Elena Horton finished as the sixth woman at the Kodiak 100K by UTMB in Big Bear Lake, California a couple of weekends ago. She covered the roughly 101 km course, with about 10,300 feet (3,140 m) of climbing, in 11:21:02. The result qualifies her for another shot at UTMB, and comes after an unusual summer build, as she describes in an episode of the Endurance Drive podcast.
On The Endurance Drive, Elena goes well beyond a race recap. 3 themes jumped out, and they're worth hearing in her own words.
Delayering. Elena signed up for Kodiak early in the year, expecting a big summer of ultra training, but when she tried to build back, nothing felt right. So she let go of the plan. She calls it "delayering": taking off the layers of expectation about what a real training week should look like. Instead, she went on easy adventure runs, hiked, and spent long days on her feet with friends. Somewhere in September, curiosity took over from obligation.
Her performance bubble. A coach, a sports medicine doctor and a sports nutritionist along with her community helped her feel confident about where she was, and how she was recovering. That support system wasn’t assembled by accident, Elena gathered people around her that listened and let her feel heard. Sometimes the most useful thing an expert could do was echo back what she already knew, so she could stop second-guessing it.
Positive self-talk. The hardest stretch came early on race day, on a big climb only 10 or so miles in. Steep ground isn't her strength right now and other women were moving ahead. She told herself she could drop at the aid station near 39 km and nobody would blame her. But she caught the thought and went back to her mantra: "don't write the narrative." She kept the day in small pieces, telling herself that she was just doing a run with friends to the first crew stop, and she gave herself permission to walk: if she reached 40 miles in, she could walk the rest. When she got there, she still wanted to keep moving. A flowing forest-road descent put her back in the race, and she passed the women who had gone by on the climb.
These 3 themes plus lots more gems about training and the race are part of a full episode 153 with co-host Katie Clayton on The Endurance Drive podcast, or watch it below.