Hayden Hawks has been competing at the top of professional ultrarunning for ten years. He's won some of the biggest races in the sport, built a coaching practice, and become an advocate for youth trail running through Trail Fam. But the version of Hayden who showed up to this conversation is less interested in tallying podiums and more focused on what it takes to keep showing up, year after year, without breaking down.

He sat down with Jonathan to talk about why patience in training beats desperation, how Precision Fuel and Hydration transformed his nutrition approach, and what mental toughness looks like when you strip away the highlights.

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Hayden grew up in St. George, Utah, in a family that modeled giving back. His parents volunteered through church, stayed involved in local programs, and taught him that being present for others wasn't something you had to force. When asked what legacy he wants to leave, his answer isn't a race result. He wants to be remembered as someone who showed what it looks like to balance being a father, a man of faith, and a professional athlete.

The interesting part is what happens when he leans into that balance. When he focuses on being a good father and husband, on mentoring younger athletes, on showing up at finish lines even after a DNF, his performance actually improves. He stays healthier. He wins more.

Hayden sees a pattern in the sport: athletes land a big win, get desperate for more, pile on volume, and fizzle out in two or three years. Brands notice. They value consistency over flash. Hayden points to his own ten-year career and Jim Walmsley's decade-plus run as proof that sustainable performance keeps contracts and builds legacies.

He references a podcast with Seth Ruhling where Seth highlighted how marathoners and cyclists take gradual, incremental approaches to building volume throughout a season. In ultrarunning, athletes tend to swing wildly between very low and very high volume. Hayden's approach this year is to build block by block. After UTMB last year, he ran 60 to 80 miles per week through fall races, won Kodiak, podiumed in Thailand, and is now building into 90 to 120 mile weeks. Each phase stacks on the last.

One of the biggest traps in the sport is comparing your training to what you see online. Hayden is blunt: nobody posts their easy runs, their rest days, or their sleep. The athletes doing massive weeks and racing six or seven ultras a year often have full-time recovery built into their schedules. Comparing your capacity to theirs without accounting for the full picture is a fast track to injury.

He encourages runners to find their own sweet spot, factoring in work, family, and life. After a seven-hour mountain training run with over 10,000 feet of climbing, his next three days were deliberately slow and flat. That recovery is what allows adaptation to happen.

Earlier in his career, Hayden would run three-hour sessions with no food or water, a carryover from his collegiate background. He was draining himself on individual runs and never fully catching up on recovery, which compounded across training blocks.

Working with Precision Fuel and Hydration changed his approach from the ground up. He started at 30 grams of carbs per hour to train his stomach, built to 60, then settled around 90 grams per hour as his ceiling. He tried 120 but didn't feel it was necessary or sustainable. Now, any run over 90 minutes gets fuel and hydration. Even on easy days, he aims for at least 60 grams per hour, because 60 is better than zero.

He's also learned that hydration needs are higher than most athletes assume. He carries extra water, sometimes two additional bottles in his pack, and works with Precision's sports scientist James Hatton to dial in fluid intake after noticing dehydration on his most recent long effort.

Hayden heard Precision co-founder Andy Blow say something that stuck: everyone thinks there's a secret sauce, when really it boils down to doing the basics consistently. Hitting 60 grams per hour reliably matters more than chasing 200. And all the carbs in the world won't help if pacing is off, aid station transitions are sloppy, or the training foundation isn't there.

He extends this beyond nutrition. Nail your sleep. Eat three solid meals a day, even on big training days. Go into runs fueled and hydrated, come out and replenish. The unsexy fundamentals are what separate athletes who last from those who flame out.

For key training runs, Hayden sets up the back of his car as an aid station with all his race fuel, plus backups. He doesn't do this for every run, but for dress rehearsal efforts that simulate race demands, he treats the logistics as seriously as the miles.

He's candid that this took years. Working with Precision wasn't an overnight fix. It took three to four years of practicing in training, adjusting based on feedback, and learning from mistakes to feel confident his nutrition won't take him out of a race. Earlier in his career, it did. Multiple DNFs came not from lack of fitness but from dehydration and poor fueling.

Hayden's 2026 schedule is entirely mountain-focused: Trans Gran Canaria in March, Lavaredo in June, and UTMB in August. He believes he can win all three, but the deeper goal is rebuilding the mental and physical toughness that took a hit after injuries and a rough experience with cold at UTMB last year.

His approach is straightforward: embrace the things that are hard. The cold. The long climbs. The poles. He grew up tough, raised by a father who taught him to work hard. But he's honest that injuries eroded some of that confidence, and getting it back requires deliberately putting himself in uncomfortable situations and proving he can handle them.

Jon is a runner, cyclist, and podcast host from Boston, MA, who now lives in Boulder, CO. For The Long Run is aimed at exploring the why behind what keeps runners running long, strong, and motivated.

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