Monday, September 19, 2016

My Book "Nowhere Near First" Has Been Released!

My book "Nowhere Near First: Ultramarathon Adventures From The Back Of The Pack" has been out for a few weeks now! It has been so exciting to have the book receive such a warm reception.

A few days after it was released on Amazon and Kindle, a friend sent me this image:

Since then, I have some things for you to check out.

1) A few days ago I did an interview with the podcast Trailmanners. The hosts, Joel and Aric are seriously hilarious. There were a few times during the interview that I was laughing so hard that I was crying. Go find Trailmanners wherever you download podcasts and you can download the interview, or go HERE to download the interview right from their website.

2) A few weeks ago I did an interview with Katie from Running Our Lives. She asked great questions about Badwater, training, and the book. You can read her article HERE.

3) HERE is a book review from Emma Lemma at Rebeltart.

4) HERE is a book review from Josh at PhatJosh.

5) The amazing Terri Rylander created a new homepage at www.coryreese.com. It turned out really awesome. Feel free to visit the site and join the mailing list.

The book is available HERE from Amazon or HERE from Kindle. If you've read the book, could you do me a solid and jump over to Amazon to leave a short review? That would be sweet. And if you have a review on your blog or website, let me know and I'll share it.

Thank you SO, SO much for supporting the book. I can't tell you how grateful I feel.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Pacing At Wasatch 100 - 2016

The Wasatch 100 is a CRAZY hard race. Imagine:

  • Listening to an entire Justin Bieber album.
  • Getting a root canal.
  • Staying awake in a math class.
  • Eating cauliflower. 

Each of those things is very difficult. But running the Wasatch 100 is harder than all those things. Combined! I had the privilege of pacing my amazing friend Jared Thorley at the race last week.

I ran the Wasatch 100 last year and it was unquestionably the hardest trail race I've ever stepped foot on. I'm still working through PTSD from that race and the fact that I finished a comfortable (cough, cough) 35 minutes before the cutoff. 

Jared paced me at that race so I was excited to return the favor. I planned to pace him from mile 67 to the finish. When I met up with him at the Brighton aid station (affectionately known as "The Morgue") Jared was feeling good, but sleepy. It was 3:00am and he wanted to nap for 10 minutes. I was impressed that he managed to sleep despite the chaos of the aid station.

After a few hours in the darkness the sun slowly began to light up the horizon. We arrived at the Ant Knolls aid station and a volunteer came up to me. She said "Are you Cory Reese?" I said "Yeah." She said "Did you just have a book come out?" I told her I did. Then she asked if I went to Oakdale Elementary School. I was stunned as I responded that I did. She said "I was in your first grade class with Mrs. Wassom! I remembered your name because I wrote in your workbook and got in trouble from the teacher." I had not seen Julie McDermott for 30 YEARS! It was awesome to have a mid-race elementary school reunion.

As the sun came up, my camera came out. And for the rest of the day I struggled to put it away. The Wasatch Mountains are so seriously beautiful.


Jared is an amazing downhill runner. He can effortlessly fly past me on the downhills...even when he's got 70-80 miles on his legs. I was thankful for the uphills when I could catch up with him. (The course is essentially straight up or straight down the entire time. There are hardly any stretches in between those two extremes.)


He went through some really strong sections, and then hit some really rough patches. That's normal during any 100 mile race. Those rough patches are inevitable. He did a good job of continuing to push forward even during those tough times.


On a side note.....these aspens......holy cow! Just so, so, incredibly, seriously beautiful! This area surrounded by aspens was my favorite part of the course.

We got to an aid station and the worker said "You guys really need to hurry. Generally in order to make the cutoffs later in the race, you need to be out of this aid station by 7:54am and it's 8:13am right now." Unfortunately Jared was in a pretty heavy bonk that he was struggling to get out of. He was eating, drinking, and doing all the right things, but couldn't get his pace up where he wanted it. But again...he didn't stop. He kept moving forward.

I don't know what mile we were at when Jared realized that he wouldn't make the 5:00pm cutoff for the race. He said "Even though I won't make it before the cutoff, I'm going to keep going. If I can make the cutoff at the mile 89 aid station, I'll keep going and finish, even if it's after the cutoff." I thought this was so admirable. 

I came across this heart rock while we were out on the trail. I took a picture, then set it on the trail facing oncoming runners. I figured the runners behind us would need a little love, and I hoped that if they saw the rock, they would smile.

Unfortunately Jared didn't make the cutoff for the aid station at mile 89 and his race was over. I'm sure he felt a bit sad that the race didn't turn out the way he hoped, but he seemed at peace and comfortable knowing he didn't quit and gave everything he had. 

I suppose that's kind of like life. Sometimes things just don't turn out the way you hope they will. Sometimes the best you can do is to smile and keep moving forward. There's something to say for that. 

Thursday, September 1, 2016

West Rim of Zion National Park = AMAZING!!!

I'm under the belief that a picture is worth 1,000 words. So by my calculations, this post will be worth exactly 13,000 words. The following pictures are from a trip to the West Rim of Zion National Park last week.

I have this little problem when I'm out on trails. I. CAN'T. PUT. THE. FREAKING. CAMERA. AWAY. So I probably took a couple hundred pictures. Woops. And the thing is that Zion National Park is freaking amazing. And you pretty much can't take a bad picture even if you try. But here are my 13 favorites.

Let's begin with the drive to the West Rim. Even the drive is freaking amazing.

I love the solitude of trail running. I love the fact that I didn't see another human being the whole time. All I saw were insects. (And a gigantic horny toad. Yep, I took a picture of him too. But I'll just stick with an insect picture.)

Now, let me give you 3,000 words worth of tree pictures:



After running 135 miles through Death Valley during Badwater last month I was shocked how quickly my body seemed to recover. The soreness was completely gone within a two days! I definitely didn't expect that. But since then my body has seemed to have a hard time getting back into the groove of running. Things don't seem to be clicking quite yet. So this "run" was closer to a hike than a run.

The fuel for this adventure was Tailwind. (And a gigantic sugar cookie nearly the size of my head afterward.)

It was UNBELIEVABLY hot outside. I kept thinking to myself "You just ran 135 miles through Death Valley! How is this heat wrecking you so much?" But the heat did in fact wreck me.

Despite getting utterly demolished by the trail, it was still so great to breathe in the fresh air of southern Utah while being surrounded by this amazing scenery.

So I got back to my car, ate the previously mentioned million-calorie sugar cookie, then headed for home. But I had to keep stopping on the way home. The sunset was hitting everything just right and the colors were incredible.



They say you should never live life looking through the rear view mirror. And I think that's true. Unless the views in the mirror look like this.

AND......my book "Nowhere Near First" comes out Monday, September 5th!!!!! I'm so, so excited. Check out www.coryreese.com for more info.