Mike Tyson once stated, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit.” The question becomes what’s our response when and if it happens to you, because the likelihood of getting hit in a fight is about 99.9%. In ultrarunning, what is it that allows one runner to soldier on while another succumbs to the upheaval of the moment?
Articles by Errol Jones
Once upon a time, in a land on the left coast of the continent, there existed people considered by some to be wacky, but certainly different. Among them lived a man who decided that he’d race alongside horses acro...
I’ve known races in the past to be canceled or postponed, but never the entire season as a whole being more or less shut down. To add to this mix, I lost my favorite sister, Gwen, to complications of the dreaded COVID virus, so I wasn’t feeling at all good about 2020. A sense of melancholy is exactly what I was feeling when I finally decided to try and enter the Heartland 100 yet again this year.
It usually begins as a sense of amazement and wonder. There are people wandering around in nature, half-clothed and on foot, covering hundreds of miles and paying good money for the opportunity. For the person who gave y...
So, you feel your game plan is set and you think you’re in control? You think you know which way is up? Sign up and toe the starting line of a trail 100-miler, and we’ll see who your daddy is. Full-blown summer is here,...
If I can stress one virtue every trail runner should possess in their arsenal of weapons, it’s the punch of patience. Something I’ve often struggled with over the years. Too often I get caught up in the moment, forget what it’s all about, ignore the signs and then it all comes crashing down.
Mike Tyson once stated, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit.” The question becomes what’s our response when and if it happens to you, because the likelihood of getting hit in a fight is about 99.9%. In ultrarunning,...
Whether you’re a veteran of 30 years and a hundred 100-milers or a newbie of 30 months and 10 events, everyone has stories to tell of trials and tribulations, joy and self-realization experienced while on the trails. The...
There are few real adversities to contend with when running trails. Running the trails and racing with others presents challenges and setbacks, but it’s what we do for fun. But life outside of running can be fraught with all sorts of real adversities.
There are few real adversities to contend with when running trails. Running the trails and racing with others presents challenges and setbacks, but it’s what we do for fun. But life outside of running can be fraught with...
When you do what we do, it sounds so easy. “I just need to cover a little more than three miles an hour.” Three miles an hour and just a little more, how hard can that be? It sounds so simplistic, so easy. Until you’re the one who has to accomplish it in the midst of a 100-mile event, then it becomes that monumental task.
When you do what we do, it sounds so easy. “I just need to cover a little more than three miles an hour.” Three miles an hour and just a little more, how hard can that be? It sounds so simplistic, so easy. Until you’re t...
It’s early in the year and as they say, “Hope springs eternal.” But when formulating plans for what’s to come it’s also important to start considering what your future exit strategy might be.
It’s early in the year and as they say, “Hope springs eternal.” But when formulating plans for what’s to come it’s also important to start considering what your future exit strategy might be. While being vibrant and o...
If you pound the dirt for long enough three things will probably happen. You will probably get off course and lost a time or two; you will run out of steam at one time or another (aka, a massive race-ending bonk); and th...
What I attempt to accomplish when I write upon these pages is to inform, enlighten and/or amuse and entertain. I’ve not crossed the finish line in a few races over the years, so DNF’s are not inconsistent with my makeup....
When I was growing up in Chicago some of my relatives would yammer in my ear about the way it used to be. How they had it back in their day: “I had to walk to school and back five miles in the snow, each way.” Their “sto...
Being the self-stated curmudgeon that I am, let me state this from the onset as strongly as possible: I love the sport of ultrarunning and marvel at the mindset and determination of trail runners/racers, and I get immeas...
In an April 2009 issue of the magazine Runners World, there was an article titled “Flight of the Bumble Bee” where I was referenced in the story and deemed the “Patron Saint of Pacers.” I’d given some advice to a woman who I’d find out later was a columnist for the sports rag.
In an April 2009 issue of the magazine Runners World, there was an article titled “Flight of the Bumble Bee” where I was referenced in the story and deemed the “Patron Saint of Pacers.” I’d given some advice to a woman w...
It’s not rocket science (no pun intended), it’s one of the most basic things we can do. Since we’ve come down from the trees we’ve been running, either away from or towards something. It’s what animals do. You put one fo...
When I first started running ultras, I was looking to extend the joy I received from running the roads, but without the crush of the urban environment. I saw a photo on the office wall of the director of a sports care center that I had office space in. He was standing in running shorts and a singlet on top of a snow-covered mountain peak. I asked where that was.
It’s time to start climbing out of the funk of winter and get back to the basics of training and preparing for those upcoming races. It’s time to get busy, getting busy. There’s work to be done. But remember, there wi...
