WE WAITED. I waited. The race staff waited. Crews, defeated runners and the media, everyone waited. We stood there staring at the woods, and the woods stared back. In this day of GPS, spot trackers, cell phones and...
Articles by Gary Cantrell
There was one thing that worried me about my Transcon. I did not want to miss out on the people. One of the great joys of journey running is the people you meet along the way. Passing slowly across the countryside gives...
Forget everything you have heard about a positive attitude. What every ultrarunner needs to be successful is a healthy dose of pessimism. Optimism is a weakness; a flaw in our personality that our subconscious exploits t...
It is seven months from today that I plan to start my six and a half million steps across North America. I have this dream of standing on the beach in Newport and watching the sun rise out of the Atlantic Ocean, befor...
I have this image in my mind that I think of as the GPS Olympics. Runners take their places along the curved starting line for the 1500 meters on the track awaiting the starting gun, just the same as they always have....
The most frequent cause of a DNF might surprise you. Are most DNF’s caused by starting too fast? Are they brought on by the mythical “bonk?” Are we most often forced out of races by sprained ankles, pulled muscles, elect...
Rules; who likes ’em? Nobody. Who needs ’em? Everybody. Running ultras is supposed to be fun. The last thing we want to deal with is having a bunch of rules to worry about. Unfortunately, ultrarunning is practiced...
Uncertainty is, perhaps, the cruelest foe of all. The race was slated to begin in the dark, at 0142 hours. Mere minutes into the race, the field entered a netherworld in which the choices were pitch black without a li...
As a high school coach, I share the knowledge with every other high school coach, that one of the critical components of a successful season is senior leadership. It is not that your seniors have to be the best players o...
As an enthusiast for both sports and education, I find that many people who value education have a distorted view of sports. They feel that sports are a negative, that they are overemphasized, and the time spent on prepa...
Although there has been some debate about whether it’s correct to call them “words,” the Eskimo really do have 50 different words for “snow.” This only makes sense, as these Arctic natives live in a world of snow. It mak...
In the September running of A Race For The Ages, some 28 runners aged 70 and up took the field. When the dust settled, 25 of them had amassed 100 or more miles. Moreover, the winner was 68, and five of the top 10 were ov...
It was the wee hours of the morning at A Race for the Ages, and things were quiet around the scoring tent. For the crews and spectators, this was just like any other day, and they were sleeping the night away. Other than...
The old guys at ARFTA have stories to tell. they have a love of life to share. and lessons to teach. greatest of those lessons... to savor the moment. when we are young, we do the things that young men do. w...
It was late afternoon of the sixth day of their trek, and JT, Kim and Novle walked resolutely down the middle of 16th Model Road. Their feet and legs ached with that deep-down ache that comes from 240 miles on the road....
I read that the Western States 100, probably the most coveted starting slot in all of ultrarunning, had a 7% DNS (Did Not Start) this year. Now, that might seem shocking. Seven out of 100, nearly one in 10 people who wer...
I feel sorry for the Bud People. We only have five senses with which to enjoy our running, and they blithely toss one of them away. Ears plugged, they never hear the sounds of the birds singing to greet the new day. Lost...
It is funny how words can become charged with emotion, above and beyond their actual meaning. Diversity is one such word. By its true definition, diversity is one of the great strengths of the sport of ultrarunning. U...
Not many of us would look for advice on running ultras from our grandparents. Our sport is a relatively new arrival on the sports scene, and time-honored secrets to success are in short supply. The equipment we use has e...
Runners have a different relationship with their surroundings than people in cars. Traveling at footspeed, we have time to see everything, and really see it. We can afford to look around, without worrying about going off...
I almost did not go. No one watches the long-range weather forecast like an ultrarunner. Whether we are planning some long training run or preparing for an event, nothing weighs as heavily on us as the forecast. Of co...
I had to give up keeping a running log years ago. I always loved my running logs; the columns of numbers were addictive. The problem was, running logs caused me to get injured. If I had a number in the box for yesterday,...
It was a less than fitting end to an otherwise successful day of race directing. The race was over; the last finisher had finished, and all the runners had been accounted for. So why was I standing in the dark with a par...
As I stepped into the chute to await my turn at the start, Ed Dodd and Dave Obelkevich jogged past. Ed Dodd was the winner of one of the most exciting 24-hour championship races ever held, when he came from 16th place at...
The Vol State has had an unexpected surge in popularity, probably due to our human drive to explore. Some inexplicable hunger compels us to see what is just over the next hill, or just around the next bend. In a world th...
When I turned 30, my mother took me aside and, with a very serious face, asked me: “When are you going to grow up, and stop this running thing?” I had to think about it. Recess was for kids. We were supposed to run an...
To sum up the 2015 Barkley in a nutshell, there were a lot of runners who ran quite well for a very long time. And then they all flamed out. Not only were there no finishers in the 100-mile main event, no runner reached...
I have been coaching basketball for about 30 years. Success in basketball requires the development of some very complex fundamental skills, and over the years I have come to recognize a truth about skill development. A t...
Are you a boring ultrarunner? It’s not that hard to figure out. When people find out that you are one of those “ultramarathoners,” and let’s be honest, they’re going to find that out pretty quickly, the natural next ques...
Compete: strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same. There is possibly no other human characteristic treated with more ambivalence than competiti...