How To Run a 100-mile Race

A few weeks ago, John Clayton, having finally emerged out of the woods and mountains of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, jogged toward a banner strung between two poles in a clearing and stopped, approximately 28 hours and 41 minutes after he’d started.

His wife, Jaimie, and two kids were there; his hand was bleeding; his feet were blistered. But he had made it 100.6 miles on his own two legs, up and down enormous hills, mountains skittered with rocks, through streams, over boulders, running, running, all day and through the night.

One of the driving forces of this newsletter is to celebrate human performance and explore what we can about how such mastery is achieved. Most of the time our focus is on the professional athletes whose brilliance (or stumbles) we all can witness. But just as often I know we can find inspiration if we choose to look off the beaten trail.

There, probably, you will see John running.

I’ve known John a long time — roughly (gulp) 20 years since we went to college together and worked at the same college newspaper. In fact, I’d seen him a few weeks earlier at a wedding and talked about work and kids. He didn’t mention the epic race he’d been preparing for.

That’s just John, as humble as they come. But when I heard what he had done, I knew I had to speak with him about it. He was gracious enough to allow me to record our conversation to post in this newsletter.

I’ve had the good fortune to interview numerous endurance athletes in my career, including world-class marathon runners & triathletes, long-distance swimmers, and even a guy who paddle-boarded up the East Coast.

I know rarely are these athletes driven by money or fame, because if they are, well, they’ve chosen the wrong pursuits. But what exactly is driving them is harder to answer, which is why talking to John helped (to me, at least) clarify the steps of evolving from a semi-habitual road-runner in college into an extreme ultra-marathoner in his 30s.

John is also not a protein-hawking runfluencer. He has no Red Bull endorsement (that I know of). He’s a lawyer in D.C. with two young kids. He is constrained by the same career and family responsibilities I know too well. Still he summons the energy and determination to meet and conquer a demand like the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100. It’s one of the most impressive and inspiring things I can imagine.

My interview with him about how he did it is below, or you can watch the video above.

Q: I don’t imagine you just wake up and say you’re going to run a 100-mile race. What are the steps to conceiving that this is a reality for you?

A: Just as, like, a little bit of background, I have run on and off since college undergrad, and I did road marathons. I took a few years off here and there, when I went to law school. And then it was really when I moved out to Colorado in 2021 that a friend of mine, Alec Saslow from Syracuse, got me into trail running. He had done ultra marathons. I hate that name, because it sounds so cheesy, but it’s a catch-all term for anything that's over 26 miles. And I started, I did a 50k and then a 50-miler with him in Colorado, and then I did a couple other longer races. And then it just kind of got to the point where, like, you know, 100 miles was kind of like the next distance. I had originally some reticence. Fifty miles is hard enough. But there's something to 100 miles, just saying it, it sounds like such an amazing challenge. And there will be a period of time when I won't be able to do this. So while I am young(ish) and healthy(ish), I just wanted to give it a try.

Q: You had set this particular race as a target, or was it just the milestone of 100 miles that you had set out to reach?

A: I actually signed up for two other 100 milers before this, one in 2023 and then another in 2024, and both times in the process of training, I got injured and just wasn't able to make it to the starting line. Probably about a year ago, I decided that I wanted to give it another try. I picked this race, the Massanutten Mountain Trail 100 as the one that just seemed like the most interesting, challenging.

Q: What appeals to you about ultra-endurance events?

A: I'm a little bit of a Type A person. I feel like I need that challenge and that thing that's out there on the horizon that I'm striving toward. I also think my relationship with running in general has evolved a lot. When I started running marathons, it was all geared toward, ‘I want to run this time,’ and I got a little burnt out with that. When I started doing more trail running, that's just a totally different vibe. It's way less about how fast are you running, and it's more about the adventure and just being out in nature and exploring a new place, or just enjoying the peace and quiet of being in the woods or in the mountains. Once I kind of reframed running, runs are like an adventure. I'm still a Type A person, and I still want to do my best. But it just kind of like became more about the experience.

