Headed West
My Zion 100km race recap.
Last weekend I lined up at the Zion 100km. An ultramarathon through one of the most gorgeous landscapes I’ve seen in my life.
I’m a big believer in not waiting. I think of waiting as one of the easiest things to avoid regretting later in life. Too many of us get stuck coming up with reasons and excuses on why this isn’t the right time, and what it ultimately does is rob us of the experience our soul is calling for us to do. When it comes to Zion, that waiting had taken me a little over 4 years to finally get to.
I first heard about the Zion 100km when my Dad and I were doing 29029. A challenge where you hike up a mountain repeatedly until you have accumulated the equivalent elevation gain of Mt. Everest (29,029ft). It was an incredible experience I’ll never forget, and it was during that trip that someone first told me about the Zion ultramarathon. Ever since that day I’ve had this race sitting on the mental shelf of options, but couldn’t make the dates work. So as I was sitting down at the end of last year thinking about which races I’d go all-in on for 2026, I was excited to see that the calendar was finally open for me to head west. Back out into the desert. A place that has pulled me back again and again over the last 6 years.
When I started training for Zion in January, I had two real goals. Get in the best aerobic fitness of my life. Don’t get injured. Having worked with multiple coaches over the years and completed several 50+ mile ultras, I went into the block optimistic that I understood how to do both.
The hardest part of preparing for race day wasn’t the miles or the hard workouts. It was the early mornings. And I mean real early. Due to the way my calendar is set up, and doing my best to protect weekends for my family, I moved my longest run of the week to Fridays. The only problem with that was I still had a full workday ahead of me, so each Friday over the final 8 weeks my alarm went off at 2:00am and I made the 2-hour drive out to Umstead. The closest thing I have to real hill training, which matters in races like this. I’d arrive at the trailhead in the dark, strap on my headlamp, put in 3 to 4 hours on the trail, and drive the 2 hours back home in time for my first meeting. Those mornings got harder the deeper into the block I got. But I did it. Not missing a single week. Not hitting snooze once. Not waiting.
As the training wrapped up and I made the final early morning drive out to Raleigh, this time to the airport, I did so with a quiet optimism. A weekend in the mountains was on the way. A return to my happy place.
I flew into Las Vegas, about a 2-hour drive from the Zion area. If anyone was prepared for that kind of drive after a flight, it was me. I was practically a professional at those highway sprints by now. Loading my bags into the rental and pulling away from the airport, I looked out at the hotels lining the strip. The younger version of myself would have made a beeline for one of those casinos and put money on red. On this day I was focused on the road.
The thing that gets me every time about the west is the scale of it. The east coast has its beauty but the horizons are close and the mountains are soft. Out here everything is enormous. I first felt that kind of size in the mountains of Afghanistan, then again in Yosemite, and eventually it captured something deeper in me while I was living in the shadow of Montara in Pacifica. Driving north on I-15 the world outside my window slowly turned red. Massive sandstone walls off in the distance, then closer, then towering on both sides of the highway as I cut directly through them. There is something about that scale that a photo never fully captures. You feel it in your chest.
Once I got to the hotel I settled in quickly. The Hurricane area was exactly what the reviews had promised. Quiet, nothing fancy, everything a runner needs and nothing more. I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and headed out for a short shake out run, just enough to get the travel out of my legs.
Friday was about staying off my feet and handling any final prep. My hotel was 20 minutes from the start line, which made the expo trip easy. I didn’t spend much time there but it was well put together. Nutrition vendors, massage tents, recovery equipment, and a lot of people talking with each other about what was coming the next day. The trail running community is filled with people who are genuinely just as crazy as you. Over the years I’ve met some pretty cool people and heard some even better stories, and the expo is always the first taste of that energy.
Back at the hotel I laid out my gear. For this race I’d be solo with no crew, which meant a drop bag at mile 34. Everything before that I’d need to either self-carry or pull from aid stations. My primary fuel was Precision Fuel and Hydration. Their gels and salt tablets have been a major part of my fueling strategy for a couple of years now. At the aid stations I planned on grabbing candy, chips, and maybe some hot food if I felt up for it.
After a final gear check it was time to find dinner. I usually do a big pizza or rice and plain chicken the night before a race. There was a pizza place nearby but they told me it would be a 2-hour wait. For once I had a legitimate excuse to wait for something, but I didn’t have 2 hours to give. I fell back on rice and chicken. Nothing exciting, but nothing that would wreck my stomach either.
Then it was time to lay down and do my best to sleep. A long day was coming.
