Another year passes in which I met exactly 0 of my goals. And ultimately that is okay. My goals were ambitious, I wanted to win the Cocodona 250 and the Bigfoot 200. I came close at Cocodona and led the race for 220+ miles before developing pulmonary edema and eventually finishing in 11th. Who knows what would have happened there and I can't really fault myself for how the end of that race went down. Then in the Bigfoot 200 I came 3rd. A podium in my second 200 mile finish is a positive result. I don't want to lose sight of that. But during the race itself, I never felt like I had any fight in me, not even towards the beginning. When I should have been buckling down and racing for 2nd in the end, I just felt myself wilting. What happened there? It's hard to nail down a single factor but I think I over trained.
Ultimately my 2023 has felt like a mixed year. In setting ambitious goals, I am telling myself that I believe I am capable of achieving them. I wouldn't set goals that I thought were totally pie in the sky unachievable, because what's the point of that? And yet, another year passes in which I met exactly 0 of my goals. I've repeated this sentence often in my head since finishing Bigfoot and I just don't quite know how to feel about it.
Often it helps to zoom out. I ran my first ultra, the Silver Rush 50 miler, in July 2018. I finished respectably in just over 9 hours and ultimately qualified for the Leadville 100 for 2019. In October 2018 I finished my first 100 miler, a tough unheralded race in Texas called Cactus Rose. I underestimated how much harder 100 miles would be to finish than 50 was. I had no idea how to fuel, pace, or strategize for a 100 miler but I still managed to gut out a finish in about 31 hours.
In 2019 I ran a trio of 100 milers at the Salt Flats Endurance Run, the historic Leadville 100, and then a freezing cold race at the Hitchcock Experience 100 in Iowa. My times were again respectable, 21, 23.5, and 23.5 hours respectively. I improved dramatically in my second year of ultrarunning after learning from the silly rookie mistakes of 2018.
2020 was a nothing year for all of us and then in 2021 I started to think I could really do big things in this sport. I ran the Ouray 100 finishing third in just over 34 hours and then won at the Cactus Rose 150 in 41 hours, returning to the location of my first 100 mile finish.
Then in 2022 I tore my hamstring attempting the Cocodona 250. That was a bummer. I managed to come back in October of 2022 and win a wonderful 50 miler in Davis County Utah called the DC Peaks 50.
This year, 2023, I finished the Cocodona 250 in difficult circumstances and I earned a podium at the Bigfoot 200.
If I just took in that set of facts about an athlete that wasn't me, I'd observe that the improvement has been both steady and dramatic. So then why when I think about that set of facts as me, does it all seem so unsatisfying? I don't mean unsatisfying as a synonym of unrewarding. The journey itself to this point in my short ultrarunning career has been intensely rewarding. I've often said that my favorite part about being an ultrarunner is the training and that still rings true. Nothing is more fun than adventure runs with friends. I've explored some absolutely incredible American landscape in the past 5 years and I look forward to decades of doing the same.
No, what I mean by unsatisfying is that I've had basically no races in which I feel like I lived up to my potential. The DC Peaks 50 and Cactus Rose 150 are the closest I've come to feeling really happy about a race in its entirety. In some big moments, like the latter stages of the Bigfoot 200, I just came up short. Now I think I can do some smarter things in training leading up to my races in 2024, but I still just have this question in my mind: can I really hack it when things get hard?
After tearing my hamstring in 2022 I had this lingering doubt about whether or not my body was even up to the task of running 200+ miles and now, after banishing that doubt this year, I am left wondering whether or not my mind is capable of getting me to compete with the very best in these distances.
So how do I feel about achieving 0 of my goals in 2023? I wish I had a cleaner answer, but ultimately I think it boils down to this: I'm happy that I'm someone who sets goals that are hard to achieve, I'm disappointed that I didn't do what I think I'm capable of in either race this year, and despite that tinge of disappointment I'm overall quite proud of my year. 5 years really isn't that long to be competing in this sport and I've got at least 5 more till I am going to be hitting my endurance prime. If those 5 years look anything like these past 5 in terms of improvement, I think I'll be in a pretty good place.
Be proud of what you have done this year and the past few years. I know you’ll nail whatever goal you have next. Just be patient. It doesn’t always come together in the first few years. I’ve been at this ultra running thing for 9 years and going on a decade. Keep learning and networking. You can do a lot. Just keeping working hard and the results will come.