🏜️ Last week, my wife Jeanne and I completed the Ultra X Nevada - 220km across the Mojave Desert.
5 days. 32 hours of running. 8th overall. 1st in our age category.
As an amateur (for the love of), it was a privilege to take part in a race this stunning, technical, and unforgiving - altitude, scorching desert floors, freezing nights, steep climbs, and miles of gravel and boulder fields that punished every step.
The desert and the distance strip you back until there’s not much left but character to carry you through. Here are a few reflections from the experience:
💪<🧠 Running is only half of the challenge. The rest is staying disciplined - with nutrition, hydration, and recovery when you’re too tired to care. Discipline decides whether you finish strong or break down. (Having the new Factor_ athlete nutrition stack on hand helped a lot this year — can’t wait to share more to support pros and everyday athletes alike.)
🐇<🐢 Consistency is everything. In long and multifaceted races, wrong turns, bad pacing decisions, or loss of composure will cost more than raw fitness and speed could ever gain. The best runners aren’t always the fastest — they’re the most consistent.
😱<🧘🏻♂️ Fear is louder than pain. Pain is simple; it’s information. Fear is the noise that says, if it hurts this much now, how can I keep going for another hour, 5 hours, 5 days? The key is to quiet that voice, stay present, and focus on the next step.
🧍🏻♂️<👫🏻 Teamwork makes everyone better. We ran every mile together and every time one of us struggled, the other helped keep the rhythm. We ran faster, smarter, and had more fun as a team than we ever would have alone.
I’m grateful to family, friends and colleagues who made it possible for us to be completely offline for a week; to Jeanne for being the best teammate imaginable, and to our little boy — who waited patiently for us to come home, and is now giving me time for this reflection by insisting that one of us sleep in his room tonight. Back to the best kind of endurance event of all, one bedtime at a time 💚
#ForTheLoveOf #Teamwork #Factor #EverydayAthletes
