E19: Jeff Hixon | The Higher You Climb, The Harder The Winds Blow

Jeff Hixon is my guest this week. He and I are the co-race directors for the Waterville Valley Mountain Race presented by Saucony. As a course designer he has developed a reputation for creating challenging, but fair, mountain race courses including the one used at the 2019 US Mountain Running Championship. And perhaps that reputation comes as no surprise when you learn that professionally he’s a biochemist working to help develop medicines to treat cancer and athletically he’s participated in mountain races all over the world including the legendary Sierre Zinal…twice. Not to mention he and his wife adopted not one, but two, rescue dogs during the pandemic (to bring their pack total to 3) all the while raising three kids. So yeah, Jeff likes challenges. Our chat covers his introduction to acidotic RACING, the brief but eventful history of the Bretton Woods Fell Race, and the latest update on the course changes at this weekend’s Waterville Valley Mountain Race.