From Broken To Breaking: The Colorado Trail FKT

when i hear your voice [Music] [Music] [Music] all right brother here we go good job man good job nice nice work pal there you go power up [Applause] there you go man um it was easy to be the 5k local gobble wobble [Music] right [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i'm michael mcknight i currently live in cache valley utah i'm an endurance coach i currently coach 18 people who are interested in learning about how to increase their endurance who are interested in learning how to implement strength training into their plan and then also people who are interested in learning how to implement a low-carb high-fat approach i'm a low-carb endurance athlete so a lot of people who come to me for coaching are interested in approaching similarly to running the way i deal with nutrition they're interested in figuring out how to be more efficient at burning fat for fuel the reason i started looking into a low carb approach is because i had a lot of issues with my stomach going south in the middle of a race or i would end up losing energy because i wouldn't eat enough because i didn't want to throw up and so people who come to me who are interested in this same approach typically have those issues as well and they're just trying to find a way that they can run happy and not have those issues so the majority of the people that are coming to me for coaching are interested in learning more about that style of eating [Music] after i started to see success in my performance after living a low-carb lifestyle i decided to look into coaching [Music] and i found that a lot of the people who want to go into longer distances are interested in my coaching services and the reason being is just because i've seen a lot of success with the longer distances in 2017 i started to get into the 200 mile distance i was able to finish the triple crown with the fastest combined time then in 2019 i went after the triple crown again and tried to beat my fastest combined time and i actually was able to beat it by just over 40 hours so the the difference between the two years was pretty drastic and i contribute a lot of that to me following the low carb lifestyle a little bit more strictly and then with covet happening i decided that with my races being canceled i wanted to go after a zero calorie 100. i've always wanted to see how far i could go relying simply on my fat storage and with 100 miles being the kind of the big distance that a lot of ultra runners work for i decided that that was the distance i wanted to see was see if it was possible or not and i finished that 118 hours so it was pretty successful i didn't have any issues and then shortly after that me and ben white decided to put together a course called the brawl 300 which was a 300 mile course through the utah mountains and it actually connects two iconic ultras here in utah the bear 100 and the wasatch 100. took us a little bit over four days we had a blast i had no issues and after the brawl was over i decided to think about going after an fkt in the similar distance range okay everybody welcome to the one step above podcast i'm your host michael mcknight we have a remarkable guest with us she's crushing it in the ultra running world please join us in welcoming courtney to walter i've never run that far so i just figured that that's what it feels like to run 300 miles or for that many days you know i was like well this is this is the situation of this ultra you're doing so like accept that that's how it feels and we're still moving on to denver i basically decided to go for the colorado trail and went for it about three weeks later after courtney told me to do it this was just shortly after she had to go to the hospital and she was all about helping me encouraging me she told me what app to download she told me the books to buy to study up on it i think it's possible under a week for sure so she made it four and a half days she made it over 300 miles um and then she had to go to the hospital because her o2 levels were down to 70. i'm very thankful that i had a crew who was paying attention your crew is huge like they know your goal um and so their job is just to like have eyes on the that goal the whole time and keep you moving but also like pay attention to some health things and safety stuff mike uh came to me and he goes hey i'm thinking i'm gonna go for the colorado trail fkt do you think you could come help me for any of it you know the one that courtney you know was was working on and he just replied yeah i'll come for all of it these are the weeks that work best for me he's 500 miles what do you think and i said how do you feel and he's like i feel amazing i feel great no better time i'm in between jobs i'm at the peak of my training i feel good would you be interested in helping me i said well of course of course i'm going to help you so i recruited ben to be my crew chief and then three weeks later we were on the road to durango we had a ton of food taconos was nice enough to help sponsor mike's run they provided pounds and pounds of salami cheese sushi we had so much food and then grapes and kennel for both mike and the crew we were planning to live like kings mike established a relationship with auto home that makes rooftop tents they provided him a rooftop pan for his truck which we installed as we were just getting ready to head out to durango to start the colorado trail sweet crewing the 500 miles across the colorado trail we were gonna be in and out of some of the more remote areas i borrowed a van from a good friend threw my rooftop tent on the top of it that gave us extra sleeping quarters and headed out to durango keep the wheels on the bus going round and round on his bus and my bus keep him fed keep him hydrated keep him moving forward we're just trying to get him under seven days i think he could go a lot faster but we'll have to see how the trail conditions pan out it looks like you know they got snow last week so hopefully it melts but i think if i waited any longer then it would get even more snowy so so hopefully this week works out when i was 21 i just got back from serving a two-year service mission for my church i went skiing with some friends up at a local ski resort it was an icy day no powder at all so we got to this terrain park and there was this big jump in the park and i decided i wanted to hit the jump dead on i landed flat on my back i instantly