Hi, I'm Jake Brockbank. I grew up camping in the mountains of California, became an Eagle Scout, and these days I spend as much time as I can running trails. I'm an American living in France, which means most of my racing has happened on European mountains.
Running for Views is my YouTube channel about trail and ultra running: training, racing, and the views that make the long miles worth it. This site is where the training plans live, along with the free tools I'm building for runners chasing big mountain races.
The short version of how it went
In September 2022 I lined up for a hundred miler in Nice, 167 km with 9,070 meters of climbing, and I did not finish it. That is the least fun sentence to write on your own about page, and it is also the most useful one, because everything after it came out of that day. Here is the full race report.
Eight months later I went back to a similar distance at the Ultra de Provence, 164.8 km, and finished it in 31:35. Then in August 2024 I started UTMB in Chamonix, 173.3 km with 9,525 meters of climbing, and finished in 34 hours and 40 minutes, 406th out of 1,760.
I am not a fast runner. I am a regular person with a job who worked out how the entry system works, trained for the specific race, and got round. If that is what you are trying to do, we have more in common than you and whoever won it.
Every race on my record
Straight from my UTMB profile, oldest first.
| When | Race | Distance | Climb | Time | Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2018 | İda Ultra | 103.3 km | 3,640 m | 14:08:29 | 8 of 35 |
| Jan 2019 | Ultra Trail Oso Negro 50K | 47.8 km | 2,800 m | 06:48:45 | 4 of 150 |
| Jun 2022 | Trails des Millefonts Marathon des Millefonts | 42.5 km | 3,050 m | 07:11:49 | 60 of 155 |
| Jul 2022 | Montreux Trail Festival MXTREME | 108.4 km | 7,760 m | 21:48:14 | 24 of 83 |
| Sep 2022 | Nice Côte d'Azur by UTMB Nice 100M | 167 km | 9,070 m | DNF | |
| May 2023 | Trail de Haute Provence Ultra de Provence | 164.8 km | 7,650 m | 31:35:46 | 14 of 41 |
| Oct 2023 | Nice Côte d'Azur by UTMB Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to Nice 20k | 22 km | 700 m | 02:22:40 | 168 of 1,030 |
| Aug 2024 | HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc UTMB | 173.3 km | 9,525 m | 34:40:57 | 406 of 1,760 |
7 finishes, 4 of them over 100 km, and one that got away.
Where I am right now
Nowhere, officially. I have not raced a UTMB World Series event since Chamonix in 2024, so my UTMB Index has lapsed and my Running Stones went to zero the moment I took that UTMB place. On paper I could not enter the lottery today.
That is the system working exactly as written, and it is a good reminder of why I built the tools on this site. If you want to understand where you stand, here is how to find your own numbers, and the Running Stones Planner will tell you what it would take to get to a start line in Chamonix.
If you want the long version of how the entry system works and how I got through it, I wrote that up here.
What's here
Free training plans for 50K up to 100 miles, built on the principles in Training for the Uphill Athlete and adjusted for regular runners with jobs and lives. Free tools for the entry system, with a race registration calendar coming next.
Everything here is free, and none of it is affiliated with UTMB. If it is useful, the best thing you can do is subscribe on YouTube.