How Diligence and Incremental Gains Might Just Take Jeff Stern to the Top of Ultrarunning

By Chase Parnell  —  February 3rd, 2021 — 📸: Ali Rogers

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The overwhelming take-away from my conversation with Jeff Stern is that he is a guy that has figured out how to find success in just about everything he puts his mind to. A leads to B leads to C. If there was a book on how to develop your running abilities, your marketability as an athlete, your community of support or tribe of mentors as Tim Ferris calls it, Jeff, intentionally or not, is following it line by line. All the sage wisdom and advice from the greats that I’ve heard over my years following the sport, Jeff already seems to understand and apply. After just three years of consistent running, he’s dramatically improved, built connections and integrated himself into the culture of the sport, and he even landed a sponsor in Salomon that knows a thing or two about how to develop and promote their athletes. If you aren’t yet familiar with Jeff, take a good look, because I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of him in years to come. 

The Rise of Jeff Stern

Morbidly speaking, we have a cycling accident to thank for Jeff’s entrance into the sport of ultrarunning. Prior to 2017, Jeff was more of a mountain biker and road cyclist, racing both domestically and internationally, doing what cyclists do: riding that razor thin edge of trying to go as fast as possible without crashing and dying. Jeff’s number was finally drawn and he ended up having his brush with the grim reaper, a crash that rattled him enough to reconsider his trajectory in cycling. 

Jeff finishing up his Los Padres Traverse FKT — 📸: Les Morales

When I asked about the exact moment of transition from cycling to running, he actually said it was during the recovery process from his bike accident. See, he was covered in road rash from smearing his flesh across asphalt. Any time something came in contact with his skin, he’d be in excruciating pain. The thought of putting on his cycling gear was repulsive; the less clothes the better. Jeff lives in Santa Barbara, CA and if we know anything about runners, it’s not uncommon to head out in nothing but shoes and some short shorties. But Jeff took it to a whole other level. He said, “I pulled out of my drawer an old speedo from a swimming class I took in college,” he said. I think you know where this is going. “That was the only thing that didn’t rub on any of the road rash!” He said he logged 60-70 miles a week in that speedo as the road rash took weeks to heal. Word of the tatted up speedo guy surely spread like wildfire as Jeff pranced up and down and around the golden hills of his local southern California coastline. From there, Jeff said there was no turning back; he loved the running and quickly put his competitive cycling days behind him. 

But Jeff was pretty green to say the least. He did a little work for the brand, rabbit, so he knew of Eric Senseman and Kris Brown, but back then, he said he didn’t know anything about Western States, or qualifying races, lotteries or anything. He said, “I remember someone mentioning the name Jim Walmsey to me, probably early in 2017, and I was like, I don’t know who that is. Jim who?!” 

As his newfound running form and speedo tan lines developed, Jeff surveyed the ultra landscape and landed on the Headlands 50k on August 26, 2017 to make his debut at the age of 30. He finished 12th out of 177 finishers. Not too shabby for a first timer. 

Just seven months later, Jeff decided to hop in the most competitive early season 50k in the west, Way Too Cool. He finished a very respectable 15th place in a time of 3:49:20. This race allowed him to really see where he stacked up with the elites; not too far ahead were Max King, Jared Hazen, Ryan Ghelfi, Matt Flaherty, and David Roche. Sure, they beat him handily, but if he could accomplish this, a sub-3:50 50k, after just a year of dedicated running, what could he do with another year? Another two years? Could he win a race like Way Too Cool in five years? Jeff is a smart guy, he knows the difficulty of an objective like that, but he’s also a problem solver; nothing is insurmountable as long as there’s a path forward. And really, this is exactly what makes Jeff so dangerous; you better believe that when he shows up at a starting line, he’s done the work and he’s likely a better runner than he was the last time you saw him.

I asked Jeff about his thoughts on a genetic ceiling. Does he view himself as someone with a lot of raw talent or will it be his workhorse mentality that will win the day? His response was the perfect amalgamation of this theme I’ve been beating like a dead horse. He said, “You really have to be consistent with running and that is definitely a skill of mine. Just day in and day out, not only with the running aspect but also the other components that come into play; you know, PT and body maintenance and sleep and eating and all that stuff,” he said. “I think I’m really consistent and diligent with that hard work, but I also know that I’ve always been geared towards running fast my entire life, whether it was playing baseball or soccer or cycling, I’ve always had a need for speed.”