felt a sharp pain go through my whole body i had surgery the next day and they put in two rods and nine screws in my spine my parents went and got the walker and i had to use that so i could walk from my parents house to the cemetery and back and it was two miles and that's where my grandparents are buried i was able to walk there and with my grandma recently passing away i was able to go visit her grave i ran a 10k race like exactly six weeks after my surgery the reason i run is because i was put in a situation when i broke my back where i was worried that i would be basically immobile for the rest of my life so i i've always thought that if i didn't take up ultra running and went back to my old ways in high school where i would play video games and not a lot of activity that would be a disservice to my body for how well and amazing it recovered from breaking my back so the biggest reason is just i'm happy that i can do these races that i can run hundreds of miles and not have any issues i know there's a lot of people that's not as fortunate as me and you know i want to continue to be able to do this while my body allows me to and i just love the concept of being comfortable with the uncomfortable there's no better way to occupy your time fully than go running for a few days for hundreds of miles the day before mike started in durango we stayed at a hotel and what we needed to do was organize the vehicles between my van and his truck i think we had roughly four to five coolers not only mike's food keeping cool and fresh it's also you got all the different crew members he had a variety of different nutrition from his electrolytes with gnarly his protein shakes and bcaas collagen the night before we got all the gear organized and he brings out this huge duffel bag and these are all his solomon shoes and they're all organized it's so big that he has it in the back of his truck everything was put and organized into bins in order to find it quickly so even though this was going to be a seven day run and it was going to be over 500 miles time was still of the essence we wanted to get mike in get him back out on the trail or get him in and get him asleep the night before we're pretty chill we went out and had some barbecue a really amazing barbecue if you ever have ben light help you with something he gives it his all this is my last pass so he's that kyle curtin's um segment that he's kind of signed up for hotel draws that's through tomorrow night he sent him this google excel sheet where he had all the crew spots outlined the elevation gain and descend for me to get to those spots he does this big climb and he's going to drop and then start climbing back up from a crewing standpoint and pacing standpoint mike's here to do an fkt something happens you're having a bad situation he needs to keep going and then we'll figure it out hey are you gonna come out and run with me in a couple days [Music] i love you more okay see ya oh getting shots of my nasty feet we got to bed early he didn't want to do a super early start he wanted to be able to sleep in casually get ready he didn't want to feel pressured or anything i mean it's an fkt you can start whenever you want there's no real race start the trail heads up north and then we go north again my strategy is to go slow hold back if i feel i can go faster just keep it dialed back take pictures have fun and just try not to like go too hard and really set myself back for the next six days i know it's the crappiest time for a pacer to pace but preference for people to save themselves for the night as much as possible when i'll have issues with hallucinating and just finding the trail and falling asleep so during the day i'm usually pretty good but it's a night when pieces really help i've only had like one hallucination where i was flat out in a different reality and it kind of scared me it's mostly just silly stuff i think mike was pretty relaxed he was ready to get started he was really excited about seeing the san juans i do a pretty good job at not fully grasping how long something's gonna take i knew i was gonna be out there for a long time but it didn't hit me how long it was gonna be and how hard it was gonna be i was very nervous that there was gonna be a ton of snow and it was gonna really slow me down i'd say as calm as i could be for what was about to happen so i go to track track we get ready in the morning we head out to the start we already checked everything the day before and off mike goes [Applause] [Music] i have a good feeling about this the weather looks good everything's looking good even though there's a little bit of snow up high i think i think things are going to work out i think this is going to be epic [Music] we're going to see him at mile 19 at kennebec we get up there with plenty of time he comes in an hour [Applause] it was definitely a little faster than what i thought i would do will you give me those alpine shoes please got it i'll get the outline the reality was i didn't know how much i'd be able to run once i got up into the san juans how uh how's the snow [Applause] well hopefully some more will be melted by the time you get up there yeah it was hard for me it's pretty bad the hikers actually told us about the snow field that he was about to go into it's slushy yeah once he heard that he asked me to get his solomon shoes with the built-in gator later in the day you just sink right through and you're right into it definitely keep your gators yeah did somebody move these shoes over to my van and when i went over to to look for it i started to go through all the different bags i started to go through all the different bins in the back i started to go through my van hey mike where did you have your shoe bag last night in the shop you know the truck on the bed [Applause] for my shoes the bag is nowhere to be found oh i think i just left it in the parking lot accidentally you expect things to go wrong when you're doing something like this big you never expect to show up and find out that your bag of 12 shoes are missing i don't know what the crime rate is in durango but it was just too easy to grab and take that popped in my mind and never entered my mind again and that's his shoes that's all of his shoes doesn't matter well it's nothing but it's frustrating i just looked at mike i said don't worry about this you just keep moving forward we'll figure it out the last thing i wanted to do is to do a 500 miles and