REI Presents: How To Run 100 Miles

You ever wonder why a perfectly sane person would try to run a hundred miles all at once? Me too. It wasn't my idea though. It was my friend Jason's. For six months leading up to race day, this was my life every Saturday. Wake up early and wait for my friend Jason to drive 10 blocks to pick me up, go to the mountains and run. We didn't sleep in, we didn't have brunch with our girlfriends, we didn't play frisbee in the park and we didn't sip coffee and read the news. We ran together for hours and every Saturday we ran longer and longer. We didn't know much about running ultra marathons but we learned one thing very quickly. Jason and I are not lifelong runners or really even runners. We met during college at the University of Northern Iowa while both of us were working as bartenders at an Applebee's restaurant. We became drinking buddies and after college we always stayed in touch. We grew up a little bit and eventually ended up living in the same neighborhood in Denver. The only reason I got into ultra running at all is because Jason's a great storyteller. He's now swinging a hammer at all of us, right? Where does a big gulp go on a motorcycle? You never believe he punched me in the face three times at Hungry Bear. He's like, what are you talking about? It's like Drew's mom. One day in August 2015, I took him out for pizza while he told me about how horrible his long trail run had gone that day. I have my shirt off, I'm poured in sweat, no water. I'm like, man what am I gonna do? It sounded like just what I needed. I don't even like running, but I like challenges. Especially when they're big and scary enough to get me off the couch. We signed up for a couple of shorter races. If you look it up, you'll find that an ultra marathon is any race longer than a marathon, which is 26.2 miles. They usually start at the 50k distance, which is 31 miles, and then the 50 mile distance, and then 100k, which is 62 miles, and then the races that are 100 miles or longer. We tried the shorter distances, got our asses kicked in every way you can imagine, and barely finished before the cutoffs. If we tried a 100 mile ultra marathon, we'd be extreme underdogs. I'm signing up to run a 100 mile race because I love suffering and running with your ugly ass. What do I gotta do it to? I had no doubt it was going to be the hardest thing I'd ever done, but Jason has this way of convincing you you can do things you don't think you can do. He told me a long time ago that you should never think about why you can't do something. You should think about how you can do it. My mom was definitely the first role model that I saw be put in a really horrible situation and still push forward. What she did was truly remarkable. When I was in third grade, my mom divorced my dad and really didn't have a stable environment. She had to figure out how to feed six kids. There was a lot of time spent from us moving from one house to my mom getting evicted, to then when we went and lived in an abandoned women's shelter, basically we were homeless. But I never saw her give up. So I found out I was dyslexic early on in grade school, and one of those things that you don't know exactly what's going on, you just know that you're different. They're also then labeling you as like slow, stupid, or dumb. So then you start getting picked on. There was a bully that always picked on me, and one day in front of the principal's office, he decided to slam my books to the ground, and this was the last time I was having that. I had to jump up to put him in a headlock, and after that, every grade until my senior year, I got kicked out of school for fights. I became known as a fighter. I got into wrestling through failing in basketball. For the first couple of years, I sucked horribly. I didn't win a match for the first two years, until finally in eighth grade, I won my first match. So by my freshman year in high school, me and some of the other freshmen, we all made varsity, and wrestling in Iowa was a big deal. And so it sort of taught me like sticking with something, you can accomplish something. I walk into the guidance counselor's office my senior year, trying to figure out how does one go to college? So I asked him some basic questions, to which he said, ah, college is not really for people like you, Jason. You just sort of need to get a job, work your way up the ladder. And I just left the office with in my head like, you dude, you don't have a clue what I can do. The guidance counselor turned out to be wrong. Jason failed to complete the ACT because he couldn't read fast enough. He went to community college and then got a bachelor's degree, and then he started knocking on doors for a political party. Then he managed a winning U.S. congressional campaign, and then he directed Nevada's first ever presidential caucus. In 2017, he left politics to become a motivational speaker and coach, which made sense to me since I'd been getting free life coaching from him for 17 years now. Jason's built his life philosophy out of taking on hard things and succeeding by not quitting. But running 100 miles was different. What if it shut him down? I certainly wasn't that confident in us. You have to run a lot of miles before you can run 100 miles. As is true in many things in life, trying is a good way to learn. And we learned a few truths about ultra running. You don't have to run the whole time. You get to eat a lot, but all that food goes somewhere. Eventually, you'll probably have to poop somewhere you don't want to. Where are you going? I'm gonna go