The Hobby Jogger Podcast
Welcome to The Hobby Jogger Podcast, where elite athletes and ham-and-eggers lace up their stories. We explore the common ground that running creates from the world-class runner to the hobbyist hitting the pavement, trail or treadmill. Expect a blend of inspiration, laughter and the shared joy that makes every step count. Join us on this journey, where every run is a story worth sharing.
The Hobby Jogger Podcast
E24 | DJ Fox Breaks Colorado Trail Fastest Known Time
Ever wondered what it takes to conquer one of the toughest ultra-endurance challenges out there? We're thrilled to bring you an inspiring conversation with ultra runner DJ Fox along with his pacer, Joshua Ried. DJ set the fastest known time (FKT) on the Colorado Trail, spanning 490 miles with 86,000 feet of elevation gain in just 7 days, 4 hours, and 37 minutes.
In this episode, you'll gain insights into the meticulous preparation required for such an immense challenge. DJ and Joshua share their rigorous training regimen, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and mental toughness. The transition from obstacle course racing to tackling a 500-mile trail run underscores the need for time on feet and relentless drive. This is an episode packed with inspiration, grit, and the raw human spirit behind an ultra-endurance quest.
Welcome to this week's episode of the Hobby Jogger. I am once again joined by my co-host with the most, Mr Rob Myers. Rob, how are you?
Rob Myers:I'm doing well. Yeah, I just got off a flight from Vegas, my second home these days, so you're hungover and tired.
Casey Koza:That's perfect. A little bit, a little bit. Are you ready for Grindstone here in a couple weeks? Got the 50K on tap.
Rob Myers:Define ready, but I'll be there and I will try to cross the finish line. Not a guarantee.
Casey Koza:Hopefully no hurricane this year, although there is one coming up, but we shall see. We got an awesome guest. Well, we actually have two guests on this week, a team, I guess we could say DJ Fox and Joshua Reed. Dj just completed the fastest known time on the Colorado Trail, where he bested Michael McKnight's previous best of seven days, 13 hours and 16 minutes. This trail, which stretches from Durango to Denver, colorado, is 490 miles, with over 86,000 feet of elevation gain throughout. Mr DJ Fox and Mr Josh Reed, how are you guys? Hello, very good, very good. How are you guys Doing? Well, the reason DJ is on recently set a pretty large FKT on the Colorado Trail and that's what we're going to talk about today Rob, pretty large, freaking huge man.
Rob Myers:I've seen a lot of FKTs. I think that one tops every one that I've seen.
Casey Koza:Yeah, it actually took me a little bit while to load it on my phone. Strava had 143 segments DJ. That's wow, I think, the most I've ever seen, possibly, but quite impressive. Thank you very much for joining us.
DJ Fox:Yeah, thank you for having us.
Casey Koza:Joshua, thanks for joining us. You were the crew correct.
Joshua Ried:Pleasure. I was primarily the the pacer, a little bit of crew crewing here and there, you know, serving up the noodles and, uh, making sure people's gear were in order, but not the pleasure of sharing about 180 miles with this fella out there making sure, uh, he didn't slack or, you know, skip his food go out there.
DJ Fox:It's all a lot, lots of, lots of duties entailed with pacing there. Yeah, and josh, put up, uh, put up some serious numbers with me yeah, 100, 180 is not a light week, um that's a lot of miles yourself yeah, we trained for it.
Joshua Ried:The pacer's trained for it too.
Casey Koza:Yeah, that has to be a whole training block just to train for this, I imagine yeah, fortunately a very fun one.
Joshua Ried:You know the mountains make it kind of easy, right? You know the place that we live, up here in the San Juans, like you know 13,000, 14,000-foot peaks. It is gorgeous and easy and we spent 100 hours training together this year. So, yeah, light work Light work Exactly.
Casey Koza:That's awesome, dj. What is your background in running? How did you get to this point? Take me through it, like where you started out running. Was it college, high school, cross country? Because that seems to be a common theme, yeah that's a great question.
DJ Fox:I have one year of high school track under my belt. I think I was like a sophomore. I ran 100 meter dash and did high jump Not very fast, couldn't jump real high, but you know, just like I went there and I played the game right and then I didn't run for a very long time. I actually picked it back up when I was 25 years old. After a visit to the hospital, I was diagnosed with diverticulitis in 2017. To the hospital, I was diagnosed with diverticulitis in 2017. And I just kept having these like ongoing attacks, after I had the first one, where I was in the hospital like once a month for a very long time, and then I finally elected to have a surgery in February of 2018, where they cut out almost like a foot of my large intestines. To you know, try to alleviate me of these, of these diverticulitis attacks.
DJ Fox:And I was laying in the hospital bed and my buddy sends me I'm like scrolling through Instagram and he sends me a link to Cameron Haynes's page and I was like, oh my God, 200 miles.
DJ Fox:Like that's crazy. I didn't know, I didn't know anybody, like I didn't even know the world of ultra at all at that point right, like not even hundreds, let alone 200s, and I was like, well, that seems really cool. You know, I was like 200 pounds like powerlifting and bodybuilding at one point and after getting sick I lost a ton of weight. You know, I came out of the hospital like like that year after much closer to 150 pounds and I had thought, you know, I just spent like a decade trying to put all that weight on and I don't know if that's what I want to do again. You know, just eating, eating a lot, and just, yeah, lifting a bunch of heavy weights. So it was like my opportunity to pivot and and I took it. So I've been I've been after this for about seven years now basically had down most of the grindstone, you know, really working at it yeah I mean this isn't just something that happens.
Casey Koza:You know, on a, on a whim, like you don't, you don't run this far in this many days over this much time. Just, you know, out, out, as I do amble about right rob.
Rob Myers:Oh yeah, I mean it's one thing to not train and go out and run, you know a half marathon and then just ache for a day or two. I mean that's some serious miles. I can just imagine how long it took to plan that out.
DJ Fox:Oh yeah, this has been a year and a half project. I tried it for the first time last year and the end of September and we made it about 420 miles in before I had to pull the plug and hopped in the back of an ambulance and make my way to the hospital with, uh, with pneumonia. That's what ended up taking me off of the trail last year, but kind of obsessed about it ever since. You know, I gave myself like four months to prep last year and then, yeah, the entire year this year leading into it. I didn't really care about anything else else. You know, I raced twice and they were just kind of like, yeah, just little tune-up events and everything was, you know, blinders on with.
Casey Koza:With this in mind, I didn't know you had the other attempt and we'll get into the course a little bit because that's something I'm pretty interested in hearing about. But when I saw that you did this and now that I know that you you didn't finish because of pneumonia and that's a hard thing to mitigate pneumonia, like was there did you move back to start time purposely due to that? Was there any kind of timeline changes?
DJ Fox:Yeah, so I did it a month earlier this year than I did last year. Last year I went the last week of September. Last year I went the last week of September. This year I went the last week of August. A couple of things helped make that change, I would say. The first one was into the last week of last year there was snow on the forecast. I never got snowed on. I was super lucky with the weather. I didn't even get rained on the whole attempt last year. But even the week leading in I was just having dreams where the whole thing was covered in snow and I lost my chance Right, and that was just like anxiety building, like before going in, which was unnecessary.
DJ Fox:Also, it was basically the equinox that I went on. So I was 12 hours a day, 12 hours of dark, and that was challenging. So this year I ended up with a little over 13 hours of daylight and a little over, you know, 11 hours of of darkness, but I mean over the course of seven days. Now I get an extra seven hours of light on the entire thing. So that was another factor. And then, outside of that, it was very cold last year. Being up high, you know every touch. 12,000 feet, and you know you're working your way into October and the wind starts to blow and it's cold up there. You know I had a couple of nights where I would come out and there would be ice all over my beard and mustache and you know the puddle I think I was going to step in would just be frozen Right. It was very cold, so that was another thing I wanted to avoid a little bit.
