Rock Creek 100 was my first 100-mile attempt.

A 25-pound ruck, plus food and water. Washington, DC. Rock Creek Park. One hundred miles on foot, under load, with more than a full day and night of movement ahead of me.

I finished officially in 37 hours and 28 minutes.

First place in the 25# ruck class.

I am proud of that. But the result is not what keeps pulling me back into the race.

What keeps coming back are the quiet moments.

The dark parts. The emotional parts. The moments where the plan worked, the body struggled, the mind had to be brought back under control, and something small became bigger than I could have understood at the start.

This race was built through structure.

It was executed through discipline.

But it was finished through something I do not always let lead.

Heart.

The Build

I flew my coach, George, from Omni Athlete Training Systems out to crew me.

That mattered.

George knew the plan. He knew my training. He knew the way I process things. He knew when to let me move and when to step in. In a race this long, that kind of trust becomes part of the execution. After enough hours, decision-making starts to fade. The crew has to see clearly when the athlete does not.

Jenn Tillard was there. Rizz was there. Their coach Sam from Omni was there too.

Leading into the race, the athletes shared a group text. We were all preparing for the same event, but we were not all following the same plan. Each of us had training personalized for what we needed. We also had weekly meetings, so while the plans were individual, the process felt connected.

This race was also part of a longer system I had been building. The training, the fueling, the ruck setup, the mental work, and the operational side of preparing for a 100-mile effort had all been developing for months. I wrote about that process in Road to Rock Creek: 100-Mile Ruck, which became one of the articles that tied together many of the systems and lessons leading into this kind of effort.

This was all of our first 100-mile attempt.

That gave the whole thing a different energy. Nobody was pretending to have it all figured out. We were stepping into something bigger than anything we had done before. There was excitement, but there was also respect.

You do not casually walk into 100 miles with a ruck and assume it will work out.

It has to be built.

Jenn and I ended up finishing first and second in the 25# ruck class. Rizz completed 50 miles, which was 30 miles farther than her longest ruck to date.

That deserves to be said clearly.

A finish line looks different depending on the athlete. Jenn’s race was hers. Rizz’s race was hers. Mine was mine. But all of us stepped beyond what we had done before.

That is not small.

Rock Creek

The race started in Washington, DC, at Rock Creek Park.

Because the park closes at night, the race shifted to a night course after hours. Once the park reopened, we returned back into Rock Creek. The format worked really well. At night, the out-and-back sections became one of the better parts of the race because we kept crossing paths with other athletes.

There is something about seeing someone else still moving in the dark that helps you keep moving too.

A nod. A few words. A headlamp coming toward you. A tired face that probably looks a lot like yours.

Nobody needs to say much.

You just understand.

Because my finish extended into the evening of the second day, I had to repeat the night course one more time before the finish.

The race itself felt like it went through three seasons. There were humid heat bursts, cool breezes, and long stretches where my body had to keep adjusting to the environment.

That became part of the test.

Not just the miles.

The constant adjustments.

Settling In

Early on, Jenn, Rizz, and I stuck together for the first few laps. We moved steady. Controlled. Nothing heroic. Nothing dramatic.

That was the point.

In a 100-mile ruck, the first miles are not where you prove how strong you are. They are where you prove whether you are disciplined enough to hold back.

There is always a danger early in a long race of mistaking excitement for readiness. You feel good, so you want to go. You see people around you, so you want to match. You feel the energy of the start, so you want to spend it.

But 100 miles does not reward early spending.

It rewards patience.

So we stayed patient.

Everything felt organized. The plan was working. The pace was steady. The support was dialed in.

And somewhere in those first 10 miles, something small happened that I did not understand the importance of yet.

The Charm

I carry a charm my daughter Steele made for me.

It is a string of hot pink beads with a black bat. Normally I keep it clipped to the back of my ruck. But moments before the race, I moved it. I clipped it to the left shoulder strap, where I could reach it.

At the time, I did not think too deeply about it.

It just felt right.

Somehow, early in those first 10 miles, the knot came undone. I saw it happen at the exact moment it slipped loose, and it landed right in my hand. All the beads were still on the string. Nothing was lost. I was able to retie it and clip it back on.

It was one of those small moments that could have passed without meaning anything.

But later in the race, I would realize it meant a lot.

The charm almost came apart before the race really even started.

I caught it.

I tied it back together.

And later, when I started coming apart, that same charm would help tie me back together too.

