Taking on a 100-mile race isn’t something to take lightly or do on a whim. Well, to be honest, the decision sometimes is a whim. But, it takes a bit of preparation. Unlike a 5k or 10k, you can’t follow a ‘quick’ couch to 100-mile plan. Generally, people start by running 5 and 10k’s, half marathons then marathons. It’s the rare person who jumps right into training for anything longer than a marathon.
I won’t start at the beginning of my running life but I’ll start a few years back when I re-ignited my love of trail running. I had run many road marathons, a few trail 50k races, and one 50-mile race then took a long break from regular running. I got the bug to do some trail runs and trained for a couple of months before running a 10k trail race in Virginia. It was a blast and I decided I needed trail running back in my life.
Over the next couple of years, I trained more regularly, 3-4 days a week, and increased my long run distances to the 10-20 mile range. I ran the JFK 50, a 50-miler, in 2020 and the Mississippi trail 50-miler in 2023 as a qualifier for the Old Dominion 100 in June 2023.
All that to say, I’ve built a strong base of knowledge and mileage over many years of running. It’s certainly possible to go from 10k to 100 miles in a shorter time but it takes more focused training than I’ve done. This year I’m taking a different approach and am striving to achieve a specific goal: running 100 miles in 24 hours. Let’s see how I get there.