Robby Chaney on Cutoffs, DNFs, and Getting Back Out There

Learn about our Patreon Offers!: ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/DistancetoEmptyPod ⁠⁠ Get some free DTE Swag by supporting out sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://janji.com/pages/distance-to-empty⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and be sure to select 'podcast' > 'Distance to Empty' on the post purchase "How did you hear about Janji" page. Thank you! Check out Mount to Coast here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mounttocoast.com/discount/Distance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Part of our miniseries on The Cutoff, the new Aravaipa/Dylan Harris film. Kevin and Peter sit down with Robby Chaney, who describes himself as a runner, hiker, and death marcher, and who has spent more time chasing cutoffs than almost anyone in the sport. Robby's first trail race was a 40K in 2018 that went so badly he wrote off trail running entirely. New shoes he'd never worn, a vest he'd never used, and temperatures over 100 degrees. Then a volunteer request for a race called Cocodona 250 landed in his inbox, and the number stuck in his head. Six years later he has four 200-mile finishes, a starring role in a film about the very thing he's spent his career outrunning, and a 2026 Grand Slam on the calendar. We get into what the back of the pack actually looks like from the inside: 100-plus hour races, aid stations where you turn around and walk straight back out, and the compounding physical, mental, and emotional cost of days on course. Robby also walks us through his 2025 Cocodona, where he made it to roughly mile 220 before his lungs quit on him in Walnut Canyon. Pulse ox in the low 80s, an IV, and a search and rescue extraction. (Peter, who also got to mile 220 and didn't finish, offers a competing explanation for his own DNF: he got tired.) The conversation closes somewhere we didn't expect. In 2002, Robby was stabbed by a stranger and left bleeding on the street. He woke up in the ICU and was told he'd probably never walk again. He used a cane for years. He turned 50 last month and is signed up for close to a thousand miles of racing. In this episode: (01:15) Aspirational ultrarunner: what "death march" actually means (02:26) What people get wrong about the back of the pack (05:41) From a miserable 40K to signing up for a 250 (08:25) Coldwater Rumble 2024 and learning what a cutoff is mid-race (11:04) Respecting the cutoff without fearing it (13:37) DNFs as data points, and the trekking poles that cost him Mogollon Monster (16:27) Getting the email from Dylan and Emily, mid-race, on a ridgeline (19:40) What happened in Walnut Canyon (23:37) 2002, the ICU, and the twenty-year road back The Cutoff is out from Aravaipa. Follow Robby's 2026 season with us.