Posts Tagged: ultrarunning

Overview / Geography / Trails

The Idaho Mountain Trail Ultra Festival—better known as “IMTUF 100”—takes place in mid-September just outside of McCall, Idaho. Runners get to enjoy about 22,000 feet of climbing and descending, which range from many miles of smooth cruiser trails, to abrupt 1,000+ feet per mile rocky and loose proper mountain running.

TLDR: Be prepared to climb, sweat,and pack your own nutrition for this minimally supported 50k. The backcountry terrain and expansive views are breathtaking and worth coming back for. At the very least, scroll for amazing race pictures by James Holk. 

Trails and Tarmac is excited to announce our newest coach selection. Gabe Joyes hails from Lander Wyoming. He’s coached trail and ultra athletes for the past four years and brings loads of experience and massive amounts of enthusiasm to our amazing team of coaches. Gabe is a farther of two as well as a high school social studies teacher. If you take a gander at his ultra sign up page you’ll see that mountain 100 milers are his jam! He’s supported by La Sportiva.

We know that anyone who has the luck to be able to work with Gabe as an athlete is going to be more than thrilled. Check out our interview with Gabe below to get to know more about what makes it tick. Get in touch with us here if you are interested in learning more about engaging Gabe or any of our other Trails and Tarmac coaches to help you take your running to the next level.

Whenever I sit down to write these race recaps I always ask myself essentially the same couple of questions. First I ask myself, What really happened out there? What can I learn from it? And how can it apply to anybody taking their time to read this?

I had some time to mull (or should I say mullet) over the Canyons 100K yesterday as I drove from Auburn back home to Bellingham. See, once I get driving, I don’t really like to stop. When I found myself with a 14 hour drive ahead of me, I knew I could drive 850 miles only stopping once to refuel the tank. As I hobbled to my car and pulled out of the motel parking lot, I knew I had some thinking time ahead of me.

I don’t think I need to drag us all through a recap the things that have happened so far in 2020. You already know. Two angles, first the Ruby Crest Trail and how this ended up being my main personal race goal this summer. Second, as a coach of around 25 athletes I’ve been able to get an inside look at how lots of different people have dealt with the adversity this year has thrown at runners across the entire globe. I want dive into these ideas, and to talk about how I hope we can be looking into the future with optimism.

I’d competed in one 100 miler before this summer; the Leadville 100. I wouldn’t say I ‘ran’ the thing, though. Instead, I ran a good 60 miles before hitting a wall made of hyponatremia and altitude. I never recovered and walked it in pretty darn disappointed in myself. Like anybody, I had a lot to learn about running this distance, and I wanted to figure it out as best I could, but the next year I skipped the distance and ran 75 mile efforts at Lavaredo Ultra Trail and an FKT on a section of the PCT. I figured I would edge forward the longest distances and durations I’ve run in an effort to increase confidence and ability for the distance that had wrecked me.

Likely trail running’s fastest middle school teacher, Tyler Green started 2019 off with a bang by winning Bandera 100k and earning himself a Golden Ticket into Western States 100. Last year he set the fastest known time on the 40 mile Timberline Trail around Mt. Hood and placed 3rd at the Sean Obrien 100K. He has lived in Nepal and Libya, and been running competitively since he got his start on the 2nd grade cross country team. Get to know a little more about Tyler in the following interview that digs into his 2019 racing schedule, love of teaching and must read books.