Leveling Up

As told to Teri Saylor. Edited for space and clarity by Jack Threadgill. March 2023.

Some people say life is about the journey and not the destination, and for Mike Smith, it is a little about both. When the horn sounds at 6 a.m. on April 1, Smith will set out on his 200th 100-mile ultra-marathon at the Umstead 100 Endurance Race. While it may look like the culmination of a lifetime of long distance running, for Smith it is one special stop across more than two decades of running.

"It's a hobby that just kind of grew over the years," Smith said in a Zoom interview a few weeks before the Umstead 100. It's something I enjoy and gets me out to see the country and meet some great folks like the race community at Umstead."

Smith, 65, was part of the 50-State Marathon club, a group focused on running a marathon in every state, when he began considering longer distances.

"To accomplish our goal, we would do a marathon on Saturday, and then we'd do a marathon on Sunday," he said. "We started thinking if we do that kind of distance in a weekend, we could do a longer distance, so I tried a 50-miler in 1999, and then pretty quickly moved on to 100 miles at Umstead."

Smith ran his first 100-mile ultra at Umstead in 2000 and has revisited that race every year since. He was there for his 100th, and coinciding with his 200th 100-mile race, he will be celebrating his 22nd Umstead anniversary. The race was cancelled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Smith recently took a few minutes to reflect on his ultra-marathon career and provide a peek into his future.

Did you time your 200th 100-mile race to coincide with Umstead? Or was it a happy coincidence?
I had done my first 100-miler there and my hundredth also, and thought it would be great if I could do the 200th there. So, I started looking at my race schedule. In fact, that's probably been the most difficult part - just making sure I've completed enough races and not too many to make it my 200th.

I have friends that run at Umstead, and once they start doing ultramarathons, they don't go back because marathons are too short. Do you feel that way?
Not only is the distance shorter, the experience is shorter too. Road racing to me is less a community experience than ultras, which are usually a smaller race. And they are on trails, so you get to see some scenery that you'd never see on a road run, and you get to interact with people because trail races are just a much more relaxed atmosphere.

I guess once you learn the rhythm, you can pace yourself. So even though they say it's more relaxed, you still have cutoff times, so there's still some deadline pressure.
Sure, and trust me, many times I'm chasing those deadlines, and certainly had DNF'd a few hundreds and missed those cutoffs. I think it's part of the educational experience for many folks who transition from road racing to ultras. They do need to figure out a strategy not only for pace, but nutrition, hydration, and navigation. The logistics of putting together everything you need for the environment, the weather you're in, running overnight. All those things change when you start doing ultras, especially on trails.

Did you play sports when you were a kid?
When I was in grade school and probably through junior high school, I played football mostly. And then in high school, I was a competitive swimmer. There was a year of track pretty early on, but not long distance.

What made you turn to running?
When I was in grade school, my dad ran a lot. [In the '60s], he probably was one of the few people that was actually running for fitness. And he would take me out to run with him. That's probably where I picked up the running bug early on but really didn't return to it until after college.

So you decided to run a marathon. What was your motivation to start adding miles?
I ran a marathon when I lost a bet, and after that first marathon, it was about just trying to achieve the 50 states and then adding mileage was just a product of my running companions trying to figure out if we could do a 50K or a 50-miler after having done so many marathons.

You said that Umstead was your first 100-mile race. What attracted you to Umstead, and what year was that?
That was in 2000. I had only done a 50-miler before, and that the Sun Mart race in Huntsville, Texas, which is no longer around. We did that 50-miler and signed up for Umstead. So back in 2000, there were not many ultra marathons. There may have been 25 or 30 races. Now, there's probably easily 130 or 140 hundred-milers out there in the U.S. alone, maybe more than that.

I remember there was a group of us doing the marathons. We must have looked around and thought that Umstead was a doable race for us at that point, but we had no idea what it meant to run 100 miles. So, I'm sure we were just looking for a race that was relatively close to Indiana, where I was living at the time, with a good chance of finishing.

What was your first impression of the Umstead 100?
I really liked Blake Norwood (the late founding race director). And I liked the way he approached the race. Umstead was nothing like some of the other big hundreds that I ran, like Western States. Blake was low key and a real great guy who would talk first-timers through the process. And the organization was just great - the way he put together the volunteers. You could tell everybody was excited about being out there, even as a volunteer. So that's what drew me to the race for repeated years. I did Umstead in 2000. I didn't run any other hundreds for two years because I was doing a lot of marathons trying to finish the 50 states, so that was my focus until 2002, when I did Umstead again. And that just started my trend of doing Umstead every year.

It seems the whole goal of Umstead is success.
You can kind of tell from not only the folks that come back every year but look at the ages of the entrants in Umstead and you'll see something you rarely see. There's a grand master's event out west where they won't even let you in unless you're 50 or older. So you see older runners in that race. But at Umstead, there are a lot of folks in their 60s and even 70s and 80s. It's amazing.

I think... there are people that are just natural ultra-marathon runners. And then there are those that do it one time just to see if they can. So, it might be a combination of your body mechanics and your mental strength.
I think there's certainly the mental aspect of it. My wife likes to say I'm mentally tough, but I think that's code for I'm just stubborn and won't quit sometimes. But, you know, it's just a mindset that you have to get into because there are a lot of people out there in races that are much better runners, at a much better fitness level, whether they're younger or my age.

