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How Do We Eat a Whale? The Badger 100 Part II

“How do we eat a whale? One bite at a time” is something I often say to my wife when work gets stressful and the list of tasks she needs to complete seems insurmountable.    I didn’t realize how annoying my go-to piece of advice actually sounded until I had to apply it to myself -on repeat- this past weekend during my second attempt at completing the virtual Badger 100.    The training cycle leading up to race day was strange. My first attempt – which ended up becoming an 80 mile fun run – occurred only 6 weeks ago. After factoring in recovery and a taper week into that block of time, I only had about 2 weeks of training runs with a long run that maxed out at 4 hours under my belt. I definitely went into race weekend feeling a little unprepared and unenthused. The buzz and excitement I usually feel leading up to an event was subdued. I think a large part of this had to do with the fact that – all things considered – the first attempt had gone so well. It’s hard not to feel the pressure
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The Badger 100 Part I

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At some point during Rocky Raccoon, I think I told Nicole that I didn’t think I’d want to run another 100 miler for a while. But here we are 6 months later and I’m writing a race recap of a second 100 miler attempt. Clearly, I have a horrible memory or am a glutton for punishment, haha. But the why is an important question to address especially given the outcome and why it was so disappointing. After mulling it over quite a bit, I signed up for The Badger for one main reason: COVID times are weird and wreaked havoc on many of our goals this race season but that shouldn’t be a reason to put things on hold. I still wanted to challenge myself. I have been trying to change my perspective on things and not see 2020 as a total loss, but rather an opportunity to practice, improve, and get to know myself better for the 2021 race season.   ***  Based on my experience at Rocky, barring a serious injury, I knew the mileage wasn’t going to be a problem. However, I remember feeling awful after mile
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2020 Sugar Badger Virtual 50 Miler Race Report

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It's no surprise that Coronavirus turned life as we know it upside down. The pandemic managed to impact every aspect of our lives including our 2020 race plans. As cancellation after cancellation notice popped into our inboxes and across our social media feeds, it was hard not to feel disappointed even though we knew it was for the best and absolutely the right call to make. I think we also felt something else: that overwhelming sense of "now what?". Well...the running community went virtual. Soon, many RD's began offering virtual options for existing events and even created some new, epic challenges that I hope continue after the pandemic is over. The spike in virtual races was certainly a very positive response to the "now what" question. But it was only part of the solution. I realized rather quickly that the rest was up to the athlete. Not only would we have to remain accountable in training, we'd also have to serve as our own RD, aid station, and
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2020 Rocky Raccoon 100 Race Report

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Way back on September 10 th  2019, I signed up to run the 2020 Rocky Racoon 100 miler. When I started my ultrarunning journey way back in 2017, I was already on board with the idea of running 100+ miles over the course of several days…but the idea of running 100 miles in one shot never crossed my mind. I’m still not quite sure what possessed me to sign up, but I am sure morbid curiosity had something to do with it. I already had two 50 milers under my belt (Grand Mesa and the long stage of the Grand to Grand Ultra) and had another coming up in November (Mountain Masochist). Aside from Mauna to Mauna Ultra in May, my 2020 race schedule was still wide open and I was itching to run something early on in the year. So instead of doing the logical thing – like picking a 100k to run – I just went for it and signed up for my first 100 miler.  Drop Bag prep  So that is how Ericka and I ended up on a plane to Texas at the end of January. We landed in Houston on Friday and drove up t
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