15:54 1ST PLACE at the Long Beach Enlightened 100

15:54    WHAAATT!!!!!

1st Place at the Long Beach Enlightened 100 MILE RACE!

 

 

 

Talking with kids from the 100 Mile Club

Thomas Podell Berlin Wall 100 Mile Race Video

My Mauerweg Experience from Thomas Podell on Vimeo.

Berlin Wall 100 Mile Race Photos

17:56 

21st Place... 
What an amazing experience! First of all, this isn't just another race, it's a race on the exact site where the Berlin Wall separated West Berlin from the rest of East Germany. Now, 25 years after the Wall came down I was able to run and experience a time capsule, from a place where running 100 miles was never an option. Berlin is an amazing and unique city. A melting pot of post war industrial buildings and low income high rises, now fully intertwined with the commercialized and free trade West. The old and the new- together.

Endure the Bear 50k

Hail, Lightning, Thunder, Flash Floods, and 5th Place. 
6 hours of mountain high fun!

Bulldog 50k

7th PLACE in BULLDOG 50k and one more 15 mile loop for fun!

Well, it's been one week since my Leadville let down, and after the Bulldog 50k, my confidence is beginning to come back. I went into the race with the specific goal of finishing, and feeling like I had a lot left, and then do the Bulldog loop of 15 miles, one more time.

What should I have done differently in Leadville?

In-Depth Conversation with Myself.

On the drive back from Colorado, I had a lot of time to contemplate what went wrong in Leadville. Did I go out too hard? I don't think so, my legs felt great, I wasn't even sore the next day, and I was actually 10 minutes behind my predicted time at mile 40. I felt I was running within my capabilities. Was it my eating? Was it the altitude? I believe it was a mixture of both. First, I arrived 3 days before the race to acclimate to the elevation, but I have since learned, that was the worst thing I could have done. I should have either arrived the day of the race, or a week or two before. With just 3 days, my body was constantly fatiguing, trying to recover from the altitude, and it wasn't long enough. Add the fact, I was eating more calories than normal, trying not to bonk, I put my body into the red zone, and I was unable to recover. I couldn't get enough blood to my stomach to digest food, which was then compounded by my pace up the mountain, and that I was going above 12,600 ft. It became a perfect storm and I was relegated to vomiting and dry heaving for 7 hours. To make maters worse, since I was unable to hold anything down, I was dehydrated and my blood sugar was down in the gutter. 13.5 lbs down from the start of the race, there was no coming back from this.

LEADVILLE 100 mile trail run

 Altitude Sickness: Stops me in my tracks

Elevation Training

Training Weekend at Elevation

The BADWATER 135 Experience

PACING DANNY WESTERGAARD AT BADWATER

I have been wanting to compete in the toughest foot race on the planet, and that race is the Badwater 135. This is a 135 mile race from Death Valley to Mount Whitney in July, with temperatures reaching 128 degrees!! The first step towards that goal was taken, I was able to pace my good friend Danny Westergaard as he completed his 8th double Badwater. A unfathomable as 135 miles in unforgiving heat seems, Danny does it twice!