one pair of i'm shoes for my buddy that's okay i think that this is the moment that might have derailed my nutrition i just threw my shoes on and took off i took like two bites of a piece of deli turkey good work guys bye [Applause] don't forget to smell the roses of course not me mike's parts it was a very spectacular section so i was able to really enjoy the the scene you know it was a blessing to get distracted a little bit could be a difficult time for mike up ahead with the conditions even though it's a beautiful day because you'll end up in mud and slush i'm rooting for them but i'm skeptical [Music] [Music] so once we left kenwick the main goal was to obviously establish shoes we made our way over to durango running company we'll be able to surprise him with three more pair of size 11 and then we got one pair of 11 and a half just in case for later on when his feet if they start to swell yeah i only had the fireman carry him for about two miles he had a cramp i mean this is just one of those moments where i'm really thankful for my crew especially ben i'll give him a huge shout out for this spot what's up kyle what's on the barbecue i was really anxious and hopeful that they found my shoes they had a table set up and i could see three boxes of solomon shoes sitting on the table so when i saw that this running store had the sense pro in my size i was pretty happy to have a pair of those i have a freaking altitude headache do you ever get that yeah for sure day one we're at the crew point hotel draw that's about 40 miles into the colorado trail we're about roughly 10 hours since mike started mike's about two hours ahead of his schedule and about three hours ahead of uh fkt pace love you too great thanks bye killian bye all right you ready kyle is really good to have in this section it was my first night section michael i'm kyle curtin i live here in durango colorado i know mike from ultra running community and tahoe 200. i'm gonna pace him here starting about mile 45 on his colorado trail fkt we're going from hotel pass to mullis pass it's about 31 miles and mostly around like 11 to 12 000 feet up so it's pretty high looks like we got a little weather coming in too it was nice to have somebody with me that knew the section really well and no worries at all about kyle he kept the pace going pretty well [Music] the last pass which was our third crew spot for him on the first day he notified us that he wanted to sleep here we actually had service so we could actually watch him come in refresh the map and saw that he wasn't moving as fast on the map as i anticipated kyle had to put up with a lot of complaining i was just really wanting to take a nap i think the altitude was getting to me it was a big relieving moment to get to mullis i really just wanted to lay down get in my sleeping bag get in my tent it was definitely one of my lower points and it was only the first night it was probably like a 45 minute nap that i was able to get in i was doubting how far i was actually going to make it so the bags loaded with that stuff and then my poles are right there poles are right there he was hurting he was feeling the elevation he was feeling the altitude gain and loss the ruggedness of the trail but he was tired the next stop we were gonna hit is about 20 miles away at mile 93 on stoney pass from the last pass you actually drop down into silverton drive through and you come out the other side and you start heading up this really remote canyon to stoney pass [Music] it took us all the way up to over 12 000 feet elevation yeah i wonder why they call it stony pass this next section is pretty it's pretty massive snow-capped mountains a magical looking area you're just high up your wave of tree line it's the funniest thing because as miserable as i was every section was just spectacular [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] when you reach the top is where it intersects with the colorado trail when we were up at stoney pass mike had a 20-mile section from molasses pass we were estimating him to be in around 1 p.m four hours ahead of his sub 7 fkt that was the pace that he was putting on 1pm came and went and it moved closer and closer to that 4pm when mike came into stoney pass the look in his eye he felt that maybe the goal that he set and the distance might be a little bit of a bigger bite he just descended out of molasses pass all the way down to the river and then just climbed all the way back up to just under 13 000 feet felt like three hours of climbing after we dropped down there and there's just like a long long brutal climb so it was almost an eight hour section it just took away longer than i thought it would i couldn't breathe i'm still gonna eat he's definitely feeling the elevation and he's getting a little tired but that'll make him sleep good tonight but uh we're here rallying together getting his wheels changed oh nice potato salad's going to use somebody offered me potato salad and i just went to town on this potato salad that climb definitely had a an effect on his overall pace he started to slip back towards the minimum of the sub 7 pace we're going to send him on his way and head on over to spring creek trail head where we'll meet him up in 30 miles we can swap pacers out in hats my name is garrett rucker from elko nevada mike's my coach i'm here to you know help him accomplish his goals and uh gonna pace him a bit crew for him and do whatever he needs with me to do to help get him to the finish line and be out here for a week and see how it goes he's looking good he put down a lot of calories this time shortly after we left i puked it all up garrett he he's a kid that i've been coaching he just reached out to me and he's like hey dude i'd love to come out and pace you for about five or six days i just knew from coaching him and seeing his progression that he was going to be just fine always having fun the san juans are just amazing they're so beautiful you turn your head in any direction and it's like stunning terrain big mountains and you're way above tree line and so you look in any direction and you're just like it's so stunning out there colorado's so beautiful we're so lucky [Music] it met a lot of hikers on this we saw at least a couple hikers every single day in my opinion they're the ones that are really really tough just because they've been out there for weeks carrying all their gear camping it's a long trip for them and that i feel