Mike Tyson once stated, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit.” The question becomes what’s our response when and if it happens to you, because the likelihood of getting hit in a fight is about 99.9%. In ultrarunning, what is it that allows one runner to soldier on while another succumbs to the upheaval of the moment?
Author
Errol Jones
Errol Jones
Errol "Rocket" Jones is a veteran ultrarunner of 34 years, having participated in over 200 ultras dating back to 1981. Jones completed ultrarunning’s Grand Slam in 1998 and is a 3-time finisher of Badwater. He is also Co-Race Director of the Bear 100 and the Quad Dipsea, and serves as indentured servant at the Miwok and Lake Sonoma ultras.
-
-
I’ve known races in the past to be canceled or postponed, but never the entire season as a whole being more or less shut down. To add to this mix, I lost my favorite sister, Gwen, to complications of the dreaded COVID virus, so I wasn’t feeling at all good about 2020. A sense of melancholy is exactly what I was feeling when I finally decided to try and enter the Heartland 100 yet again this year.
-
If I can stress one virtue every trail runner should possess in their arsenal of weapons, it’s the punch of patience. Something I’ve often struggled with over the years. Too often I get caught up in the moment, forget what it’s all about, ignore the signs and then it all comes crashing down.
-
There are few real adversities to contend with when running trails. Running the trails and racing with others presents challenges and setbacks, but it’s what we do for fun. But life outside of running can be fraught with all sorts of real adversities.
-
When you do what we do, it sounds so easy. “I just need to cover a little more than three miles an hour.” Three miles an hour and just a little more, how hard can that be? It sounds so simplistic, so easy. Until you’re the one who has to accomplish it in the midst of a 100-mile event, then it becomes that monumental task.
-
It’s early in the year and as they say, “Hope springs eternal.” But when formulating plans for what’s to come it’s also important to start considering what your future exit strategy might be.
-
In an April 2009 issue of the magazine Runners World, there was an article titled “Flight of the Bumble Bee” where I was referenced in the story and deemed the “Patron Saint of Pacers.” I’d given some advice to a woman who I’d find out later was a columnist for the sports rag.
-
When I first started running ultras, I was looking to extend the joy I received from running the roads, but without the crush of the urban environment. I saw a photo on the office wall of the director of a sports care center that I had office space in. He was standing in running shorts and a singlet on top of a snow-covered mountain peak. I asked where that was.
-
Running gave me purpose when other aspects of life gave me cause for concern. Ultrarunning in particular gave me a true sense of community. Some of the friendships I made road running remain steadfast to this day, but there was never the community that I’ve always felt and experienced since transitioning to the trails and ultrarunnning in 1980.
-
Do everything that you humanly can to get up on the game before you take on the course. Recently, I participated in a very popular 50k, and as one would expect, the usual accolades, comments and a few complaints came rolling in after the fact. One guy emailed that he’d showed up for the race 24 hours after the fact, thinking that the race was that morning. When he came to the realization that he’d had the wrong date, he decided to make the best of the very sobering awakening and he ran the course anyway, unassisted.
-
I’m not an avid reader of poetry, but the words in this Dylan Thomas poem have always resonated with me, and I think they express what I’ve done and what I continue to attempt to do in my ultrarunning. At various times over the years, my best friend has admonished me about my approach to my running and racing, and has pointed out an old adage: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If that bears fruit, then I guess most, if not all, ultrarunners are insane, or damn close to it.
-
It’s universally understood that there’s nothing easy about running and racing ultra distances. The mastery the headspace is more important to cultivate than the training miles that we put in in pursuit of ultra glory. If we come up short, we sometimes think that had we trained more, or harder, then maybe our outcome might have been better, when what really mattered was our mental and psychological approach to the task.
-
As the years fly by, I’m increasingly appreciative of what I was once capable of, especially compared to what I’m able to do now. For years, I took what I…
-
With the ever-increasing interest in the sport of ultrarunning has come an explosion of prospective entrants for certain races. This popularity has race directors resorting to lotteries, wait lists and other measures, in some cases just short of asking entrants for their firstborn for entry into their events.
-
By now it’s old news to many about that fateful day in August of 1974 when Gordy Ainsleigh’s horse wound up lame and he decided to take to the trails…