I am so excited to have joined Team Save the Children for the 2021 Leadville Race Series! I am part of a team of athletes who will stop at nothing to help Save the Children get closer to their goal of reaching every last child.
For nearly 100 years, Save the Children has done whatever it takes to create a world where no young child dies from a preventable cause, all children learn from a quality basic education, and violence against children is not tolerated. Where every child has the best chance for a bright future. I'm proud to make my miles matter for kids across the world. Please support my efforts by donating to my page today!
There are many reasons behind my desire to be a part and become part of the Leadville family through accomplishing the Leadville Trail 100. It is such a privilege to be part of a team representing an organization with such an incredible mission on top of being able to represent my family, my beautiful loving, supportive wife, our two amazing children who bring the most love into this world with their hearts. The idea to do an ultra-marathon had not crossed my mind until the last few years, much less running. I have been on this journey with my family the last few years to the ultimate goal of one day participating in the Leadville Trail 100 and have my family join me there. However, at the core of it something wasn’t there, until our daughter was born in 2019. A brief version of the story; my wife had not been feeling well and she had the instinct to leave work and head straight for her Doctors office an hour away, due to complications she had to have an emergency C-section the day we were supposed to go home from the hospital, two and half months before our daughter’s due date. Our daughter was born at 3lbs 6 ounces, by our standards she was early, but she was ready for the world and literally came out kicking and not skipping a beat. My wife had to undergo so many grueling trials in order to save her and control her blood pressure and ended up staying in the hospital almost as long as our daughter was in the NICU (standard precautions). Through the experience at the hospital, aside from seeing the remarkable babies in the NICU, I could see the true beauty, love and purity our baby tiny baby girl brought into this world, defying so many obstacles along with my wife and just crushing it. Then when her big brother was able to meet her for the first time, seeing the beauty and love he had brought in this world just amplified with the instant connection and love they had for each other and still seeing her stick by his side constantly, running alongside of him going “weeeeeeeeee”. This opened my eyes up into seeing how much resilience and love they bring with them no matter the obstacle, for someone so small that never saw anything as obstacles, but just come out of the gate springing to overcome all odds. To celebrate the day she came home from the hospital, without training, I went out and ran a mile for how many weeks she was when she was born, ended up being 32 miles.
I had grown up in my younger years outside of the town of Fairplay, just over the pass. I remember going down to Burro days as a child and something in me was in awe as these people came crawling into town with their burro, not understanding fully what they had just done, it stood out in my mind and was exciting to think about what they were accomplishing as they crossed over Mosquito pass and I wanted to be part of that. We were not able to take our daughter back out to Colorado as her being early and precaution with the altitude, but when she would have been able the pandemic put a hold on traveling. Last year my wife participated in the Leadville 100,000 feet virtual challenge. She had never done anything like that and we hadn’t done anything like that together before. It was truly incredible to see her give the same effort to not just accomplish but go beyond expectations, as we had to come up with ways to achieve the altitude gains, she pumped out incredible kilowatts and hours on the bike to get the altitude, and then come to me saying we can get another 100,000. At the end of it, I had wanted to get all my contributions by foot, but having a treadmill incline break at the beginning, was forced to do it all outside, racking up only about 12,000 feet over 500 miles, where my wife and I completed the challenge with 392,000 feet of altitude gain. It was truly an incredible experience to have with her and our children as they cheered us on and kept us going, and seeing my wife jump in the saddle more than accomplish something. John Muir is quoted to have said “going to the mountains is going home”, and that is more than accurate aside from our children not caring if it was snowing and 0 degrees but wanting to be outside, it is more true as the longer I have spent away the more I feel homesick and know that just being there with my family would make me feel complete, knowing they could share an experience somewhere that is so special and special to me. I continue with other goals, such as running for an entire year, even if selected, but with the ultimate goal of running and challenging myself in the Leadville 100, giving honor to my wife and children and God, showing my children that no matter the obstacle we can persevere and accomplish amazing things and feats that are bigger than ourselves.