like that takes a lot more mental toughness than going out and trying to do in seven days [Music] the second day the altitude puking my food up not eating a lot of food just by the time we got to the top of that climb i just needed to lay down i was so exhausted mentally physically emotionally i felt worse this moment than i did the majority of the rest of the [Music] trail i grew up super overweight i overate quite a bit i had a bad addiction to food just a bunch of processed junk drink a lot of soda i was not into physical activity at all started gaining weight along with all that i started to get made fun of quite a bit i got called fatty quite a bit making comments like that that made me kind of self-conscious about my eating habits so there's just a point where i just got sick of it all and was in between my freshman and my sophomore year i decided i wanted to lose weight i ran a mile a day and then this is probably the hardest thing i've ever done but i would only eat the portion besides like recommended sizes on all of the like a box of cereal i'd only have a cup of cereal for breakfast and whatever the recommended serving size was that's all i would eat for about half a year the three and a half months of summer break i lost about 40 pounds you know got to school and the fatty comments were gone which was great one thing about my dad is he loves his classic cars so it's kind of our project so these pictures kind of show the beginning the middle and the end and my dad always loves to joke that as the car transitioned i also transitioned because i used to be overweight so this was my really heavier stage this was kind of the same but i lost a little bit of weight and then towards the end when the car was complete that's when i was like kind of at the peak of my weight loss so these pictures are fun to look at because it's just it brings back a lot of memories does that find this laying down on that trail felt so comfortable this nap did a lot of wonders for me yeah i had quite a bit of doubts going through my head right now i'm not used to being up at that altitude for that long the first three days just really wore me out [Music] i just want to sleep in my bed [Music] most important thing is to keep reassuring him that the fkt is completely obtainable and that he is making good timing just to keep moving forward don't focus on the whole 500 miles just focus on the next checkpoint [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] spring creek became night two shortly after getting there mike comes pulling in and he was in at 126 miles he slept for a little bit and got back up and pulled right back out and headed back out on the trail before even the sun came up we are on our way to eddysville we had about a four hour drive mike's roughly 51 hours in and he's almost to mile 150. um he's doing well he's picking it back up he got he's gotten through the san juans and uh he's making his way through like the continental divide area from what i saw last night when he took off he was i think he was looking a lot better he's i think he slept okay he's you know okay for mike and uh he's been eating a lot better and he says his altitude headache has kind of gone away so i think his body's just kind of getting dialed into the ultra mode [Applause] dax was the perfect pacer for this section i met dax it's just over a year ago i met him at the bigfoot 200 in 2019 just became pretty good friends after that he's just one of the funniest guys that you'll ever meet the back of the mud flap to have dax in this section and distract me and crack jokes with me really really helped me out so it's gnarly what's that gnarly martin it seemed like his spirits were up from what they were at stoney pass that's what i was hoping for that's what i felt that we could expect you go through your lows you go through your highs and you know it all works out they had a really good system like i just come in sit down someone would take my shoes off only thing i really had to answer was just what i wanted in my water bottles and what i wanted in my pack and then they took care of it all everything seemed to have the stars aligned to where i could actually feel comfortable enough to actually get out on the trail and leave leave the crew but get out and spend some time with mike which was just so much fun when i found out ben was going to pace me i was excited because you know me and ben run a lot together so he knows me really well he knows how to talk me out of low spots all right so we just came out of eddysville we are on our way to the next crew point which will be highway 114 after this night it was only one more night until i got to see sarah and killian so that kind of kept me going i'm here to support mike in any way that i can decided to come help him out he put a call out for some some crew help and i wrote him back and i'm like yeah i'd love to help i'm hoping to run with him a little bit my segment's coming up tonight probably starting around 10 p.m so i'll run through the night so i'm gonna try to get some shut on well mr mcknight what do you want to tell all those that are watching your dot work its way across colorado i'm sorry it's moving so slow so slow but he's on track for the fastest known time when i came in at highway 114 the decision was to keep moving i knew what mike needed the most important thing is to get mike restocked get the food that he needs and then get him out the door 3 56 a.m i think it's just right across the road okay okay see you guys all right get him [Applause] once he's out the door i can start attending to my needs from accruing aspect it got a lot easier because most of the crew points were accessible from asphalt this is obviously mike's so we need to get this into mind so it's thursday afternoon uh we are at us highway 50 that's going to be mild 2 30. we're expecting my guinea minute right now he had a really rough night last night but he took a short nap we'll see how he's doing after a 30-mile stretch on his own this spot was really nice because i knew it was the last spot that i would be hitting before i'd see sarah and killian i knew that i'd be seeing them that night so that was keeping me going i was just so tired that i didn't want to try to eat any foods i had like two gels okay i want i want you just to sit here for a second and just you need to get some nutrition in you okay you just need to keep eating real food i think if anybody has the capability