When the Night Changed the Race

Every lesson I had learned leading into Rock Creek showed up during the race.

Some lessons were familiar.

Some were new.

The night brought the new ones.

As the temperatures cooled and the race moved deeper into the dark, my body naturally started to slow with my circadian rhythm. That was not surprising, but living it inside a 100-mile effort is different than talking about it before the race.

The foods that worked during the day stopped working well at night.

My normal fueling was not landing the same way. My body did not want the same carbs. I started getting nauseous. I was still moving, but there were moments where it felt like my system had pulled back from the plan.

That is one of the lessons I will carry forward.

A fueling plan cannot just be built for the first half of the race. It has to account for what the body becomes after sunset, after hours of movement, after fatigue settles in, and after the same foods no longer sound good.

Daytime fuel and nighttime fuel may need to be different systems.

George was all over it.

He got me to eat a piece of pizza, and that helped. It was not the perfect endurance food on paper, but it was exactly what I needed in the moment. Savory. Salty. Real. Different.

There were nibbles of rolls and sips of Sprite to work me through the nausea. At one point I ate M&Ms, and they instantly made me throw up.

So we learned something there.

Not that I failed. Not that the plan was bad. Just that night fueling is its own problem to solve. What works in the day might not work in the dark. What sounds good at hour six might sound terrible at hour twenty.

Chips also turned out to be an amazing treat at one point.

That sounds simple, but it mattered. The salt. The crunch. The fact that it was not sweet. After so many hours of gels, drink mix, rolls, and soft foods, a few chips felt like they brought a different part of me back online.

Sometimes performance is not about the perfect food.

Sometimes it is about the food you can actually eat.

And then there were the bathroom stops.

A lot of them.

I had been eating every 30 minutes, and sometimes I was eating real quantity. Eventually, my body had to process it. These were not little emergency stops. They were productive. At times, honestly, I was impressed with how much my body was willing to get rid of.

That is part of the reality of these races too.

It is not all mountain quotes and finish line photos. Sometimes it is dark, you are tired, your stomach is questionable, and your body has very practical business to handle.

The night did not break the race open all at once.

It chipped away.

• A little nausea.
• A little slower movement.
• A few more stops.
• A little less appetite.
• A little more mental drift.

And somewhere in there, the 70s arrived.

The 70s

The 70s were where I drifted.

That is the honest version.

There were physical things happening. The night had slowed me down. The fueling had gotten rough. The bathroom stops had taken a toll on rhythm. My body did not want the same foods that had worked during the day.

But there was also a mental slow in there.

That part is on me.

I lost the thread for a while.

Not the course.

The thread.

There is a difference.

Sam asked me at one point if I got lost, and I gave some kind of weak excuse. I knew it when I said it. It was not really the answer. The truth was that I had let something get displaced. I had moved away from the thing that was supposed to be pulling me forward.

And that is what makes this race different from any race I have done before.

For the first time in any race, I felt in control of my mental state.

That does not mean I was perfect. It does not mean I never drifted. It does not mean I never had dark thoughts or weak moments.

It means I could see it happening.

I could feel myself slipping, and instead of becoming the slip, I could separate from it.

That was new for me.

In past races, when the mental side turned, it felt like I was inside it. Like I had to wait for it to pass or survive long enough to get through it. At Rock Creek, I felt something different. I could observe it. I could name it. I could take instruction. I could reach for something. I could come back.

That might be one of the biggest victories of the whole race.

Not the placing.

Not the time.

Not even the 100 miles.

The control.

The ability to recognize that I was drifting and still have enough ownership to return.

At Omni, we talk about mental performance. George programs mental exercises into training. This is not just about getting fitter. It is about learning how to keep command of yourself when the situation gets heavy.

Around mile 78, George told me to really dial into my why.

The thing is, my why had been strong in that moment.

But somewhere in the early to mid 70s, I had lost contact with it.

Then I reached for the charm.

Hot pink beads. Black bat. Made by Steele.

Steele had just turned 11. She is full of attitude. Extremely independent. Strong-willed. Always wanting to live life. I cannot wait to see how she approaches the world as she gets older.

But inside all that fierce independence is a soft love that gives the most embracing hugs.

She thinks I am crazy.

And she is probably right.

But I also know she will remember this kind of craziness. She will remember the stories. She will tell them someday the way I tell stories about my dad. The strange things we do. The hard things we choose. The things that do not always make sense until years later.

