Are You Too Comfortable With Comfort?
It was a warm June morning when I laced up my running shoes. One of my good friends signed up for a 50-mile back-country race and asked me to pace for him the last 26 miles.
The race course changes every year and the race organizers were not careful with measuring the distances to each aid station so my 26 mile leg turned into 31 miles.
31 miles!
It was a hard run through mostly back country on rocky trails. Honestly, I don’t understand the appeal at all to run that far, but that friend had been there for me during a pretty difficult time in my life so I was returning the favor.
We joked before the event that ultramarathons are really eating contests with some running in between. The way ultramarathons work is that you have to reach certain aid stations by a specified time or you’re not allowed to continue the race. We were okay on time until we hit the bottom of Bosun’s Hill which was a grueling climb almost 1,000 vertical feet essentially straight up the mountainside. If we were moving a quarter mile per hour I would be surprised.
Following the intense training of that summer and the event itself, I didn’t slow down much. I set a personal running milestone in 2023, ending the year with more than 1,400 miles under my soles.
