Glitter, Mountains, and the Leadville 100 Mile: A Conversation with Michael Mitchell

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Michael Mitchell is quick to acknowledge that without the Leadville 100 Mile, which he is lining up for this weekend for the third time, he wouldn’t be where he is today.

Mitchell, who is perhaps better known as Mikey Mitch on his popular TikTok channel, is impossible to classify with simple labels. He’s a self-described mountain athlete. He’s a social media influencer. He’s an openly gay man not afraid to be himself. Mitchell, who majored in journalism in college, is also a storyteller, and the combination of all of the above has proven a potent combination:

“I think that what’s been really cool through the way that I’m able to storytell my own passions and my own story is that I don’t really get a lot of hate, which is really cool to see, especially because I’m so outwardly gay, and I also love to show that I’m gay because I love being gay.” He goes on to say, “But I am able to say it and tell it in a very show it in a very humanizing way.”

Mitchell has amassed a significant following on various social media platforms: 174k followers on TikTok and 114k on Instagram. His content ranges from completing the Pyramid Traverse, a technical, exposed, and rarely completed scramble across three Colorado peaks outside of Aspen, to partying at raves to racing competitive races around the American West, including the 2026 Broken Arrow Skyrace Triple Crown, where he placed second.

The videos are eclectic — some provide a geology lesson, while others involve shotgunning beers and impressive strings of profanities, and others still talk about his nutrition for race day — but they all share a through-line of being high-energy and, at about three minutes long, are incredibly watchable.

Although Mitchell, who just recently moved to Buena Vista, Colorado, from nearby Denver, says that he thinks he’s exactly the same person in his videos as he is in person, though he might be showing his “more extreme side” while the camera is rolling, it’s worth noting that while meeting for this profile, there was not one profanity uttered and it becomes immediately clear that Mitchell is someone who thinks deeply about life and the world around him.

Confidence

It takes a lot of confidence to do what Mitchell does — both in the mountains and on camera. There’s a self-confidence required both to scramble exposed ridges where a fall would be fatal and to point a camera at yourself and hit record.

For Mitchell, at least some of that confidence seems to have come from his middle and high school years while growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the time period when he discovered running. On a fundamental level, he says, “I do think that the traditional Midwestern family values and Minnesota-nice definitely pervade in how I live my life. I just generally am a very happy person and very emotionally regulated, and I think a lot of that has come from my upbringing.” He adds, ”I think how I engage with people has also come from that because back in Minnesota, everyone talks to each other.”

Sports were also a huge part of Mitchell’s life growing up — his father played for the New York Yankees baseball team — but until he joined the cross-country team in seventh grade, he says sports hadn’t really clicked for him. According to Mitchell, running was an immediate fit: “I ran a 17-minute 5k as a 100-pound 12-year-old and was getting on the varsity team.”

Mitchell explains, “It was during the time when I was coming out and really coming to terms with being gay. I had all of these older high school boys [on the cross-country team] that were looking out for me.” Mitchell being gay was a non-issue for his teammates, and he says, “They didn’t care. We’re a team. We want to do well, and how we do well is by treating each other as family. So I think that through running is how I really learned how to have relationships with my straight peers, which has been really affirming.”

A First Leadville Experience

Mitchell went to Lehigh University as a middle-distance runner and ended up racing the 10k by the time he graduated in 2021. Upon graduation, one of his college teammates, who was working for the Leadville Race Series, told him he could get him a spot in the Leadville 100 Mile later in the summer if he wanted it. Having read “Born to Run,” Mitchell says the race was “a bucket list kind of thing,” so, throwing caution to the wind, he signed up.

“That was my first experience and exposure to ultrarunning. I had no idea what I was doing at all. Neither did my crew,” Mitchell says, “I’d done 20-mile runs, but the longest I’d raced was a 10k.” The ensuing events seem comical in hindsight: “I led the first marathon. I was winning, thinking, This isn’t that hard. I’m just running. And then after, it got really hard.” Mitchell walked it in from his second pass through the Twin Lakes aid station at mile 62.

He reflects on the experience: “There was this one woman who saved me. She was running around and giving me all these things like gels and soup and jackets and the other things that I all needed. She didn’t even know who I was, and she was there, basically being my crew, and doing everything she could to help me continue. And I will always remember this woman because she cared so much.”

Mitchell made it to the finish, noting, “I was so sore, but I still finished.” He was immediately hooked, saying, “It was just a new and novel part of running that I’d never experienced. I was like, This is so cool and so much fun that I want to continue doing stuff like this.”

Embracing His Personal Style

Racing Leadville prompted a move to Denver, and Mitchell launched his TikTok channel to document his new life of adventure in Colorado. He also continued to sign up for ultras, including the 2022 Quad Rock 50 Mile. The day before, he went to a rave, and on the morning of the race, he covered his entire body with glitter. He says proudly, “I was basically the first person that I can remember who ever wore glitter during a race.”

He placed third and says that the video he made about the race “got millions upon millions of views, and it’s cool now to see just how many people wear glitter in these races now.”

