Mt. Gaoligong Ultra 170k*
Where do you even start with something like this?
What started as a “what if?” ended with a what was. I traveled to Tengchong, China with Matt and met my dad to run the Mt. Gaoligong Ultra with 8 other elite ultra running Americans - 170 kms, 28,000+ feet of climbing with a 47 hour cutoff. I was listed as an elite athlete, which still feels strange to share. I’m just a guy who likes to see how long he can keep going.
· · · The Start - CP0 to CP2 · · ·
The send off was straight out of a movie. A four string quartet playing while fireworks lit the sky. Flames lining the runway as a few hundred runners filed into the packed streets of Tengchong, the city alive with spectators hanging out of their car windows while traffic was brought to a halt. For about two miles we ran through town as the whole place went absolutely electric for us. I kept thinking: nobody told me it was going to feel like this.
Then the city faded and the darkness swallowed us whole. Just the collective dome of headlamps on a single track, the sound of footsteps and heavy breathing and the quiet weight of what was ahead. Over a hundred miles. I did the math and immediately stopped doing the math.
The first climb up to CP1 was a steady, honest grind. After CP1, David Green and I found ourselves on a fire road descent and quickly missed a marker and ran in the wrong direction. Classic. That wrong turn turned out to be one of the best accidents of the whole race because it’s how we first crossed paths with Wei Ling.
· · · Wei Ling - CP2 to CP7 · · ·
CP3 through CP5 was a blur but it was an opportunity to meet and learn more about Wei Ling. She’s an underwriter from Shanghai running her first 100-mile race. Of all the races in the world to debut at, she chose this one - an absolute bear of a course. It didn’t take long for the three of us to figure out we were better together. She’d walk into aid stations ahead of us and translate - noodles, rice, calories, wherever the conversation needed to go. There were moments where it genuinely felt like she was more focused on taking care of my dad and I than herself. I didn’t know what to do with that kind of generosity.
There was a language barrier between us but what held us together was the unspoken feeling of enduring together. None of us were comfortable but none of us put that weight on the others.
Wei moved with grace - cadence always high, posture perfect. Why she felt comfortable enough to adopt two lost Americans for 40+ miles? She referenced “Yuanfen” - a Chinese concept representing a fated, predestined connection that brings people together. GaoLigong brought us together.
· · · Indiana Jones - CP6 · · ·
Around 5 AM, under a tree canopy so thick that if your headlamp died you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, the course turned into an obstacle course pulled from an Indiana Jones set. We were descending into a valley of waterfalls, barely runnable, holding on to ropes tied around branches, metal poles driven into wet rock, anything that was available. The rocks were slick. The soil was loose. Our poles were made obsolete.
We made it. But by the time we staggered into CP6 I was nauseous and couldn’t look at noodles. Wei Ling spotted my discomfort immediately, grabbed me tea and a banana, and my dad put his hand on my shoulder and told me to slow down before we moved again. The sun had just started to rise. I put the headlamp away. That helped more than I expected.
· · · Drop Bags & the First Nap - CP7 · · ·
CP7 was our first major aid station - drop bags, cots, the works. I had to split off briefly for some private trail business, jogged briskly to catch back up with Papa and Wei about 1K before the checkpoint. We laid down for 30 minutes before eating. It felt like a blink. I changed socks, got rice down, and when we walked back out Wei was waiting for us. She didn’t have to do that.
· · · The Cutoffs Get Real - CP8 to CP9 · · ·
CP8 was a serious climb. ~3,100 feet. My dad started falling back and Wei Ling and I pressed ahead. Somewhere on that ascent there was a photographer set up in the middle of nowhere. Wei Ling laughed and told me that the photographer told her I had a very nice backside. Then a figure with a straw hat made an appearance. David, the man himself, had caught up to us. We took a family photo. Not long after, Danny Westergaard caught us and made it clear: we were in a real fight to make the CP10 cutoff. The vibe shifted. The party was over.
We hustled into CP9 then quickly moved on to CP10. I made it with 20 minutes to spare but David and Wei Ling were coming behind. The checkpoint was a full production - musicians, dancers, a song and performance for every runner who came through. I sat down and watched the entrance anxiously. Dave came in with 10 minutes left. Wei Ling came in with 5. The band was back together.
· · · Night Two Begins - CP10 to CP11 · · ·
The sleep deprivation started making its presence known. My dad was hallucinating. Wei Ling and I were fantasizing about sleeping the way most people think about food. Runners were sitting on the side of the trail, just vacant. We passed a pasture of soft grass and briefly considered it. We didn’t stop.
On our way to CP10, my dad’s breathing was off and he was slowing significantly on the climbs. He told us to keep moving. Dave, after arriving not long after, made the call to seek medical attention. He told us not to wait up and to go ahead to CP11.
36 hours awake. 30-minute nap. Night two. Just Wei Ling and I.
Early into the push toward CP11, Wei Ling started falling behind. I waited each time. Then she looked at me with total clarity and said what she always said when she was done negotiating: “Go. Go. Go.”
That was the last time I heard her voice on the course.
· · · The Decision - CP11 · · ·
I was alone now and the hallucinations had taken over. Trees were people. Leaves had faces. Trail markers were strangers waiting for me. I got my dad on the phone and he filled me in: the doctors had pulled him. I sat down at the loneliest aid station of the race and seriously considered dropping.
