The last 25 miles of a 100 mile run and a few other things I enjoyed this week.
It is 7:01am on Saturday morning. Abe started his debut 100 miler at the Rio Del Lago Endurance Run at 5:00am this morning.
I’m drinking coffee while he is two hours into what will likely be 20–24 hours of running. That is unfathomable.
Over the course of the next 15ish hours between when Abe started and when I‘ll meet him at mile 75, I have a day filled with nonsense and tomfoolery and he will be running.
The entire time.
In the back of the mind, I have a faint bucket list desire to run a 100 miler some day. These 25 miles spent with Abe will play a large role in deciding if that ever actually happens. No pressure, Abe.
[update: Sunday at 12:09pm]
Holy shit. That was an inspiring experience.
He moved so well the final 25 miles, and really, the whole 100. Of course there were down moments and miles but he kept a great attitude and just kept pressing forward.
As we passed people throughout the night you can see the various stages of mental and physical fatigue.
The moral of the story seems to be that your body can handle just about anything you throw at it and your mind is the limiting factor.
Abe nailed his first hundred.
At mile 44.5 he was in 80th place and finished in 28th place in 21:05. Such a closer. I’m so glad I got to tag along.
While sparing the play-by-play, I was blown away by Abe during this experience. It has been so fun the last few years to slowly explore the ultra running world with Nick, Jadd, Abe and the other random assortment of people who travel in those circles. I’m glad I was there for this milestone.
Abe’s success definitely gave me a ton of confidence and inspiration for my 50 mile debut in two weeks.
A few other quick hits on things I enjoyed this week.
1. How to have meetings that don’t suck.
I am guilty of a few of these things, too. And I would hope most people aren’t intentionally bad at holding meetings but a lot of times they just have never seen it done effectively.
There are lots of gems in this article but this is my favorite,
Every meeting must have a single owner, who should share the purpose of the meeting with an agenda ahead of time.
Not sure why that seems so rare.
2. Know your job.
This post is specific to a CEO level, but I think the main point of the article is transferrable. People seem to have a pre-conceived perception of their job and never spend the time to think about if that is correct of not.
3. TCS New York City Marathon
Uhh, wut? Why are Americans winning World Marathon Majors?
I didn’t get to check out the race but to have Galen Rupp win Chicago and now Shalane Flanagan win New York, this feels like a turning point in American distance running. Americans definitely seem to excel in non-rabbited, tactical, championship style races. But hey, they count just the same.
This is a fun time for being a marathon fan. There seems to be plenty of room on the bandwagon.
