Aaron Kubala runs through mud and rain at the Moab 240 ( arathon runner Aaron Kubala was leading the Moab 240 trail race in Utah on October 11 when severe weather caused flash flooding and deadly winds. Race organizer Destination Trail eventually called off the event, prompting a flurry of reactions from runners and crew on social media. After that setback, Kubala, 31, was hospitalized with Rhabdomyolysis.
He told Outside what it was like to endure the ordeal. It was day two, and I had been running in pouring rain for 12 hours, from Road 46 through Pole Canyon and to the long climb up Geyser Pass. Once I got above 10,500 feet elevation, the rain stopped and it got extremely cold.
I was soaked to the bone. I couldn’t stop shivering. Then the wind started gusting at 50 miles per hour.
This was mile 180, and I entered a section that goes over ridges and canyons filled with dead trees, thousands of them. The wind would blow and I’d hear hundreds of trees crack and fall over. The whole forest echoed with the sound of cracking trees.
And then the trees started getting blown over very close to me. One fell ten feet behind me, and then another landed five feet in front. It was nighttime and it was a pretty scary experience.
You’d hear a tree crack nearby and have no idea where it would land. At times it felt like I was in the middle of a death trap. In the past, for this section, I might have been running a 12-minute mile.
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