As I ran through utter darkness, the bouncing spotlight from my headlamp creating a very limited and Blair Witch Project style view of the immediate trail before me, little flecks of snow like material fluttered about. By this point in my experience with Oregon over the past few days, I knew it was ash but my delirious brain tried to convince me that it was just harmless snow or maybe even, at worst, little gnats. As I crested a small hill, the ridge line of a mountain pass in the distance became visible. The only reason I could see it in the complete black void of the sky was because behind the ridge, a literal chasm of fire, was pooling with a sharp orange threatening glow as it’s outline.

Even though the term, “Type II fun” has been around for a while, for some reason this little phrase has been popping up a lot lately in my life. The creepy occurrence is probably more likely just one of those things that once you notice it, you notice it a lot and therefore it seems more meaningful than it really is. Like seeing the time 9:11 or hearing a certain song come on in the grocery store that you were just thinking about. 

I like how I’m over here explaining away these little eerie nuances as if I’m a unamused scientist when just last blog post I was talking about how I worship the cat tarot cards.

On a rainy run around North Asheville the other day, I was slogging out a rough ten miles when I came across this very out of place vending machine. I swear I’ve ran around this area numerous times and had never seen it before. It felt like a sci-fi movie. I even did the cliche thing of stopping and looking around like, “anyone else seeing this shit?” I was somewhat worried that I would get sucked in if I approached it and would time travel or get Jumanji’d.

I knew this 100 miler would involve a lot of sacrificing of my time and it definitely has proven to be the case. I feel that I have been dutifully committed to hitting my numbers and I have said “no” to so many things over the past year in order to train. However, I am not a machine and I could tell I had to have this three day summer break or I would’ve broken in a different way.

It’s difficult to describe how much I enjoy true rest days. Waking up in the morning with the beautiful knowledge that I don’t have to put my running shoes on is like waking up to a snow day. Don’t misunderstand me, I do love running and I secretly love the grind, but gaining the free time back for even a day is like a huge relief.

It feels a little crunch-timey. With 11 weeks to go, I realize I’m about to dwindle down to single digit weeks. My wife, apparently sick of listening to me complain about some knee pain, has decided to get on my ass about not only strength training and stretching but also general body and life maintenance. For example, she washed both my handheld water bottle sleeve and my SpiBelt, something that I had just been neglecting… for a while. Gross, I know.

On the way to work today I called her to what sparked this extra investment lately and she said, “it seems real now, the race being so close. You need to do everything you can to make sure you are ready for this thing. It’s such an insane thing to do.”

I shouldn’t have planned to run a 100 miles in September because I’m now realizing that running is seriously interfering with my summer vibes. I knew that committing to a goal this large was going to definitely eat into a lot of my time, but now that it’s happening, I’m being a bit grumpy about it. Succeeding in any goal will take sacrifice. I knew and understood that this would happen but I originally thought the sacrifice would be more physical… sore body, knee pain, general pushing the limits, being consistently sweaty and hungry, that kind of thing. Instead, it appears that the sacrifice that I personally feel the most is time commitment. 

Race Recap of the 2025 Flying Squirrel 10 Miler in Asheville, NC.

I’m currently sitting on my front porch, water bottle responsibly next to me, listening to the light summer storm that has decided to finally roll on through and give Asheville a bit of a reprieve, albeit a few hours too late. It was a hot one today. Toasty. Without the cinnamon. Mostly due to the humidity but the sun was a steady accomplice. Perhaps this is one the first hot days of the season so it felt extra spicy out there but it was a strong slap in the face of a reminder that I need to be drinking water because I’ll be running 10 miles tomorrow morning.

accomplished speed marathon runner and coach, and Courtney Dauwalter, an incredibly talented ultra runner, who I am obviously obsessed with because I’ve mentioned her numerous times in this blog. In this interview, Floris asks her what her training plan is like and I was shocked to hear how she just does a daily check in while drinking her morning coffee and lets her body and mind dictate what she is going to accomplish for the day.

What the hell.