Rob Myers:Yeah, those are the main catalysts to make the change to go a little bit, a little bit earlier this year. That's awesome. I mean, before we dig into the race and really pick that apart. I love a good origin story. So let's go way back when you were coming up with this idea. I mean, it's one thing to hear about. You know, runners that go from a 5k to a 10k, to a half marathon, to a full marathon, to 50k and dip their toe in the ultra world, like go back to the idea, like where were you at? Were you already running?
DJ Fox:you know a hundred Ks and a hundred milers before you came up with this idea. Yeah, I had a sales job. When I got the bout of diverticulitis I came out of the hospital I still work the sales job a little bit but I started to run and push that a little bit further and further. And then, you know, at one point I'm in the car and I'm like man, this is not helping me. You know, like I was driving around door to door to door sales for an industrial hose company. I'm just sitting here, every limb in my body is bent at 90 degrees. I've been in this car for six hours. This is not helping me do the thing I actually want to do.
DJ Fox:So I got my personal training certificate, I quit that sales job and I got a job in one of the local um doing personal training and group classes. Yeah, I did that for a couple of years. While Josh was training me, we went to world's toughest mutter. He was out here in Durango. He was, he was visiting the place and he's like dude, it's amazing Like you got to come out, you know. So I came out here, hung out for two weeks before that 2021 WTM, had a good experience and then after that I went all right, there's another step of all in right, that is, committing full-time to being an athlete. I went home, I had a discussion with my girlfriend and I was like, uh, hey, I want to go back to Durango.
DJ Fox:and she's like, oh yeah, that's great, like we can plan it, and I'm like, no, like permanently, I want to go back to Durango and she's like, oh yeah, that's great, like we can plan it, and I'm like, no, like permanently, I want to go back, I want to train, I want to live in the mountains and I want to be as good as I possibly can be at this thing. So it was April of that following year, in 2022. We stuffed as much stuff as we possibly could in the car and we drove to Durango with our dog and our cat. We lived at first in a trailer, like a single wide trailer. There was like 12 of us in there at a time just making it work, and I did that basically the whole year leading into that.
DJ Fox:2022. Wtm, my sole focus for the year. I've done a really good job of just picking one event and saying this is the thing I really want to perform well in and putting all of my eggs in that basket Right, just trained, full time, went to world's toughest mutter. It was a nasty year in 2022. Where it was supposed to be nice, it was an Atmore, alabama, and the historical weather was like high of 80, low of 55. But there was a hurricane that blew in like the week before and it pushed a big cold front in there and we ended up having a high of 55 and a low of like 30 degrees. But yeah, even with the severe conditions, I ended up. I won that race. I ran one hundred and five miles and that was one where I just kind of I don't know, I was just last one to last one to die. I took over the lead of that race at hour 23 and then ended up beating second place by about 40 minutes within the next two laps we had to do. That got me to get a little bit closer to the Colorado Trail.
DJ Fox:After that experience at World's Toughest I recovered. It was like two weeks entirely off, didn't even think about running a step, just kind of soaked all that in and I put this they give you, the bib is a like a penny that you can wear. So I stapled that to the wall in front of the treadmill and I just stared at it. Every day I was going back, I'm winning again, going back and winning again. And then I don't know like almost halfway through the year, I was like I don't want to do something else, you know, and I was like I don't know what it is, and Josh and I were standing on the porch. We lived two miles from the Colorado trail at that point and I had talked about it a bunch and always talked about these long trails. And he goes why don't you do the CT? And I went you're right, let's do it.
Rob Myers:Yeah, you're right, let's do it again, just immediately.
DJ Fox:Yeah, you're right, let's do the Colorado trail. And that was like June or July and we went after it at the end of September for the first time. So jumped from that like 24 hour event where I ran 105 miles both years like ran, crawled, swam, swung from monkey bars, all that fun stuff, and then, yeah, bumped it up to about 500. Skipped a lot of stuff in between. I've never run like an official 100 miler. I've never run a 200. This one called to me, it felt good in my, in my heart and soul and we went after it. And then it became this obsession of a project for the next. You know, 16 months, 18 months that's.
Casey Koza:that's really cool, like and I know how tough some of the obstacle course stuff is because we have a guy who runs a gym down here in the valley. That guy's a monster, he's a beast of a dude. He runs this stuff and tells us how difficult it is.
Casey Koza:Nothing that's within my range of things to do. Much respect for that crowd, I appreciate it. We have a pretty big, I guess, scene we would say, around here for that. I'm a little bit familiar with it, not familiar with participating in it. I left that kind of stuff behind in my rugby days. So I don't mind running far, but just beating myself up anymore.
DJ Fox:It's just, yeah, I don't you'll have to get out there and check one of them out. Man, it's fun, dude they are.
Joshua Ried:They are Unlike, unlike just a running race. You know there's obstacles to get through or get over and people can help each other out. So it's a whole different style of community Cause it's really like hands-on helping, very, very fun.
Casey Koza:So you, you've got this background in OCR stuff much more than just a year of track. You've won a very large race. You've participated in other races. You've set your sights on the Colorado Trail. What does training look like for a seven-day FKT? I can tell you how people train and train well for 100-mile races, like I can tell you how people train and train well for 100 mile races.
Rob Myers:I can you know?
Casey Koza:go over that and what's involved. I'm sure time on feet is very important, I imagine, but how do you train Like? What's the basic training schedule look like when you start out on this endeavor?
DJ Fox:That's also a great question, right? Because there's no blueprint for any of this. You know, you don't have a pre-fabbed training plan on how to run 500 miles on the internet chat.
Casey Koza:Gpt is not going to spit me out a. Oh, you want to run the colorado trail in under eight days? Here's what you should do. It's not. There's not going to be any info for me to get, yeah there's no couch to seven day plan no, not yet.
DJ Fox:Not yet it's on, it's on its way. I'll figure it out and I'll let it, I'll release it. But yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you're sure time on feet is important. I think that is probably the most important aspect of this. I think, at the end of it all, I averaged just under three miles an hour over the course of the entire thing, right, and that's including every stop. I made every shoe change every time I sat in a, all the sleeps, right, and that really digs into the time. But yeah, it's just about being out there.
DJ Fox:The Colorado Trail is at high altitude. It averages 10,300 feet over the course of the entire 485 miles. You hit a high point of 13,200 feet, so you need to be acclimated to altitude as well. So I mean, in a nutshell, I did a. I just did a ton of miles, almost all of it very easy moving, you know, and specificity, right. I lived with a pair of hiking poles in my hands.
DJ Fox:I got out into the San Juans all the time and I was just looking for miles and vert, miles and vert, miles and vert, miles and vert, the entire entire year. I mean, I built up right so early in the year. Let's say I was doing 80 mile weeks with, you know, 18,000 feet in them, and I did a four to five week block of that. I'd have a big old down week and I'd come back and I pushed it a little bit further. I would do 100 mile weeks with 20,000 feet of climbing and that was probably like another four to five week push. I then raced a 50 miler and started to come back up where I jumped back into hundreds, looking for a hundred mile weeks with about 20,000 feet of climbing. I strung about four of those together. I was looking for a fifth and at the end of that fourth week I actually got hit by a uh, a camper while I was on my bike just going from the trailhead back to camp.
DJ Fox:Josh and I had went and did a Columbine lake out here in the San Juans and we started coming back down the road and it's like a mountain pass road, right. So two lanes, double yellow line, very windy, no guardrail, huge drop off and some dude in a truck to own. A camper tried to pass me as he went around an s curve and side swiped me with the camper, dumped me on my bike and luckily there was like a small pull off where I ended up and put my body instead of over the cliff there. But, um, yeah, that took a hit of training. I guess I mean I got.
DJ Fox:I got super lucky. I was doing 40 miles an hour on the bike. I was all wadded up like a bunch of road rash but I only ended up with with five stitches and a ton of a ton of like abrasion on my skin. The helmet saved me. That landed on the back, split it down the sides, yeah, but you know, took some time off due to that. You know, I think it was literally like, again, I was super lucky and I had four days entirely off of training after that, but that was it. And then I came back and I like jogged two or three miles at like 13 minute pace. Then I got back into hiking and I was able to jump back in at a nice big week. That following week I ended up doing 138 miles with like 25,000 feet of climbing. You know, just easing back into things.
