I finished my final race of the season and had fun doing it in spite of tough conditions. Here are the numbers for weeks seventeen and eighteen, including the Run Rabbit Run 50 mile:

• 31 hours, 12 minutes all training

• 75.93 miles running and hiking

• 11,929 feet D+ running and hiking

In week seventeen I tried to maintain a reasonable volume of training and do quality workouts. I ran four times, with some modest hills, and a fast group run at Pineridge. This was my last week of unemployment this summer, so I tried to enjoy going to bed early and sleeping late.

Week eighteen was race week, and also the start of a my job (subject of a future post). I biked eleven miles each day, Monday through Friday, and did one lunchtime run from work on trails going north to Reservoir Ridge Open Space. I slept well, ate well, and on Friday afternoon I drove to Steamboat Springs to prep for Run Rabbit Run. Picked up my bib, checked in drop my bag, and went to my hotel room to pack for Saturday. I expected rain during the race. My drop bag had spare shirt, socks, and shoes, and I would have access at miles 18 and 32.

I heard rain Friday night, and that would be Saturday's theme. There were some flashes of lightning as we gathered at the start line before 6 a.m., and ten minutes in the skies opened up. It poured for over an hour, stopping just before I reached the Mount Werner Aid Station (6.4 miles, 10,372 feet). It wasn't cold, because this was the last summer monsoon event of the year, so I left my rain jacket inside my pack, in its waterproof stuff sack, and resigned myself to being wet.

It rained intermittently all day. Flat sections of trail were often flooded. My feet were wet for the duration of the race. My shoe choice worked out well. The NNormal Kjerag 2 that I wore have less material than most trail shoes, and do not absorb much water. I lubed my feet before the start, wore my thin Darn Tough socks, and was fine. I fully plunged into puddles in the second half of the race instead of dancing around them, and had no regrets. No blisters, no trench foot.

During the middle third of the race there were some sunny breaks. My hat and gloves dried out a bit. The aid stations were serving hot food and hot drinks. I found some fun folks to run and chat with. The Dumont Lake Aid Station (23 and 27 miles) was packed with volunteers, crew, and spectators, an enjoyable spectacle. I reached the Rabbit Ears rock formation, the turn-around point, in the best conditions of the day. I'll remember this every time I drive past on US-40.

Rain returned in the last third of the race. I unpacked my rain jacket and it stayed on for the duration. It was a wet slog from mile 32 until Mount Werner, again (mile 44), and slippery in places, and then there was another thunderstorm at the finish. I had fun out there, but was also super glad to be done.

The slow 50 mile and 100 mile runners share the last 10 miles of the race. I took every opportunity to pump up the folks who were going to finish the 100 mile race after 33-36 hours. That's going to be me, one day.

Run Rabbit Run was well organized and fun. The aid stations were first class and the Park Range backcountry is beautiful. I'll return to this, happily.

Number sixteen was my peak volume week. My biggest training week in three years (not counting the Bear races of 2023 and 2025).

• 17 hours, 27 minutes all training

• 52.2 miles hiking and running

• 14,938 ft D+ hiking and running

I went out on steep mountain trails five times to prepare for the big initial climb, high altitude, and big finishing descent of Run Rabbit Run (RRR). I did more power hiking than running on the climbs, and worked on descending with fast feet and momentum. I'm not planning to use poles at RRR, so I left them behind all week.

Tuesday I hiked and ran up the Round Mountain trail in the Big Thompson Canyon. 3,000 feet of climbing in less than five miles is a good simulation of the climb up Steamboat Mountain. There is some very pretty scenery on the trail, too.

Wednesday I did some D+ grinding around Arthur's Rock in Lory State Park. 1,400 feet of climbing (and equal descending) in 5.3 miles.

I went to Rocky Mountain National Park on Thursday and Friday for an alpine mini-camp. Thursday I hiked and ran by myself up to the top of Flattop Mountain from Bear Lake. That's 2,800 ft D+, starting at 9,800 feet. I saw a Peregrine falcon and lots of pikas and marmots. Not many hikers on top, though Bear Lake was quite busy.

