“Running is how I see the world”: Travel, art and curiosity – the unconventional ascent of Chris Myers

Chris Myers doesn’t sound like a man who’s spent the last few years climbing through one of the most competitive periods in ultra-running. He sounds like someone who’s having fun – who sees the world at tempo pace and treats training as an excuse to explore.

“I love to be outside,” he tells us when RUN247 sat down with him recently to talk about his running journey. “I don’t love to do the same run twice if I can help it.”

It’s a recurring theme. Myers may have podiumed at Western States in 2025, outlasting Kilian Jornet and duelling Caleb Olson in one of the tightest top-three battles in recent memory, but the way he frames running is surprisingly unserious. He uses words like fun, exciting, satisfying, privilege and adventure more than he uses fitness or threshold or workload.

Running, in his mind, is closer to travel and art than sport. Indeed his Instagram profile, in this order, is: Artist | Athlete.

The desert kid who wandered into ultras

Before the altitude blocks in Boulder, before the consistency, before the Golden Ticket and the podium, Myers’ introduction to ultra-running was scruffy and unfiltered.

He grew up in Southern California, running long in the desert without much structure.

“I was just doing 20-mile long runs in the desert,” he says. “One of my friends was like, well, you should do an ultra because that’s only a few more miles longer. I was like, okay, why not? I’m not doing anything else.”

His first ultra – Bulldog 50K – couldn’t have been more archetypal if it tried. He won, he says “mostly because no one fast showed up”, and he under-fuelled himself into oblivion.

“I think I ate one gel the entire time,” he admits. “I was cramping. I was so wrecked after.”

It didn’t put him off. It did the opposite.

“Winning it really piqued my interest. Like, oh, I could actually do this.”

Way Too Cool 50K came next, with a similarly encouraging result, and by 2020 Myers had discovered something that felt both natural and addictive.

“I’m still learning, I’m still having fun,” he says. “I never thought it would become more of a lifestyle for me.”

Boulder: the voluntary pressure cooker

The inflection point came in 2023, when remote work allowed him to move from Los Angeles to Boulder – a town that functions as a quiet arms race for trail runners.

“All these people that are beating me live at elevation,” he says. “So I was like, I’m young, I’m really liking this running stuff – I’m going to join them.”

A month later, he lined up at Black Canyon and took a Golden Ticket to Western States. His first run in Auburn was fast – historically fast – even if the placing didn’t reflect it.

His second run, in 2025, was a podium.

“I think one of my strengths is to be consistent,” he says. “If I didn’t DNF, I was on the podium.”

That consistency didn’t come from Boulder alone, but the training dynamic helped. Myers runs with a loose collective who jokingly call themselves “the small boys”.

“Coming to Boulder and having a group of people you can solidly rely on is huge,” he says. “It’s a symbiotic relationship. I feel like I found my people.”

Running as a passport

It’s easy to tell what part of trail running really lights Myers up. It isn’t splits or hardware. It’s movement through space – through different cultures, terrains, languages and landscapes.

“I want to see the world,” he says. “I want to race in cool places. Not many people get these opportunities and I want to take advantage of them.”

2025 sent him to the UK, down the Jurassic Coast, and then to Cape Town for Ultra-Trail Cape Town. The plan for 2026 is broader still: Black Canyon in Arizona, Fuji 100 in Japan, Chamonix for UTMB, and possibly time in the Italian Alps.

He treats travel as training and training as a way of understanding places.

“One of my big pieces of advice for someone travelling to a new city is to run there,” he says. “You’re going slow enough to see more, but fast enough to see a lot.”

Early morning miles in Paris were a revelation: the Louvre empty, the Seine quiet, the city not yet selling anything to anyone.

“You see a completely different country,” he says.

In a sport that can easily collapse into seriousness – lactate curves, altitude camps, obsessively quantified sleep – Myers is a useful reminder that curiosity can be its own performance enhancer.

The artist and the athlete

Before running began to take over, Myers worked in visual effects in the film and TV industry. Recently the industry’s downturn hit him directly.

“Unfortunately I got laid off,” he says. “But it was a good time for that to happen because I definitely had a good year last year and running can actually take the place of that for the next few years maybe.”

He talks about running as impermanent – not in a fatalistic way, but in a pragmatic one. He knows the performance window won’t stay open forever. He doesn’t want to let the creative window close either.

“I always want to keep that part of my life sharp,” he says. “I’m trying to find ways to incorporate being an artist and runner at the same time.”

Sponsors are already part of that conversation; contract work may return; art content may accidentally invade the Instagram grid.

It suits him. If Western States was proof of ability, the art is proof of identity.

“Running is fun to me,” he says. “Why shouldn’t I have fun while I race?”

What comes next

Asked if he plans years ahead, Myers shakes off the idea.

“I don’t really plan past one big year at a time,” he says. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

If he’d mapped 2026 based on how he expected 2025 to go, he admits, he’d probably be back at Western States. Instead, he feels like he’s “filled my cup” with States for now.

“I got top 10, I got podium. That’s more than a lot of people ever see. I feel very satisfied with my performance at States. Maybe I’ll come back and the goal would be to break 14.”

UTMB, on the other hand, feels wide open and full of possibility — the way Western States once did. It feels unconquered. It feels like a blank page. It feels, fittingly, like travel.

“It’s mostly exciting because I don’t know what to be scared of yet,” he says.

In a sport where athletes often reach the top by becoming more serious, more controlling, more monastic, Myers may be proving a quieter point: sometimes curiosity gets you there too.

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