to go out and crack this off in the time that he is hoping to do it it is probably mike i'm carrie ward from vancouver canada came down to support mike on this effort as part of a it's called a month and a half adventure very much looking forward to getting out on the trail and running out here slight worries just about the altitude which is considerable and just being able to maintain pace but hopefully i'll have you know 100 miles in his legs before i get into it i remember how to do a lot of single leg squats i did air squats i did stretches i was doing a lot of stuff to try and combat the pain that i was starting to feel in my knee i was just really trying to stay on top of it hoping that if i did these kind of things that it wouldn't get any worse i think the wall sits and the all the mobility exercises that i did in this section helped keep the knee at bay i grew up in a small town called cornish utah it's the furthest north town in utah you can get the idaho borders a mile from my house there's about 200 people at any given time who live there there's a lot of families that grow up on dairy farms out there which was my case i grew up milking cows feeding calves moving pipe hauling hay cutting hay it's like a three or four generation dairy farm we'd go to bed at nine nine thirty and wake up at two o'clock to milk the cows yeah this is where all the magic happens we have cows come in on both sides and then we take these machines down and stick them up on the udders they don't stuff all the milk out every summer growing up i was getting about four hours of sleep every night just came home exhausted fell asleep and woke up at two again the next day it's a really hard lifestyle but i also contribute that lifestyle to being able to run a lot off of a little sleep just because i grew up functioning off of little sleep [Music] you'd be surprised how comfortable the ground is when you're that tired that 500 mile distance i think is just really unique in finding the line between how little you can sleep and then how quickly you can still move it's only two to five minutes but it feels like a long time and then that voice comes and brings me back to reality all right buddy let's do this just the general feeling i had every single time i woke up from a nap was just complete dread that i was still in the middle of this i've never longed for my bed and covers and not having to wake up more than i did throughout this trip i think you better take a banana break the biggest thing that kept me going is i just kept telling myself that i was going to get to see sarah and kylian [Music] it's always super exciting to see mike come in after not seeing him it was a relief to see him come in and see him strong and in pretty good spirits too i missed you it was just really really relieving to see them at this next section even though i knew i'd only see them for a little bit it was just helpful to know that i'd be seeing them every crew spot after that this whole colorado trail experience iota courtney really totally surprised me on the morning of day five that her husband kevin showed up just to say hi and cheer me on he was excited to to see you and see your whole crew he swung by saw how mike was doing and wanted to offer his encouragement i sounded maybe more like this little cyanide sciatica yes a guy named kevin showed up to pace me he grew up in the area that we ran so he knew the trail really well so he it was really awesome to have him with me he's a really really good guy okay almost ready good mike was in a lot better moods during the day once we were able to get into these easier accessible sections we were able to see him more often and so he didn't have to go so long without a substantial meal or changing his socks see you guys [Applause] the next section was a good healthy section with a big climb it was going to take him a good amount of time so we had time to go into leadville evaluate our supplies restock our coolers grab more personal grocery items that we might need for ourselves gas up he's a little behind on his sub seven gold pace the next stop in about the next uh three hours he'll be at 300 miles and about 175 85 to go the next trailhead was just down the road you know 10 miles right on the side of the road this is clear creek trailhead there was less stress about getting there and we were able to just kind of decompress just a little bit for that temporary period of time when he got there everybody kind of clicked into helping mode and after a couple times i had it down i felt like a like a cocktail mixer there's like eight things going into that protein shake definitely after a couple stops i felt like i was like okay he's changing his socks at every stop he's switching up his shoes get the socks and shoes and the protein mixed up and supply his sparkling water you know every every day and night was just getting a little bit closer to the finish so i was in pretty good spirits at this point the end's starting to get a little bit inside because it's day five i knew that if i was able to maintain the pace that i basically only had a 200 mile race left you know a couple more days good luck i'll see ya bye you saw my coach he's doing [Music] this is where i really started to get loopy starting to get in this like foggy hazy state the sleep deprivation is starting to compound there was a moment where crew met halfway through the minute he saw us and pulled in he instantly wanted to sleep i was just so so wrecked only a couple hours of sleep and it's been five nights i really really really wanted to take a nap we had not planned to even be there let alone have him sleep there and my crew is just telling me no like you can't take a nap right now you got to keep going if he kept moving we'd give him a bigger sleep time at mount massive i just kept telling her like i need to take a nap i need to take a nap i definitely feel bad sometimes inside when i'm pushing him to leave i know that he really wants to stay and i definitely would love for him to stay a little bit longer that was about 9 p.m i knew that if he slept then it'd be a super long night and if we just finished that section finished it sort of middle of the night then he'd be able to have a few hours the day would break it would be a fresh thing so that's when things started to break down some of the hallucinations started to happen he'd walk along and all of a sudden he would stop and he'd look i would say what