Some do give up on races sometimes because they're tired of the weather, or they're tired of terrain, or they're tired of being hungry - whatever the reason is, they talk themselves out of it ... They have the capability to finish the race. I've run with some of those folks, and they just mentally quit on it. So that's a huge part of it in a longer distance.

Some of it is a kind of shared pain too. So you're not just alone in it. I think that's why a lot of people have pacers and obviously a crew to reinforce them, and that's where Umstead is good. With the smaller loops, runners get to see a lot of volunteers who keep reinforcing the positives about the experience and keep them moving. I mean, if you're alone in the middle of the woods, and if you're running 20 or 30 miles and you haven't seen anybody, you start questioning why you're out there, and that's a dangerous spiral to get into.

We talked a little bit about older runners. What changes have you noticed as you've started getting a little older?
I'm definitely slower. At Umstead, for instance, I think I've been in the 22-hour range there, and I consider it pretty lucky if I can keep it around 24 hours now. The positives are that I'm a little smarter in my race strategy and listen to my body a little bit more. I did 18 hundreds last year and probably will do about the same number this year. I can't say my recovery is any different, but if I took more time to recover, I would probably be in better shape between races. I think it would benefit me as I get older to give myself more recovery time, but I'm just not doing it.

Do you feel you've peaked or have you plateaued in your abilities?
I think speed-wise, I peaked a while back. I can tell from trying to do the same races that I could do faster before. From an overall stamina standpoint though, I think I'm still pretty much there. And, again, that just has to do with my desire to keep finishing the races. It may take me a little bit longer, but I just keep pushing through it.

When I ask you about a memory, what pops into your head?
All the times I've spent with pacers and runners. I've been lucky enough to run with some friends for an entire hundred-mile race, which is kind of difficult when you consider the ups and downs of two people running together, sometimes slowing down and sometimes speeding up. But I've shared those experiences with friends, and it's always special to go through an entire event together, especially if it's their first time or their first time at that particular race.

And time spent with my crew. I've spent some quality time with people, not only during the event, but around the event, kind of preparing for it. To me, that's as much about the experience as, as running the race. It's nice to finish a race; don't get me wrong. But that time spent with the friends I've made over the years, the preparation, running during the race and seeing the sights around the country - that's really special.

How many times have you run the Umstead 100?
This will be number 22. I started in 2000. Then I skipped 2001 because I was running a marathon that weekend. I did every one of them after that, from 2002 on except for one year we were off for COVID. Louise Mason has also completed 21, and both of us will be there this year trying to get 22 done.

What's been your most challenging ultra?
The Hurt 100 in Hawaii every January. I have attempted that hundred-mile race 17 times and finished it six times. It's a tough race for me because it's in January, which is the worst time of year for me to be trained well on the mainland, living in a colder environment. In Hawaii, it's hot; it's humid; it's a muddy, rooty, rocky 20-mile loop that's a lot up and down, and it just takes a toll on me. It has a 36-hour cut-off time, and that plays into it as much as the difficulty of the course and the weather.

Are there any ultra marathons on your bucket list?
As far as a hundred-milers, there are a lot. I'm going to UTMB on September 1, which means I'll be racing around Mont Blanc in the Alps, and that's a bucket list for me. I got in three years ago, but COVID kept us from being able to travel over there. And there are new races every year. For instance, Montana has the Crazy Mountain 100. It's a beautiful area, and I ran it but missed a cutoff, so I'm going back this year to try to finish that one. I've got some states where I haven't completed 100 miles, and I would like to find a race in those states and do those.

How many total ultramarathons, even beyond a hundred miles, have you done?
It's in the hundreds. I have 199 hundreds (before the Umstead 100). I don't count longer distances as part of my hundred-mile race total. For a race to be counted, it has to be advertised as a hundred-mile race and I have to finish under the official finishing time. I've finished 199 hundreds.

I've done Badwater, which is a 135-mile race, and that's probably the longest distance I've completed. And the run from Baton Rouge to New Orleans is about 134 miles or so. But that is not a sanctioned official race; rather, it is just an informal run, just a group of us trying to do that for a couple of years. For other ultras, I have 90 or so races that are 50 miles or 50Ks, 100Ks, all kinds of different distances in there that were over marathon distance, but, but not equaling 100.

You've now done a marathon in every state. How many states have you done ultramarathons in?
My wife counted those up, and she says I've done 41 states, I think at that point.

How many countries or continents?
Let's see, I did New Zealand, and I did the UK this past year and I did Comrades in South Africa, but ... that's like 49 miles or something. I did a marathon in Antarctica, but I don't even know if they have an ultra in Antarctica.

What's your hundred-mile PR?
19 hours and 21 minutes at Tunnel Hill in Illinois

And I do understand that there aren't very many people who have done 200 100-mile races.
I know a guy in California who's got well over 200 ultras, and he does a lot of 24-hour races and 48-hour races on kind of a closed-loop course, where if he gets over a hundred miles then he, then he counts those in his total. So, the way people count them is just different. I've just stuck to counting the 100-mile events. I probably got that habit from Ultra Running Magazine because that's how they reported the statistics for years.