It’s not something I targeted, but I’ll end up with a new annual mileage record this year. I can thank my shiny new annual mileage record to all the long ultras I raced this year. Normally I’ll mix in some 50Ks throughout the year, however 2023 was the first year where my shortest race was…
Off Season!
Somehow I managed to schedule myself 3+ months in-between races. Do you know what that means? It’s the off season! Of course, my definition of off season is likely different than most. It’s not like I stop running and switch over to another sport/activity. I really don’t cut back my volume much either. Pretty much…
My 100 Miler Ranks: 2023 Edition
Welcome to the 7th annual update of my 100 miler ranks. No race is exactly the same and since everyone looks for something different when choosing races, I thought I would give you my ranks in various categories. Only 1 race gets added to the lists this year (NJ Devil). I’m excluding NJ One Day,…
2023 Devil Dog 100M Race Report
Under New Management (Pre-Race) Devil Dog had new RDs this year. I ran this race a couple years ago and was happy to see that it was just as well run. There were a couple of changes this year though. The first is that they added a 50K option (more like 33 miles according to…
Devil Dog 100M Preview
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…
Tussey mOUTaiNBACK 50 Mile Race Report
By popular demand – less words, more pictures! This was my first year running Tussey, which had been on my bucket list for quite some time. I read up about the race as much as possible, however still had a couple gear decisions that I was unsure about. The first was whether or not to…