Teva Tribal Photo Gallery

Every year millions of people travel from all across the globe to visit the Grand Canyon's breathtaking north and south rim. Only a few thousand each year have the rare opportunity to look up at that canyon rim on a coveted trip down the Colorado River. So in the summer of 2006 when I received a call from Teva Footwear asking if I'd be their running ambassador on a 15-day trip down the Grand Canyon, I jumped at the chance. Three days later I was in Flagstaff, Arizona. Once there I found that not only would Teva be using this trip to shoot a national ad campaign, but as we rafted down the Colorado an IMAX movie would be filmed on water conservation as well.

The trip started off with a bang as I was the first Teva athlete there to be photographed. With world-renowned National Geographic photographer Chris Rainer and members from our ad agency I headed down the South Kaibab Trail as the sun was setting. It was then as I sprinted up and down the trail again and again for the photographers, I knew for sure that this was only the beginning of a real working trip. I also knew at that moment that I couldn't wait to spend the next two weeks in one of the most remote locations on earth doing what I loved most, running.

Over the course of those next two weeks I found that while running for the photographers and documentary filmmakers was an amazing experience, it would not be the highlight of the trip as I had expected. The real mark that the canyon would leave on me would lie in the people and places that I was surrounded by day in and day out. Spending an afternoon running up a dry creek bed with Teva athlete and pro-kayaker Anthony Yapp, sitting in an enormous sand stone cavern as it poured rain talking with two river guides about what it feels like to run for seven hours straight, and waking at 4:30 in the morning so I could go run and be in my own thoughts before the day began, those are the moments that I cherish most from the trip. So as my time on the river came to end I departed the only true way I saw fit, running up the Bright Angel trail out of the canyon and into whatever adventure lay next.