If I were to metaphorize my 28 week training plan as a whole, I would describe it as having to drive across the country. You know you have to get some distance in on as many days as possible, but you also want to enjoy the trip and also not overdo it and fall asleep at the wheel. There are some days I just want to enjoy some beers at a cool brewery and stay the night. There are some days that I can really hunker down with a good audiobook and get some continuous hours in and really make some headways. And then there are some days I just don’t feel like driving at all. 

Don’t worry, even though there have been cicadas overtaking Western North Carolina, an intense hail storm last week, and then an earthquake, I’m still alive! If you couple all this with the Hurricane flooding in September and the wildfires we had last month, I think this has been either a sign that the end of times is near or a great excuse as to why I haven’t posted anything lately.

I talk a lot about accomplishments on this blog. I’ve always had a difficult relationship with “being successful” and what that truly means to me. My personality type tends to value appearing successful to others, which is super annoying and makes me sound incredibly vain. It also makes it difficult to suss out whether I find a sense of satisfaction in the success itself or the feedback I get from others after the fact. As I’ve gotten older, I have thankfully adopted more of a “don’t give a fuck” mentality regarding what other people think and this has come with a lot of internal work as well as a hint of just aging. 

Which made this past Saturday’s race accomplishment even more satisfying. Because I did it for me. 

I am not a morning person. I despise waking up early. I always have, ever since I was a kid. I kind of want to get a sleep study done and have them hook up those electrodes to my head so there is some scientific proof as to why I feel like I’m having to pull myself out of a sinkhole every morning. So this race that I’m about to run today is absolutely perfect for me because it doesn’t start until 2:30pm!

Do you remember 7th grade English when you learned about fallacies? Particularly the “slippery slope” one? I bet it’s the only one you remember.  Don’t worry, I had to google it actually to ensure I was using it correctly. During my research I read that it is considered an “informal fallacy” and I laughed out loud because I remember learning that phrase almost two decades ago but it’s definition is 100% gone from my working knowledge. So, class, to review, slippery slope is an assumption that there is a direct link between a specific action and a series of subsequent events, often outrageous and dramatic ones.

If you straight up google “100 mile training plans” (as one casually does, obviously) you’ll get quite a few helpful links, blogs, lengthy articles, and pdfs. I obsessively perused through many of them with the same insane intensity that I use when searching for reviews on what which hotel to book for a vacation, which miter saw to buy, or when trying to view and pick seats through the horrific Ticketmaster seat map interface. 

4:21:25. My official chip time for the 2025 Asheville Marathon. (Chip time just means the clock starts when I cross the starting line instead of “gun time” which is when the race starts and the first runners cross the start.) My goal was 4:20 so I’m considering this race a huge success. It was my first road marathon in 8 years and although I’ve run further distances on trail over the past few years, it had been a very long time since I’ve put that many miles in to both training, and race wise, on pavement.

But this race in particular meant more than just a PR. This was about running through my old stomping grounds for the first time since Hurricane Helene and falling in love with my city again.

So the Asheville Marathon is tomorrow! I feel relatively prepared for it, definitely more comfortable this time around compared to the other two road marathons I did in 2014 and 2017. I’ve stuck to the Hal Higdon Intermediate I guide as best as I could, skipping a run here and there but almost always hitting the long ones. I did have two longish vacations during the last four weeks of training that disrupted my flow a little bit but I was still able to complete the 20 mile training run with little discomfort. 

So for this post, I’m going to mostly talk about food since that seemed to be the biggest question from my coworkers last night when I told them what I was up to this weekend.

About a year ago, I was in the break room at work casually talking about an ultra trail runner named Courtney Dauwalter.  She is this absolutely phenomenal runner who holds many records and after watching the handful of documentaries about her, I have become a huge fangirl.

As I was fawning over her achievements, another coworker chimed in and said something along the lines of “people who run that much are definitely running from something else.” Her offhand comment, meant to be lighthearted and a joke, caught me off guard. 

Was I running from something?

Yesterday was a good day. After rearranging my marathon training plan to fit my week long vacation, I knew the 20 mile Sunday block would be an incredibly important training run. The curves of the black font of the 2 and 0 sat there at the end of the row with an air of intimidation, like two bounces checking IDs at a concert, one on each side of the door, challenging me to get past them so I could party.