navigated a near flawless airport to hotel trip using the extensive and incredible train system that Japan has. The only slight debacle I had was I accidentally put the wrong hotel address I was staying at with my former coworker and friend, Dylan and was so confused when he wasn't there or checked in. Realizing I was at the wrong loc
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