Rob Myers:Easing back into things. So it was a week after you got hit.
Casey Koza:Yeah.
Rob Myers:Okay, at least you took a week off. I know you're kind of human at least. Yeah, okay, at least you took a week off. I know you're kind of human at least.
DJ Fox:Yeah, Took a down week after that and then finished my last five week block averaging about 118 miles, with, you know, 25 to 28,000 feet of climbing, with one big week Josh and I went and backpacked the hard rock course. So that was. We did that over the course of five days with a really easy front day and a really easy last day. So we covered a hundred, just over a hundred miles, 33,000 feet of climbing, all parenting like a 30 pound backpack. That was that capped off my training. I had a three week taper and we got after it. So, yeah, it was just sped up. To answer your question again, simply, a lot of time on feet, you know, again, like 25 plus hours is what I invested, it's what I could do, started to to take this full time. So it was just like coaching athletes, training, eating, sleeping. That was that was it for for the entire year in preparation for this.
Casey Koza:Yeah, Looking, looking back through this Strava, here you have some monster vert weeks 25,000, 38,000, 20,000. That's getting pretty steep. Even if you are in Colorado, that's still a lot of mountains. It's not easy to do. Is that something that you focus on in the training? I?
Rob Myers:got to go hike up this 8,000 foot climb.
Casey Koza:I'm going to try and put down two bars or whatever I'm going to eat on this climb. Is that something you focus on?
DJ Fox:Yeah, totally, and often it was like a calories per hour thought process during training where, you know, often I would go out with these high density mixtures of a product called Fuel Elite from a company called EndurElite. So I would have 900 calories in a 500 milliliter soft flask and through most of my training-. But you say 900? Yeah.
Casey Koza:In a 500 milliliter soft flask.
DJ Fox:It was like a giant gel. It was like a huge gel. I would do that and then I would have plain water and then I would also have solids. But the plan was to always consume that 900-calorie soft glass over the course of three hours, giving me 300 calories an hour at a baseline. On top of that, you know, I'd stop at a Lista and I'd eat a Pop-Tart and boom, now that's another 380 calories on top of everything I've had. I would run around with chewy bars and eat that. So, baseline, about 300 in training, plus all of the like the, the additional solid foods I consume as well.
DJ Fox:And I would also practice eating a lot, especially as I got closer to the event. I would eat like a full dinner and then go out and do my run. So my gut is stuffed, you know. Go eat like six tacos, have a cup of rice and then go out and do like you know, a 10 mile or something, Right, and just like understand how it felt to have like a bunch of food in my stomach and say, okay, I still need to be able to move and I don't need to move fast, Right, I need to move it. Three and a half to four miles an hour is really the goal. But yeah, that is something I focused on and practiced a lot.
Casey Koza:That's funny because I think there's a lot of people that will run fast in the morning just because it's before work or whatever. So nothing in the stomach. Then, race day, they take down their 500 milliliters of Morton. You know, they eat the gel and it's like oh, you know why am I bloated?
Rob Myers:I don't understand.
Casey Koza:Yeah, you've done your whole training block. Facet with nothing in your stomach, I don't know how you expected to feel otherwise but okay, here we are. So you got the training, you got the vert, you got plenty of hours. I mean you racked up.
DJ Fox:I can't add them all up, but a lot of hours on the feet, a lot of vert. I think going into this I was, like I don't know, getting close to 600 hours for the year yeah, it was funny.
Casey Koza:When I looked at your strava I was like, oh, he must not be active on strava because you have just one little peak and then it looks just dead flat. It looks flat totally. The dead flat is 120 miles yeah that's.
Joshua Ried:That's a hilarious thing. You don't see that too often on there no, no, all right look at 500 hours going into the colorado track.
DJ Fox:Just over 500, that's a lot. Yeah, now we're at 678. That's strava, you know like I've got a couple things that didn't end up in there, but that's real close. So we're at the week's real close.
Casey Koza:So we're at the week of we'll start there. We're at the week of. We've got our training block in.
Casey Koza:You had to feel other than the bike crash and the bike incident, you had to feel pretty confident because you still got a lot of miles and you still got a lot of time on feet. So you're feeling pretty confident going into this, agreed. Yes, I mean, I don't think you could do it without feeling confident going and you can't be like, yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe I missed a thing here too, but so confident going in, josh, you're confident, right yeah, yeah actually.
Joshua Ried:I mean, not only am I immensely confident in him because you know this sport's like very much between the ears and there's no problems in there, but I also like, was it maybe three weeks prior, four weeks prior?
Joshua Ried:to this I actually went out and did 200 miles on the John Muir trail with a 40 pound pack one for myself, just for my brain. It's nice to kind of get away from things for a week. But also I was thinking like, okay, if I can, this goes really well, then I'm not gonna have any issues pacing for him. So it had a couple of things in mind, but yeah, I was immensely confident.
Rob Myers:So an important question I have is what did you use to bribe all of the people that went along with you on this adventure? Like I'm looking at the number of folks in your crew, the number of pacers, I mean there's got to be what 12, 13, 14, 15-ish people. I mean that's a lot.
DJ Fox:That's probably pretty close. You know, I think, including me, there was nine of us that started. There was a couple of folks who jumped in. I had two friends in Salida, then a friend jumping in Mount Massive, a friend jumping at Copper Skansky. There at the end, yeah, so yeah, 14, 14 people all in all, I believe.
Rob Myers:It's good to have that many friends. So training's dialed in, nutrition's dialed in. You got the full support crew.
DJ Fox:You're ready to go one group is good totally and, to answer your question, they're just great friends. Um, I got a lot of ious to give out right now, so yeah yeah, that's that is one thing.
Casey Koza:When you get a crew, you got some bottles of whiskey to buy or presents for the girl.
DJ Fox:So we'll see what everybody wants, you know, in due time.
Casey Koza:So I certainly have been there. Yeah, it's, uh, yeah, it is great to have friends that'll help you out oh, totally, I mean for a week.
DJ Fox:Right, I'm like, hey, you want to take a week off of work and come and, you know, spend summer camp with me in the colorado trail and make sure I I make it to the end. Your main priority is feeding me and just making sure I stay alive. You know it's going to a great time. There's going to be other people there you can trauma, bond together.
Casey Koza:Yeah, this isn't just trading a couple water bottles at a 50K loop. Grace here. This is a lot of driving. I imagine A lot of driving.
DJ Fox:Yeah, right, at the beginning we actually had a road closure to get into the second cruise stop we had planned. It's called Hotel Draw and from Durango you should be able to drive up to Purgatory, which is about 20 miles north of town, and then another like 20-ish miles in to get to this aid. So they closed that Forest Service road behind Purgatory. So at the very beginning our crew had to drive from Durango all the way around this mountain range to a small town called Dolores, so it took their like 40 minute drive and turned it into like a three hour one way, yeah, and then the bridge just north of that was then closed, so they couldn't carry on in that direction. They actually had to turn the whole thing around, come all the way back through Durango so to see me and help me for like 10 minutes. They were in the car for about six hours at the start and before they even had to go to the second spot that said what day was it that we?
DJ Fox:all had a meeting here. What was the final meeting? Oh so we took off on saturday and I believe that meeting was thursday okay, yeah, yeah.
Joshua Ried:so he basically you know, had, uh, we had the spreadsheets out, we had ever you know most of the people here that were part of the crew and uh and the pacers and just went through everything, made sure everyone was on the same page, went through the gear, played out some different scenarios and just made sure everyone had clarity with what was about to happen.
Casey Koza:A lot of logistics, a lot of a lot of preparation went into this. That could probably be a full episode, just the logistics of people traveling around, like where they're sleeping, how they're sleeping, who's getting paced, where and what, and yeah, that's a ton. So let's move into, like the week of. Is there anything that you do to prepare like the for a couple of days out, cause I know that's. I mean you're tapering just like a race here, I imagine again.
