We’ll make the same mistakes
How do I stop myself from doing the same things and expecting different results?
Hundred-mile foot races are a strange beast. In the entire world, there are probably fewer than a thousand people who can run this distance competitively. Only a fraction of these make any kind of career out of their sport. In 2023, UltraRunning Magazine estimated there were 11,234 hundred-mile finishes in North American races — about 76% men and 24% women. There are likely not 11,000 individual humans finishing hundred-milers each year — some nutty people log a half-dozen races or more every year. Beat was one of these nutty humans before he discovered even longer-distance events. My point: The people who finish a 100-mile race in any given year likely number in the low five digits worldwide. Compare this to the estimated 1.1 million marathon finishers in 2023.
It’s not an inaccessible sport; participation just requires a unique set of circumstances: Talent, desire, and access to resources such as free time and money are the keys to success. For the rest of us — the unwashed masses who lack talent but have been cursed with enough desire to throw vast amounts of good free time and money into bad pain — the barriers are still remarkably high. Wishful thinking and general fitness are not enough to overcome these barriers. If you show up at the start of a hundred-miler with a smattering of 20-mile weeks on your legs and an attitude that “I’m awesome and I’ll never quit and I can do anything” … you’re going to time out. Ask me how I know.
I’m a terrible runner. Really. I think it’s fair to call myself a runner — rather than a “jogger” — while inserting a critical qualifier before it. Perhaps terrible is too harsh an adjective. Maybe “substandard” or “deficient” is better.
My “track” record is thin and riddled with blunt force injuries. I did not run as a youth unless you count failing the Presidental Fitness Test because I couldn’t hammer out an 11:30-minute-mile as a 7th grader, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. I have an odd gait that my physical therapist is still trying to pin down. I have poor proprioception and trip a lot. At age 19, I tore up my left ankle when I tripped and fell down a dozen concrete stairs while carrying a massive 24” tube TV, but instead of going to the hospital, I rented a pair of crutches at Rite Aid, so now I possess a visibly misshapen and hopelessly weak left ankle. I have rigid big toes, meaning I can’t bend the joint at all, which I didn’t even know was an abnormal defect until Beat pointed it out late last year.
And yet, I love running. Not the type of running that asks “How can I train to run a 20-minute 5K"?” because honestly, I probably never could, and I haven’t yet found a way to be interested in the more quantifiable yet seemingly arbitrary achievements that dominate the sport. I desire the type of running that enables me to propel my body efficiently and (relatively) swiftly for long distances across this beautiful world. My problem is that I’ve always tried to skip all of the steps that come before efficient and swift running and go straight to loping effortlessly across the big land.
Through this method, I’ve had my share of failures and a few successes. I’ve decided to walk away from the sport more than once, and yet I keep finding my way back. The last time that I was part of the annual list of 100-mile runners was in 2019. I completed the exact set of races I’m preparing for this year: The White Mountains 100 and the Bryce 100. I finished them both, but in hindsight, they were miserable failures.
The White Mountains 100 was my “A” race and I was convinced I could hammer out a sub-30-hour hundo — a snow-packed, often subzero, and large self-supported hundo. Still, a lot about winter running in Alaska can play to my strengths. My A goal was 27 hours. I did manage to complete the first 50 miles to the high point on the course in under 13 hours. But then 8 inches of snow fell on the trail during the second half, which is a completely reasonable thing to have happen during a winter ultra, and I lost my shit. It just wasn’t fair that the trail conditions slowed me down so much! I indulged in an embarrassing and unproductive 10-hour temper tantrum while slogging out a 31-hour finish.
About 10 miles into the Bryce 100, I slipped in the mud and tore an adductor muscle in my right leg. Again, I slogged out a finish in anger and pain, and regret the moments that are now lodged in my brain as core memories.
I suppose a large reason that I want to go back to these races this year is to rectify the negative outcomes (in addition to lingering bad memories, it took more than six weeks to recover from my Bryce Canyon injury.) But there’s a louder voice that asks, “But what do you really want from these races?”
