2026 Angela Ivory Memorial 100 Mile Race Report

What an amazingly awesome (awesomely amazing?) little race this is at Killens Pond State Park in Felton, DE. It’s a throwback to the bygone days when ultrarunning was just a bunch of friends dressed in tube socks and cotton shirts who wanted to spend all day roaming the countryside with fruit stuffed in their pockets drinking water out of syrup bottles. Or at least that’s how I imagine it was back then. I’ve been around this sport for a while, but not quite that long. This is organized as a fatass style event so you only get a marked course, some jugs of water, and a buckle for finishing 100 miles. That may not sound like much, but it also comes with a low-key community vibe that’s tough to beat. The 3.1ish mile loop format means you are interacting with all the other runners no matter their pace or the distance (50K, 100M, 24HR) they are running.

In The Beginning

There is a stick. And next to the stick is Jon, the RD, who provided a few brief comments to the 50 odd (yes, we all are/were) runners before getting started. Well, they weren’t brief enough to keep us from starting a couple minutes late, but I doubt anyone cared. Apparently, the last runner left on the course gets to take that stick home with them.

Everyone started off so slow that I ended up in front as we left the parking lot, which is not a place I’m used to occupying. No one passed me on the first trail section. Nor the short stint on a park road. Or anywhere else on the first lap. I was blazing away at about an 11 minute pace, which was quicker than I wanted to be running so dialed it back on lap 2 and let the lead pack go on ahead.

The trails were mostly snow and ice covered. I decided against micro spikes as they shredded my feet the only time I used them, however quite a few other runners wore them. I ended up falling during the second lap on a sheet of ice inconveniently located at a sharp turn. Thankfully this was the only time I hit the ground during the race.

So my goal going into the race was to run sub-24 hours, which I did fairly handily the prior year. Unfortunately, the trail conditions were quite a bit slower than last year. I am probably also a little undertrained compared to my normal fitness level (stupid brutally cold temperatures!). Thankfully I’ve come up short of goal times so frequently over the years that it doesn’t bother me any more. At mile 25, my legs felt like I already had 50 miles in them from all the extra effort it took to slip and slide my way around the course. My paces gradually slowed over laps 2-8 and and then on lap 9 I downshifted to about a 15 minute pace. The shock of all shocks is that I was able to maintain this pace to the end.

Like. . . How?

I credit this performance to a couple key factors:

• Steady nutrition
• Intimate course knowledge
• Virtually no idle time

I absolutely crushed my nutrition plan during this race. This was probably 80% of my how. My strategy was 50 calories every mile and I was able to execute that to perfection with a little extra added in during the first 12 hours or so. This is always my goal, but there are a lot of races where this becomes challenging if not impossible during the overnight hours. You get a little unfocused and miss a mile. Or two. Or nothing seems appetizing and you have half the calories you had planned. Next thing you know you’re way behind on your nutrition and you don’t care about eating as you’re moving along “good enough”. Been there, done that, king of that. The trick is to never miss your treats. Once you get off track during the night, it’s impossible to recover before daylight when your circadian rhythms are back on an upswing. The good news is that you can definitely recover. The bad news is a purgatory of shuffling during what I call The Long Dark Nightcap of The Soul.

The great thing about short looped courses is that you are able to learn them inside and out. You’ll know where the icy patches are or that ninja root that always seems to catch your toe. You will figure out the most efficient lines to run, which sections to run and where to walk a bit. This last bit is key as the farther you go in an ultra, the more your definition of runnable changes. Normally it’s difficult to decide whether to run or walk a section and you’ll just default to walking it. On this course, you know which sections you’ve run in the past and which you’ve walked so there’s no mental effort involved. You run when you make this turn, then walk the slight uphill 200 yards later, then back to a run at that tree.

You’re basically on autopilot and can run/walk the course blindfolded. I decided to inadvertently test this theory on lap 25 or 26. About a half mile out onto the course, my headlamp went from bright to almost out. I fiddled with it for a minute and decided almost out was better then completely out so left it alone. There was some ambient light so between that and my dim headlamp I could see shapes and shadows. The smart thing to do would have been to turn around and grab my backup headlamp, but I decided to press on as I thought I knew this course pretty well. I ended up making it back to the start/finish without tripping and my pace was only about 30 seconds/ mile slower than I had been moving. Intimate knowledge for the win!

The biggest downside of short looped courses is the temptation to spend time at your car every 3 miles. This can quickly add up to hours lost if you’re not focused and efficient with your transitions. The goal should be to spend as little time as possible until you need to spend as much time as you need later on. I did an amazing job this year with only 26 minutes idle time total or less than a minute a lap. The mild temperatures definitely helped as freezing temps always makes everything take longer.

Overall, I had a wonderful time and can’t wait to come back next year for another 32 laps. I just love everything about this race. Well, not all the snow. Maybe next year the trails will be clear for a change.