I am not a lifelong athlete. I don’t have athletic DNA. I’m 55 years old, live at sea level in a state whose biggest climbs are the overpasses and I’m 6’2/ 190 pounds. I realize this is not the ideal scenario for racing mountain bikes in the Rockies. I’m just a guy off the couch who believes you can achieve remarkable things if you truly believe in yourself, surround yourself with the right people and commit to the goal.

Sounds really inspiring, right? Well on February 18, 2023, while pre-running an XC course, I misjudged a feature on the course and found myself on the ground in...

I am writing my story to inspire the heck out of every athlete who is trying to overcome an injury because injuries do happen, and we all fear it can destroy our hard work and dreams.

Seven years ago, on a different continent and hemisphere an armed robber pushed a gun to my leg and pulled the trigger. I had just returned home from competing in my third Ironman, feeling strong and probably in the best shape of my life. As good endings go, my fitness and strength saved my life. The bullet severed my femoral artery, shattered my femur, and disintegrated a section of my quadricep,...

I have always been a runner. Running is existential for me; it is where I feel most alive. By the same token, I have always enjoyed spending long days in nature. Growing up in Hawaii, I spent long days hiking and surfing. Since in Colorado, I have relished spending long days hiking in the mountains, especially at altitude above the tree line.

For most of my adult life, I have been a road runner. In my late 40s and early 50s, still primarily a road runner, I would jump in the Leadville Heavy Half for the pure joy of doing a 13er with aid stations. I had a blast – running it in road...

Hey there, fellow Leadville MTB'ers! As we rev our engines for the Leadville 100 MTB race, I thought I'd share some pearls of wisdom from the saddle. After all, with seven Leadville conquests under my belt, I've seen it all—from stunning vistas to the occasional, erm, unexpected dismount (more on that later). So, buckle up, grab your hydration pack, and let's hit the trail!

1. Mind Over Matter, Baby: Ken Chlouber wasn't just whistling Dixie when he said Leadville is 40% physical and 60% mental. When my legs were screaming for mercy, it was my mental grit that dragged...

You'll learn a range of topics, from mindset training and mental toughness, to the importance of learning both Persist and Resist mental strategies. If you're looking to perform at your peak this season, this webinar series is a tremendous value add.

This is a question I frequently get: With a large family, a full-time job, and countless other commitments, how do I find time to train for ultras and coach other athletes? The first answer is simply, "That's who I am," but clearly, there's more to unpack.

At the highest level, you must understand your life priorities, guiding principles, or simply your "why." My personal priorities are Faith, Family, Fitness, and Fellowship. These priorities ensure that at every decision, I'm reminded of what is important to me and strive to make those decisions in a way that supports that version...

As I get older, I have a greater perspective on the number of commitments that make up the majority of my daily life. Like most athletes that I coach, I work hard to juggle a demanding work schedule (outside of coaching), family activities, kids schedules, home projects (I still need to make time to take down the Clark Griswold style Christmas lights from this past holiday season), planning healthy meals, spending time with friends, making time for one on one time with my wife, walking the dog, cleaning the house, putting my girls to bed, focusing on my faith, and of course squeezing in...

Many people view the new year as a chance to set new goals and create positive changes. What is the key ingredient to creating positive changes in our lives? Consistency. How do you maintain a consistent approach to training not just in January but throughout the entire year? Three things to consider: giving yourself a period of reflection, setting realistic goals, and identifying accountability partners.

Period of Reflection

The holiday season is a time of gift giving for most of us and one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is a period of honest reflection....

As the chill of winter descends upon the mountains, cycling endurance athletes often find themselves transitioning into the off-season, a period often overlooked but critical for long-term success. While the temptation to lose a bit of focus, indulge at holiday gatherings, and to hibernate from training may be strong, this key downtime can be used as a golden opportunity.

At Boundless Coaching, we coach our athletes to embrace the seasonality of training and use the winter months to recharge, set new goals, and explore alternative training modalities. This proven approach helps keep...