Casey Koza:this is all brand new to me. I have no idea what it takes to do seven days in a row.
DJ Fox:So yeah, I went and slept at a little Moll lake so I was up sleeping at like 10 800 feet for 10 nights, just to acclimate, not training a whole lot. Second week of taper I got back home five days before I left and it's nothing. And that last week I think I ran five miles before I took off. So seven days out I made sure I got my last like decent downhill session in, just to maintain durability in the legs and get one last like good pounding in the quads, really just to help ensure that I wasn't going to get sore in the middle of this thing from doing all that climbing and descending. And my main priority was to get to the start line healthy, in a good state of mind.
Casey Koza:Makes sense. I mean, seems pretty reasonable. So we start out where? Because I see you did the west to east and then the collegiate east. So explain what that is and what the difference is and why you picked that. And I know the collegiate trail is a loop, correct?
DJ Fox:There is a collegiate loop trail that you can do. Yes, okay.
Casey Koza:So you're on part of that, going from West East. Where does it start? And like if you can kind of explain what the collegiate loop is? I guess as well.
DJ Fox:Yeah, so the Colorado trail runs, you know, depending on which way you look at it, from Durango to Denver or Denver to Durango.
DJ Fox:Both of those are two separate routes, right? So you're either going west to east from Durango to Denver or east to west from Denver to Durango, and then in the middle of the trail there you have the collegiate mountain range. So you have the opportunity. So it's not going over any of those 14ers, it skirts around them all on either the east side or the west side of that range. So you have the option to choose which direction you want to go. So now, for each direction you now have two separate options. So technically there are four separate trails and variations of the Colorado trail. Right. So that collegiate part, um, if you are starting in Durango, it's just after like Marshall pass you'll come to a T boom. You go left, you're going collegiate West. You go right, you're going collegiate East, um, and then, if you you're coming Denver to Durango, you'll get to Twin Lakes and you'll be able to make that decision there as well. So both sides are around 80 miles. The Collegiate East side stays a little bit lower in altitude and doesn't go over as many mountain passes, it stays in the trees a little bit, stays a little bit lower, while the Collegiate West gets up a little bit higher, and I think you end up covering like an extra 1500 feet of climbing. I'm not entirely sure on what that the exact number, but it's something like that. So it's a little bit, a little bit more vert, a little bit more out there as well.
DJ Fox:So then, to answer your next question, like why did I choose what I chose? I chose west to east because I was just living in Durango. Again, I was living two miles from the trailhead. I would basically run to the Colorado Trail and do some miles on it all the time, a couple of times a week, and for a lot of just like my easy recovery shakeout runs, I would just run to the trailhead and back on the road. So I was seeing it over and over and over and over and over again. It's something I was thinking about. So I'm like man, it'd be really cool to just keep going, you know, and just, yeah, run from home into the unknown end up in Denver. You know, that would be, that would be amazing, yeah.
DJ Fox:So, and then, when I decided I was going to actually go after the CT I last year I just looked at the overall time for the fastest time Right, and it was Mike McKnight's route west to east collegiate east. So that's why I attempted that last year and then coming back again this year, I had experience on it. We didn't finish Right. We got about 420 miles in in 2023. And some of my crew members came back. So we knew a lot of the logistics about where we were going, how to navigate these things, what vehicles were needed. You know what kind of capability, right, like hey, do we need one of the trucks here? Can we get the bus in into this location? And whatnot. So we were much more familiar with the route and it was basically like, hey, let's run it again and let's actually go do something special this time.
Casey Koza:Got it, so that makes that makes a lot of sense why, why you chose it and what is when I first?
Casey Koza:looked at it on the map on fastest known timecom I was, I was I was definitely confused. But because there's just a loop in the middle of it, but that makes sense, that where you veer off to to either way the west or the east, and which one is you know, like you said, you kind of stay down towards the valley. I guess a little bit more on the east versus the west a little bit a little bit more climbing.
Casey Koza:You're still doing a ton of climbing either way, so so we we get into it. We're on the trail, the first day. How does the first day go?
DJ Fox:the first day went pretty pretty great, honestly. Um, you know, moving really well, feeling really well, uh, fueling quite well. We started to get it like a little bit of weather on the first day. You know, we started out it was really, it was overcast, it was actually really nice. And we get to the first crew stop at kennebec, which is 21 ish miles in, and then you go up and over what's called indian ridge and when we got on indian ridge I finally got our first little bit of rain. So I was getting some wind again sprinkled on, had to put on the rain coat for the first time and that was on and off for basically the rest of the daylight hours. And then I started with another pacer at Hotel Draw. It was light but it got dark in the middle of that section and I would say, you know, shortly after it got dark it started to rain. Pretty good, we finally were getting hit with like real rain, no longer this little light sprinkle. So the rain jacket went on, the rain pants went on, the puffy was on under all of that just to like stay warm. Because you know, I mean, we're getting a pie, it's getting dark, it's getting cold, the wind's blowing, the weather's starting to roll in.
DJ Fox:When we were going up and over Bolum Pass we had about five feet of visibility for that whole climb and that whole descent running all the way into, uh, bolum Lake where it finally started to clear up. But yeah, I mean, literally headlamp was like almost a challenge to use and I was lucky I had a waist light on. Uh, it was almost worked like a fog light right where you can kind of see under a little bit and footing's actually still pretty good and you don't have this huge beam going through this thick, dense fog Because you couldn't see anything. I remember looking at my pacer at the time like well, something kind of beautiful about not knowing when this climb is going to end, right, like it just ends when it ends. So just kind of keep trudging along. Just kind of keep trudging along, yeah. And then rain was on and off for the rest of the night and it was right before I picked Josh up I could kind of start to feel my gut turning on me a little bit.
DJ Fox:What I ended up pointing that to and I just kind of used intuition where you know I was using that thick, dense liquid calorie mix. It just didn't sound good anymore. I would sip calorie mix. It just didn't sound good anymore. I would sip and I would feel this like really heavy sensation in my stomach. I do not feel good, I don't know if I'm about to get ill or whatnot, but it was just too much of that high density drink. And again, like I was saying, you can go out and practice these as long as you want over your four, six, eight hour training runs, but there's no way to figure out what it's going to do to you after 24 hours, you know, until you reach that point. Right, and I was like man. Okay, that is again one more way for me to not do this.
DJ Fox:And I chose that method because the previous year I was doing about 200 calories in these bottles and I was just sipping them constantly throughout the whole effort. And about three days in the sugar and salt water that I was constantly consuming started to eat away at my mouth. I was starting to get ulcers and, just like every time I sipped, I'm like man. Every time I take a drink I'm getting thirsty, like something's wrong. So I eventually switched to pure water at the like midway through last year's effort, which alleviated it, but my mouth was already torn up at that point. So I was like, hey, I'm going to try these high density mixtures.
DJ Fox:Eventually that just became too much on my stomach and I had to switch to just solid foods. So again I'm with Josh out there. He's like hey, man, it's been about half an hour eat something. I'm like man, I can't, I can't right now. It, I just can't, I can't put anything in my stomach. There's like no way, it needs a rest.
DJ Fox:I went a few hours where I didn't eat anything and then he like I still didn't want to, but he's like poking a problem. He's like you need calories. You know like you've got to eat something, you got to put something in you, dude, like it's we're. You know, 30 hours into this thing, you need to start eating again. So I just like slowly started to eat like chewy bars a little bit at a time, which I was able to handle pretty well, in small, small amounts until we were able to work it back up. But yeah, I mean that first day went great until it started to turn and I think I caught it all just in time to where I didn't have like like a massive, like a huge, like matt or like a huge gut issue. Right like I was still able to run pretty well. I was just starting to get uncomfortable and realized that we made the change and you know it took a little bit of time to troubleshoot and and recover from it, but we made it happen fortunately he had quite the spread of option.
