It’s 3 a.m. and you’re about 75 miles into your 100-mile race. The fatigue’s gotten worse and you’re drifting off while stumbling awake. The nausea won’t let up and you can’t eat—especially not the energy gels or gummies you packed in your vest. A bonk seems like it’s just around the corner and you’ve got miles to go until the next aid station. Your feet hurt. Your butt hurts. Your legs feel rubbery with each step and seem a bit disconnected from your brain. And then, the clouds unleash a biblical rainstorm.
This is a trainwreck. Time to walk it in to the aid station and throw in the towel. Not your day, or night or race.
That is the nature of the 100-mile beast. Problems pile up, they wear you down and the next challenge can push you over the edge. Physically, you may still be in the game, but the positive mental attitude you need to keep going vanishes. Is there any way to prepare yourself for the 100-mile trainwreck? Yes, yes there is.
When training for a 100-mile race, it’s important to put the most physical stress on yourself during long run training sessions. Typically, it’s best to pick a time, place and conditions that will help you get through your long run successfully. However, from time to time, forget about trying to help yourself and instead, make it a lot harder.
For example, start at midnight on a Saturday night and end your long run when the sun comes up. The physical challenge is there, but you’ve also added the difficulty of running at night. Moreover, you can amp up the challenge by picking a hilly route in a location you’re not too familiar with, thus adding vertical gain plus navigating through unknown territory. Your training run starts to mimic what you’ll be facing during your 100-mile race. You’ll not only be training for the race physically, but you’ll get a chance to find out how well you’ll hold up mentally.
Simulating race day is an ideal way to prepare for the worst-case scenario by imagining what inhospitable weather might rear its ugly head, and it’s an opportunity to test yourself. Do your long run on a hot day and face the challenge of lots of time on your feet while practicing strategies to keep yourself from overheating. Other ways to ramp up the challenge of your typical long run would be to run at altitude, do back-to-back long runs on successive days, run a course with steep elevation or substitute actual races for some of your training runs.
Put yourself in the position to experience that soul-crushing moment when you feel overwhelmed and your confidence is undermined—and do it repeatedly. You need to practice maintaining a positive outlook, a sense that issues can pile up but you can push through and endure it all. Every time you confront that situation in your training and successfully reach down into your well of determination through the end of your run, you strengthen that mental toughness that will get you to the end of 100 miles.