“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
— Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

I’ve tried to write this newsletter a dozen times. Every version fell short—too guarded, too polished, not honest enough to say what I really needed to say about leaving Tinman Elite. And this still may not get it all right, but I’m giving it my best shot.

A few weeks ago, Max McNerney, the best man at my wedding, and the media guy who told our team’s story to the world, texted me. He said the last Tinman Elite poster still hanging in our old team house had finally fallen off the wall. It happened, oddly enough, on the same day the team announced it was shifting focus toward the marathon. It was a small moment, but it hit me hard. Like the team itself, something we had nailed into place years ago had quietly let go. It felt poetic. A little cathartic. The end of a long, emotional chapter I’ve been holding onto tighter than I realized. I co-founded Tinman Elite because I believed in something bigger than myself. We wanted to create a team that made professional running more human—gritty, transparent, and inspiring. And for a while, that’s exactly what it was. But teams evolve. People grow. Visions shift. And somewhere along the way, I realized that what we were building no longer aligned with what I needed to chase, both as a runner and as a person.

In this piece, I want to share what we built, what we struggled to hold onto, and how the rise—and eventual unraveling—of Tinman Elite helped shape the man I am today. I’ve got more to say—and I finally feel ready to say it.

I want to note that some of this may seem critical of our team, but I take full responsibility for most of the poor decisions made. It’s easier to point fingers when you’re down on your luck but this one obviously falls onto my hands more than anyone else’s. Also, I leave out a ton of details (sales numbers, specific decisions, etc…) this is more of grand reflection on my time in the front seat at Tinman Elite.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”— Søren Kierkegaard

Inception

I moved to Boulder, CO in 2017, not knowing many people and having no real plan—just a dream of running fast. I invited Sam Parsons and Reed Fischer to join and together we started to imagine something bigger. What if we built a team that reflected everything we wished the sport had when we first fell in love with it? Authentic athletes who were relatable, and unafraid to show the raw, gross, fun reality of the professional circuit. That was really it. There wasn’t some grand master plan to create a big team, sell merch, sign athletes, collaborate with companies, and put out media content. We wanted to be ourselves, and document the journey. And that is exactly what we did. I invited my high school buddy, Max McNerney, to live in my closet, grab a camera and follow us around for the summer. As things picked up a bit, we created logos and gear that WE wanted to wear at races and in our day to day lives. Mostly we just wanted to connect with the people that were interested in running and what we were doing with it.

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."
— Vincent van Gogh

Formation

2019 was our rockstar year. We were selling out gear in minutes, hosting community runs with 200+ people in places like Des Moines, Iowa, and the team was firing on all cylinders on the track. None of this was ever part of the original plan for my running career. Honestly, most of the goals I set out to achieve—I still haven’t hit. I haven’t made an Olympic team or set an American record. But through Tinman Elite, I started to understand that running could mean something more. Maybe it wasn’t just about my own personal achievements. Maybe it could be more ‘other’ focused and still leave a mark. For a lot of people 2020 was a polarizing, unpredictable year—the pandemic, a presidential election, and small businesses disappearing overnight. We didn’t know what would happen to our team. Races were canceled, and we figured there was no way we’d be able to sell gear. But somehow Tinman Elite landed in the middle of a perfect storm of luck. We were stuck in my house—me, my best friends, and our media crew. All we could do was train, document what we were doing, and share it with the world. And the world, at that moment, was looking for something—anything—to believe in. Our gear drops kept growing. Our subscriber numbers doubled, then tripled. But what meant the most were the messages. People told us we were helping them stay motivated. That we brought joy back to running. That we gave them something to chase while the rest of life was standing still. That’s when it hit me: my purpose in this sport wasn’t just about chasing fast times. It was about using my platform to share the gift of running.

If only it stayed that simple.

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” – Andy Bernard

Awakening

Like any business, you have to adapt. We had some kinks in the foundation, things we wanted to do better, and like most 20 year olds— we had no idea what we were doing. We expected growth to remain the same as it did during Covid, because, well, when everyone can go outside again and meet up with people, they will, right? And then they will run with more people again, and buy more running merch, and be MORE invested into our team! RIGHT? Not exactly. We decided to really start paying people - our run coaches, media team, strength coaches, physios,- we even had a team training camp in Phoenix. Why the heck not? But, it just wasn’t sustainable past our big boom year. We wanted to have our athletes feel the affects of having all of these resources and in return run better than ever before but money doesn’t solve all problems… or as Notorious B.I.G puts “mo money mo problems.” Money issues unfortunately bled into our teams culture, creating a slow deterioration of what Tinman Elite really was and ironically enough, didn’t really help performances. To be clear, we still had some successful years following covid, but the expectations were through the roof after Covid, and our businesses numbers sort of stayed the same or started to fall off.

