Geoje100km
By Ryan Thompson
The Starting Line
I had a plan.
Three races inside one race.
Race 1: Investment. Race 2: Management. Race 3: Execution.
I had studied the course. I had run the final section. I knew exactly where it would break.
I just didn’t know it would be me.
The Path
The heat arrived early.
The climbs were steeper than I remembered.
My nutrition plan was solid. 9 scoops of Tailwind in 1.5 liters. Drink half. Refill. Let the concentration drop naturally.
Between CP2 and CP3, I drank the whole bottle.
A bottle designed to last until CP5. Gone before CP3.
By the climb, my stomach had already decided.
No more food.
I knew this feeling. I had been here before.
But this time I didn’t ask: How do I push through?
I asked: How do I survive this?
That is a different question. It leads somewhere different.
The Logic
Somewhere between CP3 and CP5, the race changed.
Not the terrain.
My head.
Logic snuck in.
Not race logic. Life logic.
Business. Recovery. Risk. The quiet, reasonable voice doing math you didn’t ask for.
Is this worth it? What are you protecting? You have 45 km of night racing ahead on an empty stomach.
It didn’t feel like quitting.
It felt like perspective.
That’s what makes it dangerous.
At CP5, I DNF’d.
The Real Failure
I want to be honest about what happened.
The fueling failure and the focus failure were not two separate problems.
They were the same problem. Showing up in two places.
I lost focus between CP2 and CP3. That’s why the bottle emptied.
The same loss of focus let life logic onto the course two checkpoints later.
One root cause. Two symptoms. A DNF at km 53.
The Finish Line
I didn’t fail because I was unfit.
I didn’t fail because the plan was wrong.
I failed because I left the mission.
Not dramatically. Not all at once.
Quietly. Reasonably. Logically.
The race only exists on the course. Everything else can wait.
That is the one I have to solve next.
Peace be the journey, — Ryan
I’ll see you in Geoje for 2027
One Way Grit 