I knew from the onset that I shouldn’t be there, that I wasn’t truly trained or fit enough for the task at hand. But a combination of hubris and old age had me toeing the line. I had flown into what some of us jokingly r...
When I first started running ultras, I was looking to extend the joy I received from running the roads, but without the crush of the urban environment. I saw a photo on the office wall of the director of a sports care ce...
Seventeen years ago, I ran the Bear 100 for the first time. I’d dropped from the Wasatch Front 100 two weeks earlier without good reasoning. Three or four days later, my friends chided and goaded me for the egregious act...
This is not one of my usual rants, but rather an affirmation of a widely held concept. The fact is, the female of our species rules, though some of us men would like to believe that we have the upper hand, because we thi...
In ultras anything can and does happen once the gun goes off, no matter how well things have gone up to that point. When the event officially starts, the race takes on a life of its own. Hopefully we’re dialed in and can...
Every year since Gordy’s first trek from Squaw Valley to Auburn, many runners have tried to answer the call of the wild and make that epic journey. For some it’s been a successful quest, for others it’s been a dream unfu...
It was zero-dark-hundred and I was driving to a 100k event that I'd be working for the next 14 to 16 hours. I reflected on the many times over the years that I'd gotten up at such an hour to work or run a race. I thought...
Running gave me purpose when other aspects of life gave me cause for concern. Ultrarunning in particular gave me a true sense of community. Some of the friendships I made road running remain steadfast to this day, but there was never the community that I’ve always felt and experienced since transitioning to the trails and ultrarunnning in 1980.
When you’re out there pounding the trail and things are flowing well, you’ve got to revel in the moment, because it’s one of the primary reasons for being there in the first place. We know that those moments won’t last f...
For as far back as I can remember, I’ve run. I never owned a bike growing up, and my family never owed a car, so everywhere I went, I ran, walked or took public transportation. It just seemed more fun to run rather than...
In one of my early pieces for UltraRunning, I commented on some of the changes I’d seen come to the sport. I mentioned the explosion of people showing up for races wearing costumes – tutus, capes, court jester caps and s...
The longer I’m in the sport of ultrarunning, the harder it seems to become, but the greater my understanding and appreciation are for what I was once able to do in terms of time and placing, training and recovery. My app...
Do everything that you humanly can to get up on the game before you take on the course. Recently, I participated in a very popular 50k, and as one would expect, the usual accolades, comments and a few complaints came rolling in after the fact. One guy emailed that he’d showed up for the race 24 hours after the fact, thinking that the race was that morning. When he came to the realization that he’d had the wrong date, he decided to make the best of the very sobering awakening and he ran the course anyway, unassisted.
I was at a race recently where I was holding down a spot at an aid station like I was a storefront Indian statue. I’d arrived about an hour or so in advance of my runner’s expected arrival time, as I knew he might be an...
Do everything that you humanly can to get up on the game before you take on the course. Recently, I participated in a very popular 50k, and as one would expect, the usual accolades, comments and a few complaints came rol...
Little is more deflating to the spirit of a suffering runner who has struggled to get to what he or she thought would be an oasis, only to find that what they craved most—ice and cold drinks—is not there, or has been adu...
I’m not an avid reader of poetry, but the words in this Dylan Thomas poem have always resonated with me, and I think they express what I’ve done and what I continue to attempt to do in my ultrarunning. At various times over the years, my best friend has admonished me about my approach to my running and racing, and has pointed out an old adage: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If that bears fruit, then I guess most, if not all, ultrarunners are insane, or damn close to it.
The 2015 running of Western States is concluded, and congratulations are due to last-place female finisher Gunhild Swanson, to first-place male finisher Rob Krar and to all those in between. But some didn't get that cove...
It’s universally understood that there’s nothing easy about running and racing ultra distances. The mastery the headspace is more important to cultivate than the training miles that we put in in pursuit of ultra glory. If we come up short, we sometimes think that had we trained more, or harder, then maybe our outcome might have been better, when what really mattered was our mental and psychological approach to the task.
As the years fly by, I’m increasingly appreciative of what I was once capable of, especially compared to what I’m able to do now. For years, I took what I…
With the ever-increasing interest in the sport of ultrarunning has come an explosion of prospective entrants for certain races. This popularity has race directors resorting to lotteries, wait lists and other measures, in some cases just short of asking entrants for their firstborn for entry into their events.
By now it’s old news to many about that fateful day in August of 1974 when Gordy Ainsleigh’s horse wound up lame and he decided to take to the trails…