Bryan Ellis

You stack up finishes, nail your training blocks, and start to believe you've got the 100-mile formula cracked. That was me heading into the 2025 San Diego 100. Feeling bulletproof after five straight 100-mile finishes and a shiny 3rd-place at my last 50.

Every runner's got that one piece of gear that sneaks into heavy rotation, the one you start reaching for before your brain's even had coffee. For me, that's quietly become the Ciele IBTHoody. It's part hoodie, part superhero mask, and somehow feels like it was made by people who actually run in the cold instead of just talking about it.

Planning a race strategy for something like the Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race can feel a bit like trying to organize your entire life on one Google Sheet tab. The scale is absurd, the routine is relentless, and the course is so repetitive it makes a treadmill look spontaneous. Yet every year, a small group of runners steps up to circle the same block in Queens for weeks, stacking miles until they hit a number that barely sounds real.

Summerville, GA at James H. “Sloppy” Floyd State Park. Twisted Ankle features a 5K, 10-mile, and half marathon. I ran the half.