Mind the Woods Trolls—A Reasonable Runner’s Guide to Finishing Your First Ultra

, or are planning to run your first 100 in Reykjavik during summer solstice, chances are that a good chunk of your race will be run at night. This means that you will likely be sleep-deprived, bleary, and bushes may start to look like squatting woods-trolls. I’ve heard that some runners address this in their training by doing a bunch of night runs, which sounds unpleasant. Lucky for me, I had a shortcut. Three months before I started training for my first 100, my daughter was born.

When you run 100 miles, you should make sure to spend as little time possible thinking about the fact that you are running 100 miles. In other words, if, at mile 22, you feel tired, and you think, “I’m tired and I’ve got 78 more miles to go,” yikes. Not good. But if, at mile 22, you feel tired, and think, “I’m tired, but I’ve only got 2.6 miles to go to the next aid station,” , that seems doable. You’re an ultrarunner, after all. You can always run another 2.6 miles.

When I stumbled into the 62-mile turnaround, just before 8:00 PM, I felt my mind starting to slip into panic mode. I was arguably more tired than I’ve ever been, and had unarguably just run farther than I ever had. . . and I had another middle-of-the-night trail marathon and a half to go. Possible? No way. Impossible. Maybe I should just stop here. But I caught hold of my mind just before it spiraled down this fluffy, downy, warm, soothing, beckoning rabbit hole that ends in a DNF.

Because let’s face it: You will probably end up pooping or at least think about pooping in some very strange places. Let’s face it: There will almost certainly come a time in which you feel like you are running as hard as you can, but are, in reality, moving about as fast as your 96 year-old great uncle Merv. After his CrossFit class. Let’s face it: Running is a funny way to spend so many hours of your life. And a beautiful one, too.

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