Joshua Ried:I mean the original plan. The original plan was that high density flask with uh, with the sustained was it sustainably fuel? After that wasn't working for his god I think. We switched to the precision 90 pouches. But we didn't have, we didn't have a lot of those. Those were like, oh, I'll have one of those every here and there, but after that started working, we're like I just feed them just those and we're like we're run out, we'll figure something else out, but like we just need to get things working now. So give them what works. Fortunately, guys, this is incredible.
Joshua Ried:Okay, so the lead bill, the lead bill races have happened uh, pretty recently, like right before he went for the ct. You know, there's the mountain bike race, there's the running race, you know uh, and then there's some other series races right around there. So there's a leadville race series, building uh headquarters right there in the town of leadville, which was 20 minutes from twin lakes, something like that. Come to find, I think, aransa, your girlfriend and some of the other crew, pauline and aaron. They went through the town and I don't know how they found out it was there. They were given away all of the unused gels from the races that they just put on.
Joshua Ried:And, guys, it was no small amount I mean we're talking about. There must have been a couple thousand gels. I mean boxes that you go to pick up the box, like one of the boxes, multiple boxes. You pick up one box and it's like 50, 60 pounds of gels and the person behind the counter says, please take as many as you can. Thank you, like no, thank you. So they got. I mean they must have gotten four, five $600 just in, like precision gels and Morgans, and that really saved us, I think, because the gels were working for you and we were running out man. Saved us, I think, because the gels were working for you and we were running out man. And so they show up with this like guys Christmas, you know, at one of the aid stations and unload boxes of the other stuff that they got. So that was pretty cool. Shouts to that Leadville headquarters for coming in. Much for us.
Casey Koza:And for both of you that's got to be a pretty big pickup. Just, I mean, lift your spirits up, because you just you're so focused on what you're doing. But then the crew comes in. Hey, these guys just gave us 600 with the gels. Uh, good day for us out here in the in the wilderness what are the chances?
Rob Myers:man?
Casey Koza:that's, that's amazing that's yeah, that that'll. That'll save the day. So you're back up. You're now restocked on the precision 90s, so that's good. Uh, when did you jump in josh? What mile marker?
Joshua Ried:bolly, I 73. I don't have it written down directly in front of me, but I we did 73 to like 130 something like that yeah, yeah. And then I hopped in again. What like one, maybe around 180 or something, with 71, 80 to like 220. Yep, we, I remember we passed the 200. Yeah, we're like put 200 in the with rocks, oh yeah or something uh on the dirt. So I can't remember the precise sections, but I did like a 50 miler in the san juans. That was very fun.
Joshua Ried:The weather so that's the highest part of the. That's the highest section of the ct, right, yeah yeah, yeah, we hit that point there 13-2.
DJ Fox:Yeah, so again picked up, josh, at Little Mollis Lake. That was, I think, like mile marker 73. And at that point we get to bomb down a nice hill, we get to touch just under nine for the first time in a very long time, and for the last time for a very long time as well. And then after that we climb up to stony pass and we touch, uh, just a little over 12 and we we link up with the continental divide. You know, the whole time we're like, oh man, some will be out any second. The sun will be out any second. You know, and it's just like teasing us where there would be like this small gap in a cloud and sun would just roll right through. And I'm like, come on, man, I just like I haven't seen it since we started. I would really love a little sunshine on my face. Get up to the top. It does that the whole way. We work our way across this high plateau, like just above 12, get to Stoney Pass, and while we're on our way there, all of a sudden he's like I'm going to run ahead, cause that's that was the plan the whole time. I'm going to run ahead. I'll get the pacer bag ready for you so you can get in, get out, and we'll figure it out there.
DJ Fox:By the time I get there, I'm like in excruciating pain. It's starting to swell on me and this happened like snap of a finger. All of a sudden I'm like, oh geez. So now I'm like, oh, this isn't good. You know, I've still got 400 miles to go, you know, and my Achilles is starting to blow up on me. I don't know what to do with this. I get there, crew's like massaging it, putting CBD cream on it, elevating it. I think I ended up taking like a 10 or 15 minute nap there, like, hey, let's just chill out, let's try to bring things down and get back to it.
DJ Fox:I wake up from that nap still in terrible pain. I'm like like you got to make decisions out here, right, and you got to make them quick and we're just going to move forward and if this thing's going to stop me, it'll find a way and you know, if not, we'll work through it the whole time, right? So I just trudge along on that thing. I think shortly after he's like oh man, I wouldn't even know he had a problem anymore, you know? Aside from the fact that, like we got to the next one, he's like he told the next baser, he's like man, he grunted literally every time. Yeah, every time he stepped on that foot because it was painful. But again, I'm like we'll figure it out, or we won't, you know, but we're gonna try. You know, like you never quit here, you quit at the station, right. Like I'll get to the next crew spot and we'll figure it out there, right.
DJ Fox:So we get up past Stony Pass, we're on our way to Carson and now the storms are starting to roll in and again we're well up above 12,000 feet. We are very, very much exposed, like two lightning rods standing up on top of this, on the top of this high point, and there's like thunder cracking around us. There's high winds. We look, the crew told us after you know, we were dealing with like some 45 mile per hour gusts at one point. Josh looks at me. The wind's blowing at us super hard. He's like have you ever been skydiving? I'm like no. He's like this is just what it's like, where you have to turn your face to breathe. I'm like oh great, all right, cool, check that off the list. Yeah, working our way through and we're just watching the storms roll around us and I kind of look at him like how do you feel about this? And he's like, well, not great. And I'm like, yeah, me either.
Joshua Ried:So then it got right over us and we're like, oh shit, man, I get to ride on us. Fortunately that one wasn't bolting too hard. It was like cloud lightning, not cloud to ground bolts, you know, but still it was loud. It was right on us and every time the thunder would, would crackle right on top of us, we'd start like running a little faster. So not ideal for energy conservation. Uh, I kept thinking, be like mother nature, I respect you, come on like we're cool, like we'll get off, like sorry, we're not trying to test dudes, like be cool, uh, but still like thunder would crack and we would run faster and faster. So not super ideal.
Joshua Ried:And then we got up to was it Carson Pass, carson Saddle, saddle. Yeah, luckily we had a truck up there. So glad because, number one, it was freezing cold, like the windchill. We were wet, the wind was coming through, it was frigging cold and they had us sit in the truck. Another storm was rolling in and we're watching in the distance, like watching its its direction, and it's headed straight towards the high point of the entire route, like literally headed right there. And, guys, it was lightning bolts like I've never seen before. They were friggin awesome, not ideal that you have to go out in it, but to observe, super cool, and the lightning bolts are getting closer and closer and eventually striking the mountain that we have to go over. So like we'll, just we're gonna wait that one out because that's really asking for it. So that would finally pass.
Joshua Ried:And as soon as we got, like a tiny window, we, our friend had, uh, what's called not starling, starling, I just want to say you know, sky net or whatever terminator you know, but he was checking the weather and he's like, looks like you got an hour before the next storm rolls in. So as soon as that one was out of there, we we booked it over the pass and when we got to that plateau then you could see the next storm building in the distance. Like, oh man, there's the next one. Fortunately, that one kind of skirted us. We got snowed on a little bit and there was thunder, but the actual like light. He was off to the. That was an exciting segment early on for you A little more energy expenditure than you wanted in terms of pace and dealing with the cold and not actually being able to sleep because the ground was too cold to lay on, and the Achilles thing. So adversity early on.
Casey Koza:Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is just a trial of adversity in my mind. But yeah, that's weather. Weather is just always the unknown factor that you can prepare for it as much as you want, but it's going to be. It's going to be especially out where you guys were. It's going to be wild, oh yeah, it's unpredictable.
DJ Fox:So yeah, then that finished up. We got to Spring Creek Pass after Carson and that finished up my first section with Josh and I actually laid down for my first like real bout of sleep at that point. I had taken two trail naps on the way there, but at this point I laid it down for three hours for the first time and I tried to get some real sleep, which I was in and out a little bit, but I was assured that I slept for most of it, because I kept waking up and every time I can't sleep. I can't sleep Like bro, you've been snoring.
