Entry #1: Goals
About 12 miles into my run this morning, I decided I wanted to start a blog. I don’t really know who is going to read this, but I’ll write anyway. I’d like to make this first blog entry about my goals for running over the next ~18 months.
In 2022, I was registered for the Mad City 100k in Madison, WI which serves as the USATF 100k Championships and is a qualifying race for the IAU World 100k Championships, which were held in Germany that year. About five weeks before the race (which was held on April 23, 2022), I ended up in the hospital with chest pains after being unable to finish my morning run. I had been running more than 100 miles per week and pretty much had to stop running. Over the next two years, I tried to start training multiple times, but would keep running into what I believe were long-Covid symptoms of chest pain and chronic fatigue. In July 2024, I made yet another attempt at a comeback, expecting to fail, but this time it stuck. I trained all through the summer and fall before needing to take a break in December and January after a bad reaction to mental health medication and a bout of patellar tendinitis. I began training shortly after the Super Bowl (go birds) and am currently in the build-up to what I hope is a series of three 100k ultramarathons between November 2025 and the end of 2026.
100k #1: Length of Lancaster 100k, November 2025
The first 100k I aim to run is not an organized race, but rather a route I’ve mapped near my home in Lancaster, PA. I plan to run from the Mason-Dixon Line to the northernmost public road in Lancaster County. With some twists and turns, the route is just over 100k long. It’s hard to make a specific time goal for a distance I’ve never run on a course where I’ll have to stop for traffic, but I’m hoping I can run around 6 hours and 45 minutes, which is about 6:30 pace. Maybe that’s too fast and I’ll look like an idiot for writing that down, but I’m going to stick with it for now. While I’m going to do everything I can to do well at this, the point of all of this is for it to serve as a dry run for the next 100k…
100k #2: MadCity 100k (USATF Championships), April 2026
Four years after I had to abandon my plans to run this race, my goal is to show up and run well enough to qualify for the World 100k Championships. The MadCity consists of ten 10k laps around Lake Wingra in Madison, Wisconsin. The winner of this race automatically qualifies for Team USA in the World Championships, but a fast enough time should secure a spot on the team. Based on past team qualifiers I think that a time of 6:45:00 should be enough to make the team.
100k #3: World 100k Championships, 2026
I can make a plan to run across my county, I can fly out to Wisconsin, but I can’t just show up to this one without qualifying. I don’t know when or where this race will be, how fast I’ll need to run, or what the competition to get there will be like, but ever since I learned in 2014 that this was a race that existed, I’ve wanted to run it. So I’m going to do everything I can to get there. There really isn’t much more to say about it than that.
-DMH