Q: You're a busy guy with a job and two young kids. How are you training for an event like this?

A: I worked with a running coach. This was after the second time I had signed up for and gotten injured trying to run 100 miles, and it was totally a game-changer for me. Dr. Jamie Blumentritt (Physical Therapy On The Run), I have to give her a shout out. She set out a training schedule for me and helps me correct some of the training errors that had led to my getting injured previously. But to more directly answer your question, the checkpoints are you have to run a lot, obviously, but it's just not like you can go out and run 50 miles every weekend. A) there's no time, and B) It's just not good for your body. So the peak training weeks were, you would do back-to-back long runs on the weekends, meaning like two 20-mile runs, one Saturday and one Sunday, and then additional 5- to 10-mile runs during the week. I always took a day off somewhere in there once a week, which was usually Monday for me. You're just constantly trying to toe the line between pushing further and building up time on your feet and mileage, but without getting injured, which is the balance that I had gotten wrong before.

Once I reframed running, now runs are like an adventure. I'm still a Type A person, and I still want to do my best. But it became more about the experience.

Q: Race Day. You’re there, you're setting foot on the starting line. What's going through your head?

A: My race morning was a calamity, of my own making. (laughs)

I have a vest that I wear for carrying food and water, and I have these two bottles that go in the vest — which I left in the fridge of the Airbnb. Which I only realized when we pulled into the camp where the race started. Luckily I had a third soft, like glass bottle, and then a bottle I just brought in the car to sip on the way there. It does not fit very well in a running vest, so I was like, ‘Well, I guess I'm just going to carry this in my hand for the first, you know, 30 miles.’” I had my my wife and my wife's parents were helping to crew me, and I was going to see them at like mile 33 so I knew they would have my my bottles at mile 33.

I had been told enough times that something's always gonna go wrong. Not like you're going to be an idiot and leave your water bottles in the fridge, but anyway, that was my first thing that happened. What are you going to do? Just kind of roll with it. Try not to turn it into something bigger than it is.

Q: Besides the missing bottles, what else is going through your head?

A: I thought I would have a moment before the race started where I would just be like, ‘Okay, this is awesome. I made it here. I'm just going to take a moment to appreciate this.’ But because it turned out to be kind of a calamity with the water bottles, and I was rushing around to get water into the water bottles and get things situated. And then, they were counting down. But honestly, it probably wasn't a bad thing. I had 28 hours to overthink everything from that point forward.

Q: How does the race actually work? You mentioned there are checkpoints throughout. Are there places where you stop to sleep? Are there places to sit down and eat and rest?

A: There's no sleeping. Some people do, but usually, if you are sleeping, then that means that something has gone wrong. You just kind of power through the night into the next day. There are aid stations. One of the reasons I chose this race is it's been around for almost 30 years. It's really, really, well run and has amazing volunteers. The aid stations, the spread at these places is great. They’ve got, like, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and bacon and tater tots. You're not always feeling good enough to eat it. But you were never more than, like, nine or 10 miles from an aid station where there was going to be food and water. I was lucky enough to have my wife and her parents crewing for me, so they met me at three places along the course and had everything from medical supplies to a change of shoes. You can also use drop bags to pack stuff into, and they'll take that to a designated aid station so you can access it.

One of the cool thing about these types of races is the volunteers. These are people who are some, in some cases, out in a tent, basically, in the woods the entire night, and they're just there for you. They're not getting paid to do that. They're just doing it out of the goodness of their heart. It’s this really awesome community of people who are excited to help. It’s very genuine. The amount of times where I would come into an aid station feeling really beat up and feeling defeated, and have someone ask me how I'm doing. ‘What can I get for you?’ ‘It's just five more miles to the next aid station you're doing great.’ It makes an incredible difference.

Q: Are you allowed to have a cell phone?

A: I did have a cell phone, yes.

Q: And as you're running at night, do you have a headlamp on?

