When I finished Hennepin last year (well a few weeks after the race when my feet had healed), I knew I wanted to run another 100 mile ultra in the future. After looking at what races I wanted to do in 2025, I realized that doing an Ironman just didn’t excite me, so I decided 2025 would be mostly a run focused year again. I did decide to sign up for Rockford 70.3 in June, just to get in one tri, but other than that the races would all be running.

After I raced Rockford 70.3 the official Hennepin training started. I had a strong base from the 50 mile race earlier in the year, plus the Lincoln Marathon and the Grand Canyon R2R2R, but I still needed to up the mileage. So throughout July, August and September I ran, ran and ran some more. I did a 6 hour night race, a super duper hot 100k that turned into a 54 mile race, and many long ass weekends of hours of miles. I still managed to have somewhat of a life outside of running, going to an EDM festival in Chicago and also visiting a friend in Kansas City. They also love running, and didn’t mind running 24ish combined miles on a Saturday followed by 15ish miles that Sunday with me (got to stick to the plan!).

Before I knew it, I was training for my last big weekend and then I would only have a few runs before the big race. I felt ready…but was also a little like, oh boy, this time I know what I’m getting into, do I really want to do this? Of course I did, but I just had those occasional little nagging thoughts. I also had really focused on my nutrition while training, sticking with the same plan I had last year, but adding more sodium to my skratch during the hotter runs, which seemed to work really well especially during that 54mile race in 100+ ‘feels like’ temps.

Race week I had my drop bags laid out, nutrition and gear on top and felt as ready as I was going to be. Thursday night I officially packed everything and was ready to leave late Friday morning to head to Moline, IL. The trip went smoothly, I checked into my hotel, relaxed a bit and then headed to drop off my drop bags and go to the pre-race meeting. This all went smoothly too and was soon back in my hotel room eating my pre race dinner and then doing the last minute pre-race things, like taping my toes the night before.

Except, that didn’t go smoothly. I knocked the glass bottle of compound tincture of benzoin off the edge of the tub (what is recommended to use to make your feet extra tacky/sticky when applying K-tape) ALL over the place. The walls, the toilet, the floor. I was frantically trying to clean the walls first but was not having any luck. After a google search, I headed to Wal-Mart for rubbing alcohol and fortunately that did the trick. However after that hour long incident (and sweating due to stressing and frantic scrubbing), I was pretty wiped and not in the mood to tape my darn toes. I finally got them done, with the tincture on the floor this time and put the lid right back on after using. Then I ate my nightly animal crackers, brushed my teeth and headed to bed.

My alarm went off at 4a. I got ready, ate my breakfast and headed to the finish line where the shuttle bus would pick us up to drive the hour-ish ride to the start line. All went well, it wasn’t crazy crowded and I easily got a parking spot and then boarded the bus. The ride felt much longer than last year, as I thought we arrived at the start line at 6, but we got there closer to 6:30. Since we got there so close to the start time at 7a, I immediately headed to the porta potty line. The line was super long and as a result I only had ten minutes to stuff my vest with all of my gels and skratch and line up. By the time I made it to the start I was still fussing with my nutrition and watch as the horn went off. We were off! Here we go!

Hennepin Hundred 2025 Race Recap