Bryon Powell

1 week ago | irunfar.com | Bryon Powell

The highly anticipated Zegama-Aizkorri Marathon is one of the most exciting mountain marathons on the global calendar. In a stacked race wrought with superb tactics and gutsy running, the 2025 edition certainly didn’t disappoint. Elhousine Elazzaoui of Morocco and Sara Alonso of Spain stormed to victory in 3:43:28 and 4:27:25. The 24th edition of Zegama comes at the halfway point of the highly contested 2025 Golden Trail World Series.

3 weeks ago | irunfar.com | Bryon Powell

On a recent weekday, I headed out at 1 a.m. for a 65-mile adventure run around New Zealand’s Lake Hawea. As I ran down deserted Highway 6, I considered what I would listen to as I passed the early morning hours. Surprisingly, I settled on David Goggins’ book “Can’t Hurt Me.”While I had downloaded the book more than half a decade earlier, I had never listened to it. Various clips of Goggins on social media suggested I wouldn’t resonate with the brash machismo he uses on those platforms.

1 month ago | irunfar.com | Bryon Powell

Over a recent 12-day stretch, I ran 255 miles. I ended that stretch with a 50-kilometer training run that went as well as I could have hoped. I surged in the final hour of that run, ending with my fastest mile in weeks, if not months. The next day, an easy 3.5 miles on an oft-run route turned into one of my fastest runs, again, in weeks, despite having no intention to do so. Gosh, running just feels so damn good right now. And that’s where the potential problem lies.

2 months ago | irunfar.com | Bryon Powell

Ultrarunning is community. Community is personal. Alex Pashley was both of those things. He will be so missed. If you never met “Pash,” I’m sorry, that’s your loss. However, if you had met Pash, you suffered an even bigger loss when he and two others met an untimely end in an avalanche in the Kootenay Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, on March 24, 2025.

2 months ago | irunfar.com | Bryon Powell |Bryon's Column

In early October 2024, I headed to China to run the Ultra Gobi 400k for the second time. This 250-mile (400-kilometer) run is a self-supported, self-navigated, non-stop race through the Gobi Desert of north-central China’s Gansu province. I would have 142 hours to navigate to the 28 checkpoints (which supplied ambient-temperature water only) and 10 rest points (offering ambient and hot water, heated communal tents, and our drop boxes). There were no crews or pacers at the race.