There was a time when I thought getting better at ultra running meant doing more.
More miles.
More elevation.
More races.
Longer weekends.
Harder sessions.
If 50 miles was good, 100 had to be better. If one race was challenging, perhaps two would prove something. There was always another distance, another mountain, another finish line waiting.
But somewhere along the way, I started asking a different question.
What if the real challenge isn’t seeing how far I can run — but seeing how long I can stay capable of running?
That changes everything.
I don’t want to peak. I want to last.
I’m fascinated by longevity.
Not longevity in the sense of simply adding years to a calendar. I want those years to be useful.
I want to be able to run.
I want to be strong enough to carry my own kit.
I want good balance, good mobility and enough energy to get up and go.
I want to be mentally sharp.
I want to be curious.
I want to travel, explore, learn new things and still feel that pull towards adventure.
And, importantly, I want a life outside running.
That’s the bit that can sometimes get lost.
Because ultra running can easily become all-consuming.
Training. Nutrition. Recovery. Race planning. Kit. Weather. Routes. Sleep. Heart rate. Data.
It’s fascinating — until suddenly you’re organising your entire life around the next race.
And I’m not sure that’s longevity.
The body has a bill to pay
Ultra running teaches you a lot about suffering.
You learn that the body can keep moving long after the brain has started negotiating.
You learn to eat when you don’t feel like eating.
You learn to keep going when your feet hurt, your legs are tired and the weather has turned.
You discover that discomfort isn’t necessarily danger.
But there’s another lesson that becomes increasingly important:
Recovery isn’t weakness.
It’s part of the training.
The older I get, the less interested I am in winning the battle with my body every single day.
I want to work with it.
There is a difference.
Hard training creates a stimulus.
Recovery allows you to adapt.
Sleep, food, easy days, strength work and time away from training aren’t obstacles to performance.
They’re what make performance possible.
And if the goal is longevity, recovery becomes even more important.
Because I don’t want to be incredibly fit for one decade and broken for the next.
I want to still be moving when I’m old.
Strong matters
There’s something wonderfully simple about running.
Put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
But running isn’t the only physical skill worth preserving.
Strength matters.
Especially as we get older.
I don’t want to be able to run 100 kilometres but struggle to pick something up off the floor.
I want legs that can climb mountains and muscles that can help me carry the furniture.
I want enough strength and mobility to make everyday life easy.
So strength training isn’t the enemy of endurance.
It’s part of the bigger picture.
The aim isn’t necessarily to maximise every metric.
It’s to build a body that is useful.
A body that can run, lift, carry, climb, balance, recover and adapt.
And then there’s the brain
One of the things I love most about long-distance running is what happens inside your head.
Hours alone on a trail can strip life back to something beautifully simple.
Eat.
Drink.
Move.
Look around.
Keep going.
But I don’t want running to be the only thing that keeps my brain alive.
Longevity has a mental side too.
Read something difficult.
Learn a language.
Understand something you don’t understand.
Have conversations that challenge your assumptions.
Try something you’re bad at.
Stay interested in the world.
I think curiosity is one of the great forms of fitness.
You can train your legs for an ultra.
But you also have to keep training your mind for life.
Sometimes the healthiest training session is no training session
This is probably one of the hardest things for an endurance athlete to accept.
There are days when you should run.
There are days when you should train hard.
And there are days when the best thing you can do is nothing.
Sleep in.
Go for a walk.
Eat properly.
Spend time with your family.
See a friend.
Read.
Sit outside.
Do something completely unrelated to sport.
Because your life is bigger than your training plan.
That’s an easy sentence to write and a surprisingly difficult one to live.
Especially when you’re competitive.
Especially when you’re used to measuring progress.
But sometimes progress looks like restraint.
Sometimes progress is choosing not to squeeze another session into an already full day.
Sometimes the mature athlete isn’t the person who can push hardest.
It’s the person who knows when not to.
I still want to go hard
None of this means I’ve lost the desire to challenge myself.
Quite the opposite.
I still want the big days.
I still want the mountains.
I still want the feeling of being completely spent at the end of something that once seemed impossible.
That’s part of why I run.
There is something incredibly satisfying about discovering that your limits have moved.
But I don’t want every day to be an attempt to find those limits.
I want contrast.
Hard days and easy days.
Long runs and short runs.
Training and rest.
Adventure and ordinary life.
Intensity and calm.
That’s probably what balance really means.
Not doing everything equally.
Knowing what deserves your energy — and when.
The finish line has changed
Someone once said live your life like there is a video crew filming your every move for a movie and you are the star, look how your behaviour changes for the better. This is how I live my life now with a pretend video crew filming my every move.
When you’re younger, the finish line can be very clear.
A time.
A distance.
A race.
A placing.
A personal best.
But eventually you start to see a much bigger finish line.
It’s decades away.
And that’s the one I’m interested in now.
I want to arrive there with something left in the tank.
I want to be the older person who can still head out for a run because they can.
Who can walk up a hill without thinking about it.
Who can pick up a grandchild.
Who can carry a backpack.
Who can travel without worrying whether their body will cope.
Who can sit around a table with friends and still be curious about what comes next.
Who hasn’t spent all their physical and mental capital chasing a number on a watch.
The ultimate endurance event
Maybe that’s what ultra running has really taught me.
The ultimate endurance event isn’t a 100-mile race.
It’s life.
And there is no medal for reaching the end completely exhausted.
The goal is to go the distance well.
To stay strong.
To stay mobile.
To stay sharp.
To stay curious.
To keep challenging yourself without destroying yourself.
To have enough discipline to train — and enough wisdom to stop.
To run hard when you want to run hard.
And to know that sometimes the most important miles are the ones you don’t run.
Because ultimately, I don’t want to be someone who spent their life preparing for the next race.
I want to be someone who was fit enough, healthy enough and curious enough to enjoy the whole journey.
That’s the ultra I’m training for now.
Not the longest race.
The longest life — lived well.
Mike.
UltraEnduranceLab