Over the following years, Mitchell continued to grow his online following. He says, “It’s been really rewarding to see how many people respond to this and how many people are inspired then to get involved in whatever I am talking about, whether it’s going outside or going mountaineering or joining the ultra world or doing a marathon. I’ve gotten so many messages that I’ve inspired people to run, basically. I never really had that intention when I first started posting on social media, but now I really understand the impact I’m having.”

While on the surface, many of Mitchell’s videos may seem simply like a younger runner playing in the mountains with a camera, they also serve a deeper purpose that hints at his education in journalism. “As journalists, we’ve learned to understand that we are subjective … and we all have our own truths and what we believe to be right and wrong. And just because somebody else has a different opinion from you or lives a different life or believes something different than you, it doesn’t mean that they’re wrong.”

Mitchell asks, “How do you make other people feel the way that you do when they have just a different lens over their life?”

Based on his following, Mitchell is on to something and goes on to explain the benefits of social media for the LGBTQ+ community: “A lot of people are sharing their experiences, and they’re also able to see people like me, for example, who are living out and proud and just their own lives. And there are just so many more examples of openness. So I think that Gen Z in particular has changed a lot of preconceived biases by other generations.”

Mountaineering, Risk, and Focus

When it came to running, it wasn’t just the racing that fascinated Mitchell, but climbing peaks as well. When he first moved to Colorado, he’d had some experience in the mountains — he was a Nordic and downhill ski racer growing up and had climbed both Mount Shasta and Mount Kilimanjaro — and quickly became interested in Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks, the 14ers.

In the early years, he says, “I was doing a lot of their easier 14ers, but that was how I was doing training stuff as well. I was running them. It wasn’t until really last year that I started getting to the really intense stuff, and it’s really cool to see how far I’ve come from that.”

According to Mitchell, some of the skills he’s honed in the more technical mountains have helped his mental game in ultrarunning. “I’m really good at just making a choice. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the right one, but when I’m up there, instead of sitting there and contemplating things, I need to take action. And I think that I’m very good at compartmentalizing and being emotionally regulated in these high-pressure situations.” The ability to stay calm in the middle of a trail race, in decidedly less life-and-death situations, is a useful skill.

As Mitchell’s mountain experience grew, his life priorities changed as well. Many of Mitchell’s early videos centered on a partying lifestyle in Denver, a city he recently left for the small mountain town of Buena Vista, home to many top ultrarunners. Mitchell says there were several motivations behind the move: “I’ve done a lot of reflection, and I definitely am an adrenaline junkie and a big risk taker. I am just a high-risk behavior kind of person. But I’ve also realized that mountaineering and running in general are just very healthy things because they take the desire to do other high-risk behavior out of my life.” Mitchell explains, “I moved to the mountains, to Buena Vista, because I was partying a lot and just drinking a lot and going out. And I really do love doing that with all my friends in Denver, but it’s not very productive if I want to be a good runner.”

Returning to Leadville

While the 2026 Leadville 100 will run on an alternate course due to the Willow wildfire, Mitchell isn’t upset over it, saying, “I’m just really excited to just run and compete because I love to be competitive. It’s so much fun, too, during these races. I love to engage with the crowds. It’s just a big party for me.”

With his new focus on running, Mitchell is aiming for a good result. “I’m in really good shape right now. I think that I know the course really well.” In the weeks leading up to the race, his focus has been on 12,500-foot Hope Pass, the high point of the course that racers traverse twice on either side of the halfway mark: “I’m not going to be walking. We’re running all of it. So, I’m making sure I know it in and out.”

When it comes to race day, Mitchell says, “I’ve done all the work. I have all the support staff and the great people to do it. I’m just going to have as much fun as I can and compete as hard as I can.”

In the end, the experience is more important than the result, and Mitchell’s online following has translated to real-life recognition on the race course. “I love interacting with people, and now at these races, a lot of people know who I am, and a lot of them are so excited to see me, and that gives me so much energy and life.” He goes on to add, “These races are fun. What’s the point of running if you don’t enjoy it?”

Leaving an Impact

While there’s historically been a distinct line between running influencers and professional runners, Mitchell is starting to exist in both worlds. Just before placing second at the 2026 Broken Arrow Skyrace Triple Crown — racing the Ascent, 46k, and 23k on consecutive days — he signed a contract with Nike ACG. He says that none of his contracts are contingent on race performances, but it’s clear he’s focused on being a better runner and mountaineer.

Mitchell is philosophical about his current position, saying, “It’s cool to have the running and the influencing parts. I’ve been understanding that I truly am having an impact on people’s lives, and I do think it’s a positive impact.”

It’s clear that Mitchell has a lot of ideas about things he wants to do in the future, and it seems that whatever path he ends up pursuing, it’s going to be in his own unique style.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to be dead,” he says candidly. “There’s no guide that says this is how you should live life. That’s up for you to decide. But I think I’m really just getting into my stride of who I’m supposed to become, and I’m really excited to see what I can do over the next few years.”

Call for Comments

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Glitter, Mountains, and the Leadville 100 Mile: A Conversation with Michael Mitchell by Eszter Horanyi.