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Jeff Garmire and Allison Powell join Kevin on the day Rewritten premieres — the film Allison directed about Jeff's Appalachian Trail FKT, out now on the Free Outside YouTube channel.

Please note: this episode includes candid discussion of depression and suicidal ideation. Resources are listed at the bottom of these notes and at the top of the episode.

We start where the film starts: Denver, a corporate job, twelve-hour days, and the drive home where Jeff realized that if the worst option was on the table, then literally every other option was too. That realization became the 2016 calendar year Triple Crown, a dehydrator running before sunrise, a daily blog, and about $15,000 raised for suicide prevention — as much a way to open a conversation he didn't know how to start as it was a fundraiser.

Then we get into the AT: fifty miles and roughly eleven thousand feet of gain a day for forty-five days, and the parade of things that went sideways. Two left shoes in a resupply box (meaning two right shoes were sitting somewhere else). A broken pole in Shenandoah. A missing box. InReach messages so garbled Allison couldn't tell if Jeff was typing fast or coming apart. And the text, two hundred miles from the finish, asking whether he should hike twenty miles backward to retrieve every piece of electronics he owned.

Allison gives the crew-from-2,000-miles-away perspective that rarely makes it into these stories — staring at a dot, sleeping with the ringer on, waking at 4am Mountain in case something had gone wrong at 6am Eastern, and the night she ended up on her knees on an Airbnb staircase during her cousin's wedding weekend. Jeff talks about the six or seven months of mental work that let him rewrite his A goal mid-effort without it becoming soft quitting, why a "why" can be simple, and what five years of therapy has done for him.

Also in here: how the film came together, Allison's pitch for more producers in adventure filmmaking, her Moab 240 and a hard-won love of red rocks, where the title came from (and Jeff's extensive brainstorming before agreeing she was right), and a stop-the-episode moment near the end when Allison catches us leaving out the small matter of the ring Jeff carried in his pack for the entire trail.

Watch Rewritten on the Free Outside YouTube channel.

Learn more about the Trevor Project or donate: https://www.thetrevorproject.org

Mental health resources
The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386, or text START to 678-678
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (US): call or text 988

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Part of our miniseries on The Cutoff, the new Aravaipa/Dylan Harris film. Kevin and Peter sit down with Robby Chaney, who describes himself as a runner, hiker, and death marcher, and who has spent more time chasing cutoffs than almost anyone in the sport.

Robby's first trail race was a 40K in 2018 that went so badly he wrote off trail running entirely. New shoes he'd never worn, a vest he'd never used, and temperatures over 100 degrees. Then a volunteer request for a race called Cocodona 250 landed in his inbox, and the number stuck in his head. Six years later he has four 200-mile finishes, a starring role in a film about the very thing he's spent his career outrunning, and a 2026 Grand Slam on the calendar.

We get into what the back of the pack actually looks like from the inside: 100-plus hour races, aid stations where you turn around and walk straight back out, and the compounding physical, mental, and emotional cost of days on course. Robby also walks us through his 2025 Cocodona, where he made it to roughly mile 220 before his lungs quit on him in Walnut Canyon. Pulse ox in the low 80s, an IV, and a search and rescue extraction. (Peter, who also got to mile 220 and didn't finish, offers a competing explanation for his own DNF: he got tired.)

The conversation closes somewhere we didn't expect. In 2002, Robby was stabbed by a stranger and left bleeding on the street. He woke up in the ICU and was told he'd probably never walk again. He used a cane for years. He turned 50 last month and is signed up for close to a thousand miles of racing.

In this episode:

• (01:15) Aspirational ultrarunner: what "death march" actually means
• (02:26) What people get wrong about the back of the pack
• (05:41) From a miserable 40K to signing up for a 250
• (08:25) Coldwater Rumble 2024 and learning what a cutoff is mid-race
• (11:04) Respecting the cutoff without fearing it
• (13:37) DNFs as data points, and the trekking poles that cost him Mogollon Monster
• (16:27) Getting the email from Dylan and Emily, mid-race, on a ridgeline
• (19:40) What happened in Walnut Canyon
• (23:37) 2002, the ICU, and the twenty-year road back

The Cutoff is out from Aravaipa. Follow Robby's 2026 season with us.