You work hard. You train your body. You’re disciplined and committed to improving your fitness. You follow a plan for getting stronger and faster and you push yourself towards goals that matter. In your life of being an athlete, one important element may be getting left behind, however. Your mind. Sure, we’ve all been hearing so much about sports psychology and how important things like “mental toughness” and “grit” are in reaching peak performance. But has anyone ever structured a training plan for your mind in a similar fashion for how you train your body? I’m here to change that. Here’s...

Climbing up the first major ascent of the Wasatch Front 100, my legs were already tired. We were less than seven miles into the day, which at Wasatch meant at least 27 more hours of work. I knew my mental game was the only thing that would reliably keep me moving forward.

Nine months earlier I had gotten the incredible news that my name was drawn in the Leadville Trail 100 lottery. Leadville is my absolute favorite race and I had waited five years to toe the line again. This would be my fourth Leadville and I planned to focus my entire year on the...

11 January 2011, I had a life-changing event at age 52. I had a nearly fatal heart attack with a right coronary artery that was 100% blocked. When the doctors put in a stint and cleared the blockage, my heart stopped. The staff made me ride the lightning twice before God decided to let my heart restart. I didn’t have a cardiologist at the time, because just 6 months prior I had a physical and was given a “your good to go” diagnosis. The cardiologist that found me is a very active mountaineer (kinda weird he’s in desert of West Texas). He told me I didn’t have any sufficient heart...

I started running consistently back in 2018. I completed a few marathons and half marathons but wanted a bigger challenge, so I set my sights on Ultras, specifically the Leadville 100 Trail Race Across The Sky.

Why Leadville?

Im not sure I can give a clear reason other than it's calling my name. It's turned into something I MUST do.

I must complete this race.

I finished the Leadville Heavy Half this past Saturday and completed it in 4 hours and 7 minutes. This was my first taste of running at elevation, and I did pretty damn well, being my first time running...

As an endurance athlete and ultrarunner, I am always looking for the next outrageous event or activity to participate in. After seeing photos and videos from last year’s Garmin Unbound Gravel race, I knew this was something I needed to sign up for. Even though I had not participated in nearly any cycling races, I was hooked on this event. I have always been inspired by Tony Krupicka; his looks, his free-spirit, his introspect, and perspective on movement in the mountains. After seeing him tackle Unbound XL as an ultrarunner, I knew I wanted...

An Accidental Shift?

Stage running the Appalachian Trail and dropping the lone wolf mentality!

This past winter, I was visiting my son at college in Phoenix. About a month before I went, I was mindlessly scrolling Instagram and happened to see a post by Boundless Endurance that it was the last day to sign up for their Arizona Running Camp. It happened to be the following weekend of visiting my son, so I thought, huh! Why not sign up and kick-start some spring training on the glorious desert...

What separates successful and unsuccessful race results can almost always be attributed to a racers ability to manage variables. In long distance bike racing, managing variables begins months or sometimes years before lining up at the start line. While physical preparedness is perhaps the most important variable, what we encounter on race day, and the way we respond is perhaps just as likely to impact how we finish the race.

My approach to managing variables has been to define those which I have total control over those which I do not. What’s critical however,...

“It’s going to be hard work, but we'll have fun.” The last words of the first phone call with my coach. It was the end of August and I was going to run the Austin Rattler 50K in November. I had my work cut out for me. Just to spice things up a bit, I had also signed up for Brazos Bend 100 in December. Yeah, you read that right. The month right after the 50K, 28 days to be exact, I was going to tackle my first hundred.

You might be thinking to yourself that I’m overly ambitious and tad insane, and you’d be right, but that little bit of...

Chris Barnett had run one ultra on a track previous to the Leadville 100. A 40 miler to raise money for charity. He was inspired to run Leadville even though he didn’t do any research about the race, and had no idea what he was getting into. He signed up for the Boundless coaching package with guaranteed entry, and was reffered to coach Cat Bradley by a friend. In the first couple of conversations, they both realized that he was in over his head. He had never heard of a pacer, didn’t realize it was on trails, and had no expereince with the details of ultra running including nutrition,...