A: Yes. That part was interesting — I mean, I've run at night, or more often super early in the morning, which is when I do a lot of my training. I have two kids, and a job that can be somewhat demanding. So my window to train was usually like 5am, sometimes earlier than that. I had been accustomed to running in the dark. It's a little different, though, when you're in place that’s pretty remote, there's often not much cell reception, and you're just by yourself in the woods and whatever else lives in those woods. I thought I would be a little on edge, but it ended up being quite peaceful in a lot of ways. It's just you and the little cone of light in front of you.

Q: Are you listening to music?

A: I did listen to music a little bit, but not that much, in part because I didn’t want my phone to die.

And when I'm in the woods, I just want to be aware of anything that's around me. When it's like 3am and you've been running for like 20-something hours, things get a little loopy. So I’d be just like singing randomly (laughs). If I heard rustling in the bushes, I would just start talking, ‘Oh, hey, just me. Just coming through.’ If I could’ve seen myself, I’m sure I would have looked like an absolute crazy person.

There will be a period of time when I won't be able to do this. So while I am young(ish) and healthy(ish), I wanted to give it a try.

Q: What was the hardest or most challenging moment in the race for you?

A: Well, adding to the difficulty of the course was they got like six inches of rain a couple days prior. The conditions were very difficult, very wet. There was a lot of standing water in places on the course. Times you'd be hiking up a steep hill and there would just be a stream of water coming down the trail. My feet were wet the whole time. And when you're running in wet shoes, wet socks, you can get a lot of blister issues. And that definitely happened to me. At one point it was in like, the 16s somewhere in the 16s, where my feet were really, really hurting because of blisters. I had a moment where I was like, ‘I think I can push through this, but this is going to be very difficult.’ Thankfully, I got to the next aid station, there was this woman who, they called her the foot doctor. I don't know if she was an actual physician, but she was amazing. Just volunteering her time. And she helped patch up my feet so that bought me, like, 10 miles, until my feet got soaked again, and then it was like the same thing all over.

Then the last big climb of the race was just crazy. I was so tired and it was just never ending. I had been warned that this was coming. But there's a section of the last climb that becomes like hiking through a stream, going uphill. You're just like, ‘I don't even know how I'm supposed to get 20 feet from here.’ You're looking for the trail. And I was just so tired. And my legs are so tired, and mentally, I was tired. That was really hard. But then, once you were through that, it was like they were kind enough to give us five or six fairly easy downhill miles to the finish line. But in the moment, it was one of the lower moments of any race that I’ve ever had.

Q: And what was the most peaceful or sublime moment in the race, excluding the the finish, which, I think we can all imagine, was sublime.

A: There were a lot of little moments where you're in the mountains, it's beautiful. It stopped raining fairly quickly into the race, and so it turned out to be a decently nice day. And it's just like, ‘How lucky are we to be here and able to do this?’ Those are my favorite moments of any race where you just have that feeling of gratitude.

Then, right after that last climb, when you have like five miles left to go, and it was all gravel roads, and it was like, ‘Okay, I'm gonna finish.’ Barring, you know, I get struck by lightning, or attacked by a bear or something, I’m going to finish.

Q: Now, how long has it taken for you to recover? Are you running again?

A: It’s not the most healthy thing to do for your body. My sleep has been kind’ve all over the place. I’m definitely getting there. I’m feeling a lot better than I did, I don’t know, 5 or 6 days ago. But it is for sure a process. But I also say that it’s all relative. I’m fine. I can go to work. I live life. But also through this whole experience, I know when my body feels fatigued, and so I can feel that I’m just not fully at my peak where I was heading into the race.

Q: What’s next on the to-do list?

A: I want to do more of these for as long as I’m able to. Who knows? The window could be short. But there are also people who ran this race in their 60s and 70s. It’s incredible. I couldn’t believe it. I think that’s so cool. I’m not saying that’s going to be me, but I would like to do this for as long as I’m able. I don’t know if it will always be 100-milers. But I love running, I love the—I hate to use the word ‘journey’—but the experience of training for a race and the discipline that that takes. I think there are a lot of things from that that translate into other parts of my life. I’d love to be able to run races with my kids someday, that’s my dream.

Links

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