135 miles. Through Death Valley. In July, when the temperatures reach well over 120 degrees. The road gets so hot that runners, who appear almost other-worldly in white suits to protect themselves from the sun, often have to run on the white painted line, just to avoid melting their shoes. It's enough to make even…

In the first eight miles of the Laurel Highlands 50K — for which I trained almost entirely on the track, with precisely zero runs longer than seven miles — there was a 700-foot climb followed by a 500-footer followed by a 1200-footer.  And all of it on rocky, technical terrain like I've never run before….

Ask any longtime runner, and chances are there's a race that holds a special place in his or her heart. Maybe it wasn't their fastest race ever.  But under some tough circumstances, it's the effort they're most proud of, the time they were able to dig the deepest. Perhaps it was a beautiful destination race…

It makes me a little sad to report that I'm not going to be running 100 miles on June 4th.  But I'm okay with that. The reason?  No excuses or blaming external circumstances.  I honestly just haven't found the discipline recently to get out there for 20, 30, and 50 mile training runs.   It's not…