Join Boundless Coaches Jay Friedman MD and Kathy Pidcock as they cover the following:

• Pacing and Crewing basics
• How to Pace
• What to Expect
• Logistics
• Safety
• Gear
• Crew and Aid Stations

We all have been dealt an injury,nag,surgery or setback in some shape or form throughout our life. I had a freak accident that cut my Achilles tendon at a young age that shaped my path to the Leadville race series. The one thing that has got me where I am today is my mindset.

Whether you are racing one of the Leadville race series races or preparing for another race. Some of the key ingredients to getting to that finish line is listening to your body throughout your training cycles. Keeping your easy days easy and your hard days hard. Addressing, strengthening, and stretching the...

Wowza! It's hard to believe that summer is just around the corner. Hope Pass may still be buried under a blanket of snow, but before we know it, the trailhead will be packed with buckle-hopefuls every weekend until the race has come and gone.

As summer quickly approaches, so does the 2022 Leadville Run Camp, where athletes cover the course over three days in thirteen, twenty-four, and twenty-mile runs. All above 10,000 feet and all with significant elevation change. For some, it is the only opportunity athletes have to see the course and to run at altitude...

As a nutritionist, “what should I be eating?” is a question I get on a weekly basis from folks looking for nutrition advice. Ultimately, I hate trying to meal plan for people as I honestly don’t know what you want to eat. Rather, I think there are some staple foods that all endurance athletes should have in their pantry or fridge, and these should be incorporated into their diet on a daily basis. Below are 5 of my favorite foods that I think all endurance athletes should be eating on a regular basis.

1) Sources of Omega 3’s: Stock your pantry or fridge with sardines, tuna, canned...

We’re still six months away from the rifle blast signaling the start of the Leadville 100 mile trail run, so it may seem a little too soon to be making a bunch of decisions about gear. But in reality, this is the perfect time to start thinking about what equipment you’ll need in August in Colorado. Any ultra runner worth their salt tablets will tell you that the biggest mistake you can make in a hundred—aside from starting too fast and, obviously, accidentally running the race in wooden clogs—is trying out a new piece of gear for the first time on race day. As training starts to ramp...

We have all made Resolutions or Promises starting a New Year. Goals are good, SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Frame for completing) goals are better and moderation in deciding what our goals will be for the new year is best.

The holidays are fun but can leave us feeling as if we ate our weight in desserts or not so good food. We may have been distracted with family gatherings and didn’t get all of our planned work outs in which may leave us feeling frumpy. The new year can give us that shiny new feeling of here I come 2022!

Start your new year with a...

Just been reflecting a bit more on Leadville now that it's been almost 3 months since crossing that finish line... as I mentioned this morning, I just wanted to share with you how grateful I am for you guiding me through the training and then the race.

I know that everyone says that running the Leadville 100 will be a life changing experience, and before you do it you really wonder "how?" I've done a lot of cool things in my life that I am super grateful for. How will this be different? But it is. It stands alone as one of the single most life changing experiences I have...

When training for an Ultra event the probability of getting an overuse injury is very high. Your number one priority through any training program is to show up to the start line healthy. Taking a proactive approach to your preventing overuse injuries is key. Below you will find some quick tips from Coach Jill Becker.

• Warming up is key: Warmup drills- Moving hamstring stretch, moving quad stretch, hip circles, donkey kicks etc.
• Base miles- Building the foundation
• Incorporating cross training, especially if coming back from an injury to build your engine without...

As I trundled through the beautiful autumnal landscape on my trail run today, the cool breeze reminded me that winter’s chill is right around the corner. This time of year, hiking up Hope Pass under a blazing sun seems a long way off. But Leadville and the rest of our summer goal races will be here before we know it. What can we do now to help ensure that we get the most out of those highly anticipated adventures? Here are a few suggestions on how best to approach winter/off-season training.

1. Take a break. If you’ve been training steadily for an extended...

Limiting GI Distress - Low FODMAP diets

Low FODMAP diets

Basic Application and Thoughts on Race Circumstances

Huh? Fogmaps? Frogmats? Whaaa???

FODMAPs

Stands for: Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols.

These are an otherwise unrelated group of carbohydrates that have a short chain length and can be fermented in the small intestine or colon and are thought to contribute to IBS in many individuals.

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