Trailhead

I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself, as well as explain the focus of this column. My name is Adam Campbell and I’ve been a professional athlete since the age of 19. I live in Canmore, Alberta and when I’m not running in the mountains, I’m a lawyer working as general counsel for an engineering firm in Calgary.

I started out my professional athletic career racing on the Canadian national triathlon team, training and competing alongside the likes of Canadian legends Simon Whitfield and Brent McMahon. During this time, I was able to fully explore my physical limits by training full-time, and learning from some of the best endurance athletes, coaches, physiologists and physiotherapists in world. Through them, I learned how to be an athlete and what it takes to compete at the highest levels. I was also able to travel, explore and experience the world through racing.

After failing to qualify for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, I came across a picture of ultrarunning legend Scott Jurek running through the rainforests around Seattle; the freedom I saw in that image captured my imagination. I turned my focus and love of pushing my limits towards trail and mountain running. From there I began exploring longer and longer distances in training and racing. I soon jumped into ultramarathons and competed in some of the most iconic trail and mountain races in the world with some success. I finished on the podium at the Squamish 50, the North Face 50 Endurance Challenge, the Trans Rockies Run, the Ultra Trail Mont Blanc, the Ultra Trail Mount Fuji and the Hardrock 100.

Although I continued to compete, I found myself increasingly drawn away from structured competition and more towards personal challenges. There was something very simple and poetic about seeing a peak from my home in the Canadian Rockies and wanting to see how fast I could get up and down it, or to see how many peaks I could link up in a single push, trying to set Fastest Known Times (FKTs) along the way. I began looking for lines and racing up. Along with the physical challenge, the pursuit of FKTs also had an aesthetic appeal and I soon found myself scouting maps and trip reports looking for inspiration for projects of my own.

With this shift away from the safety of monitored races into more unpredictable and dangerous mountain terrain, I began to take a greater interest in working on my technical skills and general mountain awareness. This interest in mountain endurance challenges led to one of the most significant experiences of my life. While doing a big traverse in Rogers Pass, British Columbia I had a serious accident which led me to breaking my back, my hip and I suffered other significant injuries. This near-death experience and my subsequent recovery back into the mountains has taken me on a journey of significant self-reflection on my approach to running, competition and mountain safety.

Through this column I hope to share some of my lessons and experiences gained from a lifetime surrounded by some of the best athletes and adventurers in the world, as well as explore the motivation and draw away from the racing side of running and more towards the adventure side of the sport. By freeing myself from the confines of a race course, I found myself limited only by my imagination and motivation in what projects I could explore. I hope to take this column on the same journey, exploring some of my thoughts, experiences and lessons from the trails and mountains, as well as focusing on some of the friends, characters and mentors who influence so many of my adventures.