The alarm went off at 4:00am. I slept okay, which is about as good as it gets the night before a race. The eagerness takes over. I lay in the dark for a moment running through the day in my head before crawling out of bed and making my way to the desk. Standard rice breakfast, an energy drink, and a full serving of Precision’s 1500 electrolyte tabs. A pre-load for what I knew would be a long day in the heat.
After loading up my gear I set off for the start. There was a long line of headlights stretching out ahead of me in the pitch dark, hundreds of people who had circled this race on their calendar and were now, like me, just minutes from finding out what all that sacrifice was worth.
As I got closer to the parking lot, attendants guided us in with flashlights. That was the first of many moments that day where I noticed the volunteers. People who show up at odd hours for no pay to help strangers finish something hard. There is a lot of good in that.
The start line area was the only thing lit up for miles. A handful of floodlights cutting through the dark, hundreds of headlamps bobbing in the crowd, breath fogging in the cool desert air. As the final seconds ticked down I did one last rewind of everything that had gone into getting to that moment. The early mornings. The long drives. The hard workouts. The finding room for all of it inside an already full life. Now was the fun part. Well, fun for now.
The first few miles were along rolling jeep roads, the sun barely beginning to push color across the tops of the plateaus. By the time we hit the first singletrack of the day, Wire Mesa, the sky was turning pink at the edges. One of four loops I’d run that day.
It wasn’t long before the lead group I was part of caught up to the back of the 100-mile runners who had started 30 minutes ahead of us. The singletrack was tight and passing was hard, so I settled in and used the forced slowdown as an excuse to actually look around. The canyon walls. The deep red against the early morning sky. Oh, those views! I’d say that to myself over and over throughout the entire day, just genuinely in awe of what I was running through. Whatever the day threw at me, I kept coming back to the same thought. What a privilege it is to explore this part of the world on your own two feet.
Around mile 8 I hit the first aid station. Filled my bottles, grabbed some Coke and a handful of chips, and kept moving. Things were feeling good. The Wire Mesa loop had the same jaw-dropping views, which I was beginning to accept was just the baseline out here.
After completing Wire Mesa, runners from all distances folded in together on the main road connecting the loops. 100 mile, 100km, 60km, 30km, all of us sharing the same stretch. Getting to run alongside that many people was one of the better parts of the weekend. Back home in Bridgeton I rarely see another person out running. Not on this day.
As I made my way back toward the start area and the back half of the course, people were lining the sides of the road holding signs and calling out names. I missed Felicia and the girls in that moment. They couldn’t make it on this trip, which meant the distance was entirely on me. No crew. No familiar face waiting at the next aid station. Just me and however well I could manage myself out there. What I didn't expect was how many messages were waiting for me every time I checked my phone at an aid station. Friends, family, people tracking my dot from home and encouraging me to keep going.
From the turn near the start, we headed toward Gooseberry Mesa, the loop I had been most uncertain about going in. Roughly 11 miles of slickrock. If you aren’t familiar, slickrock is essentially running on boulders. The uneven kind. Up and down and sideways. By this point the sun was fully overhead and the rock was radiating heat from below as well as above. Some sections brought me within a foot of drop-offs I’d estimate at close to 1,000 feet. I moved carefully and didn’t get close to the edge!
Around mile 30 I started to feel the day catching up to me. The extra electrolyte bottle I’d carried on this section earned its weight in my pack. Toward the end of the loop a few of us spotted a rattlesnake just off the side of the trail. Far enough away not to be a threat, but close enough to get the heart rate up for a few steps.
Getting back to the Mondo Z aid station at mile 34 was a relief. Drop bag retrieved. I had been averaging around 90 grams of carbs and about 36 ounces of fluid per hour. I was feeling okay but the slickrock had clearly done some damage to my quads. I grabbed a bite of grilled cheese, about six orange slices, washed it all down with a Coke, grabbed more of my gels, topped off my bottles, and headed toward the cut.
The Mondo Z descent was absolutely the crux of the day. Roughly 1,200 feet in half a mile, all loose rock and soft dirt. Foot placement was luck and my quads were screaming for the entire thing. I passed a few runners on the way down and at the bottom found the water monster, a massive multi-gallon tank sitting out in the open desert. I soaked my face, arms, and the back of my neck, held my hat under the spigot, and then kept moving. Twenty miles to go.
On my way to Virgin Desert at mile 43, I could feel how much the first half had taken. I tried to run the early part but it became clear fast that I needed to pull back and work in some walk/jog intervals. My spirits were still reasonable when I rolled into the aid station and the volunteers helped me get sorted on food and electrolytes. I was spent. But I knew one thing… as long as I walked out of that tent, I was finishing Zion.
