Excluding the half marathon I ran with my wife last fall, this will be my shortest race in almost 3 years. Which is just crazy. Early on in my ultra career, I would run three hundreds per year with a shorter ultra either as a lead up or out of season. This slowly transitioned to just hundred milers which is obviously my obsession passion, however I hadn’t realized how little I’ve raced sub-hundred distances recently. Part of it is that I’ve done most of the local shorter ultras and don’t have a burning desire to go run them again. Most of it though is that’s just not my focus. There are still a huge number of longer races on my bucket list so those will always take priority.
I signed up for Ironstone early this year when I stumbled upon the idea of The ESTEA Gauntlet, which was doing all the ESTEA sponsored races in a year (Eagleton, Ironstone, ES100, The Void). Well, Eagleton 86 got cancelled so that idea never got off the ground. I’m still excited to do Ironstone though for a couple different reasons. First, is that it’s a new to me race. While I volunteered there a couple years ago, I haven’t run the race.
The second reason I’m excited is to experience the 100K distance again. This has historically been my least favorite ultra distance. I remember it being a very hard effort, yet you don’t get quite the same sense of satisfaction as a hundred. Like if I’m working that hard (and it’s almost hundred miles hard!), I’d like to be able to check the same emotional accomplishment box. I understand this is my issue. I also acknowledge it’s not a fully rational opinion.
And the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to believe it’s just straight up wrong. Here is my Mt. Rushmore of ultras that I’ve completed:
- Eastern States 100M
- Old Dominion 100M
- Delmarva Ultra Challenge 100K
- Laurel Highlands 70M
You’ll notice that half of those races are 100Ks (or 100Kish). So I have this deep seated belief that I don’t like 100Ks, which is completely contradicted by the list of my favorite races. People talk about crazy ultrarunners, yet they don’t even know the half of it.
The third thing that excites me about Ironstone is its unique format. It’s not just a point-to-point 100K (yawn). It’s one that starts at 2pm with 15 of the first 20 miles on a pancake flat (technically slight downhill) rail trails. Then you experience 8k feet of elevation gain over the final 40 miles on some the most technically advanced trails Rocksylvania has to offer. Now toss in that some aid stations are 8-9 miles apart and that pacers are disallowed thereby upping the degree of difficulty even more.
Sounds like my kinda race.