Cocodona 250 Report
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One aid station to the next.
Nothing more.
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Somewhere between Schnebly and Munds Park, I looked up and saw a tree shaped like a dinosaur hugging an old lady.
“That’s definitely not real,” I told myself.
Then I looked to my side.
“But those little gremlins are.”
I was alone. It was the middle of the night, day two or three, I’d lost count. My eyes wouldn’t stay open. I’d tried lying down on the trail multiple times to sleep but the cold cut through me too fast to actually rest. So I kept walking, half hallucinating.
I wanted to move faster. A few other runners from the Sedona race would come by. I tried to stick to them but every time I picked up into a jog, my eyes would close after one or two steps and I’d stumble back into a walk. It felt like something inside me had put a governor on how much energy I was allowed to spend, and I had no say in the matter.
As the night wore on and my mind cleared a little, the hallucinations faded but something else crept in. Claustrophobia. Not from being closed in, but from the opposite. I was trapped on this trail with no walls and no way out except forward. I kept opening the map looking for possible side roads to civilization. I kept thinking that if I could find a gas station and drink a redbull and eat snickers I would be back on track.
That was the bottom. But let’s back up, because the bottom only means something once you know what came before it.
The Start
The expo was the day before, Sunday afternoon. I’ve been to marathon expos and Ironman expos, and this wasn’t like either. There was no way to tell who was racing and who was crew. Elites had their camera crews, but mostly it was just a few hundred people who were excited about running, hanging out. The prerace photo felt almost ceremonial. Documenting what you looked like before you went and did something to yourself for 250 miles.
5am Monday, we went off. I wasn’t nervous. Unlike an Ironman start, everyone around me was talking, joking, settling each other down instead of amping each other up.
My plan was simple: stay near the front half, but don’t get pulled into the fast group. I tucked in behind a small train of runners that happened to include Sally McRae and a handful of Coco veterans who kept the whole pack honest, slowing down every few minutes just to remind everyone how early it still was.
About 20 miles in, I ended up next to Lindsey Dwyer, an elite who’d run this race before. I mentioned my goal, 4 to 4.5 days. She said, “Oh, well, you’re on track to go way faster than that.”
That one sentence changed my race. I wasn’t chasing a finish time. I was chasing a strong finish. So I let myself drift back, found my own rhythm, and spent the next six hours mostly alone, working my way to Crown King.
Lesson: A good plan isn’t one you defend no matter what. It’s one you’re willing to revise the second new information shows up. Lindsey’s one sentence was critical information for my inexperience. The skill was being willing to listen to it instead of being committed to an effort or pace.
The Crew: Armando, Ally, Jen & Phil
My crew met me for the first time at Crown King, mile 37. Ally was the captain. She knows how to read my body language without any words needed to be spoken. Having Jen there meant the world. She’s the master mind who brought Phil, Armando and all the other amazing Ultraman people into my orbit. She’s also crewed a ton of these races, so she knows what athletes go through over the course of multiple days.
After Crown King I had another 40 solo miles before I could see my crew at Whiskey Row. At this point, I was still feeling pretty good and the idea of covering this unique terrain alone was still exciting. During this section I joined up with another runner, and we ran about 90% of this section together. He would drop me on the hiking sections, and I would catch back up on the runnable sections. I’m a slow power hiker. It’s something I just can’t seem to master. I move as hard as I can. But it always seems that others move faster.
Most of this section was fairly runnable and I felt like I was moving efficiently throughout. Near the end there’s a sneaky climb to the Camp Kippa aid station that I hit right at sun set.
Rolling into Whiskey Row I was starting to get tired. Both physically and mentally. I was looking forward to getting to my crew and my pacers.
Armando and Phil carried most of the pacing load, and they both had their own styles.
Phil stayed conversational the entire time. Dad jokes, running circles around me trying to get the right camera angle, finding something funny in literally everything. Armando was the opposite. Quiet, subtle, he’d just pick up his own pace slightly until I matched it without noticing, then say, “ready to shuffle a bit,” and we’d go.
Neither style was better. They were just different tools doing the same job, keeping me moving, in a way that fit who they each were.
Lesson: You don’t get to choose how the people around you show up for you. You can only choose to let their version of support actually work. Phil’s jokes and Armando’s silence were doing the exact same thing.
Riding the Highs
There were 2 distinct sections where I was in complete flow state. The first was early on coming into Crown King. The stretch from Lane Mountain is almost completely downhill. It was a nice break after climbing for almost 8 hours.
A few DAYS later, I found another moment of effortless running. I was with Armando for a long stretch. We went from Munds Park, where I had just slept off the hallucinations, to Kelly Canyon to Fort Tuthill. This stretch goes through the Alpine Forest. About 21 miles very runnable single-track trail. We timed my sleep so that I started again with the sunrise. If you’re new to multi-day events, this is a lesson you should take away. The sunrises are a breath of fresh air. They wake you up and your body will forget that you’re running on little to no sleep. When you’re in that 2-4AM witching hour, just keep telling yourself that the sunrise will be there soon. I promise that it changes everything for you.
During this 21-mile section, Kelly Canyon aid station is in the middle. Somewhere throughout this section you cross the 200-mile mark, which was a monumental point for me. It was the point in the race where I finally said to myself “I’m going to do this!” As we left Kelly Canyon, all of a sudden I realized that I was moving really well. My music was blasting, the legs felt fresh, and I was in this euphoric daze. I just decided to let it go. Armando was behind me, but I couldn’t hear his steps because my music was so loud. During this time I was running 8 min/mile and it felt effortless. I had tears coming from my eyes because it just felt so good!
