Good Morning! 🏃🏻♂️
Here we go again - five articles about running that you should read.
As always, it’s a wild mixture and it features great people who achieve great things while running.
The really fantastic thing about running is that it comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. And while it is still running, it can be as individualistic as it gets.
I do have to say that the endurance side of running fascinates me most, and you can probably tell by the stories I picked.
Read on, my dear. And then go running! 🏃🏻♂️
After Surviving a Mid-Race Heart Attack, Ultrarunner Jeff Browning Says ‘There Is a Path Forward’ to Getting Back on the Trails
The 55-year-old resident of Flagstaff, Arizona, is a Hardrock 100 champion, six-time finisher of the Western States 100, a Keen-sponsored runner, and a longtime fixture at the top of the ultrarunning world. He made his first social media post on Thursday, thanking family, friends, and the trail running community for the overwhelming support. He said he would be released from Grenoble Alpes University Hospital in France and spend another week in recovery in a nearby apartment before heading home to Flagstaff, Arizona.
This is really good news. I’m glad he’s recovering so quickly. Still a DNF, though…
Ultramarathon runners train for months, sometimes years. But what happens when they don’t finish a race?
DNF stands for “did not finish” and it’s the acronym no ultrarunner wants assigned next to their race result. For amateur runners, it’s so loaded with emotion, it is rarely spoken about. Failure, disappointment, regret, shame and guilt all jostle for position in the mind of a broken runner in the days after a DNF.
But a DNF is extremely common. Sometimes it’s the result of a single factor, like a race-ending injury, but more commonly it’s a convergence of elements, physical and psychological. DNF rates vary wildly from race to race, but it’s not unusual for an ultramarathon to have an attrition rate between 15% and 40%, depending on conditions. The 2026 Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, which took place on 28-30 August, had a DNF rate of 30%, while in 2025 when the weather included driving rain, strong winds and biting cold, the rate was 35.8%.
Every DNF sucks, but I cannot imagine what it must feel like to DNF after runnings hundreds of kilometers monthly for a long period of time and then boom. No finish.
Rachel Entrekin Is Ready to Take What’s Hers
At 1:09 p.m. on May 6, 2026, the 5-foot-3 runner sprinted down the finishing chute with a vigor that seemed superhuman after 253 miles. (The race’s second-place finisher, Kilian Korth, would eke out just a shuffle here an hour and 19 minutes later.) She seized the finish-line tape and pumped her fist in the air. She had won the Cocodona 250 ultramarathon outright in 56 hours, 9 minutes, and 48 seconds, beating every other male and female racer and breaking the overall course record by more than 2.5 hours.
In the days that followed, national news relayed her feat: WOMAN MAKES HISTORY WINNING BRUTAL 253-MILE ULTRAMARATHON. People loved this part of the story: that Entrekin, already a two-time women’s race winner at Cocodona, had taken the lead early at 61 miles and momentarily wondered if she was making a mistake. But then she had said to herself, “Someone has to lead this race. Why not me?”
Badass.
Release the Beast
First out of the aid station, I passed through the crowds and into the quiet night. I checked over my shoulder. No one.
Well, run your 4:00 kilometres. Expect to see them soon. But by Notre-Dame de la Gorge I was still alone, clipping up the canal of hooligans and red smoke and noise big enough to burst the ears. It felt easy.
Then into the red-light section, where we were required to change headlamp settings to avoid disturbing the marmots. Still alone. I’d hoped for company through the night.
Reading this makes UTMB sound doable, maybe except for the little fact that running 4:00 kilometers is crazy, especially when done across mountains and for 160 km.
Unfortunately, Life Got Better When I Started Running
Truthfully, the process was composed of equal parts of loving and loathing. I couldn’t stand waking up in the pitch dark to run multiple miles in sub-20 degrees. I was ecstatic to mention how much I felt I’d already accomplished that day while gliding through the office to my desk. I was less than thrilled when the weather got so frigid I had to relegate long runs to the treadmill. At one point, five miles into a seven-miler on the machine, I gave myself accidental motion sickness watching the swinging ponytail of the treadmill runner in front of me while listening to “4 Raws” by EsDeeKid bounce back and forth between my AirPods. (After this embarrassing incident, I quickly switched to audiobooks.) But most importantly I relished the fast-paced feeling of control that the routine—one I had to either complete or quit—gave me while working a job as social and variable as fashion. My own goals came into sharper focus; in fact, I got the HR call that I had received this very job at Vogue while on a run
Running is awesome. Really.
If you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here:
Now, go running!
— Nico
🏃🏻♂️