What makes a race hard? Most people will immediately think of elevation gain/loss. Technical trails, high altitude or extreme weather are also things that make a race difficult. Basically, anything that slows you down are good criteria for determining what’s a hard race. I know this is how I’ve been conditioned to think: More vert…
2024 Schedule
It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally settled on my 2024 schedule. For the longest time, I had been planning on doing what I was calling the Pennsylvania 500 which consisted of the five PA hundred mile races. I thought it would be cool to do them all in the same year. Two of…
The Nuances of Running A Hundred Miles
A lot of people probably question my obsession with hundred milers. Goodness knows my wife does. So why do I keep signing up for race after race? It’s because the sheer quantity of nuances involved keep the distance fresh and challenging for me after all these years. Or it’s possible that I’m just a very,…
The Big Three Challenges of Running a Hundred Miles
In my opinion, there’s three big challenges in running a hundred miles. I’m going to ignore fitness when talking about challenges though. There’s a base level of endurance competence that you need to bring to the table. If all you’ve ever done are 5Ks or day hikes, you’ve no chance of moving your body 100…
Chasing 10K Update: Halfway to Halfway
For the uninitiated, this blog is documentation of my ultimate ultra career goal of finishing a hundred 100 mile races. 100 x 100 = 10k. Rather amazingly enough this was something I came up before I had even toed the line at my first hundred miler. As I was getting into ultras, hundred milers had…