Navajo Mountain Runner Turns Hardship Into 100-Mile Zion Ultras Test

A divorce in 2018 sent Dominic King back to the simplest motion he could trust: walking. From Navajo Mountain, where rugged canyon country shapes daily life as much as any race course, that first step became the start of a serious endurance habit and, eventually, preparation for the Zion Ultras 100-mile race on April 11.

King’s path matters because it was built mile by mile, not by shortcut. He began walking to steady himself after the divorce, then gradually moved into running. That shift changed the shape of his days and gave him a new routine to hold onto while raising three children with his ex-wife. What began as a way to get through a difficult chapter turned into disciplined training and a new identity grounded in distance running.

Navajo Mountain gives that transformation a specific setting. The community sits in one of the most remote parts of the Navajo Nation, surrounded by steep country and hundreds of canyons. Trail Runner Magazine has described Navajo Mountain as a training ground for Diné ultrarunners, and that terrain helps explain why endurance running can take root there. The land demands patience, climbs, and the kind of mental toughness that a 100-mile race asks for from the first step to the last.

That is the context King brought to Zion Ultras, which offered five distances in 2026: 100 Mile, 100K, 60K, 30K and Half Marathon. The 100-mile route runs through the southern Utah desert adjacent to Zion National Park, with four steep climbs onto mesas and long views of sandstone cliffs. For runners who train in Navajo Mountain country, that kind of course is not just scenic. It is a test that rewards the same habits the landscape teaches every day.

King’s story also fits a larger Navajo running tradition. Diné runners have long connected running with early-morning practice and spiritual purpose, and the first sanctioned ultramarathon in Navajo Nation, the Canyon de Chelly Ultra, launched in 2012. That history gives King’s effort more weight than a single race entry. His preparation shows how running across Navajo land can become a way to rebuild, to focus family life, and to carry hardship into something far more demanding than survival: 100 miles on the trail.