do you see mike and he said i see monkeys riding a four-wheeler that's not real is it no it's not real at all wandering all over the trail on the trail off the trail i couldn't walk in a straight line i had to take multiple trail maps this was the lowest part of the whole fkt attempt he has paid the price requisite to actually see hallucinations like that we are looking to hit another 10 miles in the next few hours and get him asleep the next spot i just told my crew i don't care what you guys say i need to take a nap and so we got to that next spot i took a nap i was able to pass out and that next section after i finally got my nap i crushed it we're set to set the fast this time across the colorado trail well i don't want it congratulations thank you y'all have a good thing getting past that night that was just getting over the hill and my spirits were a little bit higher and i was able to find a gear that i haven't been able to find for the whole thing i have a good good buddy named josh stevens he showed up and ran 40 miles with me i was really looking forward to running with him [Music] each of the stops got longer and longer they got longer because from a mental push standpoint it's hard to turn and burn when you're gone that far doing good buddy don't fall asleep why because you need to either be doing that or eating i don't think there's anything here i know it doesn't smell like a little muffin grind mike do you want any of these primal cakes how about this put some food in your house and sleep and sleep and then two or three bites and sleep like that mike what flavor so this horse walks into a bar mike the bartender says hey why the long face killing there we go just kill him he's absolutely dead [Music] [Applause] i had my first duke's original recipes not only is he physically tired but he's mentally tired he's mentally tired from pushing mentally tired from hanging that carrot out in front of him and driving himself forward he can actually decompress here and it's so important for him to decompress to reset to to forget about the section that he went through it's over it's done with no more now i got a new section you know that close the book on the last section and open a new chapter take it on from a mindset that it is the new adventure he was super super excited to see his friend josh and so that was a big boost in his morale he'd asked if i'd come out and help him on this little project so it's been uh been a real treat to be out here today and we've got 13 change in about another 25 to go i think ben cherry picks the easy stuff for me [Music] he's right behind you we can start seeing his lights where can i sit down oh he was hurting a little bit i think he said it was his biggest run all year by a long shot so the fact that he came out and hurt that much and did a lot for me just to give me company for 40 miles is really awesome that last segment was pretty was pretty stout uh it was nice coming out of tennessee pass like the next six miles were pretty smooth you know got going and uh it's a really uh it's a really good challenging climb up to kokomo and then you're up over 12 000 feet again and still have another 14 miles to go to get down here so yeah it's um yeah it was it was definitely an attention getter we ended up i think going about 40 miles together today so uh yeah he's he's amazing and i i have to say i'm quite happy to be here with blankets wrapped around me now that last eight miles felt like a exceedingly long eight miles okay [Applause] did you have a protein oh shoot i didn't mix by this point i had three hours of total sleep throughout the whole five nights yeah yeah i'm all ready you're sleeping yeah mike was you know he's tired when the lights go out it puts that fog on the mic we can go and we can sleep with the next one too and do both do like 50 50. or i'm just i'm just so you don't fall backwards it's almost midnight it's like 15 minutes to midnight so it shoot for um two two a.m uh he's sleeping until two and then um we're gonna get up and and uh get ready and get out of here he keeps making the statement i don't know how i'm going to keep going i don't know how i'm going to get through this my legs are so tired i'm so tired and we just i'm just trying to get him to focus in on just one segment at a time okay let's get out of here [Applause] see on the other side of the mountain yep hopefully that's what you meant ben paced me on this next section and it was just like a really steep climb up followed by a really steep climb down we just went over about a 3000 foot climb last night just hammering it hard coming down we are about to hit mile roughly 375 380. he has just about 100 miles remaining he has one little range to go through until he starts to make the descent down into [Music] [Laughter] denver [Music] you hit that 100 mile left and you start getting under that that's a good i'm not going to hate the bar and starts waking them up yeah just start making your way down i'm going to take your bag and your shoes over there you go [Music] absolutely right here [Music] this donut just looking so good it put a smile on his face [Music] this is a corner that we're turning with mike the low-carb runner it was so delicious oh yeah yep you're gonna like send us to the store to buy you a home the famous donut is what he accuses the inflammation in his knee this next section he blames it on the gluten and the donut it was a few hours after having that friggin donut that my quad gave out and really didn't get any better the rest of the way it was also probably that i have ran 400 miles at this point we're going to pass the 400 mark on this run so i think you'll have about 80 miles left by the time when we get to kenosha pass they just happened to be in the area while i was passing through so nora met up and did a good section with me starting in breckenridge had a long fun day ahead of us keep them moving keep them positive you know keep it steady you know we got history to make so kill you bye see you dad see ya give daddy a hug i love you have a good day nora was great to have she was a great runner really talkative and thought it was really cool that while she's out on this vacation slash house hunting type trip that she would take a full day to come running with me [Music] i was just really hoping that they were going to be at mile 15 into this section instead of mile 30 because i wanted to muscle blast my hips i wanted to do some