Rod Farvard’s mustache might be my favorite in all of running. It’s neither thick nor groomed, neither oiled nor manicured. It’s messy. It’s patchy. It curls at the ends. I think I caught him snacking on his own facial hair the day his whole body began snacking on itself at the highest point in Thailand, as he attempted to run the Doi Inthanon Thailand by UTMB 100-miler in December, 2022.
I didn’t know it at the time but his kidneys were failing and his father had nearly died from cardiac arrest on the plane a few days prior. I’d probably gnaw on my mustache, too.
Rod Farvard, 27, from Mammoth Lakes, California, is an up-and-coming elite ultrarunner and former triathlete. In 2022, he was selected as one of 17 athletes for the North Face’s Athlete Development Program (ADP), the latest emerging model of innovative athlete support and sponsorship, ways that companies and organizations are beginning to think differently about how to support athletes and changemakers within the endurance community.
The North Face announced ADP in March 2022 as a way to “to equip aspiring athletes with the tools and…