That charm became something more than a gift.

It became a reminder.

I had moved it from the back of the ruck to the front before the race. I had placed it on my left shoulder strap. At some point, the phrase came to me:

Lead with the Heart.

That was a big shift for me.

Logic and reasoning rule so much of my life. Structure matters to me. Discipline matters. Planning matters. Execution matters. Those things got me to the start line prepared.

But out there, deep into the race, I needed something else too.

When I felt myself moving in a negative direction, I touched that charm and it brought me back to the goal at hand.

And at times, when things were the heaviest, I said the words out loud:

Who do I want to be when things get hard?

I did not answer with words.

My body answered with movement.

My mind answered by staying the course.

I ate when I needed to eat. I listened when I needed to listen. I kept going when the easier option would have been to drift, complain, or let the moment become bigger than me.

That question mattered because it moved the race beyond the finish line.

It was not just about getting 100 miles.

It was about the kind of man I want to be when things are difficult.

The kind of father I want Cannon and Steele to know.

I want them to know that I choose to continue through hard things with purpose. Not perfectly. Not without emotion. Not without moments where I have to pull myself back together. But with intention.

I want them to know that when life gets heavy, we still get to choose who we become inside the weight.

That was what the charm kept asking me.

Not, “Can you finish?”

But, “Who do you want to be when things get hard?”

Coming Back Online

By the late 76-77 mile range, my body started to come back online.

The temperatures were up. Daylight had returned. Carbs started working again. I could feel energy becoming available in a way it had not been during the early morning.

Coming into checkpoint at mile 78, I received an energy from George and Sam that I needed.

They looked at me and said, “You are getting 100 miles today.”

I said with conviction, “Let’s do this!”

That was perfectly timed.

Not because the race suddenly got easy.

It did not.

But something inside me accepted the instruction.

No more negotiating.

No more drifting.

No more letting the hard part become the whole story.

We were getting 100 miles.

Sam found my Subway cookies, and I was so excited. That probably sounds ridiculous unless you have been deep into an event like this. But when the right food appears at the right time, it can feel like somebody just handed you a key.

George loaded me up with my loop fuel. He gave me an extra gel or two and told me to eat everything I had.

So I did.

And that next stretch from 78-88 became one of my best feeling 10-mile sections of the entire race.

After everything that had happened through the night, after the nausea, after the bathroom stops, after the mental slow in the mid-70s, I came back. My body accepted fuel again. My mind sharpened. My movement improved.

That is one of the biggest lessons I am taking from Rock Creek.

A bad stretch does not have to become the story.

Sometimes it is just a stretch.

You keep moving. You adjust. You listen to the people who are there to help you. You stop negotiating with the part of yourself that wants to slow everything down.

And then, sometimes, you come back online.

The Final Miles

The last 3.5 miles were different.

There were parts where I was not just surviving anymore. I was enjoying the movement.

That is hard to explain after nearly 100 miles. I was tired. Of course I was tired. But I also felt present. Grateful. Aware of what was happening.

I thought about the other athletes. Jenn still moving. Rizz pushing beyond anything she had done before. The people we crossed paths with through the night. Everyone out there carrying their own version of the race.

I thought about my coaches.

George, who had flown across the country to crew me and kept making decisions when my own decision-making was not at its best.

Sam, who was there with steady energy and the right words when I needed them.

I thought about the weather, even with all its changes. The humid heat, the cool breezes, the strange gift of getting to feel all of it while still moving.

And I thought about Steele’s charm.

The one that almost came apart in the first 10 miles.

The one I caught in my hand.

The one I tied back on.

The one I kept touching when I needed to come back to myself.

There were a few times during the race where emotion came up. Not because I was falling apart, but because I understood the size of what I was inside of. Sometimes the body is still moving, but the heart catches up to the meaning before the mind can explain it.

That is what has been happening today as I reflect.

I can feel pieces of it again.

The dark. The nausea. The reset. The words from George and Sam. The cookies. The final miles. The charm. The feeling of still being able to move after everything the race had asked from me.

What Rock Creek Gave Me

I finished Rock Creek 100 in 37 hours and 28 minutes.

First place in the 25# ruck class.

Jenn and I finished 1-2. Rizz went 50 miles, 30 beyond her previous longest ruck. All of us stepped into our first 100-mile attempt and left with something we did not have before.

But when I think about Rock Creek, I do not keep coming back to the placing.

