Unsponsored Eagle runner — and husband to a pro athlete — wins $8,500 in shocking Run Rabbit Run 100 performance
Mike McMonagle/Courtesy photo
There are now officially two pro runners in the Harrison household.
Jon Harrison — whose wife, Genevieve, has been sponsored by On running since 2021 — came into the Run Rabbit 100 last month hoping to break his 100-mile best, a 22-hour, 18-minute, 16-second performance at the Leadville 100 six years ago. He ended up needing a lot less time to cover the distance — and walked away with a lot more.
The 36-year-old started slowly at Steamboat Springs’ signature ultra, moved into the top 30 by the midway point and rode the euphoric wave of a perfect performance into a stunning second-place finish. His 19:06:36 time bagged him a cool $8,500.
“The beautiful equalizing thing of the 100 miler is the fable of the tortoise and the hare just rings so true,” the Eagle runner said. “Slow and steady is just enough.”
Harrison’s running journey mirrors Aesop’s famous fable, too.
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Harrison’s humble beginnings
Harrison was “forced” to do cross-country by his parents as a junior in high school.
“Much to my dismay,” he added. “I don’t think I ever ran every step of any event. I determined after that I really didn’t like it at all.”
After graduating with a 5K personal best of 22:22 — about seven minutes slower than the state’s top varsity boys — he went off to Asheville, North Carolina, to get his degree in Spanish and literature. One day, he came across a flyer for a 10K ‘mountain run.’
“I had no idea what that was about,” he said.
The curious college kid signed up, completed the race and was hooked. Shortly after, a few friends told him about a 20-mile mountain ‘fun run’ they always participated in. Even though the distance seemed “insurmountable” at the time, Harrison gave it a shot. The more he fell in love with off-road adventures, the more he found himself hearing war stories from Hard Rock and Leadville 100 finishers. He wanted to test himself against bigger mountains after graduation, so he went west.
While working at City on a Hill as a barista in Leadville, he signed up for his first century run in 2012: the inaugural Run Rabbit Run. He didn’t finish.
After meeting his wife and moving to Eagle, Jon Harrison spent the next decade or so working as a teacher, starting a family and supporting Genevieve’s pro career. Occasionally, he slapped on a bib himself to “satisfy an itch” or get another Hardrock lottery ticket.
“But I never considered myself competitive in any sense really,” Harrison said. This year, however, he signed back up for Run Rabbit Run. At first, he contemplated registering for the less-competitive ‘tortoise’ division.
“I thought, if I’m going to get proper redemption, I need to make sure I register as a ‘hare’ this year,” Harrison stated. “And I’m glad I did.”
Dirt, distance and double strollers
Erin Park met the Harrisons at a group run in 2018. The Battle Mountain science teacher always considered herself a runner, but only discovered ultras in the last decade or so.
“I was like, ‘I want to do that.’ So, I decided to start doing it,” she said. “And that’s the thing I love about running: if you decide you want to do it, most people can — if you just keep trying.”
Park tried her hand at a few sub-ultras, placing 97th at the 2017 Canyonlands Half before jumping up to 11th at the Collegiate Peaks 25-mile trail run in Buena Vista later that spring. She was second overall at the Arches Ultra 50K in 2018 and also competed in the Desert Rats Trail Festival by UTMB 50K in Fruita and the Grand Traverse later that year. In 2019, she tried her first 100, placing 21st in Leadville. Park credited Genevieve Harrison for luring her into century runs. Ironically, the feeling is mutual.
“I’d say Erin was instrumental in my entry into the ultra scene,” Genevieve Harrison said. “Having friends who truly want to see you thrive in your dreams and goals is rare, and Erin has always been that kind of friend for me — I hope I’ve been the same for her.”
“We keep signing up for stuff and supporting each other,” added Park, who “made a point to keep running” after having her two kids post-Leadville. The countless training miles spent together have provided space for deeper conversations on balancing running, motherhood and more.
“Those runs have become the thread that ties so much of our lives together,” Genevieve Harrison said. “There’s nothing quite like it.”