Joshua Ried:Yeah, I'm like, okay, all right, whatever.
DJ Fox:It's anxiety, you know being out there, that's all.
Rob Myers:Did you have a plan for sleep?
DJ Fox:Not really when you were going to sleep, and the plan was to was to go until I was very tired, because last year I went okay, I'm going to get to, you know, that 70 mile mark, it was about 21 hours and I'm like, cool, I'm going to lay it down for like three or four hours in front mode to sleep. I lay there the whole time with my eyes shut and didn't sleep at all, just like with the energy of everything, just like a little too amped. And then that was unfortunate, because then, you know, I started the next day and we went through another 24 hours and I, you know, I still hadn't slept. So it was well over 48 hours before I actually slept the first year. So this time I was like I'm going to go until my body's like, bro, lay down, you're exhausted.
DJ Fox:So, and you know, by the time we were 135 miles in, it was, it was about time. So that was the first nap. And then, outside of that, you know, I kind of left it in the hands of the crew where it's like, hey, we got to cover you know X amount of miles during the day. And then, yeah, well, we, yeah, we'll have real sleeps when I get to a crew stop. And we ended up settling on about two hours at a time after that, which actually was pretty restorative, eventually, seemed it.
Casey Koza:Yeah, that was probably my first question is like how do you sleep? Like what's the game plan? Does that make sense? Yeah, if you're still amped and you can't sleep, there's no use of laying there. You just got to sleep when the body has told you hey, we're going to sleep either on our feet or you're going to lay down soon because we're going to sleep.
Joshua Ried:It's tough, though. So I think it was night three ended up getting in a couple hours later than we expected, so it was like 11 30 by the time we got out from. That was highway 114. Yes, okay, right, 14 to 150 is what we did. So that night, you know, that was 11 30 at night. We're trying to push through the night and it gets to the point where he's so exhausted like dude, I gotta, I gotta stop here. But the thing is is it's so cold, especially the ground is so cold, so he's laying there just trying to sleep and I catch these little naps and they're like they're not working at all. I think it was after that that we kind of made the call like, okay, try to rest at a vehicle at night yeah, there's.
Casey Koza:There's just so much to be mindful of sleep, eating gear, uh, hauling enough water up and down a hill, the crew, like just incredible amount of different moving parts that are all going into this. So we're making our way down the Colorado Trail. We'll say we get to, because I'm looking at the collegiate loop right now.
DJ Fox:Yeah, so last section we were just talking about josh and I started highway 114. We went up to sergeant's mesa that's where I actually got my the second bit of sleep and then I woke up and I started coughing up like a lot of phlegm for the first time there, and it was blood after a little blood probably coming from my nose, everything just being really dry.
DJ Fox:That's what I told myself at the end of the day. Yeah, and that night was hard, like I. Like you said, it was pretty technical and I I would look at a rock and I'd be like gonna step over that rock and then I kick it damn oh yeah, I can't like I can't get my body to do the things that my brain wants to do, and it was just like it was the longest trudge up.
DJ Fox:To finish those last few miles I slept. I woke up, I was having a rough morning, eating and whatnot, and then, just like cool side story is a couple of bikers came through and a through hiker, and you know they could see me, they could see something was happening right, and you know they're like, oh, what's that? What's going on over here? Oh yeah, we're doing that kt, we're doing that kt. And then one of the through hikers leaves and turns around. He's just kind of like hey, just want you to know, there is a version of you at the end of this that has that record. I'm like, damn, there it is and I can see it. And God, I do not like it right now. It sucks, it's going to hurt, I am so tired, and but he's right, and like again, like I said earlier, you got to make a decision and like, all right, okay, let's get up on our feet and let's go be that person, let's get it done.
Rob Myers:Did you see him again later in the race? Because at this point you have to be hallucinating a little bit right.
DJ Fox:Never saw him again, this like fat happy Buddha walking down the trail giving me wisdom. He was going the other way, like again, like the storms. I did not eat, well you know, over the last like 36 hours or so, and I was getting tired. But we were starting to eat again.
Joshua Ried:I was coming back around, but it was a long, long day to get there and let me just say that his ankle was so bad that sergeant's mesa, when you number one, you looked like shit you really did, and because you only got like two hours of sleep, it's just like uh, snot all over the place, the you know, and you tried to walk out of there. It was limping so hard like that is that is not good at all. The amount, the, how slow you are walking and the amount that you are limping. Fortunately, once you know, until you've moved 100 yards or a couple hundred yards, started to shake out. Movement was his friend. But man, those, those stops were super rough looking, yeah for you, and even more so at was it marshall pass? Marshall pass was bad.
DJ Fox:That was bad there's a cost of everything. You know, and like laying down and getting stiff is it's tough.
Casey Koza:You know, I'm like getting, just waking up, being like oh, I'm still here, I gotta go yeah I mean, I wake up after a full night's sleep out of my bed and I have mornings that I'm stiff, so I can imagine you're gutting it out. Sleeping on the trail, the cold trail, and sleep probably isn't very restful. I'm gonna, I'm gonna assume well, I don't know.
DJ Fox:Eventually, like I said, those two hours I was like I feel pretty damn good, just like comparing it to how I felt before, I laid down like that was. The only thing I knew was I am a mess, I am about to collapse and oh cool, all right. Like the sun's about to come up and you know, I don't know, I feel better, you know that's.
Casey Koza:Yeah, I hate that's. You would know much better than me. I just, you know, I'm just imagining things.
Rob Myers:I'll never be in that situation, so well, casey, casey, you and I are old, so we need like eight or nine hours, like two, two and cut it but there's, it's a, it's like a bell curve, because I look at like my 80 something year old father.
Joshua Ried:He gets four hours and he's great man. I look at all these old, old timers that are up, you know like three or four am, and they're spry man, so don't worry, it's gonna come back around for us, I think I can't wait yeah, but you know, I just talking about marshall pass.
Joshua Ried:That seems like a pretty big threshold point where like lots of adversity, things kind of sucked ankle was pretty bad. But I feel like we had a great section after that. And then it's like you, I feel like your mentality after that was more like oh no, we're fucking getting there, we're going like we're going going. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it was a doubt tipping point. Yeah, doubt went away, confidence came in more.
DJ Fox:Yep, I would say like there is like a pre-definable moment there too. Josh was getting the pacer bag ready at marshall and I was like I'm just gonna start walking, guys, you know, let me just go. And I was walking out and my girlfriend was following me a little bit and like she's like okay, you know, bye, I'll see you and see you in 10 hours or whatever. And I was like all right, see you. And I turned around, I was like can I have a hug, you know? And she runs up, she's like oh yeah, and I just like I probably I just sat on her shoulder and I just like cried, I like bawled and sobbed for what felt like an eternity.
DJ Fox:It was probably like a good 60 seconds, but you know, I let go. And I was like I'm gonna go do this. It is what it is again, just like one of those decisions where it's like you have to. Just, I was in a mental funk. I wasn't feeling great but like, more than anything, like I was mentally falling out of it, you know, and I just looked at her and I was like I'm gonna go do this, you know, like I'll see you later. Right, like big hug, big kiss. And I just turned around, I started actually like hiking pretty good again, came around a corner, saw them through the woods like hooted and hollered and was like all right, I'm getting after it. And I just started trudging again. I remember at one point on that and I was like, oh man, did I take a wrong turn? Because normally josh reeled me in by now, you know, and he comes up, he's like dude, you're moving great all of a sudden I'm like, yeah, bro, we're going to get this thing.
DJ Fox:You know, like we had a good moment and I was. Yeah, I just decided it's time to start working again.
Casey Koza:So we get over the mental hurdle, Cause there's always going to be a low point in that I've. I've found any of these endurance things. You're always going to hit the crash to the bottom mentally. We've picked ourself back up off the mat. We start getting. I don't want to call it the end, because the end is a very long time.