Thursday night I stayed at the cabin of my friend, Dana, and Friday the two of us ran and hiked into RMNP's Wild Basin, following a ridge to Mount Orton (11,729 ft) and then to the summit of Chiefs Head Peak (13,579 ft), the third highest summit in the park. From there we dropped down into the drainage containing Snowbank and Lions Lakes and along North St. Vrain Creek to the trailhead. Over 5,700 feet of climbing and twenty miles. We ran almost all of the return, and I felt pretty strong. It's a good sign for RRR.

Sunday I went back out for a little more D+ grinding on Towers Trail. I hiked and ran at the very end of the day to beat the heat. The lights of the city on the way down was something I hadn't seen in a while.

On the Some Work, All Play podcast this morning the Roches said that ten hours of training is near the productive limit for most athletes. They are not counting active recovery, that's my understanding. My count of more than 17 hours includes three hours of easy cycling and my usual mobility and core routine, and no more than four hours of zone 2 effort. Everything else was quite easy. I wouldn't want to stack too many of these weeks, but this one on top of a pretty big week fifteen is not too much. I've got plenty of recovery time before RRR.

Weeks twelve through fifteen had a little better air quality and I increased my training volume steadily, transitioning to more uphill outings and more power hiking.

• 56 hours, 15 minutes all training

• 125.8 miles running and hiking

• 26,420 ft D+ running and hiking

In week fifteen, I logged 10,000 feet of elevation gain (D+) for the first time this year. And I felt good after eight consectutive days of hiking and running.

Week eight began in Glacier National Park and week eleven finished in Steamboat Springs.

• 51 hours, 47 minutes all training

• 116 miles running and hiking

• 16,903 ft D+ running and hiking

Hiking with my oldest kid in Glacier and Grand Teton Nation Parks was one of the highlights of this year. Arabelle has become a strong hiker (summiting nine of Colorado's fourteeners this summer) and is great company on the trail. Hiking options were limited in Glacier, which was recovering from torrential rain and washed out trails, but the Tetons were wide open to exploring. Our big hike was to trendy Delta Lake below Teton Glacier.

July in Fort Collins was characterized by exceptional heat and miserable air quality. Particles from smoky wildfires upstream and ozone derived from fuel pumps and gas wells locally are making smog a permanent feature of summer on the Front Range of Colorado. It's nice to be able to escape to the mountains to escape the heat and ozone.

I tried a new kind of running event in week eleven, a relay race from Fort Collins to Steamboat Springs, 200 miles in 36 legs, as one runner on a team of twelve. I ran legs 11, 23, and 35, all of them on the shoulder of a scenic Colorado highway, the middle one at 1:00 a.m. It was a bit like running a hilly, short 10K every 7-8 hours. We split the team into two vans of six runners, so one group would be a rolling runner and crew, while the other had 7-8 hours of downtime. None of us had done the Wild West Relay before. We executed pretty well and had a lot of fun. I drove a giant white Ford Transit, ate a lot of junk food, slept very little, and made a bunch of new friends.

The first half of summer has flown by. I'm quickly catching up on six busy weeks here.

• 53 hours, 52 minutes all training

• 130.1 miles running and hiking

• 16,220 feet D+ running and hiking

That's about 9 hours of exercise, 22 miles of running and hiking, and 2,700 feet D+ per week. I've been active enough to maintain my base fitness, but haven't done much building. Travel and vacation have kept me from sticking to a regular workout schedule.

In week two, I participated in Laramie's Pilot Hill Classic 25K race for the first time. I experienced cramps again, but not as bad as at Quad Rock. I tripped a few times on the way down, and once did a full Superman dive, head-first, onto a smooth (luckily) stretch of trail. I had some calf cramps and a bloody elbow after that, but the cramps cleared up before the finish.

