Do the Hard Thing: My Bootlegger 100 Mile Race Recap
Do the hard thing.
That was the mindset I carried into the Bootlegger 100... and let me tell you… it was HARD.
The Bootlegger 100 is held at Indian Springs/Dauset Trails Forest System in Georgia. The course is made up of a roughly 10-mile loop with about 600 feet of elevation gain per loop, meaning the full 100 miles adds up to just over 10,000 feet of climbing. The loop starts and finishes at the pavilion by the lake, with runners passing their drop bags and crew around mile 4.8 before heading back out to do it all again.
Ten miles.
Repeat it ten times.
Simple, right?
Not exactly.
This race was brutally hot, and the heat became one of the biggest challenges of the day. I also had an allergic reaction to my socks that turned into a terrible rash and blisters around my ankles and feet. And, for roughly 80 miles, I felt sick.
There were a LOT of moments when I wanted to quit.
I cried. Several times. I was in pain. I was dry-heaving. I was sunburned. I was exhausted. I was miserable And yet, every time I thought, I can't do this anymore, I found a way to keep moving.
I had an incredible crew and pacers around me who made an absolutely miserable day somehow fun. They kept me laughing when I wanted to cry, encouraged me when I was struggling, and reminded me why I was out there in the first place.
That support mattered more than I can put into words, s
ometimes doing the hard thing doesn't mean doing it alone.
It means surrounding yourself with people who believe in you when you aren't sure you believe in yourself.
People who will tell you to keep going. People who will make you laugh when you're miserable. People who will sit with you in the hard moments and remind you that you're capable of more than you think, eventually, after what felt like an eternity, I crossed that finish line.
100 miles. I was proud.
But I also learned a lesson that I don't want to gloss over. The part of the race I didn't expect happened after the race, I ended up in the hospital with rhabdomyolysis. That was a wake-up call.
As an endurance athlete and a coach, I thought I understood hydration and electrolytes. But this experience taught me that understanding something in theory and actually executing it correctly during an extreme endurance event are two very different things.
I lost an estimated 15.3 liters of sweat—about four gallons—over the course of the race.
I took nearly 200,000 steps and burned more than 10,000 calories according to my watch.
Those numbers sound wild—and they are—but the bigger lesson wasn't the calorie burn or the step count.
It was realizing just how much fluid and electrolyte replacement matters when you're asking your body to work for hours and hours in extreme heat.
I learned a lot from this race about hydration, sodium, fueling, recovery, and respecting what my body is telling me.
And that's something I'm incredibly grateful for.
Because being tough isn't about ignoring every warning sign your body gives you.
It's not about proving you can suffer the most.
It's not about pushing through something dangerous just because you've decided you're not allowed to quit.
True toughness also means knowing how to take care of yourself.
Knowing when you need fuel.
Knowing when you need fluids and electrolytes.
Knowing when you need to slow down.
Knowing when you need to stop.
And knowing that one difficult experience doesn't erase everything you've accomplished.
What I'll remember most
I won't remember every mile.
I won't remember every hill.
I probably won't remember most of the conversations I had out there.
But I'll remember the people.
I'll remember the laughter.
I'll remember the tears.
I'll remember the moments when I was convinced I couldn't take another step and somehow took another one anyway.
I'll remember crossing that finish line as well as the lesson that came afterward. The Bootlegger 100 was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It was also one of the experiences that taught me the most.
I'm proud that I finished. I'm proud that I kept going when it was hard.
I'm proud of the people who surrounded me and helped me get there.
And I'm incredibly thankful that I get to take what I learned from this experience into the next challenge.
So yes…
Do the hard thing. Challenge yourself. Do things that scare you. Find out what you're capable of. But don't confuse suffering with strength.
Surround yourself with people who love you, support you, and will help you through the hard parts.
Listen to your body, pay attention! Take care of yourself. And when the next hard thing comes along, remember:
You are probably capable of more than you think