The next aid station was only 2 miles away but they were the longest 2 miles of the day. The sun was directly overhead with nowhere to hide, and the wind was steady enough to pull sweat off my skin before I could feel it happening. I was losing more than I realized.
At Virgin Dam I sat down for the first time all day. The folding chair felt incredible for about 30 seconds. I drank some Coke, got down a handful of chips and a few pieces of candy. My stomach was starting to shut down, and I knew what that meant for the final 15 miles. This was going to get really hard.
What really stung at this point was that the section from Virgin Dam through the town of Virgin and back to the water monster was some of the best singletrack I’ve run in years. Gentle, slightly rolling downhill. On any other day that terrain would have had me grinning the whole way through. Not on this one though. A large part of the next 10 miles was spent walking. My legs just couldn’t turn over. I’d get a jog going for maybe half a mile before having to walk it out again. My body was shutting down. I was in trouble.
I knew going into the race that around mile 50 I’d hit a 2-mile stretch of road near a highway. What I didn’t know was that there’d be a brand new gas station sitting right at the turn. The sight of it felt like finding water in an actual desert. I peeled off the course and went inside. Lucky for me I had a bit of emergency cash on me. The air conditioning hit me and I stood there for a moment before grabbing an icee and a Gatorade to drink. I sat down outside the door and gathered myself. Mondo Z was still 5 miles away. The finish line was 10 out. On a normal day that’s nothing. On this day I was fighting to get through the next few feet.
I stood up and started moving. I had come out here alone. I had spent all those Friday mornings in the dark at Umstead alone. Quitting didn’t register as an option. I jogged down the 2-mile road stretch, turned right, and got back onto the jeep road. Up ahead was the same gnarly section I had come down hours earlier. This time I was climbing it.
By the time I hit the base of the climb at mile 55 I knew what I was getting into. Not the hardest I’ve ever done by any objective measure. I’d handled bigger at CCC a few years back. But I was running on fumes, and nothing had stayed down in hours. Ten feet at a time was about all I had. I’d find whatever flat rock I could, get a few seconds of rest, and move again.
Halfway up my stomach finally had enough. I dropped to all fours on the steep trail and dry heaved for about 20 seconds, doing my best to not slip down the mountain. It wasn’t pretty. But when it was over something shifted for me. A strange second wind came out of nowhere. I stood back up, moved through the rest of the climb, and walked into the Mondo Z aid station at mile 55. Five miles to go.
Another runner hobbled in just ahead of me. He looked completely broken, eyes glassy, not quite sure where he was. I said a few words to him but he just stared past me like he’s seen a ghost. The volunteers got him into a chair. I stood there for a moment watching them before chugging most of a 12-ounce Coke. The sun was getting low. A breeze was picking up and the temperature was dropping.
Over the next 5 miles I traded slow jogs with power walking, doing whatever I could to keep moving forward. With about a mile to go, the finish line still not in sight, I looked up.
I’ll never forget what I saw.
The stars. The brightest I have ever seen them, so dense and close it felt like they had lowered themselves toward the desert floor. I turned off my headlamp to get a better look and just stood there. Back home in Bridgeton I love standing on the back deck at night and looking up. Even in the dark out there it doesn’t come close to what was above me at that moment.
With a quarter mile left I turned a corner and entered the finisher’s chute. I found whatever was left in my legs and ran it in, doing my best not to trip on the rocky ground. When the medal went over my neck all I wanted to do was sit down.
It was a day that asked for everything I had. Much harder than I had expected. But I was proud to have battled through it, and when it was over the only thing I could feel was grateful.
The day after the race I spent in Las Vegas on a pair of very tired legs. First stop was the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop from the TV show, something I’d always wanted to see. Lots of memorabilia, cool to walk through, probably not quite as dramatic as what makes it onto the screen. Later I spent some time on the casino floors at the Venetian and did some people watching along the strip. The younger version of me would have found a table and played some hands. All I wanted was to sit somewhere quiet and wait for my red-eye home to NC.
Not because I have to. Because I get to. That’s the thing I keep coming back to a week after the race. I’m in a place in my life where I can sign up, train, and take time away to go do something like this. To have something hard on the calendar that requires real sacrifice to reach. The effect that kind of thing has on the rest of my life is hard to measure, but it’s real. It changes how I show up when things get difficult in ways that have nothing to do with running.
The Zion chapter is officially closed now. The road to Javelina continues.