take a ----. Well, enjoy. Oh, that looks great at R. Okay. Remember, there's no toilet paper in nature. How was it? Dude, that was a rookie mistake. What happened? I tried to wipe with some of those dry pinecones. It just broke off? Yeah, it's just a rookie mistake. It's not good. Look at all these rocks. Why did you try to use the pinecones? There wasn't any rocks. You gotta pick them up. You often will have to run when you don't want to. Yeah, 19.57. If the schedule says you have to run 20 miles on Saturday, you don't stop after 19.6 miles. Parts of your body will hurt often. Are you actually chafing right there? Yeah. That's chapstick. Your joints, your muscles, your ligaments and tendons will rebel. The pain will not go away, but it will move to other places. One day your foot hurts, the next day it's your hip, or your knee, or your ankle, or your toenails. You'll try anything to make it hurt less. Ice. Space-age lubricants to prevent chafing. Eating raw turmeric root. Yeah, I know. Foam rollers, which are home torture devices for athletes. Even stretching. When people say, wow, 100 miles, that's a long way to run. I feel like saying, no ----, I had to run 1,200 miles before the race even started. I've been doing ultras for, I've been running for 45 years. I've been doing ultras for 25 years, and so what I'm going to tell you is not a pep talk. It's the plain truth. 100 miles is really far. I'm pretty sure everybody at the starting line of this race is more qualified to be here than us. I'm terrified, but at least we're doing this together. Most people don't plan on running the entire race with their friend, but that's what we're doing. It's harder than you think it is, and it's going to hurt more than you think it will. Real friends show up for each other, especially when it's the dumbest thing you've ever done. The Run Rabbit Run isn't the easiest race to do for your first 100. It's 102.9 miles long with 20,000 feet of elevation gain, or roughly four New York City marathons, plus 18 trips up and down the stairs of the Empire State Building, and you have to finish in 36 hours, the official final cut of time. So here we go. I think Run Rabbit Run is deceptively difficult. 100 miles is a journey. You're going to spend the night out. You're gonna experience, you know, everything that comes with being out for 24, 30, maybe 36 hours. I think a lot of races start and finish in the same place, but when you arrive back to that same place, it feels like a lot of ---- has gone down. The hills there are steep. You know, you're settling into a 2,000 foot climb or a 3,000 foot climb, and it doesn't level off the entire time. That's the top of the gondola. How do you feel? Pretty amazing. That's one hour. You're like mile three, mile two and a half. Don't stop moving. There's no reason to. You can pee while you're walking. You can eat while you're walking. You can cry while you're walking. I am proof that you can puke and walk at the same time. There's no reason to stop. Every year, on average, about a third of the people who start the race don't finish. Our race started with 242 runners, and 95 of us would drop out. We didn't care about speed. We just wanted to finish. Your muscles are sore. That happens. If you're tired, that happens. You know, if you threw up five times, that happens. That is a part of running 100 miles. Commit to seeing those grievances through. My name is Sid Jones. I'm a friend of Brendan and Jason. I've known those guys for seven years or so. The things that I really enjoy doing is knowing what they need before they know they need it. So when they're, I don't know, 10 minutes away, I'm sort of frantically trying to think of, if I were at this point of a race, of a run, what am I going to need? You know, am I probably going to need some body glide? I'm probably going to need to refill my water bottle. I'm probably going to need a hug. Nice work, guys. Thank you. Burrito's kind of cold. It's a little cold. You want me to heat that up for you? There you go. Now it's nice. At this point, they thought they might actually be a couple of hours behind, but they're so on pace. It's been a perfect day so far. A little hot right now. They're a little hot. It's easy to feel optimistic when you're a third of the way there, but in the back of your mind, you know eventually that the wheels will start falling off. Now we can be drinking a little bit sweaty. Thankful for the shade that we've got going on right now. I would say I do not feel 100% right now going up this. Sun's getting lower. Almost 11 hours in. Not sure of the miles. Still having fun. Still having lots of fun out here. Lots of power hiking at this point. I'm a bit concerned about tonight when it gets cold, but they'll be warm. Coming into the Olympian Hall aid station in a second here. That's mile 42. Is that right? Yeah, 41.9 or something. People tell you that the night is the hardest part of a 100-mile race. It's dark for 12 hours, it's cold, and your world is reduced to the little bubble of light from your headlamp. In the grand scheme of an 18-year friendship, 36 hours is nothing, but this is the start of the most intense 24 hours of our relationship, and I think we both kind of know it, but don't want to say it. We're going into the dark, into the night, obviously, as it's night outside, and we are going to Long Lake, which is back up where we came down earlier, about 10 miles. It's actually pretty, it's going to be a pretty interesting climb because that was rugged on the way down, so navigating at nark, dark, nark, dark. They had a snack, good snack, changed their clothes, got a little dry, got a little warm, had some hot broth, some hot soup, so they warmed up a bit. I think they're doing good. They might decide to slow their pace down a little bit, which is probably a smart thing at this point. Jason seems like he's in really good spirits. Brendan might be lagging just a little bit, but I think he's realistic about their time goal now, which is a good thing. