Brandon Cooper

Writing about this one didn't come as naturally as past races. In the days following the race, my mind was a bit scattered. I finished (spoiler alert) and was proud of the effort, but training for it was challenging and I thought this might be my last 100 mile race. My wife and I recently started a family and when you put the time commitment required there side by side with running, running definitely falls to a lower priority. That's exactly what happened during training -- for my first 100 miler, I averaged 61 miles/week in the month leading into the race. For Javelina, I only managed 42 mi/wk during that same period. In the months since though, I've noticed a void where training used to be. It's driven me crazy - within a week, I've oscillated between being done with running and signing up for my next 100 miler. Last week I decided finishing this would probably help me figure out a way forward, so here we go. I wrote ~90% of this within the week of the race and t...

Preparation Four years ago, I ran my first marathon. It was around that time that I heard about ultrarunning, which covers races for any distance beyond 26.2 miles. What stood out to me the most though was the 100 mile distance. I think the first time you learn about people running that far, your initial reaction falls into one of two camps: 1. That's impossible! 2. That's possible? I fell into the second group the first time I read about renowned ultrarunner Scott Jurek winning several 100 mile races. Not only was this guy running 100 mile races across the mountains of California, but he was doing it with hundreds of other people. And there were hundreds of these races across the world, spanning decades back. It blew my mind. The marathon always reigned supreme for me as the longest distance a person could go, but I learned that people were running way, way, longer than that, up and down mountains, and I wanted to try. The past four years have entailed a consistent effort to w...

Anticipation I've been looking forward to running Quad Rock ever since I started trail running at Horsetooth Park outside of Fort Collins. The course runs over some of the best trails in Horsetooth and Lory Parks just outside of town. While it looked bleak earlier this year due to the pandemic, the race directors managed to jump through hoops to make it happen this year. There were many changes due to COVID including waved starts, masks at aid stations, limited spectators, and more, but the biggest change impacting the race its delay from May to August. Anyone who lives on the Front Range knows that those are two very different climates. Because of that, in the months leading up to the race I spent a lot more time running in the afternoon instead of the mornings to get acclimated with the heat. In the final week leading up to the race, my body was feeling as good as I could hope for coming off of the Never Summer 100K a few weeks prior. After a week or so off from running followin...

Leading Up to Race Day 2020 has been a strange year. As effects of the pandemic swept across the country in March, my expectations to toe the start line of any of the 5 races that I signed up to run this year vanished (those races being Crown King Scramble 50K in March, Quad Rock 50 Miler in May, Never Summer 100K in July, Black Squirrel Half Marathon in September and Blue Sky Trail Marathon in October). Sure enough, Crown King rescheduled for a date I could not make and the Quad Rock was tentatively delayed from May to August. Things were looking bleak which was tough to deal with as I had begun training in November of 2019 for these races and had been running more consistently than ever before. Disappointed as I was, I quickly realized that these races were small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. The spread of COVID-19 continued rapidly and its impacts were impossible to ignore. I’m grateful and fortunate that none of my loved ones have died from or even contracted COVID-19...