Brandon Cooper

Writing about this one didn't come as naturally as past races. In the days following the race, my mind was a bit scattered. I finished (spoiler alert) and was proud of the effort, but training for it was challenging and I thought this might be my last 100 mile race. My wife and I recently started a family and when you put the time commitment required there side by side with running, running definitely falls to a lower priority. That's exactly what happened during training -- for my first 100 miler, I averaged 61 miles/week in the month leading into the race. For Javelina, I only managed 42 mi/wk during that same period. In the months since though, I've noticed a void where training used to be. It's driven me crazy - within a week, I've oscillated between being done with running and signing up for my next 100 miler. Last week I decided finishing this would probably help me figure out a way forward, so here we go. I wrote ~90% of this within the week of the race and t

Preparation Four years ago, I ran my first marathon. It was around that time that I heard about ultrarunning, which covers races for any distance beyond 26.2 miles. What stood out to me the most though was the 100 mile distance. I think the first time you learn about people running that far, your initial reaction falls into one of two camps: 1. That's impossible! 2. That's possible? I fell into the second group the first time I read about renowned ultrarunner Scott Jurek winning several 100 mile races. Not only was this guy running 100 mile races across the mountains of California, but he was doing it with hundreds of other people. And there were hundreds of these races across the world, spanning decades back. It blew my mind. The marathon always reigned supreme for me as the longest distance a person could go, but I learned that people were running way, way, longer than that, up and down mountains, and I wanted to try. The past four years have entailed a consistent effort to w