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Don't forget to turn on your headlamp, Jason. See you soon. Thank you. See you later, man. End of the mountains. Here we go. Lots of fun. I feel much better after everybody force fed me. Yeah. Do you? You were, you're a stubborn bastard. I just felt like ----. Sorry, I shouldn't say that. You're a stubborn guy at times. They had to force feed you. You should have been eating. I think they're about two hours late, is what Hillary had said that Kate had sent our message. So that's kind of disconcerting. Yeah, it says they checked it at eight, I think, but I think they left around 840. Okay. So nine, 10, 11 and a half hours for 10 miles. Hour 19, 3am. Just left the Summit Lake aid station. Mile 57. We're jogging. Trying to jog. Jog a little downhill action. Make up a little time. 4am, hour 20. Doing a little blister. It's like the darkest part of the night for these guys, I think. And it's just brutal watching their posture and they're like, they really do look like zombies, but yeah. Where am I looking? Right there. Oh yeah. So I had a moleskin on it. I know it's the worst. I've never had one there. Yeah. It feels very slow at this point in the night. It's like every time an hour goes by. Oh my God. We're going to be out here like 36 hours. Brendan. I think it's over here. She said when we're just ready to go up, like upstairs. No. I'm sorry. No, no. Thank you. It's all good. Now I'm starting to drag. We've been moving for 21 hours and there's no way you're going to feel good at this point. But Jason and I have a sort of unspoken agreement. He keeps moving, so I keep moving. Time to pace. We've been ready to go up and pace them since like two more or less. Those guys should be coming in about 45 minutes an hour. It's been 24 hours. 8am on Saturday. We've been moving for an entire day. As happens in these things, not everything's going to plan. We made it through the night and you'd think the sunrise would be this big hopeful moment. But look at Jason. He's limping and we still have 29 miles to go. But nobody's talking about quitting. Who's the stubborn bastard now? This is the guy who lost a full two years of wrestling matches before he won one. I pee when Brendan pees. Hey, I'm bringing humor right now. We need it. Okay. What is this thing in front of me? Brendan's doing awesome. I care about him. But you just keep pushing the bar of the hardest thing I've ever done. Further and further out and all those hard things become way less hard in retrospect. So this is probably going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. What are you guys doing now? Chip drink. It's an electrolyte made of potato chips. How's the chip drink? Phenomenal. What? I feel like I have the energy to bring it home. Because everything's clunked. Clunked out. A mile 74 or so, Jason's ankle started to really hurt and become swollen. So he's trying to troop it out and hopefully we finish before the cutoff. He's tough, but I would be lying if I didn't say it was not giving me some anxiety. They're both pooping right now at the same time. Let's be clear here. I'm ready to quit. Everything hurts and this is not fun. I hate running. I hate mountains and I hate this sandwich. But we still have a couple hours until the final cutoff and we can still walk. I can take these steps. They're much easier on the shin. Want to have as much fun suffering? Why not? Why not? Want to have the tip of your private parts chafing? Why not? I know those are two of the most stubborn guys I've ever known in my life. And if anybody can make it together, those two together are gonna get across. But I think they're in pain. I think they're hurting. We're gonna be down there by seven. Now 45 minutes to go four and a half miles. Walking backwards. I don't know if you're going two. Our pace, I can just tell you guys, our pace is 30 minute miles right now. Okay. So yes, we'll be down here in two hours. You guys are going to have to run, I think. We're starting to worry about these guys. We were getting text messages that they were hurting in bad shape. I'm worried to be honest with you. I'm really worried. I know they want to come in in under 36 hours, but I'm kind of worried that it's going to be really, really close. This is happening. What do you mean this is right? I'm going to get down this mountain. I guess when your friend is also your hero, sometimes you just do what he does. Not everyone finishes an ultra marathon under the cutoff time, but Jason's whole life has been based on not quitting. You are one tough dude. We don't always run together on Saturdays anymore. Now that we finished our hundred mile race, maybe we'll do another one someday. Maybe we'll just be proud we did one at all. Whatever happens, I always remember one thing I've learned from Jason. When you're a kid, they tell you, you can do anything. Most people stop believing that at some point. Jason never has stopped. Maybe I shouldn't either. Trust them. They're all puppets. Love is nothing scared of success. One for the base, two for the trumps. Last call, gonna take whatever comes. Barely trust them. They're all puppets.