An ultrarunner paused on a high-alpine ridge at golden hour, photographed from behind.

Field Journal · Issue 47

Long-form trail writing from people who've DNF'd, finished, and gone back out.

Race reports, ambassador dispatches, gear field-tests and course-marking notebooks — written above 9,000 ft, edited in Boulder, shipped weekly.

Read the Latest Dispatch Browse the Gear It Mentions

Est. 2017 · Boulder, CO Published since the Leadville summer we ran out of flags

Featured Dispatch · 18 min read

A hand-painted Weaselballs trail flag planted in alpine scree at first light.

Mile 71 · San Juan crest, 11,240 ft

Race Report · Hardrock 100

What the flags know: a Hardrock dispatch, told the way the trail actually feels at 3 a.m.

Ambassador and two-time finisher Marco Reid walks the 100.5-mile loop the long way — from the Ouray box at 4:12 a.m. to the pole at the Silverton finish, with every aid-station flag, every dropped gel, and the one patch of trail where the headlamp just gave up.

Course: Hardrock 100 · 100.5 mi · 33,050 ft gain
Conditions: Monsoon-week smoke, 19°F at the Kroger's aid-station crossover, dry on the east face
Flags carried: 4 reflective Weaselballs markers, swapped at mile 47 for the brighter HD line
Field lesson: When the wind picks up above 12,000 ft, orient the flag's reflective panel away from your line of sight, not into it

By Marco Reid · Photos by Jess Halverson · Published 14 March 2025

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The Standing Columns

Four kinds of writing, one rule: it has to have actually happened.

The Field Journal isn't a content calendar. It's a working notebook — edited by ultrarunners, fact-checked against the aid-station logs, and published only after the writer has slept on it.

Ambassador Dispatches

Letters from the team — Marco, Jess, and our three athlete ambassadors.

Long, technical, occasionally grumpy. Recent pieces cover the Cuyamaca 100K's new night section, what a 240-mile pacer rotation actually looks like, and why ambassador Lena Vasquez taped her flags to her poles for the entire UTMB.

Updated weekly 23 dispatches in 2024

Read the dispatches →

Athlete ambassador Lena Vasquez running on forested singletrack.

Race Reports

First-person accounts from the start line to the last cut-off — including the DNFs.

We publish the finishes and the pulls. The 2024 archive includes 14 race reports across UTMB, Western States, Leadville, Hardrock, the Mogollon Monster 240, and the now-discontinued Bighorn 100.

14 reports in 2024 Average read: 12 min

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An ultrarunner fording an alpine stream at dusk with a headlamp on.

Gear Field-Tests

600-mile reviews of flags, markers, vests, and the things we quietly stopped using.

No unboxing videos, no "first impressions." Every field-test is run for at least one full training block before we publish. Recent subjects: the 4.2 g reflective flag, the new pole-clip adapter, and three competitor flags we benchmarked at our Boulder workshop in Q2 2024.

600+ mile minimum 7 field-tests in 2024

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Reflective trail flags and gear laid out on raw linen fabric.

Course-Marking Journals

Notes from the 38 race directors who let us flag their courses — the good, the bad, the bear encounters.

A working log from the Cuyamaca 100K founders, the Mogollon Monster 240 crew, and the volunteer coordinators of the Never Summer 100K. What's worked, what the flags survived, and what we'd do differently in the next flag cycle.

38 race directors Updated seasonally

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Hand-tied reflective flags marking an alpine course beside a wooden arrow.

We don't write gear porn, we don't take sponsorships, and we don't run a piece that hasn't been worn in, flagged, or DNF'd on. The Field Journal is what happened out there — edited by people who'll be on the same trail next weekend.

— Jess Halverson & Marco Reid, founding editors · Boulder, 2024

The Journal, by the numbers

A documented trail, not a content calendar.

612

Documented ultramarathon finishes where our flags have been carried since 2020.

142

Combined UTMB, Hardrock, and Western States finishes across our 7-person paint team.

Years publishing the Field Journal without sponsored posts, banner ads, or algorithm chasing.

11,400+

Lifetime flag replacements honored under our Never Lose a Flag guarantee since 2019.

Climate Neutral certified since 2023 1% of every order to the Access Fund via 1% for the Planet

Keep Reading · Or Go Run Something

Subscribe to the dispatch, or pick up the flag those reports keep mentioning.

A short email every other Thursday — race results, new field-tests, the occasional DNF post-mortem. Or step over to the shop and meet the 4.2 g reflective Weaselball that started all of this.

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Hand-painted in Boulder, CO. Carbon-neutral shipping on every order. Lifetime Never Lose a Flag guarantee.