My first 100K at Canyons
The lesson from my first 100K was simple: slower is faster when the cost of going too hard shows up later.
In April 2025 I ran my first 100K at Canyons Endurance Runs. I had trained for it in Orlando, Florida, which is a strange place to prepare for a mountain race. My long runs came from flat roads, humid mornings, swamp trails, and time with the O-Town Blazers. There were no real climbs and no long technical descents. There was heat, dirt, roots, water, and repetition.
That kind of training builds something. It did not fully prepare my quads for twenty miles of mountain downhills.
The race started at 5am, in the cold and snow. I remember the strangeness immediately: months of Florida swamp training, and now I was standing in the dark at the start of a 100K in winter conditions, carrying poles, layers, food, and a very optimistic idea of how the day might go.
The mistake I made early
Like many first ultra mistakes, mine was simple: I started too fast.
Not dramatically fast. Not in a way that felt stupid at the time. Just a little too excited, a little too fresh, and too willing to take the early miles for free. The problem with mountain races is that the bill comes due later.
By around mile 20, my quads were blown from the downhills. Not tired. Blown. Every descent became a negotiation, and I realized the race had changed. Whatever clean plan I brought to the start line was mostly decorative.
I dropped something like 100 spots. That sounds bad because it was bad. People kept passing. I was moving, but not racing the way I imagined. The day became smaller: less about pace, less about position, less about the version of myself I had brought to the start.
It became one step at a time.
I had to learn during the race
The best thing that happened to me was also the bad thing: blowing up early forced me to adapt quickly.
Before Canyons, I mostly thought of poles as something for climbing. You use them to push uphill, save your legs, and keep rhythm. That was the mental model I brought from training.
After my quads started failing, I had to learn a different skill in real time: how to move downhill with poles. Not gracefully at first. More like survival engineering. Plant the poles. Stabilize the body. Take pressure off the legs. Shorten the stride. Stop braking so aggressively. Find a pattern that did not destroy me further.
It was not fast, but it was movement. Movement was the whole game.
That was the first lesson: slower is faster is not a motivational quote. It is a physical fact. If I go too hard early, especially downhill, the time I think I gained can become meaningless. The body collects interest. The mountain keeps accounting.
Eventually I found a new rhythm. I stopped waiting to feel good. I stopped trying to get back to the race I wanted. I started solving the race I actually had: eat before I wanted to eat, drink before I felt desperate, keep moving before the brain had time to negotiate.
The banalities mattered. Food. Salt. Coke. Mountain Dew. Small bites. Small sips. Another aid station. Another climb. Another descent. Another mile. Ultra running makes ordinary things important because ordinary things keep you alive in the race.
The long middle
There is a part of an ultra where the story becomes boring from the outside and intense from the inside. Nothing dramatic is happening. You are not making a heroic move. There is no music and no clean narrative. You are just moving through discomfort and trying not to become stupid.
That was most of the race for me.
I watched people who looked strong early start to fade later. Some were bonking. Some were sitting. Some had that empty look where the body is still present but the system has gone offline. I recognized how easily that could have been me if I had kept forcing the original plan.
Blowing up early was painful, but it gave me information early. It made the race honest. I had to assess, adapt, and become conservative before it was too late. That probably saved my finish.
At some point, the race stopped being about damage and became about management. I was still hurting, but I was no longer surprised by the hurt. The pain became part of the operating environment.
Move downhill with poles.
Eat.
Drink.
Reset.
Keep going.
Slow enough to survive. Fast enough to keep advancing.
I started gaining places back. Not all of them, but enough. After dropping about 100 spots, I gained back roughly 70. That felt less like a comeback and more like proof that patience is not passive. Patience is a strategy.
Into the dark
I finished around 10pm, after about 16 hours on the course. By then it was dark again. The race had started in the dark, with snow, and now I was finishing in the dark, using a night flashlight in a race for the first time.
Near the end, I was moving around some of the 100-mile runners. They were in a completely different state than I was. I had been out there for 16 hours. They had been moving for something like 28 hours when I passed some of them a few miles before the finish.
I do not know how to describe the human state I saw there. It was beyond normal tiredness and beyond normal athletic effort. Some looked hollowed out and still determined. Some looked like they were operating from a place deeper than personality. Not fast, not pretty, not dramatic, but still moving.
It was hard to watch and encouraging at the same time. That is one of the things I will remember most: not just my own pain, but the quiet evidence that people can keep going much longer than the normal mind believes.
What stayed with me
My first 100K was not clean. I made mistakes. I underestimated the downhills. I paid for starting too fast. I had to learn skills during the race that I should have respected before the race.
But I finished.
Sixteen hours after starting in the cold and snow, after blowing my quads, after losing positions, after learning to use poles downhill, after Coke and Mountain Dew and all the small ultra-running necessities, I crossed the finish line.
The simple lesson is that slower is faster. The deeper lesson is that endurance is not about avoiding pain. It is about staying functional inside it. I do not need to feel good to make progress. I need a strategy, enough humility to change it, and enough patience to keep taking the next step.
I will never forget that race. Not because it went perfectly. Because it forced me to become smaller, simpler, and more honest:
eat
drink
adapt
move
One step at a time.