I had nothing left to prove. The goal had been to finish with him and that wasn’t happening anymore.
Then I called Matt Gaide. He was ahead. I asked what the route to CP12 looked like. He told me: brutal climb out of CP11 but after that - railroad grade fire road, runnable. He’d done it in 2:15. I had just under three hours to the cutoff. If the cutoff is what takes me out of this race, at least I tried.
Queue Barry Can’t Swim. Queue Tylenol. I was out the door like a bat out of hell.
· · · A Bat Out of Hell - CP11 to CP12 · · ·
Matt was right about the climb - unforgiving ascent up the spine of a ridge, row after row of trees, single track that never seemed to end. I tripped on loose gravel and went forward. Nearly went off the hillside. Didn’t. Kept moving.
Then the ridge broke and the fire road appeared and I was running again. Actual running. I rolled into CP12 at 12:35 AM with 25 minutes to spare, and standing in a volunteer vehicle right at the gates was Wei Ling. She’d been picked up at CP11. She saw me and we both understood. I was going to finish this for her and my dad.
I found a cot, set a 20-minute alarm and was out. When I came back to, Andrea "Coach K" Kooiman was already gone from the tent next to me. Changed shoes, ate rice, walked out. Heard her voice call my name from across the station: “Can we run together?”
Of course.
· · · The Climb That Broke Time - CP12 to CP13 · · ·
The segment out of CP12 had the biggest climb of the entire race - 5,000 feet of gain. It was 2 AM. Andrea and I were walking in literal zig-zags, using each other as reference points to stay on course. Everyone around us was a zombie - autonomous, forward, barely conscious.
After three hours of that we made it to CP13, found a pad on the floor, wrapped ourselves in someone’s oversized jacket, and set a 20-minute alarm.
It went off. We got up.
· · · Rain, Mud, and the Reunion - CP13 to CP15 · · ·
The moment we walked out of CP13, the sky opened. Within minutes, everything - shoes, socks, pack, hands - was completely soaked. We were navigating mostly by hunting for reflective course markers through sheets of rain, walking zig-zags for a completely different reason now.
Somewhere in the dark I heard Andrea shout: “You’ve got to be f***ing kidding me!” Her shoe had gotten sucked into the mud. She pulled her foot out. The shoe stayed. That same foot went into the mud to catch her balance. She stood there in one socked foot, looked down, stepped back into the muddy shoe, and kept walking.
We arrived at CP14 to news that the race had been paused due to conditions - cutoffs suspended. We didn’t celebrate for long. I called Matt; he was at CP15. Only one checkpoint away. We changed ponchos, used a real bathroom, and got back out into the downpour.
The descent to CP15 was gradual and our hallucinations actually synced up. We both saw what we were certain was a stone building. It was logs in the ground. We didn’t even question it at the time. That’s what 40+ hours awake does.
Walking into CP15 felt like a reunion scene from a movie. Through the rain and into what felt like a fortress of an aid station, huddled around a fire: Gregg, Sonia, Matt. We all looked at each other with that face - the we made it this far face. The final 18 miles would be together.
· · · The Avengers - CP15 to CP17 · · ·
Five of us. Rain still coming down. I ate more rice, rang out what I could, and we left together.
CP16’s section had been rerouted due to conditions and somehow still managed to be a mud soaked slip and slide. At one point I watched Matt go helplessly down a descent on his ass for what had to be 100 yards. I stood there like a parent watching a kid do something you absolutely can’t stop - concerned but kind of proud. He came to a stop. We laughed. We kept going.
Matt and I took turns pushing the group into a jog whenever the terrain allowed. Everyone bought in.
· · · CP17 & the Victory Lap · · ·
CP17 was a delight. Smooth, flowy jungle-like descent with mud puddles we were now running through with zero hesitation. We knew we’d finish. Wet feet had stopped mattering about 20 miles ago.
The final checkpoint before the finish was a full production - camera crew, volunteers, cheering. One volunteer made it her personal mission to wipe the mud off Matt and my legs, then asked for a photo with us. A volunteer from CP16 got special permission to join us for the final leg. She ran to catch up just to be part of it.
And then it started raining harder than it had the entire race.
We laughed, put our jackets back on, and ran into the finish.
· · · Heshun - The Finish · · ·
We entered the town of Heshun together and made the call to cross the finish line as a group. We walked the last stretch deliberately, taking it in. 45 hours. 170 kilometers. ~28,000 feet of climbing. Two nights of hallucinations. Rain that didn’t quit on the second day.
We had endured something remarkable. And we’d done it together.
· · · The End · · ·
This finish wouldn’t have been possible without:
My dad - for being the reason I was there in the first place.
Wei Ling - for reminding me that kindness has no language barrier.
Matt, Andrea, Gregg, and Sonia - for the last 30 miles. An old friend who once told me that to connect is to feel and to feel is to be alive: you were right.
What if? became what was. And that’s enough.
Thank you to the incredible volunteers who tirelessly took care of myself and all runners alike ensuring we were safe and well fed. To Lixin, Wen, and those who approved me to be part of the race. It’s an honor to be part of GaoLigong history.
I do it for those who can’t.