Thanks to less running, my right knee is feeling less gimpy. Could be my new omega-3 regime, too. I'm interested to see how it feels as I ramp up to 40 miles per week in August.

Welcome to week one of my year's second eighteen week training program. I'm gearing up for a race that I've never run before, a long-standing one that is close to home: Steamboat Springs' Run Rabbit Run. The 50 mile course goes from the base of Steamboat Mountain, up Right-o-way, then up next to the Thunderhead Express lift, and then (as far as I can tell) up around Tornado and Buddy's Run to one of the chutes and onto the ridge just below Mt. Werner. 3,500 feet D+ (dénivelé, in French, or cumulative elevation gain) in the first 6.5 miles. From there it rolls through the high country to Rabbit Ears Peak and then returns along the same route. The total elevation gain is almost 9,000 feet. It doesn't climb quite as much as the 50 mile Quad Rock course, which I've finished three times, but is at higher altitude. I'm looking forward to it!

In week two, on May 30, I've got another chance to work on my race day cramps puzzle. I'm going to run Laramie, Wyoming's, Pilot Hill 25 kilometer classic for the first time. My friend Stefan, who has family in Laramie, has been recommending it to me for several years. Ruthie and Bea will be at an equestrian event in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that same day. After I finish, I'll drive east on I-80 to meet them and watch them ride.

Finally, here are the numbers.

• 10 hours, 2 minutes all training

• 15 miles running

• 3,090 feet D+ running (and treadmill)

I was diligent about doing my mobility and core routine, and running or biking each day, including an uphill climb and downhill ripper on Friday.

Nine years ago, I ran a 18 km race in the hills north of Montpellier, France, part of a big three-day festival of races called Festa Trail. I have good memories of the event. The weather was great, it was more runnable than Trail Quillan, and one of the race organizers emailed me the day after I posted to express interest in my blog post.

I had some leg cramps at Festa Trail. Cramping is the subject of my next blog post, and scanning my previous posts for mention of cramps is what reminded me of my run around Pic St-Loup.

My first trail race was in Colorado, but running in France really got me hooked. The runners were super enthusiastic, the villages we ran through provided food, drink, and music, the courses were crazy steep and technical or very sloppy. Adventures, but safe ones, because the pompiers (firefighters and first responders) were always on the scene. The events were big! Hundreds or thousands of runners at some of them. In the years since, I've heard French people say that trail running has become too big, and I get it now, but nine years ago the scale and intensity of French trail impressed me.

I was anticipating a good day at Quad Rock and instead I flopped. I finished in 8:14:46. 186th out of 209 finishers, my poorest place at this race by a big margin. And I'd expected to match, if not exceed, my previous best. What explains this fiasco? My major problem was acute leg muscle cramping, but there were some minor issues as well.

In the week before the race I did my mobility and core routine every day and ran 15-30 minutes per day. I ate and slept normally, which is to say, well. Instead of feeling fresher and fresher, I started to feel stiff and irritated all over. My right Tibalias Anterior and Peroneus Longus, the muscles on the shin and outside of the lower leg, were particularly tight and tender starting on the Thursday before the race and continuing into the eve of the race. I did a small set of 20 second hill sprints on the street around the corner from home on Thursday and felt okay. My shakeout run on Friday afternoon, however, sucked. I never got very comfortable and the strides I attempted were a chore. I was a little dismayed by this, but let that feeling go, figuring that I was likely to feel better on Saturday.

Saturday morning I ran the first mile very easy, then picked up the pace in the second to jump some places before we hit the first single track. In the first half mile of the single track I made about five short bursts to pass slow groups and find people who were running at my target pace. Soon after this, we started uphill and I started to get negative feedback from my legs. Not cramps yet, but a lack of energy, like I'd felt on Friday. I'd felt better on the same climb a week before in my last uphill workout.

