I have a confession to make. I don’t really train for ultras anymore. My first 3-5 years were composed of a 20 week training block followed by a race then a month of downtime/recovery. Rinse and repeat. It was a pretty epic grind to build up my endurance base. Once I had finished 10-15 ultras…
Spice Of Life
Despite almost breaking a foot on a dozen separate occasions during Ironstone, the race successfully reignited my desire to run sub-100 mile races again. My focus will always be on the longer ultras because that’s what I truly enjoy, however there is a place in my schedule for races that can be completed inside a…
Ironstone 100K Race Report
Ironstone 100K is a trail race across 100,000 iron stones. There are big rocks. There are small ones. Most are solid, however some are not firmly anchored in the ground with no warning as to which is which. Many, many of them are sharp and pointy (oh, so pointy!). There are invisible stones and ones…
Ironstone 100K Preview
Excluding the half marathon I ran with my wife last fall, this will be my shortest race in almost 3 years. Which is just crazy. Early on in my ultra career, I would run three hundreds per year with a shorter ultra either as a lead up or out of season. This slowly transitioned to…
Holy Crap, I Love That Song!
or sometimes the algorithm we need to break out of is ourselves. One of the reasons I picked DJing as my first retirement hobby was to dive deeper into my massive music collection (1,200+ CDs). While my music consumption is mostly associated with this collection (i.e. no streaming, radio), for the last 20 years or…
DJ Chasing 10K – 1% Completed
If you’re here for the running content, feel free to skip this post. If you’re here for the DJ content. . . LOL. Nobody’s here for that. When I retired, I decided to pick up DJing as a new hobby. Since I have pretty much zero musical talent (I played cymbals in my high school…
Finally Time To Retire An Old Friend?
Pretty much the first gear decision you make when entering the world of ultras is what pack to get. As the miles get longer, the need to carry more stuff with you increases. Fluid, food, jackets, poles, blister kits – the list just seems to get longer and longer. I went with a Nathan waist…
2026 Last Annual Heart Of The South Race Report
An epic race deserves an epic race report. Journey Run Or. . . The Last Annual Heart of the South is a 355 or 400 mile footrace on unmarked open roads. It’s completely self supported (no crew) so runners are solely responsible for getting themselves to the finish. To up the degree of difficulty, the…
2026 HOTS Preview
Deep breath . . . and exhale. The Journey Of A Lifetime This year’s Last Annual Heart Of The South is a 355 mile journey run from somewhere down south to Sand Mountain in north Georgia. There’s also a 50 mile bonus option for those runners who feel this isn’t a long enough distance already.…
Moments In Time: The Art Of A Dirt Nap
Heading into Buckeye 200 in 2023 I had a lot of ultra experience, however zero experience in sleeping during runs. I did some research and decided to go with short “dirt naps” along the route instead of prolonged sleep breaks. I’m not the fastest runner out there and so intentionally try to spend as little…