DJ Fox:We are almost halfway.
Casey Koza:Yeah, so we get to like we'll say part of the course we get through the Collegiate. We go through Leadville where we pick up. We have another big boost there because we get the gels from the Leadville Racing. Folks Shout out those guys, and so we're starting to make our way like, I guess, more towards like the Breckenridge area.
DJ Fox:Correct. Yeah, so we're at Tennessee pass. So I've got to go up and over 12,000 feet two more times and I've got one big climb in front of me to get up and over Kokomo pass. And I felt pretty good there. I was in a great mental state and we were just like crushing the climb. At the end of the day we we got to the over the pass and we had like a beautiful sunset there. Yeah, we like that was another big boost up and over 12. Okay, I gotta do that one more time. You know I've got, I've got one more pass to cover where I gotta go over 12 000 feet and then, but kind of all downhill from there. But, yeah, get to breckenridge, go through the, go through the town. You know, hit some pavement. What is the last big climb? Um, oh geez, georgia pass is the last climb. Okay, where is that located? Uh, that's like right before kenosha pass. I want to say like at mile like 90 ish 100 coming the other so 90.
Casey Koza:So 90 left, correct, correct, okay, and I mean I know downhill running's not really any easier than than uphill running, but it still has to be a big moment when you get to that last 12,000 foot.
DJ Fox:Oh yeah, I still had downhill legs in me. That was. The saving grace at the end of the day is I could still go downhill. I was moving all right uphill but like I could, I could still. I could still run and jog the downs pretty pretty well. My hamstrings were starting to kind of go on me a little bit, but the quads were ready to. They were ready to take a beating for the last, whatever we had to do.
DJ Fox:Yeah, we got into copper and we had uh, one of our pacers actually ended up having to drop there just like wasn't ready to handle the last climb out of Copper Mountain with me.
DJ Fox:So I had a friend, marshall, drive down from Denver like last second. He probably got to the trailhead like within an hour before me, so he was like just in time. And then we got through that section and again like sometimes like it's darkest before before the dawn right, and I was having a hard time on like the last like two miles with him where it was the same thing, where I'm like I can't stop kicking rocks, I'm gonna step over this rock, I swear to god I'm gonna do it, and I would just boot it like a ball. I'm like, oh my god, this is so hard, you know, but I keep. He was great company. We navigated, I think I I took like my first little bit of caffeine there, or maybe for the second time, popped like 50 milligrams of caffeine. Got through that last like couple, couple miles in the night and then found my way to josh where I took my very last sleep of the effort at at gold hill before we did our our last big push coming out of there.
Joshua Ried:Yeah, it's funny too, man, like for the for the cause, we all had in reach, uh, minis, all of these devices to track his location and you know like when we had cell service we were able to check on our phone. So we had some issues with the in reaches, whether it was cloudy skies, being in the trees. They didn't do as well as we were hoping they would. So we sometimes the message would get sent saying two miles out and we'd never get it. So really we're just playing a guessing game based on where it looked like he was on the map. So we're trying to do all these estimations and you know like we're expecting you at 3 am and next thing we know you're not in until five, right, so the crew ends up being awake and just like anxious a lot of this time too, waiting. So it was tough for the crew and the sleep. But at gold hill man, we woke up in that morning like the sunrise had just come up, had some caffeine. It was the best day, dude, it was such a good day like.
Joshua Ried:So the, the trail was finally getting super buffed out. It was really smooth like rolly single track. So buttery, smooth and nice, dude, we ran so much. I'm like, give me your poles, I'm not. When you have the poles, them run. There's just no reason to go any slower. You know the difference between, like, three and a half miles an hour and four and a half or five miles an hour is hours and hours.
DJ Fox:Yeah, we. So we started at gold Hill like basically right at 8 AM on day six and we went all the way through. So we we finished with a 28 hour push to get the thing done. You know where we did. I think I ended up taking a five minute trail nap, like 30 miles out or something. But we had 105 miles to go and you know, josh did like 70 of those miles. You know, you did like the first 30 with me to start the day, where we were moving pretty well and like it was a little bit slow to start.
DJ Fox:But you know, all of a sudden he would just like run away from me. And I'm like you know, and he'd like let me reel him back in and then he would run again. I'd be like I'm just gonna go with him this time, like I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna put my head down, I'm gonna look at his heels and I'm just never going to let him get away from me again. And he kind of I felt like he was noticing that, where I would see him like peek over his shoulder and be like huh, he's still here, you know. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going anywhere, dude. Yeah, I'll like josh, take me to the end.
DJ Fox:You're like, let's get this done. He's like well, and he gave me a couple numbers. He's like hey, if you go this fast, we'll get there at this time. If you go this fast and you stop for this long, we'll get there at this time. And if you go this fast, we'll get there at that time. And I'm like I want to be competitive. I'm here to finish this thing off and finish it, well, dude. So like, let's go, like, take me to the fastest option, let's get this done.
Joshua Ried:By the way, ask for consent from your runner before you just spit numbers at. Some people don't want to know. So I was like, hey, do you, do you want to know the numbers? Because some people don't want to. You know, like this guy, what is it? Ludovic that just did hard rock. Oh yeah, you want to know. Where he was, until he was like 10 minutes out from the finish line. Someone's like you want to know, you're ahead of killian's record.
Casey Koza:And then he's like, oh shit, but yeah, sometimes people don't want to know, but it was fun to be able to share that and you're gonna be like, oh hell, yeah, yeah ludo's a hell of a runner, yeah, and I'm looking at the ending here and I mean you're running, you know 10 minute miles 9, 30, 8, 43, and this is coming down the range into denver watertown yeah, water containing there, that's those last, like seven miles so so we're getting towards the end.
Casey Koza:I I pretty amazing the splits you're getting towards the end. I I pretty amazing the splits you're putting up the last one, two, three, four, the last six or seven miles, is it?
DJ Fox:you just want to be done right, I want to be, I want to, I want to be competitive. Like I said, you know, like finish with no doubts.
DJ Fox:Yeah, yeah, I can't leave anything out there, right, like I made mistakes along the way, you know, know, I didn't eat as good as I could have. Um, you know it's gonna be hard to make everything perfect in this, but I'm like I have something left. I told myself and everybody that I'm with that, that the trail and my team gets a hundred percent of my heart and soul today. Right, and I've got a little bit left. So here it is. You know, here's everything. This is all I got. Um, we pushed 10 minute miles as long as I could and, you know, some of the crew started to show up. Josh and I were finishing that last bit and, yeah, we just got in. It was like a very, very light decline on that hill and he's like, you know, he's like let's, let's at least hold, let's at least hold 10 minute pace. And I'm like we got it you know.
DJ Fox:And then our like let's, let's at least hold, let's at least hold 10 minute pace. And I'm like we got it, you know. And then my buddy, marshall, rides up on the bike and he starts spraying me with water on the side and you know like then Austin and Abby and Aaron come out. You know I'm with everybody now and I'm like again, like I just I'm, I'm out of it, I've got nothing left and I'm just using everything that they're able to to give me right, you know, like their energies, and I'm like let's, let's bring it home. You know I've got something left, we're going to dump it all out.
DJ Fox:And I ran as fast as I possibly could for those last like two and a half to three miles. I was like bearing down dude. You know, like hamstrings are twinging on me and I'm just like let's just get there, just get there, just get there. And it wasn't. I want to be done, it's, I want to do the best I can. And they're still I'm not there yet. So let's, let's push. I mean, like we were ahead of mcknight's record by nine, you know, eight hours at that point, whatever it was, and I could have walked it in and like got the record right, but that's not what I want to do at the end of the day, so you wanted to put some gap in between you and the record and make it a little bit tougher for.
DJ Fox:Yeah, I mean hey, let's say the next person who tries gets to that Waterton Canyon road at the exact same time I did.
Casey Koza:Yeah, you're not. You're not going to walk it in off the off. The same effort. To that point, you gotta, you gotta pick it up a little bit there.
