The Zen of Ultra Running

I DNFed Vermont 100 (VT100) this past weekend. Vermont 100 is one of the six oldest 100-mile races in the US and it's also part of the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning. The cool thing about VT100 is that they also have a concurrent 100-mile horse race so the runners and the horses share most of the course. I used my CC100 time to qualify and enter VT100 lottery this year. In order to enter, you have to finish a 100-mile race within 30 hours or a 50-mile race within 12 hours or a 100K race within 16 hours. You also have to submit your "service hours" by volunteering at a race or doing trail work for at least 8 hours. Since I was the aid station captain for Run with Scissors last year, I used that time as the service hours. Regarding the training, I could say I trained as hard as I could (while trying not to jeopardize my marriage and career) this year in order to prepare for VT100. The race, while it's "runnable", has 17,000 feet of elevation gain. So, I focuse...

We were on a 2-week vacation in Germany and Portugal and it's been really really really busy since we got back from the trip. Overall, we had fun and it was good to spend time with my family. We started our trip in Hamburg, Germany where we stayed at my brother-in-law house. His parents have a house in Hamburg. My family was already there. They flew in two days before us. Then, the whole group went to Berlin for a couple of days (2 hours train ride) and came back to Hamburg to rest and relax. When I planned the trip, I was also looking for a race to run at the same time. I found that Hamburg had a half marathon that weekend. It was perfect timing. I, then, signed up for the race. They also had a half marathon skating race at the same time. I'd never seen a skating race before. Quite interesting. The skaters started before the runners as it took them less time to finish the half marathon. On the race day, it was EXTREMELY hot (95 degrees) and the race sent out a couple of ...