“I believe most people could run 100 miles; after all, we face harder challenges every day,” she said. “What’s missing for many of us is the wildness we’ve lost as humans on this earth. Erin hasn’t lost that. She’s an incredibly strong and talented runner, but it’s her wild, wholehearted approach to running that makes it something far beyond just covering miles.”
Park signed up for the Run Rabbit Run 50 this year. With a 4-year-old and 2-year-old, she said her preparation included “a lot of double-stroller runs this summer.”
“It gives you some mental toughness,” said Park, who also enlisted the help of her unofficial coaches down the hall: Battle Mountain cross-country coach and assistant principal Rob Parish and assistant coach and fellow high school teacher Spencer Messer. They suggested Park ramp up from 50 to 70 miles in a week at some point in the base-building phase. That meant lunch runs stacked on top of morning sessions, bookended by long, weekend adventures in the mountains. Park hoped to be in the top 10% of the 200 or so entries at Run Rabbit. She knew prepping for the last 6.4-mile descent from the top of the ski area would be critical.
But on race morning, she opened the out-and-back course going up the 3,500-foot ascent. Partway in, she ran into someone she knew flying down to the finish of the 100, which had started the previous day.
Surpassing expectations
In his last 100, the 2023 Bighorn Mountain Wild and Scenic Trail Run in Wyoming, Jon Harrison crossed the line in 23:34:59. His main goal going into the 14th annual Run Rabbit Run 100 was to simply improve upon his personal best at the distance. He figured a sub-22-hour mark would render him a top-15 spot. That meant he wouldn’t even taste any of the record-breaking $100,000 prize purse, which extended to the top 7 in both genders. The winners of the male and female ‘hare’ divisions would each receive $20,000, the most for any U.S. ultra ever.
Having pored over past race splits, Harrison concluded the initial climb up Mt. Werner was “irrelevant” to how athletes finished. He devised a plan to keep his heart rate low enough to slurp and digest carbohydrate-rich gels at a rate of 85 grams an hour. His conservative start got him to the top of Mt. Werner some 16 minutes after race leader Arlen Glick. Glick was followed closely by 2023 Leadville champ J.P. Giblin, multi-time JKF 50-miler podium finisher Ryan Sullivan and the race’s eventual winner, Jesse Rich.
Meanwhile, Harrison filed into a conga line going into Fish Creek Falls, remaining satisfied seeing some of the top women nearby and realizing he was still 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Harrison hiked the first two miles of the next climb — the second of four major ascents in the race — but jogged the rest of the way to the Long Lake aid station a quarter of the way through the race. At that point, he’d already passed several males paying dearly for fast starts, but he still hadn’t even cracked the top 20. Harrison held a 9-minute mile pace to the 10,316-foot Summit Lake stop.
“Then things started getting interesting,” he said.
The wind picked up. Hail and rain turned into snow. Out of necessity, Harrison picked up his mile pace to 7:30s, his body shivering despite the heat-generating physiological demands being placed upon it.
“My optimistic brain was like, ‘it’s Colorado, this will just last 20 minutes,'” Harrison said. “It just kept going.”
But so did he. Harrison kept rolling, hitting sub-8-minute miles into the halfway point. The beam from his headlamp caught a familiar face — Genevieve — at Olympian Hall. His wife notified him that he was 1 hour ahead of his predicted finish.
“He was full of energy, chatty, and honestly, I’d describe him as jazzed,” Genevieve Harrison said. “Part of me was a little concerned — he still had 50 miles to go, and I wanted him to save some of that spark — but I’ve never seen him approach an ultra with such a positive mindset. It was fun and inspiring to witness.”
Jon Harrison posted the second-fastest split on the 12-mile loop around Emerald Mountain on the south side of town, passing Glick and a few other pros in the process. When he got back to the 63-mile aid in 10th place, he was shocked.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m still running all this stuff. This feels so good,'” he said. “I just had this suspicion; I had this weird confidence my legs were not going to fail me, even though I had 40 miles — 30 of which are uphill — left.”
