This edition of the Sunday Summary is coming to you from Colorado, but it will be the last one here for a long time. Tomorrow we're leaving the van behind, and we'll be out of the country for the rest of the year :)

Before we dive into the Leadville 100 stuff, I have one important update to share with you!

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The Leadville 100

This experience feels deserving of a book (which I have no intention of writing), but right now I feel like words would cheapen the experience. Plus, I don't want to give away the ending for those of you who haven't see the video.

What I can say is that this was one of the best weeks of my life, and I literally feel like a different person than the version of me who was lined up at the starting line.

But before I get into my race, let me back up a week and tell you about our friend Rick. Here's the quick version of our relationship:

2016 - We met Rick for the first time in Kathmandu, Nepal during our Everest Base Camp Trek. He owns iTrek Everest which is the company we used to organize our Everest Base Camp Trek.

2020 - We were driving through Colorado in our van, and they offered a free spot to park in their driveway. We met Rick's family for the first time, and immediately became best friends. What was supposed to be a 1 night stay turned into 6 weeks of living together and mountain biking the Colorado Trail.

2021 - We biked across Iowa together and ran a half marathon with burros in Leadville.

2022 - We spent a week gravel biking through Tuscany together.

2023 - We biked across the U.S. on a 3 seater bike.

2024 - We both attempted the Leadville 100

The Saturday before my run, Rick took on the challenge of the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race. It follows a similar course to the one I ran, but instead of 30 hours to complete the course like I had during the run, he had 12 hours to do it on a bike. The mountain bike race is basically a 12 hour sprint!

The thing that made this especially hard for Rick is that he basically only has one functioning lung! If you want to see how Rick fared in the race, start at 44:55 of the video below.

The first 45 minutes of the video are my last two big training runs leading up to my 100 mile run. Feel free to skip those. It won't hurt my feelings. However, if you do plan on watching my Leadville 100 video, watching the whole video will give a much better appreciation for everything that goes on that day.

​Van Life in America's Highest City (Training for and Crewing Leadville 100)​

Instead of telling you about my race, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who made it possible! I had the absolute best crew in the world, and there's no way I would have made it as far as I did without them. The importance of crew can not be understated!

I also want to say a big thank you to Kevin who flew out for the race and stayed awake for 30 hours to help us capture every moment of the experience. We rarely film with a third person, but Kevin being there allowed Kara to focus on feeding me during the race and allowed her to be present for the whole experience.

Maybe the most heroic effort of all was not Rick's bike ride or my run, but the back to back 1.5 hours videos put together by our editors. Thank you Brooke and At for the late nights and amazing edits!

If you want to watch me attempt the hardest physical challenge of my entire life, grab some electrolytes and joint me for this hour and a half journey.

​30 Hours to Run 100 Miles (Leadville 100)​

What's Next

We are currently packing up the van and packing our lives back into suitcases to be out of the U.S. until Christmas! After everything I just wrote about, this is going to sound weird...but this is the most rested we have felt in a very long time. We could not be more excited to be living on the road again, and we have a bunch of epic adventures planned for the last few months of the year start with (drumroll)...

ICELAND! We've rented one of these epic overland vehicles and we are going way off the beaten path! But the best part is my parents are joining us again for the adventure. We figured we owed them a slightly more comfortable trip after taking them to Tonga last year, haha.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! We can't wait to start sharing these next adventures with you!

Cheers from Colorado (one last time),

Nate (and Kara)

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