From one end of the pandemic to the other, Anita Ortiz has had a lot of highs and lows as a runner. On February 13, 2021, she was released by her doctor who gave her the OK to begin running again. This good news se...
Articles by John Trent
Cody Lind has followed in the footsteps of his grandfather Dr. Robert Lind and his father, Paul Lind, for almost his entire life. When Cody was boy, he would join his grandfather in the family’s camper parked at th...
For Kyla Maher, the process of discovering her future has been about finding out who she is and something more – about how she can help others find a stronger sense of who they are and the community they wish to belon...
“Do you ever still hear them?” I knew exactly what he meant. Yes, all I needed to do was close my eyes. For the past 25 years, they’d been a reminder that Joe Braninburg, in the midst of his own finest athletic moment...
If you think hard enough, you can feel the footsteps and hear the voices of all the races you’ve ever run. They become like a thin veil between the ambition of youth and the perspective of age. The problem, of cours...
In late June and through the middle of July, the Tahoe Rim Trail’s 171-mile FKTs were battered by a bevy of runners that included Fran Zelenitz (women’s unsupported FKT on June 27), Helen Pelster (lowered Zelenitz’s unsu...
He had only been gone a few weeks. But when Amanda Espinoza-Martinez spoke of her late husband, Chris, it’s obvious his guiding spirit still remained.“He was so good at leading people,” Amanda says of Chris, who died on...
The Bighorn Trail Run is in Michelle Maneval’s blood. There are few things in her life, other than her family, that she’s had a longer or more intimate association with than the endurance races which have been held witho...
My routine hasn’t varied much over the past few years. Once another Western States has been put to bed and those who have worked so hard in putting on the race have all hugged one last time, I take one final look over my...
On the climb out of Robinson Flat, a little after 30 miles into the Western States Endurance Run, you can usually spot those who will finish and those who will not.What usually matters is the look in their eyes. Some loo...
He was just like any other first-time, 100-mile runner. The adventure of soaring into the unknown and testing one’s limits had come crashing down a little past the halfway point. Fifty-five miles into the Mountain Lakes...
There was only one thing left for Maggie Guterl to do, and that was to run.She was wrapped up in the middle of a strange gathering of runners in someone’s backyard. To call it a competition several months later, now that...
2019 will always be remembered as one of the watershed years in our sport. New records and standards of performance were established at some of our most enduring events (Jim Walmsley’s course record at Western States) by...
When you get old, you lose things. From your dreams of youth to the passing of friends you haven’t seen in decades, each day you grow older can be a gentle or a stark reminder of what you once were. As I stood on the sta...
Prior to the start of the Wasatch Front 100 Mile Endurance Run, before the headlamps of 300 starters quietly snaked their way up the mountainside at East Mountain Wilderness Park in Kaysville, Utah, I left our group stan...
He lived in Leadville during that long-ago summer of 2009, out of the back of his white Chevy S-10 pickup, which he affectionately called, “The Roost.”Anton Krupicka was focused on a simple task: run faster than anyone h...
The alignment seems almost uncanny, now that Andrea Abel has finished the Western States Endurance Run.Her late husband, Jeff, ran Western States in 2005 and finished in 29:24. Andrea finished this year in 29:27.Jeff fin...
Even if it was cool by Western States standards, the compelling severity of what lay before him was on the mind of Jim Walmsley as he walked slowly to the start of his fourth Western States Endurance Run.Talk in the days...
We all face crucial decisions throughout our lives. The one facing Nikki Kimball last fall was the most important she would ever make regarding her running.A left tibia injury from a snowshoe race in 2016 had escalated d...
In the summer of 2018 near his home in Mammoth Lakes, California, Tim Tollefson had been preparing with uncommon focus for the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) in Chamonix, France.After finishing third in both of his pre...