62 Miles to Find Out Who Was Running

My body wanted to quit at mile 5. My soul got me to the finish line. This is how I know there’s a difference.

On October 18th, 2025, I signed up for the Zion 100k, a 62-mile foot race through Zion National Park. I had never run a foot race before this day. I had never run more than 22 miles at a time. I bought my first pair of running shoes one week before I signed up. Race day was April 11th. I had six months to train.

Training was epic. I loved learning about my body, tracking daily HRV, heart rate, sleep scores, stress. Watching the progress week by week. Long runs of 25 miles, then 35, then 57. Watching my resting heart rate drop. I found a new love for the mountains. A new respect. A new understanding. I built to 70-mile weeks before tapering into race week.

Race week I made every mistake in the book: all things I’d never practiced before. I tapered too hard, running only 10 miles in the 10 days before the race when it should have been 40 or 50. I sodium loaded. I carb loaded harder than I ever had. Combined with the stress of preparing for a 5-day campervan trip on top of the race itself, my body started breaking down by Tuesday. By Wednesday evening I couldn’t finish dinner. Wednesday night was the last real meal I had before I stood on the start line.

I woke up race morning with an HRV of 43. It had been 84 one week before. For context, my HRV was 37 after running the 40-mile Trans Catalina Trail. I hadn’t eaten more than five bananas in the 48 hours before the start. Bananas were all I could force down. But there was no way I wasn’t lining up. My family was there. I had trained six months. I had told everyone I knew.

My goal was a sub-10-hour finish, a 9.5-minute mile pace, which I hoped would put me in contention for the podium. I knew if everything went right, I had a chance to win.

That went out the window quickly.

I hung with the leaders for about eight miles. My heart rate ran 20 points above normal. My stomach was a mess. I’ll spare the details. I knew if I was going to have any chance of finishing, I needed to drop to a manageable range, the 140s, and backed off the leaders to run my own race. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink anything but water.

Miles 5 to 15 were the hardest miles of the race and of my life.

I was contemplating quitting. Everyone would understand. You’ll have another opportunity. And then the stories started, on repeat, for an hour straight. Who I was going to tell. What version of the story I’d give each person. Remembering every conversation I’d had about this race, how confident I’d sounded. Anguishing. Cycling. Building the narrative of how I’d failed.

Then something happened.

A light turned on, not through effort or decision, but through exhaustion of everything else. The stories had been cycling for miles. The same loops, the same people, the same justifications. And then the program ran out of material. The voice had nothing left.

In that silence I realized: whoever was listening to these stories couldn’t be the one telling them. The storyteller and the listener couldn’t be the same thing.

I changed from the Observed to the Observer. From inside the stories to watching the stories being told. The further I went in, the harder it was for the ego to speak up. For maybe the first time ever, I was observing this body and this spirit together, seeing the movement, hearing the thoughts, watching the stories run.

It was like a third entity had appeared: the body, the soul, and then this witness, observing both simultaneously.

The pain went away. The feeling sorry for myself didn’t exist. The thought of whether I would finish vanished.

I didn’t add anything to get here. Everything that wasn’t real had simply been stripped away.

It was one of the most significant moments of my life.

I wanted to go deeper. I knew I was only brushing the surface.

The Observer wondered where these thoughts and stories came from. Where else was the Observed telling stories? What had been the cost?

I left the door open, and in came memories from when I was 12 years old.

My brother’s friends would come over. The guys would offer me tobacco or alcohol. The girls would give me a hug, call me cute and cool, ask me to hang out with them. Every time they came over, I put on my Mr. Cool hat. I wanted to be seen. I needed to be seen. And it worked.

That moment quietly wrote a program that ran for the next twenty-five years.

Florida instead of Wisconsin for school, because it sounded like the kind of choice people admired. Becoming a bodybuilder, because of how people looked at me. Moving to Las Vegas at 23 and living on the Strip, because of the story it made. A Porsche 911 at 24, same reason. Dozens of decisions, large and small, filtered through the same unexamined question: what will they think of me?

I nearly shed tears somewhere in those miles.