I kept a steady enough pace up Towers, and wasn't passed by anyone, but began to go backwards on the first descent. My legs felt tight and fragile. I lost contact with the folks with whom I'd climbed Towers and a few places heading down to the 10-mile mark, Horsetooth Mountain Trailhead.

The next seven miles after the aid station were a complete disaster. I experienced calf cramps that stopped me cold, and shin and foot cramps that made it hard to stand at all. I was passed by 54 runners, about 2 runners per minute, before I reached the Towers aid station. I tried salt. I tried stretching. I had to lie on the dirt at Towers for 15 minutes before I could continue. 3:22 of that was spent listening to "Rock Me Amadeus" on the aid station's sound system, which gave me life and saved my race.

I fumbled my way down Mill Canyon to Arthur's Rock aid station at mile 17, three hours after leaving the Horsetooth aid station. I laid down in the shade to stretch and slowly put myself back together. After 15 minutes, I felt like I could continue, if not quickly. The cramps were fading, but my legs were shot from the involuntary contractions. As if I'd done squats and deadlifts to the point of muscle failure.

During the last seven miles of the race, I caught up with runners who were in their first Quad Rock, or first trail race of this distance, and it was fun to pre-celebrate with them, pump them up, share stories, and remind them that we were going to be finishers, if only because there was nowhere to drop out before the finish. I was feeling a lot better at this point. The last climb up Howard was hard but not the end of the world. I managed a good amount of easy running on the last descent to the finish.

The cramps reminded me of my experience at the Bear 100 in September 2025, except that they hit me sooner at Quad Rock, at 10 miles instead of 17 miles. I've been analyzing my data, memories, and notes to find things about the races that were common or different. And, now that I think about it, it was calf cramps that brought me down at mile 21 at Never Summer 100K in July 2023. I've got a problem with cramping that hasn't been solved by physical therapy or judicious amounts of hard running. It's going to be an interesting problem to work out.

In the end, I did finish, and feel pretty satisfied about that. I haven't crossed a race finish line since July of 2023, almost three years ago. Breaking a streak of three DNFs (2023 Bear 100, 2025 Never Summer 100K, 2025 Bear 100) felt good. The weather was good, the trails were fine. I ran with friends for a while and saw other friends at aid stations. It wasn't all torture. I smiled and laughed quite a bit.

Biggest thanks to Ruthie for driving me and Stefan to the start, taking our drop bags to Horsetooth, and for picking me up at the finish. Thank you, everyone who offered me help on the painful cramping trip. And thanks to Nick and Brad, and all you race volunteers. Everything about this race was top notch, except my legs.

Week 16 is over. It's six days to Quad Rock.

• 10 hours, 11 minutes all training

• 18 miles running

• 2,385 ft D+ running

I did a small set of hard running intervals, some steady running, and one last hilly run on the Quad Rock course with a friend on Friday. We pushed the pace on the upper half of the first climb, going up Towers Trail, and I was just a few seconds off my personal bests on those segments. 10/10 effort on Saturday won't be sustainable, but it was fun and a useful check on my fitness before the race. I'll completely recover from that by the end of the week, no problem.

Week 17, race week, will be so easy that I expect to go a little stir crazy. A winter storm is arriving tomorrow, so I'll be inside, running on a treadmill and sitting in a sauna, until Thursday. I'm curious to see how much snow we get, whether it's going to stick on the mountains through race day, and how muddy it will be.

You've probably seen links to "The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess" already. I've just finished the last installment. This is an excellent series of posts with many references. If we meet to talk about the industry, I'm almost certainly going to ask if you've read it.

This is bullshit about bullshit machines, and I mean it. It is neither balanced nor complete: others have covered ecological and intellectual property issues better than I could, and there is no shortage of boosterism online. Instead, I am trying to fill in the negative spaces in the discourse. “AI” is also a fractal territory; there are many places where I flatten complex stories in service of pithy polemic. I am not trying to make nuanced, accurate predictions, but to trace the potential risks and benefits at play.

I've already come to some of the same conclusions, so I admit to confirmation bias.