Arches Ultra-Marathon and My Final Adventure Fundraiser for Thorn.

It’s been a couple months since I nearly completed my first 100-mile race.  The body is certainly put back together and running strong, and I’ve stepped out of the ancient rainforest I call home for the foreseeable future in order to prepare for the next big efforts: Arches 50-mile ultra marathon and, of course, the highly anticipated glacier crossing in Norway.  Y’all will get updates and training efforts for the glacier trip in due time, but for now just picture me dragging a small tractor tire through the snow at 6:00 AM in Montana and you kind of get an idea of what I’ll be up to over the next few months.

Arches is an effort that lies completely out of my comfort zone.  No mountains, no calf-blasting technical climbs on slippery wet rocks, and no forests to blaze through.  This baby is a solid 50-mile run through sandy flat desert.  Judging from the map it appears to be a call back to the Arizona Trail where I spent a month living out of my backpack earlier this year.  Without varied terrain or rivers, mountains, or trees what’s the point?? Yeah, I’m still asking myself that question everyday.  In truth, the vastness of the desert creates a similar mental challenge to what I anticipate experiencing while living on the glacier (and one day in Antarctica).  Moving my body through a wide-open space with no refuge from the elements, knowing often how hard I’m working but not always gaining the satisfaction of tangible progress in the form of a summit or hard descent really keeps the body in work mode but without the added boost of energy for reaching a waypoint.  I remember this vividly during a 100-mile sandy stretch of the Arizona Trail earlier this year.  The days felt like no progress was being made, but thankfully the GPS, and certainly my legs, assured me I had.

The Bozeman Run Club, a small collective of wild and bizarre Montanan transplants (myself included) is showing up in mass to compete both beside and against each other in the race.  I never thought I would find such a powerful community outside of my life on trail, but it turns out they were just tucked in a holler 3,000 miles away from home.  Never before have I had a network of folks as crazy as I am (or at least almost there).  Sunrise polar plunges, sick 20-mile runs through the snow and over frozen lakes, enthusiastic and incredible inviting conservancies.  A part of me feels like I’ve found a home here, but back to the matter at hand.

THORN.  Yes, if you have followed me at all over the past two-and-a-half years you know how passionate I feel about this amazing nonprofit that works tirelessly to help save sexually-exploited children and keep all our youth safe online.  It isn’t lost on me that while I am living this life of absolute freedom on the road and in the mountains that I have been blessed with the safety throughout my childhood to do so.  People don’t like the word “slavery” very much, but pretending it doesn’t exist won’t make it go away.  Children of every color and creed, every economic class and from every corner of the globe, including the places you call home, are being carted around to tend to the perverted whims of their owners.  Entire black market circuits operate to profit off these children’s abuse, and as technology continues to improve so does the ability of these horrid slave-rings to remain discreet.

It often weighs on me to think that no matter how beautiful the town, no matter how kind the culture, this kind of abuse and enslavement endures, and it’s highly possible to cross paths with one of these poor souls regardless of where I go.  Stories of years of manipulation, physical and sexual abuse, enslavement and transportation between trading rings as well as online-distributed sexual abuse content arise more and more every year.  The stats are available on Thorn’s website and they all point to the fact that this disgusting problem isn’t going away on its own, and Thorn’s ability to identify abusers and assist police forces in tracking them down is integral in fighting this issue.

Atop training for future endeavors, the Arches ultra serves as my final adventure fundraiser for Thorn.  I encourage all of you to share this GoFundMe across your social platforms and please give a few dollars in support of this incredible mission.  We may have the blessing of sharing the holiday season in the comfort of our homes surrounded by loved ones, but these poor children will ultimately spend the season alone, abused, and enslaved.  Give them the opportunity to one day enjoy the same freedom as you and I.

You can find the fundraiser HERE.

Love to you all, and I’ll post updates soon.