Two days after the 2015 Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) last summer, Seth Swanson was giddy.
“This is wild,” he says. “It’s mind-boggling that running could take me there.” his astonishment—still fresh—masked any fatigue from the 104-mile course, or the days-long travel that followed from Chamonix, France, back to his home in Missoula, Montana.
UTMB circles the race’s namesake peak on a route that spans three countries—France, Switzerland, and Italy. It’s known as one of the world’s most competitive and prestigious ultra races and among the most brutal. American men have historically faltered there, but Swanson’s steady-as-he-goes approach yielded a widely unexpected fourth-place finish in 22 hours.
And with two straight runner-up finishes at the famed Western States Endurance Run and a 2014 course-record run at Washington’s Cascade Crest 100, Swanson’s quiet climb to the top of American trail running is also a tale of consistency. At the 2014 Western States, he was an unknown. Now, despite the added pressure he feels as a sponsored athlete for The North Face, Swanson tries to remain grounded.
“Hopefully that just translates to wanting to do my best,” he says. “I try to stay within myself and my limits.”
That poise and his quiet demeanor belie his relative inexperience. The 36-year-old took to more serious running just four years ago.
Swanson ran cross country in the seventh grade, when then-classmate and now-wife, Norel, routinely beat him. “I was one of the slowest people out there. I just wasn’t motivated or interested,” he says.
He became a good skier and then a mountain biker. Then he raced a duathlon, which he entered in 2008, marking the first time he had run in years. He caught the bug, returned to the event a year later, and won. The years following included an Ironman triathlon and Montana’s Bridger Ridge Run, as well as an unofficial (“fatass” style) ultra—his first venture to longer distances.
“I had no idea what the hell I was doing; I got crushed,” he says. “I liked being outside, in the wild. I was really intrigued by these really long distances and just started running these things as a way to explore.”
As much as Swanson has grown as a runner, he’s never checked his heart rate and doesn’t follow a strict training plan. He does, however, prioritize his limited time to make each run count.
“Garbage miles—that just seems silly,” he says.
He reached a peak of 96 miles per week in last year’s Western States preparation, and generally totals about 15 hours of training per week. Over the past couple of years, he’s developed a sense of how to train for specific goal races.
“Western States and UTMB are completely different, and that’s good,” Swanson says. “For Western [States] training, I was really working a lot of runnable terrain, and it was good to switch that up afterward for [the steeper mountains of] UTMB.”
That schedule, heavy with quality over quantity, balances the training rigors Swanson experiences as one of the world’s best ultrarunners with a career as a horticulture extension agent at Montana State University—and the rewards of being a husband and the father to 4-year-old and 2-year-old daughters. Swanson also gardens his own land, aiming to teach his kids where food comes from.
“It’s not easy,” Swanson says. “I’ve got two young girls that are both active, and my wife and I both work. That’s a lot there and these are big races and big courses.”
Norel, an elementary school art teacher who ran her first ultra in 2015 at The Rut 50K, is still somewhat surprised by her husband’s success—not that she ever doubted him athletically, but because, as she puts it, “We have a lot going on.” Her tone understates Seth’s limited free time. After initially conceding to support him through one 100-miler, she now says, “He needs it. It makes him feel good, a way to get that energy out.”
Beyond that, Norel says, “It’s good for our daughters to see us doing something healthy, outside, and that we’re passionate about.”
Swanson meets his training goals with “a lot of early 5 a.m. runs,” he says, “and some 9 p.m. runs. That late shift is tough.” He clarifies that 5 a.m. means he’s out the door at that time, after an even earlier wake-up for his dog, Norm, who wears a bell to stave off bear encounters on Montana trails.
Swanson is humble and positive. To him, two second-place finishes at Western States aren’t near-misses, but incredible successes.
“I never considered myself a competitor at all. Second at Western [States] is huge,” he says. “This wasn’t on my radar, I never even knew that Western [States] existed. To do that was totally awesome, absolutely huge.”
The same thought holds true for UTMB. The big race “wasn’t even a dream,” he says. “It was beyond that. This is all so foreign to me, it still seems so wild that running has brought me to these places.”