Lesson: For every low, there will be a high. You just have to stay in the game. Recognize that you’re in a low and stay in the game. If you hang on long enough, there will be a turn around.
Eating & Drinking is Important!
There were several different lows that hit and they all seemed to be with Phil (sorry Phil). Heading into Walnut Canyon, I’d been running well, 8-to-9-minute miles for stretches, handling a couple of steep 500 to 1,000 foot climbs over half a mile without much trouble. Then, after the first one, I was just empty. No pain anywhere. Just gone. In hindsight, I think it was a combination of low calories and the altitude. I was religious with taking in nutrition every 20 minutes, but I wasn’t eating enough at the aid stations.
Earlier in the race, in the section from Sedona to Schnebly Hill, Phil and I got so caught up in the views off Hangover Trail that we miscalculated our water. He thought the next stop was 2 miles out. It was closer to 4. Running low on water for what should’ve been a quick stretch turned 2 extra miles into something that felt like days. It wasn’t entirely due to the water, but this was definitely a stretch where I would have been served better to carry 4-6L. In fact, there are several sections where it was ironic that I was carrying my mandatory cold-weather gear, but overheating, wishing I was carrying 4L of water instead.
Lesson: Preparation doesn’t stop problems from showing up. It just decides how much they cost you when they do. I know that I should have been eating. It was an avoidable mistake, but the other elements of the race became higher priorities at the aid stations.
Forward is a Pace
I touched on this earlier, but there were many moments where I felt trapped. My body was just screaming to stop and my mind was screaming back at it to keep moving. It made me feel claustrophobic on the trail. There was nowhere to go but forward and I knew that. But the constant signal to stop became so frustrating. Mentally, I was well aware that stopping was not productive. But physically, there were moments where I just wanted to either get off the trail or just stop.
Phil witnessed a lot of these moments. I would stop. Lean on my polls. Get pissed. Moved some more. Stop again.
There were times where I started trying different tactics to distract my mind. The one that stuck was counting to 50. I would just count to 50, then start again. Over and over and over. I wasn’t running and barely walking. But the counting created a rhythm for my mind to lock into. That rhythm also helped control my breathing which I think helped settle my nervous system a bit.
Referencing back to my hallucinations at the opening of this email. My lowest of all low points occurred from Schnebly to Munds Park. A relatively runnable section through the alpine forest. I had taken an extended stop when arriving at Schnebly because of the issues I had with Phil coming into that aid station. I thought I had rested and refueled enough. There were no pacers allowed through this section, but I left feeling relatively confident and comfortable. But it didn’t take long before it started getting dark, literally and figuratively. There were moments where I don’t think my steps were more than 5-6 inches. I was dragging my poles, exhausted, while trying to stay upright and moving. Looking back, this is a section where I still can’t believe that I reached that state. It was such a dark place. Completely different than anything I’ve ever experienced.
Lesson: At your lowest point, your mind and body will be fierce enemies. There’s no amount of anger, rage, or force that will solve that equation. Control what you can: calories, hydration, and pace. Then start looking for ways to break the negativity loop.
The Finish
Ryan (my Ultraman buddy who’s to blame for talking me into signing up) and I had talked before the race about avoiding Mt. Elden at night if we could help it. About 24 hours out, it became clear I’d hit it after dark anyway, which was fine, my race plan had always allowed for that possibility.
Before that, I got my one section with Ally. Seven miles, under the stars, something we’d both hoped would happen somewhere in this race. We rolled into Wild Cat around 10pm. It was getting cold. You could see headlamps scattered up Mt. Elden in the dark like fireflies on a mountain.
I was feeling good enough that I floated the idea of pushing straight through the night. My crew was tired. They were looking forward to a night’s rest. Armando also reminded me that the top of the mountain was an unknown. It could be ridiculously cold at 9,000ft. There was no rush. This was my first real shot at more than an hour of sleep, so I took it. Four to four and a half hours, then woke up and went for it at first light.
Mt. Elden is long, not technical. I climbed it mostly alone until about a mile from the top, when I ran into Andy Glaze. The Andy Glaze. We traded stories, and he gave me the rundown on what the infamous Mt. Elden descent. Fortunately, he was pretty casual about it. He said “It’s steep, but it’s short. The 2.5 miles of rollers after the descent are worse”. He was right. Going down the descent in the day light with rested legs was pretty straight forward. But those stupid rollers felt like they took forever.
At the final aid station, four miles to go, I sat down, joked with the volunteers, gave some pets to all the dogs and got moving again with what felt like brand new legs. Sub-9 minute miles, easy, full flow state, straight into town.
Coming back into civilization after four days away felt disorienting in its own way. I picked up Phil for the last half-mile stretch, and we made the turn into Heritage Square together. Ally, Armando, and Jen were all there waiting.
The first thing I said when I crossed the line was, “I don’t want it to be over.”
Lesson: Letting my crew talk me out of pushing through the night wasn’t giving anything up. It was trusting people who could still see clearly when I couldn’t. Rest isn’t weakness. Build a team that you trust, so they can make decisions for you.
If you’ve followed this newsletter, you know the loop: Thoughts → Beliefs → Actions → Habits. Cocodona was that loop running at full speed, sometimes flipping from rock bottom to flow state in less time than it takes to drive to work.
For everyone racing Cocodona week next year, you’re going to hit your own version of that trail to Munds Park. You’ll know it when you’re in it. When you do, remember it’s not a verdict on the rest of your race. It’s just where you are right now, one aid station from somewhere completely different.
This was a long report, and I could go on and on of hundreds of memorable moments. If you want to watch a video, Phil (Rambling Bear Media) put together an amazing documentary of the race:
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