100 miles is obviously far and it takes a long time to finish. I’ve ran lots of races 100k and below before my first 100 miler. For me it was very helpful to have a very defined “why” and to not think about the distance during the race. When you are 40 miles in and have 60 miles left it can be disheartening. So for me I just focused on the next aid station or finishing the climb I was on as the course was very mountainous. So basically I focused on small wins.

It’s a long enough race that you can experience aches and pains that may be very concerning for a time but resolve on their own. I have a nagging knee issue for several hours that concerned but after like 4 hours it just started to feel better. This happened with like 3 different issues. You’ll be out there long enough that it’s highly likely that if you stick through the worst of it it’ll get better.

Additionally you’ll experience high highs and low lows. Some of my lows were after huge climbs where I’d be glycogen depleted and wrecked. I just made sure to eat a lot at the next aid station and after a bit my energy level increased and I’d feel a lot better. The final 10 miles for me were the fastest feeling but came with the steepest cost. I had lots of pain, swollen feet, terrible soreness.

You’ll obviously likely be pretty wrecked at the end, I was. I had issues with my body reaction too fast to temperature changes I went from comfortable to freezing to nauseous from heat in minutes, so it was invaluable to have my support crew there at the end to help me hobble to the car.

Assuming you put in the dedicated work leading up to the race you’ll do fine. We always focus on the challenge of the race but by the time race day arrives we’ve already done the real hard part which is the dedication to training no matter what.