My misery had turned into gratitude. Grateful for this moment. Grateful I’d put myself here. Grateful for the family coming up at mile 18.

They were waiting at the aid station with everything: chicken, rice, bananas, bone broth, coconut water. Nothing but smiles and encouragement. They were holding it together spiritually when I couldn’t hold anything together physically. I was back on the trail within 15 minutes. Still not sure I could finish. In 18 miles I hadn’t kept down a single thing, gels, coconut water, carb mix, watermelon. All of it immediately wanted back out.

Mile 23. I tried a Coke. Something about it settled things, got some good burps out, calmed the stomach. A few slices of watermelon. I sat at that aid station for 30 minutes.

Then the course opened up into something beautiful: ridgeline running with panoramic views for miles in every direction. I picked up a running partner named David. He passed me keeping a pace I recognized as exactly right. I caught up and ran with him for the next 10 miles. Somewhere in those miles I went from not knowing if I’d finish to having no doubt. He brought me back. Some people show up at exactly the right moment.

At mile 35 we descended 1,400 feet to the valley floor. My family was waiting again at mile 43. Feet hurting. Body hurting. Mind hurting. Under 20 miles to go, and I had to climb back up that same mountain to reach the finish. But mountains were my thing. I’d trained for mountains. I relished them. I took off from the aid station and pushed.

During the final stretch I noticed something else about myself.

Every time I approached a runner ahead of me, I slowed down. Wouldn’t pass them. Kept my distance. I first noticed it clearly when a guy I’d been trailing for five miles stepped off the trail briefly, and the moment there was no one in front of me, I immediately accelerated. A full minute per mile faster.

I thought back through the entire race. That had been the pattern everywhere. Come up on someone, back off, don’t pass, keep your distance.

It was another version of the same program: managing perception. I didn’t want anyone to think I was showing off. Didn’t want to be seen as the person trying to impress.

Same twelve-year-old. Different trail.

Mile 55. The final ascent. 1,400 feet of gain over two miles.

This is where my ego dissolved.

The stories were gone. No thoughts in my head. I went from pure stillness to repeating a single mantra: step. Step. Step. Step.

My body moved. My mind stayed still. No complaints, no concerns, no worries, no celebrating. Just movement. Sitting in the fire with nowhere else to be or go. Oneness. Pureness. Love, gratitude, energy, all present without being thought about.

These were the moments I had known were possible when I signed up. I just hadn’t known what they would feel like.

The last five miles were downhill. I ran like I was racing for first. All sub-9-minute miles.

I crossed the finish line in 15 hours and 17 minutes.

I thought I would cry. I didn’t. The quiet surprise of actually finishing, in the condition I was in, seemed to hold the emotional release back.

It came later.

The days following the race were the darkest stretch I’d experienced in years.

Complete shutdown. No appetite. Vitals I didn’t recognize: HRV, heart rate, sleep scores, stress levels all in territory I’d never seen since I began tracking them. Exhausted in a way that sleep didn’t fix.

A few days after finishing I had a thought I’d never had before: so this is what people mean when they say they’re depressed.

The contrast was disorienting. Mile 55 had been oneness. Stillness. Love. Four days later I was lying in bed, unable to sleep, unable to eat, watching numbers on a screen that looked like someone else’s body.

I came home 15 pounds lighter than I left. I didn’t have 15 pounds to lose: I was at 5.2% body fat before race day. My HRV crashed to 30% of baseline and barely moved. It took weeks to come back.

What I now understand: I put my body through the greatest stress of its life, probably by a factor of five. The physical cost of what I asked of it was real, and it collected its debt in full.

The darkness passed. Slowly. But it taught me something the peak couldn’t: the body doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t negotiate.

In meditation a few weeks after the race, something became clear.

There is a distinction between the soul and the body. The body is the vessel. The soul is what lives inside it.

My body wanted to quit at mile 5. My body did not want to start that race. My soul is the only reason I finished.

For the first time in my life, I had concrete evidence. Not philosophy. Not belief. Not woo-woo thinking. Just evidence.

For me, there is no longer a dispute.

It’s matter of fact.