This week Clint and Dawson sit down with Tab Tollett. Tab started road cycling in the mid 90s on up until the mid-2000s. Picked up mountain biking and almost immediately signed up for the Leadville 100 mountain bike race with a great group of guys. He did the Leadville 100 three times with two being on a single speed. From that point he did several other mountain bike races and stage races in Tennessee, North Carolina Georgia and Colorado. Also twice he did the La Ruta de Los Conquistador stage race in Costa Rica. It was all fun and good as a mid pack racer with the occasional surprised good result. Working full time and trying to train 12-14 hours a week to be reasonably competitive in my age group grew tiring and became stressful. He felt guilty training all of the time so in his early 50’s he hung up the bike. Later, Tab was lucky enough to secure a position on the Rock Creek All Mountain Team! He found this super motivating! At age 53 he signed up for a trail race in the Tennessee mountains called the Fiery Gizzard. It happened to fall on his 53rd birthday. He had never been a runner so he was starting from scratch. He figured he could get away with a lot less training hours and still stay in reasonably good shape. Then his daughter Camille, showed an interest in running and started cross country and track in high school. Since that first race in 2017, Camille and Tab have done a couple dozen half marathon-ish distance trail races together.
It’s been a great father/daughter time being able to train and race together. Surprisingly, In early 2021 I had a stroke. Obviously this caught his family off guard because he has always been reasonably healthy, eats well and gets plenty of exercise. It was a setback but Tab recovered. Tab started training again as soon as his Doc gave him the go ahead. Tab says he has done well over 60 trail races so far to date. Tab is contemplating stepping up to the 50-100 mile distance for his 60th birthday in 2024. Tab has always enjoyed having destination races on the calendar. So this year he found a cool tour company (Vagabond Tours) that offered trail running tours on the UTMB course which is also called the Tour of Mont Blanc. It’s a huge hiking destination as well. His wife and daughter joined in and they trained hard for several months to prepare. They basically did the entire Mont Blanc Massif (UTMB/Tour Mont Blanc course) over six days which was a little over 106 miles with 34,000 feet of elevation gain and loss. They carried their hydration packs with foul weather gear, running poles, food, and water. The tour company moved their bags from one refugee to the next. From their start in Chamonix, they stopped overnight in several small towns throughout the week-long trail running tour. The tour covers three countries including France, Switzerland and Italy.
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