I keep coming back to a small string of hot pink beads with a black bat.

I keep coming back to those first 10 miles, when the knot came undone and the charm fell into my hand at the exact moment it could have been lost.

I did not know then how much I would need it.

I did not know that later, when the night got long and my body slowed and my mind started to drift, that same little charm would become the thing I reached for when I needed to come back.

That is the part that still gets me.

Because out there, beyond the splits and the mileage and the result, I was just a father moving through the dark with something his daughter made for him tied to his ruck.

That sentence is hard for me to sit with.

Not because it is sad.

Because it is true.

For all the training, all the structure, all the discipline, and all the logic I use to make sense of my life, the thing I kept reaching for in the hardest moments was not a metric.

It was not a watch screen.

It was not a pace chart.

It was not a ranking.

It was a gift from my daughter.

She gave me that charm as a gift.

I carried it for 100 miles.

But in the hardest parts of the race, it felt like it was carrying me.

Every time I touched it, I thought of her energy. Her attitude. Her independence. Her strong will. The way she wants to live life on her own terms.

And then I thought about the softer side of her.

The hugs.

The love she gives when she lets her guard down.

The little girl still inside all that fire.

That was the part that broke me open.

Not in weakness.

In gratitude.

There were moments near the end where I could feel the emotion rising and I did not try to push it away. I had spent so much of the race managing the practical things.

• Eat.
• Drink.
• Move.
• Fix the problem.
• Follow the plan.
• Listen to George.
• Keep going.

But in those final miles, the race became quieter.

I was not chasing anymore.

I was arriving.

I could feel the weight of the ruck on my shoulders. I could feel the soreness in my feet. I could feel the fatigue that had settled into my whole body.

But I could also feel how lucky I was to still be moving.

Lucky to have George there, who knew when to feed me, when to push me, and when to remind me who I was.

Lucky to have Sam there, bringing steady belief at the exact moment I needed someone else to see the finish before I fully saw it again.

Lucky to have shared the course with Jenn, Rizz, and all the other athletes carrying their own courage through their own miles.

Lucky to have a daughter who made me a charm without knowing she was giving me something I would hold onto when the race got heavy.

That is what I will remember.

Not just the finish line.

I will remember the night.

I will remember the nausea.

I will remember throwing up the M&Ms and laughing later because sometimes the lesson is very clear.

I will remember the pizza, the Sprite, the little bites of rolls, the chips that tasted better than they had any right to taste, and the Subway cookies that felt like a gift.

I will remember George and Sam looking at me and telling me I was getting 100 miles that day.

I will remember saying, “Let’s do this,” and meaning it.

I will remember touching that charm and asking myself:

Who do I want to be when things get hard?

And I will remember the answer was not something I said.

It was something I did.

• I moved.
• I ate.
• I listened.
• I stayed the course.

That is what I want Cannon and Steele to know.

Not that their dad won a race.

Not that he covered 100 miles with a ruck.

But that when things got difficult, when the night got long, when my body did not feel right, when my mind started drifting, and when the easier thing would have been to let go of the standard, I kept choosing purpose.

I kept choosing movement.

I kept choosing to become someone inside the weight.

And maybe that is the lesson I was supposed to bring home.

Not just that I could go 100 miles.

Not just that I could win the 25# class.

Not just that the plan worked.

But that even a man who lives by structure can still be carried by love.

That the strongest part of us is not always the part that calculates, reasons, or pushes.

Sometimes the strongest part is the part that feels.

The part that remembers.

The part that reaches for a small charm in the dark and finds its way back.

Rock Creek gave me 100 miles.

Steele gave me the reminder that got me home.

And when I think about that charm now, I do not just see beads and a bat.

I see the first 10 miles, when it almost fell apart.

I see my hand catching it before it was lost.

I see the night trying to pull me away from myself.

I see my daughter’s gift tied back onto my shoulder.

I see a father trying to become the kind of story his kids will remember.

I see Cannon and Steele growing up with their own hard moments someday, their own weight to carry, their own decisions to make when life does not feel easy.

And I hope they remember that their dad did not keep going because it was simple.

He kept going because it mattered.

That is what Rock Creek gave me.

It gave me proof that I could carry the weight.

It gave me proof that I could command my mind.

It gave me proof that I could suffer without becoming hardened by it.

And it gave me one of the clearest lessons of my life:

Sometimes what gets you to the finish is not the strongest thing you carry.

It is the most meaningful.