Running 100 miles through the mountains is hard. Running 100 miles through the mountains with the flu was something I thought my experience and will to finish would carry me through, but I was sorely mistaken.

I got into Sheridan on Thursday, the day before the run, and picked up my bib and all the fun Bighorn swag. The 8 hour drive from Utah wasn't that bad compared to some drives I've done in the past before races. I left my drop bags in the proper trailers to be taken to the 3 major aid stations.

Now it was time to meet up with Anthony, my good friend from Boulder who would go on to win the Bighorn 100, but we'll get to all that. We hit the grocery store for some last minute things, ate at Pony Boy and then we went to the prerace meeting. For dinner we got pizza at MrJims. After MrJims I went back to my hotel room and laid out my gear for the next day.

After a decent night of sleep I woke up for continental breakfast and ate some eggs and bacon before heading into Dayton to catch the shuttle to the start line. I chatted with my buddy Rob who I met up in Canada last year while I was running Fat Dog. We picked up our trackers at the start line and began the wait for 9am.

The race started a little late, maybe 5 minutes, and then we were off. 300 runners all with the same goal headed out to Jaws. The first section is about 13 miles and is nearly all climbing. 45k feet of gain later you drop down into Dry Fork AS where I had my first drop bag. On the way to Dry Fork my heart rate was sky rocketing into the high 160s and I still felt really sick. I was coughing and blowing my nose constantly. Honestly, it had me pretty worried that the heat plus the flu that just wouldn't let go of me were going to be a quick end to my day.

Around mile 20 some clouds rolled in and the temps dropped to a nice 70 degrees or so. Now I was moving. My heartrate went down to a normal zone and all my walking turned into mostly running. In the 17 miles from Dry Fork to Sally's I passed what felt like 100 people. The rolling trails and steep downhill into Sally's all felt great. I had another drop bag at Sally's with more maple syrup and all my night time/cold weather gear. At mile 39 who do I see? None other than Anthony cruising down in first place and a whopping 20 miles or so in front of me. He looked happy to be leading and calm and collected even though 2nd and 3rd were close behind. The sun was setting now and it was time to layer up and get the head lamp out.

About 5 miles out from Jaws is when the real mud that I heard so much about made it's appearance. Each step was ankle deep mud and water as I climbed the last few miles up to the turnaround. When I got to sit and eat some hot food at Jaws I thought "This is it. I'm going to make it if I don't drop here." "All I have to do is get out of here. There is plenty of time and I don't feel totally destroyed yet." I put even more layers on, changed batteries in my camera and headlamp, refilled water and got out of there.

After leaving Jaw I was averaging 1520 minute miles. Within 5 miles of heading back to Dayton my body just shut down and went into limp mode. "Fuck." My pace was now between 3040 minute miles and my feet were in bad shape. All the mud that had gotten into my shoes during the 10 miles of mud slinging fun had now caused trench foot and a few blisters, one that was under a toenail. I tried putting more calories down and drinking water, but nothing was seeming to bring my body back to life.

At this point I had 13 miles to Sally's where I could drop from the race. I did some shitty runners math and the numbers weren't looking good. Those 13 miles took me about 10 hours to complete. I made it to Sally's an hour before cutoffs and handed in my tracker and bib. I was done.

A huge shoutout to all the volunteers and race directors that made this run possible and have been hosting Bighorn for 31 years now.