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” - The Screwtape Letters

We moved on from our first coach, and that brought a lot of controversy and shame. We were a team and not a training group based around a coach— a big distinction from other teams. We did everything together outside the hours of practice. Meals, jobs, and copious amount of time contemplating nothing (it’s good to be bored with people you love.) This was the product that captured people’s attention—and their loyalty. Gee, I wish I could go back in time and shout this from the rooftops back in 2020. People just enjoyed watching us all hangout and do everything together and show the behind the scenes our evolving lives. The performance stuff was important, but the journey of those performances were what people gave a shit about— they were invested in us because they knew us.

I have to be careful here because a lot of the slow decline of our sales and our media was due to good stuff in life! A lot of us fell in love, and our time and energy moved into more lasting and important relationships. I can’t live the rest of my life running around in splits shorts with my friends forever! We wanted families, stability, and a sense of meaning outside of our running. So, naturally (and you could see that in our content) shifted to what a lot of other teams were already doing— workout videos, training tips, etc… The content we started to create became a convenience — we weren't grappling with creativity anymore or a sense of awe in what we stood for — harsh but true. And I only have myself to blame. I lost interest in what we were doing, and I hate to admit that, because when we were doing it right, it felt like the most purposeful thing I could have ever been doing with my running career.

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself... loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect, he ceases to love.”— The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is a bit introspective for a tiny running newsletter, but in the end, it felt like the last few years I was constantly lying to myself that we were still cutting edge, creating a lasting impact on the running world, all while providing value to our sponsors. The love we initially put into this project was waning. We were locked into the same routines, same habits, and same patterns of execution to our business as before while the culture wasn’t the same. Most of the athletes on the team didn’t live together, we hired my mom as our coach (not everyone was stoked, which caused rifts in the team) and finally, we didn’t really know what our mission was anymore. We were still trying to push the sport forward or did we just not exactly know what we wanted to do next? Team members moved onto other things, we sold less and less gear, and we engaged less and less with our community. My wife always talks about doing things because they’re true, good, and beautiful — not because it’s easy and routine. In a world of every increasing convenience, we became comfortable. With everything now being easier to do, we stopped believing that what we were doing was true, good, and beautiful. It was all just meh.

“Beauty will save the world.”— Fyodor Dostoevsky

The end

There are a lot of questions about the new team structure and how that came to be. I have vaguely addressed that in some podcasts, hinted at it in some of my other newsletters, and have openly talked about it if people ask but here is the skinny of what happened:

Around the time of contract negations this past fall in 2024, Reed, Sam, and myself were all up for renewal. Our agents all got to work with a similar goal: to keep us together under one brand, and keep our team under that brand as well. As the talks were progressing, it looked less and less like that was going to happen. Sam and I were going to go another route and Reed was gonna re sign. Now it was up to the team to decide what to do, and ultimately, they decided to sign another contract with a brand neither Sam nor I were representing.

At first, I didn’t care. And that upset me. Tinman Elite was the pillar of my running career— many of my best friends were on the team, my mom was the coach, and it was the team that I built. But it was deeper than that for me. I was upset because I felt like something I once loved was so foreign to me at this point in my life. And any last grasp to hang onto it was out of envy or maybe pride, not out of a desire to revive it or make it whole again.

"This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." — T.S. Elliot.

I said good bye to my former team this last winter. I won’t be involved with media, content, the camp, community activations, or gear drops. I will be still be in the lives of the guys on the team, and hear about all of what they will be up to going forward, but I won’t have any of my finger prints on any of it. I think that is for the best. I want nothing more than for the team to succeed, and I think in order to do that, I needed to step away.

I owe a lot to the guys I was able to share miles with throughout the beginning of my running career. I was an intimidated little kid when I first started my pro journey. I didn’t know what I wanted or who I wanted to run for. Sam and Reed believed in me when few others did. Throughout all of my running career, the people who I spend the most time with shape and shift the type of runner I want to be. These guys gave me a logo and team to run for, when all I previously had was my self. The new guys that came into the fold because they wanted to represent that same logo gave more more fuel for the fire. Those same men are starting families, getting married, and becoming the best versions of themselves outside of running. It’s weird, I wish I could go back and do it all again, but at the same time, it was all perfect and beautiful when it happened. All I can be is grateful.

“I am a part of all that I have met.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

“Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses.” — F Scott Fitzgerald