reboot blog

Race report: A 100-miler where I dropped out and what I learned

Completing a 100-miler was the goal; dropping out was not. I entered the 100-mile race at the Black Dog 100 in Tasmania’s Central Highlands and withdrew at mile 89, with 11 miles left. My right leg failed on a descent, and safety ended the race.

The result was disappointing, yet the failure was useful. I could see where my plan became unrealistic, where excitement overrode discipline, and how a small nutrition mistake became expensive across nearly a full day of racing. It was a useful lesson because the problems were ordinary enough to change in training.

The event also sharpened my view of endurance as a long project. A finish is only the final visible output; before it come sleep, food, judgement, recovery and repeated decisions made while tired. A race plan has to survive bad patches, not merely look clever in a notebook.

The setting was unmistakably Australian: cool, damp forest around the Central Highlands, button-grass shoulders and long forestry roads. Before the race, Canberra’s hard frosts had made night running familiar, turning the clothing, lighting and bottle-handling drills into routine rather than race-day improvisation.

The plan looked solid on paper

I had trained for the distance rather than merely completing a shorter event. My longest efforts had reached 50 miles, with back-to-back long runs, hill work and deliberate practice of eating while moving. Canberra’s winter nights were useful: cold enough to rehearse wearing layers, warming them and refilling bottles without stopping for long.

The race plan was specific. Start no faster than 8:30 per mile, take 250 calories each hour, drink regularly and reach mile 50 around 7:30 in the morning. My target was 28 hours, leaving a generous margin under the cut-off. On paper, it balanced effort, nutrition and risk with sensible margins.

Its weakness was that every margin assumed I would make ordinary decisions well. The plan did not account for getting carried away, missing a feed or treating a niggle as background noise. Those were not dramatic variables, but they became the race.

Dawn rewarded the wrong kind of confidence

We started in darkness, and the first miles felt absurdly smooth. The recent training gave me confidence, so I slipped above the planned pace. At mile 30, I was nearly 45 minutes ahead of schedule. In hindsight, that was not efficiency; it was borrowed time.

The early course had enough gentle track to disguise the cost. I kept telling myself that banking time would help later, when weather or terrain worsened. By then I was running with more tension than the pace justified. My breathing was fine, so I ignored the first sign that smooth was not the same as controlled.

The time gain disappeared as the kilometres accumulated. Later in the race, climbing one forest hill could take 25 minutes, and descending loose ground demanded concentration. The buffer I had built in the first morning gave me permission to make worse choices instead of giving me the strength to execute the plan.

The race was lost in the middle

The clearest mistake was under-fuelling. For the first three hours, I averaged nearer 180 calories an hour than the planned 250. I could eat, yet I did not want to. A handful of gels was easier than chewing while moving, so I kept postponing real food.

Remote checkpoints did not fix the problem. The volunteers had soup, apples, rice cakes and Milo in a thermos, while my crew carried more gels, drink mix and sandwiches between forestry-road checkpoints in a ute. The supply was there. My routine was not. I ate when hunger became uncomfortable rather than when the timer said to.

By mile 55, I was noticeably empty. I slowed on an exposed climb, then tried to recover the time with another surge. That oscillation burned more energy and made eating less appealing. A scheduled drink every 25 minutes and a small feed every hour would have been less sophisticated, but much more effective.

The stop was a decision, not a surrender

Around mile 82, my right hamstring began tightening on a descent. It eased while walking, so I kept moving and blamed the hills. That choice felt disciplined, but I was actually avoiding evidence. By the next checkpoint, the weakness was present on flat ground as well.

I reached mile 89 with close to four hours remaining before my 28-hour target. The leg could not produce a controlled stride, and the route still included uneven descents. I could have shuffled onward, yet doing so risked a fall, a worse injury and a difficult extraction for my crew.

I withdrew there, 11 miles short. Part of me still argued for a slow walk to the finish. The responsible choice was different: stop while I could still communicate clearly, receive care and drive home with my crew. The result stayed the same, but control returned to the decision.

A stronger system for the next hundred

Looking back, the improvements are less dramatic than they are specific. They can sit inside a training week and be checked at aid stations rather than left to race-day judgement.

The list is less about becoming cautious than preserving decision quality. My worst moments came from treating discomfort as an inconvenience. A better system notices those moments early, when they still cost minutes rather than kilometres.

Recovery was part of the training

After the DNF, I did not punish myself with a heroic block of running. I walked, ate properly and let the leg settle. Back in Hobart, the post-race chicken parma takeaway mattered more than another endurance metric. It marked the race as finished without pretending the distance had not mattered.

The first useful change was physical. I added slower downhill running and strength work to my Canberra training, then progressed to long efforts followed by descents. I also practised drinking in the dark and eating food I did not particularly enjoy. Fluency comes from repetition, especially when fatigue has narrowed attention.

The second change was mental. I now treat a slipping plan as information, not a verdict. That carries beyond racing: in a long work project, changing scope at the first sign of trouble can look like failure, yet it may preserve the outcome that matters. The goal is not blind persistence; it is informed continuation.

The lesson I kept

The race did not teach me that quitting is good or that injury is inevitable. It taught me that patience early and honest assessment late are forms of speed. Both protect the quality of decisions when every kilometre feels heavier than the last.

I still wanted the finish, and disappointment was real. The result still belongs in the record. So does the fact that I stopped when continuing had become unsafe, and the fact that a 30-minute feeding routine might have changed the day.

The lesson to remember is simple: protect the decision-maker, and the long effort becomes stronger.