When did running a hundred miles become a normal every task? Add a hundred mile bike ride and fifty mile run to that and the task becomes immense. Those aren’t normal every day tasks, even running a marathon isn’t a normal everyday task! However, normalizing it is easy to do when you surround yourself with ultraendurance athletes every day and also work with, and associate with, the best coaches in the business. I do this for a living, so it’s easy to see how it becomes normal in our minds.

It’s in the execution and action where the good stuff lies. While I don’t know what the outcome will eventually be I plan to keep digging in and staying the course.

My chest was aching. My breath labored. My heart racing. I struggled to gather myself as I made way up the steep staircase of a trail that is Mt. Sanitas in Boulder, Colorado. The trail gains about twelve-hundred feet in one and a quarter miles for a 17% percent grade, it’s very steep and really hard. And honestly I feel this way most of the time I get to climb this. I’m a little over two weeks out from contracting COVID for the second time so I wasn’t surprised by the discomfort I was experiencing. The last time I had COVID in fall of 2022 it came and went but I had chest pain for almost three months forcing me to DNF after 80 Miles at the Javelina Jundred. I have no noticeable symptoms right now other than the a little fatigue, a high heart rate on exertion, and a little cough every so often. The high heart rate honestly may even be from a bit of detraining and not COVID.