Just a year after Way Too Cool, on March 23, 2019, Jeff raced the Nine Trails 35 Mile Endurance Run. All five of the Coconino Cowboys came out to Santa Barbara to run on Jeff’s home turf: Jim Walmsley, Jared Hazen, Cody Reed, Eric Senseman, and Tim Freriks all laced em’ up on this burly 35 mile course with almost 11,000 feet of vert! All the cowboys are sponsored professional runners so if Jeff could hang with them, then he’d know for certain if he belonged, if he had it in him to compete with the best. In what Jeff called, “the best ultra race I’ve ever run in terms of pacing, training, nutrition, hydration, tactics,” he found himself in 12th place at the turnaround and ended up closing well, picking off four guys in the latter stages, including the 2017 Transvulcania winner, Tim Freriks. Jeff finished in 8th place, just 47 seconds behind Senseman, and four minutes back from Reed. A swell of confidence lifted him up; he was indeed squarely in the mix. He said, “it was for sure a special day, and something I lean on every time I go out and run long.”

Not ALL Rainbows and Butterflies

Despite his steady progression, the rise of Jeff Stern hasn’t exactly been meteoric. Remember, Jeff was hardly a runner prior to the bike crash in 2017. He was an endurance athlete but didn’t have a massive lifetime base of running to draw from or years of speed development. It wouldn’t be fair to compare him to a guy like Matt Daniels, who entered ultrarunning after a full running career of other distance running disciplines, including a sub-4 minute mile in college. Daniels won Black Canyon in his first 100k, and finished 4th at Western States in his first 100 miler. Jeff has needed to be more patient as he’s developed his physiology and experience, but I won’t say that he can’t eventually reach similar heights. 

📸: Les Morales

Jeff’s Nine Trails performance was actually sandwiched between a rough day at the Black Canyon 100k in February of 2019, where he was rattled by a fall and finished 30th, as well as a 32nd place finish at the Broken Arrow Skyrace 52k in June of 2019. But generally speaking, he’s undoubtably trending upwards. Salomon must have spotted the same thing, signing Jeff in January of 2020 to a professional contract. 

The relationship with Salomon opened up all kinds of doors and Jeff was primed to make a cannonball splash in his first season as a professional. He had a dream race schedule including a Salomon team trip where he’d be introduced to all the greats, he had the Lake Sonoma 50 miler in April, the Dipsea and Broken Arrow Skyrace in June, Alaska’s classic Mount Marathon in July, and then he was going to focus on his big objective, OCC at the Ultra-Trail Du Mont Blanc festival. What a year! But unfortunately, that all came crashing down of course as the pandemic ushered in a year of sheltering in place and limited travel opportunities. 2020 was a challenge, even for someone with the resiliency of a very determined Jeff Stern.

I find it funny how the difficulty of the year manifested in his life. Did he take up an old vice and suffer through? Did he fall into a deep dark depression, unable to get out of bed? No, he started surfing. A lot. In a podcast interview with Ultrarunning Magazine’s Amy Clark, he said he became obsessed, surfing every day one week, which actually ended up leading to another injury; he dislocated his shoulder. But thankfully, much like his bike crash, this injury caused him to recenter and recommit to his running. With all his races cancelled, he decided then and there to focus not on what he couldn’t do, but on what he could do. Time to crush some FKTs.

First, Jeff set his sights on the supported Backbone Trail FKT, a 67 mile traverse of the Santa Monica Mountains. He did everything right; he scouted the course, he trained with specificity, he gathered intel from the prior FKT holder (Jeff Browning), he built a solid supportive crew, he executed his plan on November 7, 2020 and spanked the record in dominant fashion, dropping it down to 11 hours and 10 minutes. Next, Jeff locked in on the Los Padres Traverse. This route doesn’t quite have the same prestige and history as the Backbone but at 42 miles with 5,100 feet of elevation gain, it was the perfect tune-up for his upcoming racing plans. On January 16, 2021, he completed the traverse unsupported in 5 hours 56 minutes, adding another FKT notch in the belt and further establishing himself in mountain lore of southern California. 

Reflecting on Professional Life Crossroads

I’ve sort of painted a myopic picture of Jeff thus far, mostly focusing on competition, racing, and athletic achievement. I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t say that Jeff seems like a very genuine nice guy with more to offer the world than just running. He has a certain depth and emotional maturity to him. I was appreciative when he opened up about his decision to choose the path less travelled in his professional life.

See, Jeff was set up to do just about anything he wanted. As a Cal Poly grad with a B.S. in Financial Management, he landed, “about as ideal of a desk job as you can have in Santa Barbara,” he said. He had a short bike commute along the beach; dress code: sandals, shorts, and a t-shirt. He was greeted each day with a very relaxed casual environment and supportive management. “But the bottom line was that I was still sitting at a desk in an office from this time to this time and it just really didn’t make me happy,” he said, “even though it seemed like that was what you were supposed to be doing at 25 or 26.” In the end, he lasted a year. “I just can’t do this,” he said, “this is just not how I want to live, so I left.”