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In this special edition of Distance to Empty, Kevin and Peter sit down with Jen Novobilski, one of the runners featured in The Cutoff, the new film from Dylan Harris and Aravaipa Running.

Jen's path to a 250-mile buckle started on a rainy day in Alaska in 2007, when she and a friend bailed on a hike and signed up for a half marathon instead — one minute running, one minute walking. Marathons turned into a 50-states goal, the pandemic turned that into her first 50-miler, and the company she kept did the rest.

She talks about finding out mid-race that she'd be in a film (filmmaker Bradford caught her hugging her crew at the start and tracked her down at Crown King), and about only learning last week — from our episode with Jamil and Dylan — that the movie was really about the cutoff all along. Her first reaction was ego. Her second was admiration for how the crew handled it.

We get into her 2025 Cocodona 250: roughly five hours of sleep across the whole race, no real dirt nap until past mile 200, hallucinations, a full head-to-toe clothing change in the downpour before Fain Ranch, and snow on Mingus that felt like home. (She did not bring rain pants. Who brings rain pants to the desert?)

Jen also breaks down the Skydive Ultra — where the skydive itself counts against your cutoff — and previews her next big swing: the Iditarod Trail Invitational 150, starting days after this recording, with a kid's sled her nieces and nephew decorated and her grandmother sewed the zipper into.

At 51, with a regular job and a regular life, her message is simple: if she can do it, so can a lot of other people.

In this episode:

• Accidental ultrarunner: from mountaineering to a rainy-day half marathon
• Alaska running, sled pulling, and the Susitna 100
• The Skydive Ultra 100 — bacon, hallucinations, and losing two hours to the jump
• Getting recruited into The Cutoff at mile 37
• The "observer effect" of running with a camera on you
• Sleep deprivation, weather, and why the 2025 Cocodona was the hardest year yet
• Why crew and pacers made the finish possible
• Escalation, "normalizing Norman" friends, and what's actually being chased
• What Jen hopes people take away from the film about the back of the pack

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Bigfoot 200 — 2026 Course Preview

Bigfoot is back. After two years of fire reroutes and closures, the 2026 course returns to its classic form — Klickitat is back in the rotation, and Forest Route 25 has finally reopened, cutting the drive from Randle to the start line from nearly four hours to under two.

Jameson joins Kevin and Peter fresh off course marking to break down all 200.1 miles, section by section: where the water actually is this year (there's less of it), which climbs hurt more than the profile suggests, and what the blowdowns look like on the back half.

In this episode:

• The 2026 changes — Coldwater Lake crew logistics, Twin Sisters losing crew access, and the Owens Creek aid station moving 1.5 miles down the road
• Why the silty water off Mount St. Helens will end your filter's race
• Quartz Creek: 7,000 feet of gain, 17 miles, and the loneliest place on the course
• Klickitat to Twin Sisters, fresh windfall, and the phenomenon known as "Klick-a-face"
• Crewing with one vehicle pass, no cell service, and a lot of driving
• River crossings, waist lamps, huckleberries, and why Bigfoot is the best place to dirt nap

Race starts Friday, August 14 at noon. Good luck out there — and remember to check official race comms, since things can still change.

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Kevin and Peter sit down with Selene Mallone, a Canadian firefighter who jumped from 100-milers to the 200+ mile distance and hasn't lost since. In under a year, she won the Divide 200 in her first attempt at the distance, took the Arizona Monster 300 in brutal desert heat, and then won the Ribbon 200 outright on Ontario's Bruce Trail. Selene shares how she balances training around 24-hour fire shifts, her DIY heat prep for the Monster (sauna suit on the StairMaster, a sauna sleeping bag, "practicing dirt naps"), why two-to-five minute trail naps beat fighting sleep deprivation, and running out of water alongside Sam Carroll in a 22-mile exposed desert section. Plus: the growing Canadian 200-mile scene, the Sioux 200 coming in September, and why Selene thinks the only way to know if you can do the distance is to try.