self-care really bad and fortunately the crew was there and i was able to do some self-care self-maintenance 15 miles earlier than what we had planned before we went into this [Music] ah he came in in really good spirits he really enjoyed the conversation he had with norah norda was a fantastic pacer nora and i was able to move somewhat at a good pace with night six quad hurting super tired yeah he had a knee issue where his quad was getting really really sore and so uh we took his buff and wrapped it around the top of his knee um to alleviate some pressure see if someone just said donut that jacked my knee up i told you he was going to play with him he's not moving like somebody who has run over 400 miles i'll tell you that he's doing great you ready greg i think so yes you are greg was just like a super happy and good spirited person no idea who he was didn't know what to expect i just remember that he reached out to i think ben on instagram and told ben he wanted to come and pace me my name is greg i'm originally from upstate new york but i live in indian hills outside denver now and uh i'm here to help pace mike for uh the next 13 or so miles uh colorado trail closing in on the end here i think he's got about 70 left so just trying to keep him entertained keep some positivity going he's doing really good at keeping the conversation going um talked about his trail running journey so it's just like a good conversation getting to know each other i was just going into a cold dark night and i wanted to sleep so i started to do the death walk again he did not want to sleep tonight the hay is in the barn he wants to be finished before too late tomorrow it's been a it's been a wild fun ride i i kind of like being on the running side i'd have to say [Applause] this was miserable to drive out to awful it was like driving on a cobblestone road it beat the tar out of my mounts i think there's some rattles in that van still to this day from from that section getting back there during this section here at long gulch the trail head that is indicated on the map is technically about two or three hundred yards away from the actual trail i wrote a sign that'll be fine you'll see it put mike's name on it took the kagawa light threw it into flash mode that would catch his attention because middle of the night they're tired they're cold they're just going to be looking three feet ahead of them and they're gonna blow right through i had to clear a trail from the trail down to where we could where we parked you better not get lost by the time i made that trail and get down here i'm like he's gonna be here anyways i gotta just sat there on the phone and waiting so you're waking me up yeah he's doing great um he's down on himself about it because he's not running the way he did 400 miles ago big surprise but he's getting a little bit uh just sleepy you know like just mentally he's clouding out on the uphills and then on the downhills he seems to get a flow even though the knee seems to be bugging him and he seems to be able to get like make up some good time is kerry getting ready [Music] it was the sixth night i knew that everything went well i'd be finishing in about 24 hours with his knee and slowing him down we knew that his seven day goal was starting to slip away we continuously encouraged him not to focus on that but just to focus on getting it done so much i'm gonna start walking carrie i'm with you see you thanks guys okay have a good one tell us take care gentlemen [Music] mike has got the music going now you know it's serious hopefully that'll bring us into morning and daylight it's well below zero still but as long as we're moving it's warm enough mike is taking his bottles out because he is about to have a five-minute dirt nap on the trail he's just walking zombie in terms of falling asleep now he's looking for a good spot that looks fantastic look at that bed snow white couldn't have asked for anything better i'm giving you five minutes dude enjoy that's your five minutes man let's do it this is good stuff man [Applause] that's what i'm talking about he's on the trail he's moving take a right [Music] it's like having my real-life personal zombie i get to follow through the woods [Music] i'm chris mealy i live in denver uh mike's my coach he's been my coach since november um super stoked to be out here it's pretty crazy that he's here already but uh hopefully i can keep up talk on the phone a bunch email him every week but uh never met him in person yet should be pretty interesting to meet him now [Music] and i just kind of stared at her he was still kind of coming back too i've never met him i'm delirious he's a really cool kid we're just coming upon his sub 7 marker goal where he wanted to be finished 40 miles is so so close the fkt's in the bag as long as he can push forward but that knee just it's not how you want to finish any race [Applause] you're almost done though is it going to be over today oh yeah no no you're at your pace what you're doing right now if you can just maintain you're going to be done before dark you're going to be done in less than 12 hours did i have to walk 40 miles did you walk that whole thing it was just it was a really hard spot i was worried that i'd be walking all the way to the finish so what do you recommend just blast in my muscle and hope it gets better if you can do what you're doing right now it's still going to be over before the lights go out you're going to be in a bed tonight that's all that's all you have to keep saying to yourself i'm going to be in my bed and i'm going to have the fkt by almost 24 hours you're not doing any damage do you see me i'm fine i'm running again do you see how bad i was coming out of that because it was all locked up it's just all locked up it's you muscles said i'm done we might as well just start sprinting and get over with no i'm sorry i can't even imagine that at the end but you're you're you're right there with where i was so theoretically if i sprinted and just dealt with it i couldn't i'm not going to hurt myself anymore i'm not going to say that one and we're joking about sprinting yeah i think i think it's fine and i had this idea in my head if i like maybe started sprinting maybe i could trick my quad into thinking that i was okay [Music] what are the things that you were saying at the very beginning of day seven as you were closing in on watterson canyon well i imagine that a lot of it would be tears yeah