DJ Fox:So you hit the finish, what goes through your mind? Oh man, I'm like wheezing a little bit, I just like I don't know if anything went through my mind immediately, right, like I hit the sign and I was like shade, you know, and went and hobbled over there and just like starfished and then just got like my breathing calmed, you know, eventually like oh again I sitting like like a hundred percent effort at the end there, yeah, and just calmed it down and soaked it in for a second Again. It was a year and a half project and in that moment it was over, right, like it was over. The prep was over, the training was over, the the attention to detail it was over. And that was over. The training was over, the the attention to detail it was over.
DJ Fox:And that was like a very bittersweet thing, like I remember, even like right before we like really brought it home in those last six miles, I looked at Josh and I was like I'm in like a weird headspace right now. It's kind of like what do you mean? And I'm like I don't know. I just kind of like feel odd and I think like, in reflection after is like I was about to be done. You know, with this whole thing and yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm sleep deprived and I'm dehydrated and I'm underfed and there's a lot, a lot that goes into that but I almost was like I just like I kind of want to just go slow and just be here. You know, I'm like no, wake up, wake up going fast, you know, like you have to, you know, but yeah, it was just like hit the sign and everything calmed down very fast, you know.
DJ Fox:And then I like get up and I look and my friends are just standing around me, all quiet, and I just again, very emotional, I like break out in tears and like one at a time I'm like dude, it's like I need come in here. We did it, give me a hug, thanks guys here. We did it. Give me a hug, thanks guys. Like there's no chance in the world I could have done anything out there that I did without my people, definitely like the unsung heroes at the end of the day. Right like I had to go out there and do the the physical exertion part and move my body from durango to denver, but there was so much in between there and there's yeah, there's no chance of me covering that distance in that time without the help you know. So, just like extremely grateful in that moment for everybody around me.
Casey Koza:Nice it is, it is definitely a team effort to get through all that. I mean, josh, you did a great job pacing, I'm sure, organizing a lot of crew, making sure he ate Biggest thing, really, making sure he eats.
Joshua Ried:Even though I did, you know, comparatively so few miles, I was so happy and impressed to see the crew every time. You know, like pulling in there and be on top of Sergeant's Mesa with like beds laid out.
Joshua Ried:I was like, oh my gosh, you guys, this is so nice, even though it's just like you know, it's a piece of cloth on the ground and there's like a 75 cent container of noodles that they gave you and, just like, this is the best, most luxurious thing I've ever seen in my life. It's a beautiful, it's amazing.
Rob Myers:So you're, you're finished, you're celebrating. Most runners, would you know, say it's time for a burger and beer. But you know, you strike me as the kind of guy that wants to go for a run afterwards, maybe a recovery run or something like that. Yeah, right, yeah, what'd you do?
DJ Fox:um, my friends actually. I grabbed a beer at the end of there. We cheersed and, while still sitting on the ground, had a couple sips.
Joshua Ried:Drunk off sips yeah, I had half of an ipo.
DJ Fox:I was like I can't finish it and then we're like, hey, well, let's get out of here, there ain't no point in hanging around the waterton sign. So my buddy eric, he's like I'm like, okay, the the bus is like a quarter mile over in the parking lot and I'm like, bro, I'm, there's no chance of me moving another quarter mile. Zero chance. You know, central governor has has kicked in. I've achieved, I've hit my finish line and my body says no more, no more. So my buddy's like oh, I'll give you a piggyback. So he piggybacks me over over the bus, drops me off, we all just kind of hang out for like another 20 minutes and my ride home says, hey, we're gonna leave, we're ready to go. I'm like, all right, shove me in the back of the truck. You know like, pick me up, stick me in the back of the truck, lay me out a little bed. I lay down and I fall asleep and we start driving home. Yeah.
Joshua Ried:But then they try to feed you and you're like eating while you sleep with food in your mouth.
DJ Fox:Yeah, basically we stopped at a gas station and I got a pint of ice cream and it was like the most beautiful thing I've ever had in my entire life, cause my mouth is still like raw from just nonstop eating for 172 hours, nonstop chewing. So I just like put the ice cream in my mouth. It's cold, it dissolves and, oh my God, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced in my life Immediately fall back asleep. I wake up. We're pulling into a Wendy's and I'm like I want a Wendy's, order a burger. And I'm like why else I have to go to the bathroom? So now I have to get out of the truck and again everything costs something. And now I'm like it's over. So I'm, I cannot move, I cannot walk, I can barely stand. Honestly, I get a friend under each arm to support my body weight while I just kind of drag my feet along the ground to get into this Wendy's and the staff runs out and they're like they totally ignore the two people on the side of me which I do appreciate and they look at me and they're like hey, are you okay? Do you need water? And I'm like I don't need water, I'm all right, I did this to myself these people are helping me they're not like abducting me or anything. Yeah, so they helped me out.
DJ Fox:I got some snacks, got back in the truck, immediately fell back to sleep. Woke up in durango my girlfriend ordered us some man, I think we, she, she grabbed Indian food and, like Josh was saying, I'm sitting up in bed and in between every bite I'm falling asleep. I put food in my mouth and I'm trying to chew it and I fall asleep. I wake up and I, like, finish my bite again and you know, repeated that for the next. You know, probably took me three times as long to eat that meal as it has anything else in my life, but finished my snacks and fell asleep for, like you know, 16 hours and I'm basically playing that on repeat for the last almost two weeks now. Just eat, sleep, eat sleep eat sleep.
Casey Koza:Yeah, I imagine the recovery from this is pretty extensive, for a couple of weeks at least, right.
DJ Fox:Yeah, very much so. Like last week was a lot worse, especially being sick. Right, yeah, very much so. Like last week was a lot worse, especially being sick. Um, I laid in bed with clearing out pneumonia symptoms for the first two weeks, so this time is so much better. Um, you know, I I didn't end up in the hospital this time. Big win got to come home, just kind of do it all, do it all by myself here. But yeah, I mean it's, it's taken a lot, a lot of sleeping and a lot of eating. When I finished, I had lost about like 12 to 13 pounds on the trail and I gained 15 pounds back in the last 10 days.
Casey Koza:So it's a quick, quick weight loss program, that's just eating and sleeping.
DJ Fox:But yeah, I mean I feel pretty good all things considered, aside from a few acute things like the front of my ankle is still giving me some issues like dorsiflexing and this hamstring, my left hamstring, still bugging me a little bit, where it feels good for the most part, but I'll move a little fast and that quick contraction of the muscle I'll yelp a little bit. But yeah, I mean using the stairs, walk to the grocery store today, do pretty good. But yeah, I mean I don't plan on, I probably won't run a step for at least a, you know a month after the fact. You know I didn't run a step for two months after. So if I could consider it, you know, four to six weeks this time, I'd be really happy. But I'm just really looking forward to getting under some weights. I want to put another big strength block in, do some squats and deadlifts, some overhead pressings and pull-ups, have some fun just being strong again, and I want to get on the jujitsu mat. That's one of the two things I'm really looking forward to right now.
Casey Koza:So well, hey, man, we certainly appreciate you telling the story. Uh, hopefully we did it justice here, because it's an amazing feat. There's so much we could have gone into, I have no doubt, but I just want to thank you both for your time and just going through all this and the whole FKT and the process, the buildup, the training, everything that went into it and, real quick, what's the t-shirt you guys got on?
DJ Fox:So this is Endurly. That is a company I'm sponsored by for my supplements. So they they've got a gamut of things. They've got like pre-workouts and intra workouts and recovery, recovery formulas and everything like that. So shout out to Endurly. They've they've been supporting me since just before I won World's Toughest Mudder in 2022.
Casey Koza:Thank you very much, and where do we find you on Instagram?
DJ Fox:Yeah, I'm on Instagram. My handle is at D-E-E underscore J-A-Y, underscore F-O-X.
Joshua Ried:DJ Fox, it's Joshua Reed, it's J-A. Underscore S-H-U-A. Underscore R-I-E-D.