Jeff decided to travel, to see the world, and really try to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. During that time he managed to build relationships and organically create a network of relationships and income streams in the outdoors industry. That was ten years ago and he’s managed to live a life of his own style and making ever since. Not to mischaracterize, he did say, “It hasn’t always been the smoothest ride, and I haven’t always had a bunch of balls in the air, but it’s been really rewarding and I’ve gone to some beautiful places, cooked food for people out of a food truck, biked up mountain passes, hiked up these crazy trails, running and all these different things; it’s been really rich and rewarding in that way and I feel like now I’m just collecting all of those experiences and really applying them to everything I’m doing now, which is beyond all my wildest dreams when I left the quote-unquote real world.” 

📸: courtesy of Jeff Stern

You’re not going to believe all the irons he has in the fire: professional runner with brand obligations, freelance columnist for ultrarunning magazine and other publications, high school cross country coach, marketing consultant for outdoor brands, online ultrarunning coach, social media and newsletter engineer for his coach Mario Fraioli’s The Morning Shakeout, and last but not least, he’s a dedicated dog dad of two. So clearly, in no way did Jeff trade in his desk job because he doesn’t like to work. The guy must never cease!

I could hear the conviction in his voice when he spoke about all the people who look up to him for his decision to go against the status quo and pursue his passions. He said, “I think some of the best moments I’ve had since I quit that job that society said I should love,” he said, “are when other people have come up to me and said, man, watching you do what you want to do and be bold and chase dreams […]; to have someone come up and say that, to say that inspires them, and that they really appreciate and respect me for doing that, I think that’s been the greatest part.” 

Jeff chose a lifestyle of freedom, of doing things on his own terms, and in taking that risk, it would certainly appear that he’s starting to cash in on that investment in himself. Massive respect from me, a guy who is in the early stages of taking his own swing at a life untethered. 

Black Canyon 100k with Eyes on a Golden Ticket

To wrap this thing up, there was an interesting moment in my conversation with Jeff that I’d like to share. Now, take it with a grain of salt because this was only my perception and as we all know, sometimes you think you know what someone is thinking or feeling but you can actually be wildly wrong. I think any marriage counselor would agree! But there we were, enjoying this light-hearted jovial conversation up to that point, when I arrived at the final topic I wanted to address: Jeff’s upcoming participation in the Black Canyon 100k, an incredibly competitive golden ticket race where the top two finishers will earn an entry into the coveted Western States Endurance Run in June. 

I knew Jeff had done some research on the entrants in the race. He knows all about Jim Walmsley, Justin Grunewald, Tyler Green, Seth Ruhling, Dakota Jones, Eric Senseman, Ben Koss, Brandon Miller, Nick Hilton, Ben Atkins, Kallin Khan, and other potential contenders. Jeff knows the caliber of these athletes and that they’re all fighting for two spots. 

So I jump right in, wanting to know where his head’s at, “Alright, here’s the big question,” I said. “Are you going for a golden ticket?!” Of course, by asking that question, I was essentially saying: do you really think you can compete with those guys? Jeff’s response, while still composed, had a little edge to it. I felt the temperature on the call cool a bit, but he said exactly what I wanted him to say, “I don’t know how as an elite you register for a golden ticket race and not admit that you’re going for a golden ticket. That’s the whole point, I mean, not the whole point, but as a competitor and someone who wants to push themselves and see how fast they can go and see who they can run with and who they can beat, that’s what Black Canyon is about.” Let’s go! There it is! He’s not just a hard-working analytic; there’s some fire in there too. I could tell in that moment that Jeff is playing for keeps. He’s hungry and ready to solidify his place amongst the best in our sport.

Look, Jeff has laid the foundation over the last three years, he’s sharpened his skillset and learned to perform in high pressure situations; he’s done just about everything right. Will it be enough to earn him a spot at Western States? Will his best day be enough to get him there? Who knows. One thing I do know, however, is that I’m rooting for him to pull it off. And I get the sense that most people who meet Jeff will walk away wanting to see him succeed too, even if he is from California. Boom, roasted. 

But really, Jeff made a fan of me and I’ll be cheering for him every step of the way at the Black Canyon 100k on February 13th, and hopefully for many more years to come in events all over the world.

Follow Jeff: instagram, strava, his website uponward.

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