Utah State Magazine Excerpt: A Tale of Two Injuries

This is an excerpt from Utah State Magazine's Summer 2022 edition, out now, with the theme "Persistence." The full article is available on the magazine's website, utahstatemagazine.usu.edu.

We’ve all been there. In the middle of a long drive, broadsided by that feeling of dread when you read a mileage sign that proclaims you’ve still got hours behind the wheel.

But for Michael McKnight ‘16, after driving a couple hours south from Cache Valley to Moab in October 2017, a glance at Google Maps showed he had more than 180 miles to go. That’s when it struck him. He was driving 180 more miles that day, just so he could navigate his way for another 240 miles. On foot.

“I remember looking down and seeing the distance we had to drive to Moab was shorter than what I was about to run,” McKnight recalls.

Of course, Mike McKnight has a way of turning hard things into things he actually wants to do, no matter how much it punishes his body. But to get to the point of becoming one of the country’s premier ultrarunners, McKnight had to take a first step. And that inaugural step came along a lonely country road on a cold winter day in the tiny farming community of Cornish, Utah.

And for the man who has since completed nine 200-mile races and traversed the 486-mile-long Colorado Trail in just over a week, it required the help of his grandmother’s walker.

Continue reading at Utah State Magazine.