I’ve wanted to blog for a while now. I’m not sure what has been keeping me from starting. Maybe my shit writing skills or a weird sense of imposter syndrome when it comes to sharing my life with everyone through a blog form of social media. Either way, I’m here, and I hope you all can get some joy out of it!
When I first got into running, blogs were my primary source of education and entertainment. After reading about Anton’s adventures, be it up Green Mountain or flying down mosquito pass, I felt like I could go out and train like a madman, all while jamming out to his music suggestions. It will be interesting to see where this blog goes. My guess is it will mostly be word vomit about my running. I hope to inspire a few of you and elevate the trail-running community through that. Let’s get started…..
I titled this first entry as New Beginnings. I’ve made significant life changes over the last few months to better my mental health and regain control of my life which was starting to spin out of control. Some of those changes were small, and some were really big. The biggest is my decision to stop coaching. This was not a decision I took lightly, but I knew it needed to be made if I was going to gain control of my life again. As many know, I’ve battled plenty with depression and PTSD post-military. I will probably go into more detail about that time of my life in a later post. However, I didn’t want to end up back in that state, and I could tell I was quickly heading that way if changes were not made. The focus as of late has been to get back to a place where stress is low, home life is good, and running is as fun as ever. It’s all a work in progress, but things are looking up now!
My wife Lauren and I moved back to Boulder, Colorado, in April. Since then, I have reunited with some close friends and am enjoying this fantastic community. The trail-running community here is like nowhere else. I’ve been doing a lot of training with my close friends Adam Merry, Drew Holmen, and Seth Ruhling. This recently has turned into a lil trail team that has been coined the “Boulder Boys,” or as I’ve seen some people post, the “Boulder Bros.” We have no idea where this will go, but we are having fun with it and enjoy training together under the guidance of David Roche. Hopefully, we will get a little content out for everyone to enjoy and maybe even expand on that in the future. For right now, the four of us are all very focused on our upcoming races. Seth and I will be racing this weekend. Seth is running the 100k at UTMB Mexico, and I will be out at Javelina. Adam Will be running in the World 80k trail champs in Thailand in a few weeks, and Drew will be out at Ultra Trail Cape Town racing the 100k. Everyone is incredibly fit right now. We have high hopes of running well, but as everyone knows, ultra running is a gamble every time you line up, and the outcome can be many different things.
Since returning from Chamonix in September, I’ve been focused on gearing up for Javelina. I came off of CCC with an incredible aerobic base that translated well to some of the more uptempo threshold running I’ve been doing in prep. I’ve gotten to do some of my favorite types of training during this block with extensive workouts on Magnolia Rd, fun back-to-back long run days, and even a 50k race here in Colorado! I feel about as ready as I can be for 100 miles in the desert.
I am hopeful Javelina will be a fast race, and we can put on a show. I don’t think I have ever toed the line with so many experienced 100-mile racers, so this should be a real treat. If you want to follow along, you can watch the live stream here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmakJBq6A7Y.
I will post more about training and any significant life updates in the future. If you would like, you can follow along through my other social media platforms linked below.
“Growth is uncomfortable; you have to embrace the discomfort if you want to expand.” – Jonathan Majors
https://www.strava.com/pros/14169827
https://www.instagram.com/mattdaniels480/
https://twitter.com/MattDaniels480
Trail Talk 
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