Bryce Carlson explores whether Tom Evans’ Hardrock DNF could become an unexpected advantage as he returns to defend his UTMB title.
For those who know me, I am a big fan of baseball. And by baseball I mean the Chicago Cubs.
It has been a thrill this year to watch my thirteen-year-old daughter fall in love with the game and with the North Siders, of course. Slowly but surely, she is learning the lingo.
“Dad, what does it mean to strike out the side?”
“Why is the infield playing in?”
“Did he just say paint the corner?”
Impressions of Klattermusen,
Rachel Entrekein and the Story Trail Running Needed,
The Curious Case of Emory Atterberry
Anyhow, it was a proud dad moment the other night when there were runners on first and second with nobody out and the Cubs batter hit a high fly ball deep enough to the corner in right that both runners tagged and advanced.
The ball was caught.
Raine grinned and said, “Yeah, but at least that was a productive out.”
A productive out.
That pretty much sums up so many performances in ultra-running, even amongst the elites.
A few weeks ago, I watched the reigning UTMB champion Tom Evans DNF Hardrock. Not exactly how he drew that one up, I’m sure. He started in Silverton, and he didn’t get back to Silverton… at least on foot.
An out.
But sometimes an out doesn’t tell the whole story.
Tom Evans Returns to UTMB After a Hardrock DNF
Hardrock is an interesting race to put in front of UTMB. It is high, slow, exposed, and brutal in a very specific San Juans way. It is certainly not Chamonix. It is not runnable in the same rhythm. It is not the same kind of challenge. Still, Tom Evans chose to stand there in July with UTMB waiting at the end of August.
That choice fascinates me.
Maybe Hardrock was a mistake. Maybe it was too much, too close, too different. Maybe it told him nothing helpful except that he should have stayed home and kept training for UTMB.
Or maybe it was a useful out.
Not a win. Not a moral victory. Just something that moved the next race forward.
Tom Evans doesn’t need a lecture on coming back to UTMB after disappointment. He already finished third there in 2022. Then he dropped in 2023. Then he dropped again in 2024. Then he came back last year and won the whole thing in 19:18:58.
That is a strange line when you stop to look at it.
Third. DNF. DNF. Win.
Somehow you expect the line to make more sense than that. The sport rarely cooperates. UTMB made Tom Evans come back more than once before it gave him the result everybody remembers now.
Yeah, I’m talking about the shoey. Gross.
A DNF Isn’t Always a Wasted Race
So this year he returns as the defending champion, but not with a perfect summer sitting behind him. He returns with Hardrock still lingering.
I like that.
Not because DNFs are secretly good. Some are just bad days. Some are bad calls. Some are the body telling you, very clearly, to stop. But in a sport this long, not finishing is not always the same thing as wasting the effort.
That is the baseball part.
A productive out is still an out. Nobody walks back to the dugout after recording an out and demands applause. But the inning is different after it happens. The runners move. The next at-bat changes.
Chamonix is the next at-bat.
And Evans does not need to arrive there as some wounded defending champion in need of sympathy. He won UTMB last year. He has won Western States. He has nothing to prove in the shallow sense. But defending a title is different from winning it the first time, and defending it after a fresh DNF adds a little grit to the story.
Maybe that is all Hardrock gave him.
Grit.
A few hours at altitude. A reminder that nothing is guaranteed. A chance to pull the plug before one race became two bad races. A result he probably didn’t want, but maybe one he can still use.
I don’t know. Neither does anyone else I suppose.
The useful thing about the productive out is that you only really know later. If the next batter strikes out, maybe the whole thing disappears. If the run scores, everyone remembers the fly ball differently.
That is where Evans sits now.
Hardrock is over. The DNF is in the books. There is no need to turn it into something prettier than it was.
But UTMB is coming, and Tom Evans is still the defending champion.
The ball was caught.
The runners moved.
Now we see if he brings them home.