a little like happy and sad oh my gosh oh whoa very high maintenance not at all oh hey if you're going to go for the supported record you go for the support right take all the support you can get mike really started to pick up in spirits 4 30 for today is 24 hours before it so 4 34 tomorrow is the fkt on tuesday p.m p.m 20 plus l it was the seventh morning so i knew that i would be finishing some light relatively soon it's 8 50 which means in five minutes it'll be one week effort and then by week i mean the actual time period not weak like is in strength it's a pretty insane record so far where are we going yeah going nice you get to see what we drove up you see what the prius is [Applause] if you keep doing that i can't calculate when you're coming in [Music] wow the number one rule for crewing that i would have to say is when the runner leaves you pack your stuff up you get to the next location before you ever sleep i had these small 45 minute interval naps i think i was if i was lucky i got two a day my day consisted of driving trailing sometimes running i'm ready for this to be over with golden harper the founder of ultra showed up and ran to the next crew spot with us it was just really fun to catch up with golden oh it was super awesome seeing how strong he was even towards the very end just mentally persevering through all the physical pain it's like really cool to see [Music] i grew up super unathletic i've always had a physical hatred towards exercise all three seasons i tried football i rode the bench never played track i came in last a second to last every single track meet didn't see any kind of success with it the concept of trail running is just really remarkable and for me it's all about gratitude because i grew up overweight super inactive didn't even know that this kind of thing existed my friends tried getting me into mountain biking and i remember i didn't even make a mile into a bike ride with them once and i convinced them all to stop and go to a buffet with me i gotta set like some pretty big limits on myself with food or else i have no control over it i'm just the type of person where i do things in extremes i don't just run a few miles a day to stay in shape i have this weird desire where i have to go run multiple miles for hours a day or else i don't feel satisfied [Applause] nice to meet you kelly i'll see you [Applause] later [Music] as someone who loves him as much as i do i was very happy happy for mike happy to see the end even though it's his accomplishment feels kind of like my [Music] accomplishments we lived [Music] [Music] it's an emotional rollercoaster as the wife of somebody that does these things i constantly worry about him and i get excited with him i feel pain with him when he comes in feeling low and it's exhausting but it's definitely very rewarding [Music] so i'm gonna run the last section with him but he doesn't know hopefully that'll be exciting for him just running with me yeah go up over a big mountain what's the surprise uh he yeah that's a surprise he's that's the surprise you're you gotta you gotta do this alone man is that seriously the support this is your challenge i'm having too much fun are you running with me or not he's a driver are you running with me are you running running really yes yes yeah i was pretty nervous because i'd only ever run a half marathon and the next section was well like 16 miles [Applause] surprising me that she was gonna get a run with me was completely awesome just never expected that she was gonna finish with me and i'm really happy that she was able to it was fun to do part of it with her we're here at waterton canyon this is the pretty much the finish line this is the denver part of the colorado trail gonna start walking up to meet him along the way and kind of guide him in to the finish line if he finishes between 9 and 10 he'll be looking at taking off roughly 19 or 18 hours off of the fkt time of the colorado trail setting a new record for the collegiate east from west to eastbound i'm amazed how he just kept moving forward pretty much no matter what it's a ridiculous thing to be out for seven days on almost no sleep relentlessly pushing forward on a trail oh this is a huge deal yeah people try this every year and fail miserably or they get really close and have to call it i mean mostly just injury i think and just the mental side of being up for a week or longer running every day i mean it's not an easy thing to do so to see mike push his personal farthest distance and push pushes personal limits it's it's pretty incredible to watch on such a amazing trail i've been spending a lot of time recently thinking about the word broken and the meaning behind that word i spent a good portion of my early years feeling sad and out of place and the reality is i felt broken i felt like there was something wrong with me the constant fat jokes the constant being made fun of not feeling like i fit in because i couldn't perform athletically it really messed me up mentally further i physically broke my back and i physically was broken [Music] this fkt means a lot to me i i never ever imagined that i would be into a point in my life where i could go after records and not only go after records but achieve records and so being able to go from broken to breaking the colorado trail fkt is very meaningful for me it's something that i'm truly grateful for and you know it gives me a lot of hope and i am looking forward to going after more fkts in the future congratulations that was amazing it was so fun to follow along on on your adventure of it and i hope that your recovery goes well [Music] [Music] temperature icing this is [Music] down this is this is [Music] this is our time [Music] rising up this is [Music] this is [Music] [Music] this is who we are now [Music] this is who we are [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're rising down together [Music] so [Music] i'm yeah

Channel: The Low Carb Runner

Views: 73,336

Rating: 4.9458761 out of 5

Keywords: Colorado Trail, FKT, Low Carb, Fastest Known Time, Mike McKnight, 500 miles, Denver, Durango, Keto, Coaching

Id: 5EwWYa74__o

Length: 86min 13sec (5173 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/FullTiltWard]

This is such a quality video. Amazing work done by Matt Van Horn getting this thing together. I only wish I had editing skillz this sharp.

Oh yeah, Mike did pretty good making this FKT into another feather in his Ultra-cap.