Why I'm Running 100 Miles Again: My Pinhoti Training Journey
A few months ago, I signed up for the Pinhoti 100. Not because I needed another race belt buckle, and definitely not because 100 miles through the Alabama mountains sounded easy. I signed up because I needed something hard.
I've run 100-milers before, so I know exactly what I'm getting myself into this time. The specific brand of suffering, the moments in the middle of the night when your legs stop cooperating and your mind starts negotiating, the way mile 70 feels nothing like mile 30 no matter how well you prepared. Knowing all that doesn't make it less intimidating. If anything, it makes it more real.
So why do it again?
Honestly, it comes down to a promise I try to keep with myself: do hard things. And let's be honest, hard things are not fun while you're in them. Somewhere around mile 60, when your body wants to quit and your mind is negotiating with you at 3 a.m. on a dark trail, there is nothing enjoyable happening. But the feeling on the other side of that is unlike anything else. There's a kind of reward you only get from finishing something that tried to break you, something that felt impossible twenty miles earlier. That feeling is almost addicting. Once you've felt what it's like to finish something you weren't sure you could do, you start chasing that feeling again. It doesn't come from a good day at work or a comfortable week. It comes from mile 87 when everything hurts and you keep moving anyway, and then it comes again at the finish line.
This is actually something I think about constantly with our patients. When someone comes in dealing with pain or an injury, one of the first things we talk about isn't just fixing what hurts, it's finding something for them to work toward. A real goal. Whether that's playing 18 holes without guarding their back, finishing a 5K, or just getting back to the gym consistently, having a target changes everything. It's a lot easier to push through the hard, uncomfortable parts of rehab when you're working toward something that matters to you, rather than just trying to make pain go away. Pain relief alone doesn't keep people motivated for long. A goal does. That's true for a training block, and it's true for recovery.
There's also a more practical reason, and it's probably one a lot of you reading this can relate to. Training for a race like Pinhoti keeps me honest. It's easy, especially running a clinic and a life, to let "staying active" quietly become "staying active when it's convenient." A 100-mile race on the calendar doesn't let me get away with that. It demands consistency I wouldn't hold myself to otherwise. The long runs have to happen. The recovery has to happen. The sleep, the fueling, the mobility work I tell patients about — I actually have to do it, not just talk about it.
Right now, training looks like a lot of early mornings before the clinic opens, weekends built around long runs instead of long naps, and a growing pile of trail shoes by the door. Some weeks feel great — legs feel strong, everything clicks. Other weeks I'm grinding through tired miles because the plan says so, trusting it all adds up. That's the part nobody posts about: most of ultra training isn't inspiring. It's just showing up on the days you don't feel like it.
What I'm looking forward to most isn't actually race day, as strange as that sounds. It's everything leading up to it — the process of building something in myself over months that I can't fake or shortcut. Race day is just where all of that gets tested.
I'll be sharing more as training ramps up this fall — the good weeks and the rough ones. If you've got a big goal of your own, whether it's a race, a lift, a return to a sport you love, or just getting back to moving without pain, I get it. That pull toward doing something hard for yourself doesn't need to make sense to anyone else.
More updates to come as Pinhoti gets closer.
— Dr. Cory
