For athletes who did not make goal in the air on the last task of the 2025 Global Rescue XRedRocks but still powered on by foot for many things got pretty wet and cold as overdevelopment got pretty serious and the rain at times was torrential. Stephen Guyette, who won task one And two in the Pro Division and then threw his reserve on task 3 in particular raced incredibly hard, running over 17 miles through at times heavy rain. Cal Neff in the Challenge Division did over a marathon! When our retrieve crew caught up with Stephen well after dark he was well on his way towards hypothermia. So now we have to warn for cougars, bears, rattlesnakes, dust devils, altitude, hypoxia, badgers AND hypothermia! Good lord Utah brings it all!
A day after the race ended Ben Walker, who has raced in every edition of the XRedRocks and has been on our task committee since the beginning had this to say about this years event:
“I’m sitting at work today reflecting on this year’s race. My words can’t do it justice, but an event of this intensity brings new perspective.
It’s impossible to capture a favorite moment, but on day 4 I sank out and had to climb up a plateau to tag the third TP. As I ascended, the terrain increased in angle until I was climbing through several cliff bands. It started raining with thunder and lightning all around as I pulled through several 5th class sections of rock. When I finally reached the top I started running and immediately kicked a cactus. I yanked it out with the typical pain as the barbs pull through the skin. After successful cactus removal I took a quick look at live tracking and saw that I might be able to catch a fellow competitor. The race was on and I ran through rain and mud for an hour in an attempt to improve my result for the day by 0.5 points.
Experiences like this are totally normal in the race but are freakishly rare, impossible even, in everyday life. I’m not sure these experiences are fun (type 2 maybe?), but they are special. And when it’s over these experiences serve as highlights in my year and make the typical problems and stressors easier to overcome.
This year I also had the opportunity to share a house with Gavin which provided a glimpse behind the scenes. The passion and amount of work that goes into organizing this event is incredible. Thank you to everyone who works so hard to push this sport forward and provide a forum where we can come together with like minded fools, to push ourselves to the limit and occasionally beyond what we thought we were capable of.”
It took several hours to get everyone back to base for our annual awards shindig and big feed consisting of pork baby back ribs, tri-tip steak, chicken drumsticks, sausage, mac and cheese, scalloped potatoes and salad. We’ve come a LONG ways since year one when we had potato chips and plastic awards! Shout out to Cal Breed (Orbix Hot Glass) for making the amazing hand-blown glass awards again this year. They are stunning.
All the results can be found here. In the Challenge Division we had lots of new faces who are definitely going to be hard to beat next year in Adventure:
In the Adventure Division we had our first female winner in the history of the race! Sarah Crosier CRUSHED and will be fun to watch in Pro next year:
In the Pro Division we had a pretty extraordinary finish to things. Stephen Guyette had it pretty locked up going into day 3 but then threw his reserve (and still finished the task on foot!) but he still had a shot at the podium going into the last day…if he could win. He gave it everything he had (see aforementioned 17 mile rally in the dirt) but in the end David Chen and his buddy Jens Glatthard (who were both 2nd and 3rd on task 1 and 2 both days) snuck the overall out from under him. Congratulations to ALL our participants, whether you got on the podium or not. You can be incredibly proud of your effort, training and most of all – have a totally safe race. This was one for the ages.