Kevin and Peter break down the wildest week of the year: Cocodona 250, 2026 edition. Peter kicks things off by running the Bradshaw Brute (recap episode coming soon), then joins Kevin at Mingus Mountain for the inaugural season of the MBA — the Mingus Basketball Association — where nearly every runner, from Rachel Entrekin's course-record-setting first bucket to Courtney Dauwalter's extended court time, stopped at mile 107 to shoot their shot. Spoiler: 107 miles of running does terrible things to your jumper.

The week also included an overnight shift at Schnebly Hill Aid Station (nonstop chili mac and at least three saved races), snack reviews delivered mid-race, surprise phone calls to runners live on the Mountain Outpost stream, "Emotions on Elden" interviews from the final climb, and a down-to-the-second cutoff drama at Mingus.

Stick around to the end for the full 50 minutes of raw MBA court audio — trash talk, airballs, celebrity cameos and all. If you can name every voice you hear, we might just send you a hat.

Huge thanks to our sponsors Janji and Mount to Coast for making the MBA possible. Support them (and us): use code DISTANCE at Mount to Coast or select Distance to Empty in Janji's post-purchase survey, screenshot it, and send it to @distancetoemptypod on Instagram or distancetoemptypod@gmail.com for free swag.

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Paul James Johnson is a civil trial attorney from Michigan who didn't run his first marathon until he turned 40. He and didn't discover ultrarunning until he was 60. Nine years later, at 69, he was the oldest finisher at Cocodona 250 this year, posting his fastest time yet on his fifth attempt at the race, and landing on the podium in his age group.

In this episode, Paul opens with an apology for missing a commitment during Cocodona (a mid-race "basketball" tradition on Mingus Mountain. Before diving into his running origin story, from a courthouse rec-league basketball team to his first brutal 50-miler in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He talks through what changed in his training and mindset that led to his breakthrough performance this year, including a more structured training block, starting creatine supplementation, and leaning hard on his crew — including his two sons who crew for him at nearly every race.

Paul also shares his self-coined "Art of Distraction" technique for getting through the darkest miles of a 200-plus-mile race, his habit of recording detailed audio notes to himself before each race segment, and his refreshingly simple philosophy on aging in the sport: age doesn't disqualify you from anything — the answer is always yes.

The conversation wraps with a rapid-fire "Quick Five," covering his highest high (crossing the Cocodona finish line with his full crew), his lowest low (a DNF at the Thailand 500 he's still chasing redemption for), his go-to race fuel, and whether he's found his distance to empty. (He hasn't. He's already signed up for four more races.)

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Lindsey Dwyer: Cleaning Up the Mess at Cocodona 250

Middle school PE teacher by day, 250-mile ultrarunner by... well, by 72 hours and 48 minutes straight. Lindsey Dwyer joins the show fresh off a 5th-place finish at Cocodona 2026 — a full seven hours faster than her debut the year before, with nearly four of those hours saved just by spending less time loitering at aid stations.

In this conversation, Lindsey breaks down what it actually takes to come back to a race and "clean it up": the rookie mistakes she refused to repeat (no more fun-runs in a dust storm the day before), racing against the sunrise for her B-goal, and why she sets A-goals she only expects to hit half the time. She talks candidly about battling her asthma through smoke-choked air, losing her voice for the entire second half, and gutting out two pacer-less night sections — including a lonely, viewless summit of Mount Elden at mile 230 where her sister's midnight phone calls kept her moving.

We also get into her training philosophy (big volume, reluctant strength work, lots of zone two), the growing pains of going from self-coached to working with Coach Leo Perschel, how she squeezes altitude and heat training around a teacher's three personal days a year, her Rio del Lago course record, a top-20 at UTMB, and what's next at the Mammoth 200.

Plus: breakfast tacos with HEB tortillas, why the pack is the one piece of gear you can't get wrong, and whether Lindsey has found her distance to empty. (Spoiler: not even close.)