Third Time’s a Charm This is my third consecutive April 100 miler where I’ve been gunning for a sub-24 hour finish. My first attempt resulted in a DNF and I walked in the last 30 miles of my second try. Both times I was pretty confident that I had it in the bag so I’m obviously…
100 Miler Wish List
You may find this surprising, but according to Run100s.com (my go-to reference for all things 100 miles) there are about 150 races in North America that are 100 miles in length. This is up about 50% from when I first started researching the distance 4 years ago. Heck, three of the races that I’ve done…
Something Always Goes Wrong
I’ve learned a couple things over the past 18 months of running 100 mile races, but nothing more important that the title of this post. Maybe it’s the small sample size (5 races). Or maybe it’s my inexperience (same 5 races). Or maybe it’s just that with 100 miles and upwards of 35 hours of “running”, there’s more opportunity…
Moments in Time: 2016 C&O Canal 100
It’s 2am and I’m sitting in a chair at the Nolan’s Ferry aid station. Normally, this is not a good sign during the later stages of an ultra. Chairs have magical attractive properties (especially during 100 mile races) such that once your bottom touches them, it’s extremely difficult to extricate yourself from them. Luckily for…
2016 Cloudsplitter 100 Race Report
Note: This race report is from the last year of the original course and is completely different than what has been run since 2017. I need to start with how absolutely gorgeous the course was. I picked this race because they had some pretty pictures on their website and if anything, they undersold how beautiful…
Cloudsplitter 100 Preview
The family and I are off to Kentucky Friday for the 3rd running of the Cloudsplitter 100. As a relatively new race, there’s not a lot of information available outside of the race website. Frankly, it was the picture on the main page that drew me to the race initially. Who wouldn’t want to run…
Ready or Not
I’m 13 days out from the Cloudsplitter 100 and finished my last long run earlier today. OK, it was my only long run. And it was only 10 miles. I had planned on doing a 2 hour hike immediately afterwards, but ended up substituting a 2.5 mile dog walk instead due to time constraints. The…
Signs
Do you believe in signs? Whether it’s God or life in general giving direction by providing an insight into the correct choice? When you’re presented with 2 equal options, how do you pick between them? Most times the correct choice is easy. It screams out to you what you should do. But what about those times…
Eastern States 100: Odds and Ends
You would think I a 3100 word race report would be enough to cover all the details of a race. Normally, it would however there were many things that I ended up leaving out. In no particular order: Race organization. I can’t say enough about how well run this race was. The aid stations were…
Eastern States 100 Mile Race Report
Hard. So hard. I don’t have the eloquence to properly describe the difficulty of this race. Yes, there was a lot of vertical gain/loss over the 102.9 miles. Yes, it was hot (90s) and humid. And yes, the trails were highly technical even for Rocksylvania. The latter is what really took me by surprise. I…