Ultra – A Way of Life

In January of 2014 I was reviewing life and preparing to turn 50 that July and I kept thinking “how could I significantly indicate to my Self that turning  50 is the second half and it’s going to be stronger than the first half?”  I had completed my third marathon after having just started running three years before in November and was feeling kind of burned out running with 30,000 of my closest friends and was looking for something different.  In the middle of the night I thought “That’s it!  I’m going to run 50 miles on my 50th birthday!”  Now if you’ve met marathon runners before you know we’re kind of anal about our training and if your training schedule says “Run 20 miles” and it turns out there is a hurricane going on you still go out and run 20 miles because the day of the race you don’t get to decide not to run if the weather is cruddy.  So never mind that my birthday is in July and the weather was bound to be at least in the high 80’s and most likely in the 90’s nor that I had never done more than a marathon before.  I decided that I was running 50 miles on my 50th birthday.  So I charted out a course around my beautiful city of Sheridan WY and began training.  Birthday morning came and before the sun had risen I was out on the streets getting my inside city miles in before it got hot.  I headed out into the country on a series of dirt roads and in 12 hours I had finished my 50 miles and knew that I had begun the second half of my life strong.  Shortly after I found out that there were other crazy people like me out there and that they were called ultra marathoners and there were races to run ultra distances and I decided there and then that I would run ultra races so in the last two years I have now completed six ultra marathon races and am working up for my bucket list ultra marathon of 205.5 miles in the Taos 200 in 2018.

Along the way “ultra” has become a lifestyle and teamed with my motto of Live With No Regrets I am testing the waters of putting myself on the line on a daily basis, to go beyond what my mind and body think I can do and put it all out there, to go for it with everything I have.  This website is the beginning of living a life to the full and not constantly going back to a life lived with “what ifs” and “if only I had”.

Author: MikeHornerUltra

I am a husband, a Jesus follower, a businessman and an ultra marathoner, not necessarily in that order. I believe life is best lived when we live it to the ultra or the fullest.

4 thoughts on “Ultra – A Way of Life”

  1. Mike, this is an awesome site! Looking forward to following in this life adventure. Let me know if you need support volunteers for the Taos 200 in 2018. 🙂

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