He inched past a pair of athletes in the next 12-mile section, then two more sitting down at the Billly’s Rabbit Hole aid station. The next 5-mile climb only took 47 minutes instead of the 55 he thought it would. Harrison moved into fourth and was informed by a friend and his father-in-law that the podium was just 10 minutes ahead.
“I was still just having fun the whole time, which is just the most mind-boggling thing,” Harrison said.
The momentum kept growing over the next 10-mile stretch. At the Long Lake aid 89 miles in, he slammed a couple of Cokes and took off. Less than a mile later, he caught third place and realized the suffering individual had no interest in maintaining the now torrid pace. Shortly after, he came up to second place and flew past him, too.
“I kind of had a moment there where I was like, incredulous,” Harrison said. “I was thinking I was going to finish this in 22 hours at best, and here I am, going to go under 19. Like, what in the world?”
The livestream drone honed in on the father of two, who, in the final downhill stretch, came around a switchback and ran into Park, busy ascending the first climb of her race. The pair embraced.
“She was just exuberant for me,” Harrison said.
“We were just jumping up and down and screaming,” said Park. “That gave me a lot of motivation in the early miles.”
Park settled into sixth in the beginning stages of the 50, distracted by a pinky sprain from an early fall.
“I was like, ‘at least I’ll have something else to think about as far as the pain goes,'” she said.
She moved into fourth by the turnaround, but knew third was a ways off. Then, at mile 42, the podium came into view.
“And I was like, ‘Oh no. I have to go get her,'” Park said. “The competitive juices took over.”
Park ended up finishing the race in 8:50:02, less than four minutes behind Jill Seager of Silverthorne as Megan Roche (8:21:52) captured the victory.
“I was just in shock,” said Park, who picked up her son in the chute. He was responsible for Mom’s mid-race mantra.
“Which is ‘I am a robot,” Park said, explaining her son’s current interest. “So, I just pretended I was a robot and I had no choice but to keep moving the same pace. At the end, I was delirious and crying and super happy it was over. It was my best race ever.”
The same is undoubtedly true for Harrison, who crossed the finish line in 19:06:36 to pick up the hefty payday. In a post-race interview, a reporter asked if Harrison classified this as ‘a breakout race.’
“I just laughed it off because I don’t see myself in the same breath as these guys. My race was so much about being patient and just trusting what feels easy and doing that,” Harrison said. “Every single mountain town has a handful of guys or gals that are doing this. The idea that any guy like me who are just dads or out there working from any of these towns could go and have a day where they race really smart and feel really good is super exciting.”
Harrison said he plans to spend the cash on a whale-watching adventure when the family goes to support Mom at the Kodiak 100 in California later this month. The sport has always been a means for their kids to “see people working hard towards things, going to beautiful places and surprising themselves,” said Jon Harrison, whose next project is to continue playing the Hardrock 100 lottery game.
“And get in some day,” he added. “And try to surprise some elite runners again.”
Unlike most elites, as of this writing, Harrison still doesn’t have any pro offers. His wife laughed off the suggestion that her husband might be stepping on her turf now that he’s cashing big trail running checks.
“There’s room for more than one runner in our family,” she said. “Honestly, I’d love for my kids to surpass me in an ultra someday, if they choose to step into the sport. Sure, there’s a touch of healthy competition between Jon and me, but at the end of the day our lives revolve far more around family and friends than around running.”
Her hope is they will “always keep the balance,” something she sees as a prerequisite for longevity in the sport. The couple met almost 15 years ago when she walked into City on a Hill on Harrison Avenue in Leadville and he made her some coffee. Their first date was a run up Mt. Massive. Ever since, she’s had a front-row seat to watch his relationship with running evolve.
“Sometimes leaning toward competition, other times serving as a steady outlet for his mental health and well-being. It has never been about obsession, but about balance,” she explained. “I’ve always believed that in ultra running, if you stay healthy and keep showing up, eventually you’ll find yourself in the middle of something extraordinary. For Jon, that moment was Run Rabbit Run.”
