2025 Eastern States 100 Preview

It’s kinda crazy to think that this is the tenth ES100 that I’ve signed up for. Unfortunately, I don’t have 9 buckles to show for this. I have 6 buckles and three partial refunds. One year the race was cancelled due to an issue with their communications team (ham radio operator backed out). Then there was COVID. And last year an insane amount of flooding cancelled the race literally minutes before the start. I’ve now had five races cancelled on me over the years, however ES100 seems to have the worst luck. Fingers crossed I get to run the race this year.

Fitness / Health

So I went and reverse jinxed myself. I specifically didn’t write about a knee issue only to jack up my foot 10 days out from the race. I have no idea what happened. I went to TopGolf with my son (it’s awesome, you should go) and then my right foot got sore during my afternoon walk. I had trouble sleeping that night because of it and then could almost barely walk the following day. Oddly that it bothered me more walking than running. It felt quite a bit better on day 2 (maybe back to 90%) and then slowly improved each day afterwards. At this point, it’s more tender than sore, however only periodically at that. Basically, it’s not something I think will bother me by the time Saturday rolls around.

I’ve put in my biggest running volume yet heading into this year’s race. My year to date July mileage is 20% more than any other year. The chart above tells a similar story with the exception being elevation. I haven’t been hitting the hills as much as the past couple years. I decided in this year’s run up to the race to focus on total volume more than elevation gain/loss. This may not be the smartest training decision I’ve ever made, however I have my fingers crossed that it won’t hurt my chances of achieving my race goals. Speaking of which. . .

28 Hour Pace Group

Last year I had a plan to run an even split 28 hour race. In hindsight, I probably didn’t have the fitness to execute it, however think I could have knocked some time off my PR there and dipped under 30 hours. Well, I’m feeling more confident after my last race so I’m dusting off the plan for this year’s race. The math on a 28 hour finish for 103.1 miles is a 16:18 minute/mile average pace.

When I started out running ultras, I would set my pacing targets as times to reach aid stations. So 9:30am into Lower Pine or 4pm into Hyner. This is because I would give these times to my wife who crews for me. The problem from a pacing standpoint is you only know if you’re on pace once you get into an aid station. The rest of the time on the course is a bit of a guess. I’ve switched over to average paces over the past couple years which lets me be more precise with my pacing. Now I know wherever I am on the course whether I’m ahead or behind my pacing and by how much.

There’s always going to be a little bit of wiggle room with the numbers depending on whether I’m at the top or bottom of a big climb. I’ll probably drift below my targets as I’m running downhill and may get above them topping out on a climb. These are more guidelines than hard or fast rules. My hard and fast rule will be not to get more than 5 minutes ahead of my target pace. Early on though the risk is that I’ll be going out too fast. While I’ve learned a lot about pacing over the years, I’m still not great at pacing by feel. What feels easy enough starting out in a hundred really isn’t. And the problem is that you never realize this until it’s far too late.

My thought process with this pacing plan is that I’d rather get into the halfway point at Dry Run 5 minutes behind plan and feeling amazing than to roll in 10 minutes early feeling a little worked over. The whole point of this pacing strategy is to make it to the second half feeling strong. The second half is the easier of the two with about 1,000 feet less elevation gain and more runnable stuff. Well, theoretically runnable stuff. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to run the runnable sections in prior years. I believe this pacing strategy gives me the best chance of executing my dream race.

Or at least that’s the plan for 2025. There’s always next year if I need a better one.