How many Grizzly Bear race medals made from recycled plastic are there in the racing world?

Probably just one. Right here in Southwest Montana

Tick, Tick Tick……

The 2026 Race Season Is Almost Here!

For the past 19 years, I have been the race director of the Greater Yellowstone Adventure Series (GYAS). It has been an exhilarating journey with too many wonderful memories to count. Since our first race in 2008, we wanted to make the world a better place by connecting sports with fund raising and awareness building for communities. In more ways than one, we have succeeded.

This is what being a race director is all about. It’s not about organizing a race, recording times, and handing out finisher medals to runners. It’s about making the world a better place through the runners’ experience. It’s also about sharing and showing off the beauty of Southwest Montana. It's part of the job.

Afterall, we are the only multi-sport race series in Montana. Someone has to do this, and we’re doing it. We’re also looking for people to join this effort.

GYAS Shirt Design for 2026

Pretty Damn Cool!!

It is not an exaggeration (nor a convenient cliché) to state that founding and then hosting the GYAS for 19 years has changed my life. I am a more tenacious person and also a more patient person because of my race director (RD) experience. I learned to refuse to give up, but also to adjust and adapt on the fly as needed. For example, the Inaugural Tour de Gravelly only had a grand total of six cyclists. For most people, they would have abandoned the idea as infeasible. A complete money loser because no one showed up.

However, we believed in the beauty of the route, the location near Yellowstone, the level of difficulty, and the communal sharing at the end of the race. The cyclists (as well as the runners in the other races) have constantly thanked us for organizing the races. While the races made very little money in financial terms, they made millions for the soul. The race series changed my life, but it also changed the lives of countless others who have participated in the events. They shared their personal journeys with me. I highly value that level of trust. I also value and appreciate that I had been put into a position to help so many people in so many different ways. How many careers, side careers or otherwise, can truly accomplish that?

The runners’ stories were so numerous and powerful that it compelled me to write a book about it all. In 2018, I published A World Gone Mad for Marathons. In this book, I tried to explain why, in every country in the world, sporting events were booming. From simple 5K fun runs to marathons and ultra marathons, people around the world were signing up to compete. This trend could not be explained by too many people in the world. I was one who could because I was a RD and knew why so many people were toeing the line to compete. They had told me their stories.

At the Big Sky Marathon on July 9, 2023, a runner from New York City told me that he had read my book and said it was the single reason he traveled to Montana to run the Big Sky. As a writer and race director, that was the highest compliment I could have ever received.

My son Colter, who was just seven years old at the Inaugural Madison Marathon in 2008, has also benefited from the race series. As he grew older, he took on more co-race director duties. He did well in this regard and became an exceptionally valuable part of the race director team. At age 13 and a couple years before he had a driver’s license, I had him shuttling runners and gear around the routes in various vehicles. He gained confidence in himself and also witnessed the up close and personal stories of the runners. When he was applying to universities in 2018, he wrote about these experiences in his application to the University of Michigan. He wrote about the runners he met, their stories, his RD work, and how the race series had impacted his life.

Along with several other schools, he was accepted into the University of Michigan and won a four-year, $25,000 per year, scholarship from the College of Engineering. This was an exceptional award as it was a scholarship directly from the Engineering school and not the University of Michigan overall (who also awarded him scholarships). In April 2023, Colter graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He has been working as a professional mechanical engineer for the past two and one-half years. He is just 25 years old.

Did he get accepted and win the scholarships because of what he wrote about as a co-race director of the GYAS? Of course, I cannot know that for certain. But he had something in him that compelled Michigan admissions to award him entry and then for the College of Engineering to offer a four-year scholarship.

The race series has also been an opportunity to learn how communities grow and prosper. Prior to the GYAS, there was no such community for Madison County. Within a few years of operation, a community was born. Not by design or intention, we had become the source of a community of runners from across the United States and several countries. We became community builders.

This can be explained in part by the small, niche feel of the races. They are not ‘mass events’ with thousands of runners. They are small affairs where people run together and/or separately, but they all share stories at the finish line. When they say ‘See you next year’, they actually mean it because they do return the next year. The return rate for all the GYAS races is quite high (up to one-third in some races).

SWAG Bag Design for 2026

As you know since you’re reading this, I write and publish the GYAS newsletter which is sent out to more than 2,800 people. The readership (open rate) for the newsletter is over 50 percent which is two or three times higher than the industry average. I write about sports, life, people, ideas, trends, and facing challenges. Sometimes, I publish excerpts from my book and other stories. This keeps the community connected, flowing, and growing.

How can you place a monetary value on what I have written above? How do you measure community building? How can you explain the compulsion and the wherewithal to write a book about running because of a race director’s experience? How about reading your son’s essay about the GYAS for his University of Michigan application and then he not only got accepted into the school, but also won a four-year scholarship from the college of engineering (it only gives out a few such scholarships each year)?

In some manner, I should be able to place a value on these issues and thus the race series overall, but I am at a loss. I am left with the statement that the GYAS has changed my life, and it has done so for the better. In terms of value, it has been priceless for me. It can be for you, too, if you want to join us.

Thank you for reading about the GYAS journey. If you want to know more about how being a race director for the GYAS can be part of your life journey, let’s talk.

Until then, Stay Happy, Healthy, and Always Keep Running Forward seeking incredible 19 years (and counting) journeys.

Sam, Thao, Colter, Cory, and Kevin.