Getting There (or not)

“It’s about a bajillion degrees as I run past LaGuardia, all radiated heat off the slabs of tarmac, the jetfuel sizzling the air. I’ve just run 40 miles in about 7 1/2 hours, and it’s all felt very decent.”

Narrator: He would then have to walk the next 20 miles in about 5 1/2 hours, stopping to buy a ginger ale from a taco vendor, and a bottle of Pellegrino from a gas station minimart, enjoying the air conditioning for like the first time in his life.

I started to write about TGNY100 2025 as if it were a normal race report. As normal as running that far ever is.

But it was not normal. It’s new for me to fail at my goal for an ultra. And for this one, I would have claimed that I didn’t really have a goal.

But I did.

I did I did I did.

My secret goal was to run, not the 100k I signed up for, but the full 100 miles.

I kept it secret even from myself.

Until I got back to my hotel in Times Square at 8 or 9pm and discovered that although I had thought I’d reserved it for Saturday night, I had been supposed to check out that morning as I tiptoed silently through the empty lobby and past the still-partying tourists up Broadway.

Now that’s interesting.

I arrived at the Forest Hills 100k finish line around 6pm. When I told them I had made myself a 5pm cutoff to go on for 100 miles, someone told me that I was still quite early and would still have a decent 100 mile time, even now I was almost an hour over that cutoff.

I internally agreed that I would likely be under 24 hours even if I walked the whole way. But that’s 6 whole hours slower than I was in 2019. So, why walk (likely, mostly) another 38 miles? Sure it’s my favourite section of the course, but no way I’d enjoy it just limping along, surely?!

If only I could let go of my 2019 ultra-self. Maybe one day, I will.

Looking somewhat dehydrated a few miles from the finish.