As a substandard runner who loves to move through this big beautiful world, I think 100 miles is the most compelling distance for a race. Shorter distances tip the scales in favor of athleticism, while longer distances — similar to the multiday bikepacking races in which I thrive — favor the mental game of strategy, self-care, time management, decision-making, etc. One hundred miles seems to be where athleticism and mental game meet in the middle. The result is a rewarding combination of intellectual, spiritual, and temporal growth.
Since I already thrive in the longer long games, and since I now have nearly two decades of mental muscle memory to back me up, I was determined to sharpen my athletic abilities. When I signed up for the Bryce 100 in October, I resolved to focus and work hard on my weaknesses — balance, full-body strength, and speed. The problem starts because these aren’t just my weaknesses. They’re essentially a core tenet of who I am — born to be a quiet soul, an observer, a shy, pale bookworm at the corner window watching the world as it passes by. If I want to sculpt myself into an outwardly strong go-getter, I need to change everything. I need different perspectives, different beliefs, different friends, different hobbies.
And of course, I’m not going to change all of that. Instead, I committed to “once a week speedwork, twice a week weightlifting, higher protein lower sugar diet, and after that, just run and run as much as I can, because I love running.”
Now three months have passed, and what have I accomplished? I have tried one treadmill interval session. I lift weights whenever I can squeeze in a trip to the gym; my average over three months has probably been closer to once a week after multiple trips out of town. I signed up for a weekly feet and ankles strength class, also known as “Larry’s Balance Class” … but will only be able to attend the last four weeks. The diet was of course steamrolled by the holidays. I’m somewhat back on track with my meal-replacement protein shakes and fruit and yogurt instead of dessert, but … yeah. I can’t say I’ve made big lifestyle changes.
My running is … not progressing. In November I ran a last-minute 50-miler to qualify for the Bryce 100. It was a tough course on sandy desert singletrack littered with rocks, and temperatures were much colder than I prepared for. I finished the race in 12:13 and thought “that’s a great baseline.” But then came the holidays and higher prioritizing of adventure weekends over long runs. Rather than regular weekday runs in the cold and wind, I often rode my indoor bike instead. I spent the month of December focusing my training on slowly dragging a sled through the snow so my chronically injured back would be prepared for our trips at the end of the month. Returning home from Alaska on Jan. 1, I caught a cold virus that got into my chest. The congestion affected my breathing for weeks. I’ve only started to feel strong while running again, but when I look at my treadmill times I feel dispirited. I was probably in better shape in October.
So what do I want from these races? I want to run like I ran in 2015. I want to run better than I ran in 2015, back when I was still a naïveté in this sport, back before I had chronic illnesses, back when I was nearly ten years younger.
Now I have only two months until the White Mountains 100 and I’m still not willing to make big changes. New Year New Me? No thanks. I’m happy where I am!
Or am I? And if I’m happy, why can’t I accept that perhaps a “strong” hundred-miler is out of my reach?
And so what if it is? Fewer than 10,000 of 530 million North Americans complete a hundred-miler each year, which shows a strong hundred-miler is out of reach for most. This, of course, is due to a lack of desire more than a deficiency in anything else. I’m not under the delusion that the arbitrary achievement of finishing a hundred-miler makes me special. No, it just makes me weird. Why would any normal person want to do this?
Why indeed.
Either way, I’m not backing out now. I’m going to continue to scheme ways to maximize my potential while making as little of the necessary change as possible.
Isn’t this the American way?
Well, I guess you are a terrible runner. But only by comparison. Otherwise you're a wonderful runner. Because if it gives you joy, what could be better than that?
I kinda like being weird. I should give up on 100's, being even older than you afe (by a good margine), prone to falling (ditto), and now having had a few knee surgeries (plus that chronic back thing, spondylolisthesis). You nailed it, 100 provides with a solid combination of a general fitness (not a pure running fitness that majority of population define as one) and a mental strategy and strength. I usually say, I love to overcome. Here's to our year of trying to do the same thing, and expecting a different result:)