On A Heater (Chashing10K Update)

I don’t provide many updates on my quest to finish a hundred 100 mile races (100 x 100 = 10,000 = 10k). My last one was over 2 years ago when I reached #25. Well, only a short 24 months later and DD100 was #40 overall and #9 on the year.

When I started, I decided to approach this like an ultra and pace myself conservatively. A hundred 100s isn’t something that I was going to accomplish in five years. Or a dozen. This was going to be a lifetime achievement type goal. As such, there was too much risk early on of blowing myself up physically or mentally if I tried to squeeze in a couple extra races to shorten the process. I guessed (correctly in hindsight) that three hundreds per year would be a good number. I then supplemented these with three shorter ultras mostly used as training runs heading into those races.

I’ve been able to handle more than 3 since pre-COVID, however family commitments kept me from upping the number. These are full weekend activities and it would have been overly selfish to be away more than this. Well, my son is now a sophomore in college and my wife has given me the green light to up my racing a bit. My 2026 calendar looks to be about 9 races again. Physically I think I can handle at least one a month if not more. It’s the mental side that’s holding me back. I don’t really want to race more often than this. Maybe this will change in the future. Maybe not. The important thing is enjoying the journey rather than how quickly I can reach the destination.

Going Streaking

My last DNF was back in 2018 at Bighorn. Since then I’ve managed to finish 32 straight races of 100 miles or more. I’m counting three times races and a pair of backyard races in there. It’s safe to say I’m on a bit of a roll here. There’s a number of factors that have contributed to this and I’d rank them like this:

• Always In Shape
• Uninjured

It’s really the big two ones and everything else. I don’t have any way to prove this, but my guess is either or both of these result in half of all DNFs. The hundred mile distance literally breaks you down with each and every one of the 200,000 steps required to finish. It’s just not realistic to think you can start at anything less than 100% and be able to finish. Does it happen? Sure. Should you be surprised when I happens? Yes, yes you should.

Starting out, my annual mileage was 1,700-2,000 miles through 2017. I stepped this up to 2,100 in 2018 and have been mostly around 2,500 or more since then. I’m always running. Taper and recovery weeks may be under 20 miles, but everything else is typically 30 or more. I don’t have an offseason, which means I’m always in shape whenever I start a race. This doesn’t mean you need to be running these volumes year round like me to be successful, but you can’t roll into a race on limited volume.

And you definitely can’t start with any sort of injury. The continuous stresses placed on your body throughout a hundred will attack this and whatever part of your body is attempting to compensate for this. I had some minor muscle imbalances for the first couple years (both knees, back, hamstrings), however nothing that kept me from running. Couple down weeks here and there was all. Since 2018 though these have been very few and far between. Being injury free has really underpinned my always being in shape so this is probably slightly more important of the Big Two.

Additional Factors

Only picking exciting to me races. I’m only toeing the line at races I want to do and am all in on. I would call them A races, but when you do as many as I do they can’t all be A races. I do try to treat them as such to the extent possible. And I’m not signing up for races I’m not fully invested in. Case in point. I was originally signed up for The Wild Oaks Trail 100 earlier this year. It’s a gnarly looped, self-supported course in February. As the race approached though, I wasn’t quite feeling it because of the temperatures. It just didn’t sound like fun. Or you know, 100 mile fun. So rather than start a race I wasn’t sure I cared to finish, I withdrew from the start list. These races take a lot of effort and you need to give yourself the best chance possible by caring about every single start.

Student of my game. While I may not always be improving, I’m always striving to improve. I give quite a bit of thought to my races: what went well, what didn’t go great, how my mind dealt with different situations, and what I could do differently in the future. Endurance is difficult to train for on a day-to-day basis and there are many situations that you will only encounter 80 miles or 30 hours into a run. What I’ve come to learn is that there are nuances to running hundreds and then there are nuances to the nuances. Every time I peal a layer off the hundred mile onion, there’s another layer there to peal. I’ve found that the more I know, the more enjoyable the races are.

Momentum. I believe Sir Isaac Newton was an ultrarunner. Even though team sports normally come to mind when we think of momentum, this is definitely a thing in ultras, too. When you’re on a roll, it tends to persist. Success in ultras is largely based on belief and nothing bolsters belief like recent success. This most assuredly guarantees nothing, but it reduces stress and keeps you in a problem solving state of mind instead of being defeated by the first (or 7th) challenge that comes along.

Overall, I feel like I’ve really hit my stride. I wonder how long I can keep this up. . .