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Category: Trail Race

Black Forest 100K – Black List

Black Forest 100K – Black List

Published by Patrick Durante on October 9, 2026

What a crazy season it has been. When I set this as a goal last year, it seemed so far away, but there were three new-to-me races I would be taking on in addition to Eastern States 100: Hyner 50K, World’s End 100K, and finally Black Forest 100K to complete the “Black List.”

The views don’t get better than this!

If you had asked me which of these four races I thought would be the hardest, I would have said World’s End. I had heard a lot of horror stories about racing the cutoffs there. I knew I could do ES100 without issue; I had done it twice before. Black Forest? Well, I thought that was a joke! It was the end, an afterthought after I would have the most fitness built up.

Well, I know now it’s pretty dumb to ever underestimate running 62 miles with 13,400 ft of climbing. That’s never easy, but compared to the others, I thought it was going to be “easier.”

I was wrong. I was dead wrong, and DEAD LAST. I headed into the race with a time goal of 17:00 flat, just because I thought I could run a better race than I did at World’s End. I was HIGHLY mistaken and should have known that was going to come back to bite me. I would say it had more technical sections than World’s End, and the navigation piece of it was bad. The back half of the race wasn’t marked, and having never done it before, I didn’t know what to expect.

I love racing in the fall.

First off, I had the fitness. That I knew. But something very strange happened in this race. A pair of shoes I had worn a ton in training started to irritate my Achilles. This was a brand-new pain I had never felt, and it had to do with the rocky terrain and how the shoe was digging into the back of my heel. It slowed me to a crawl until I could get a new pair of shoes around mile 30.

Pacing was fine at the start. I was moving fast enough to offset the cold weather. No issues there. I stuck to my nutrition of homemade gels that I FORGOT to use at ES100. I froze them after that race and used them for Black Forest. A fun new fuel I used a bunch in the race was Nerds Gummy Clusters. They tasted AMAZING.

OMG my new favorite fuel

This season did identify a flaw in my ankle mobility that I need to address for next season. I plan to work on that over winter break and during my transition season.

For motivation in the race, I for sure had the goal of completing the “Black List,” which was the entire reason I was there. As for race day, running with Doug from the Hills and Friends VF group was the highlight of the run. A few things happened that got me across the finish line. One was that Doug corrected a miscalculation I had made of the distance to the aid station after I went off course. Had I not run into him, I don’t think I would have paced correctly to get to the aid station in time. There is an energy you feed off of when you are running with someone. I was stronger on the climbs, he was stronger on the descents, and we just kept trading places.

You get some great views you miss in ES100 because you are there at night.

In my head, I was calling it a “mutually assured finish.” I knew I was finishing with him no matter what. Once we both left that aid station, I knew I had to keep up with him, and at times he knew he had to keep up with me. MASSIVE amounts of fear were driving my pace, and sprinting to the finish in the dark was insane! I tried to use the light on my watch to help see some of the rocks and roots, but I kept thinking, we can’t move this fast in the dark without going down. I would say luck was on our side, but we also both had the fitness. To pull off that long of a push was brutal!

Running groups and running with friends will be the biggest memories I take from this entire season. This season was so much fun. It was the group runs I got out on with people that had the biggest impact, and there were a lot of them. It was the people who made the season, not the individual races. We don’t remember days; we remember moments. I put the races on the calendar to create more chances for those magical moments to happen. Adventure may hurt, but it’s worth the risk every single time. Every race where I’m cursing my existence, suffering, or out in crazy conditions, I know that Monday is just around the corner.

Doug is a BEAST of a runner!

Make sure to subscribe, as I plan to do a follow-up video on the entire PA Triple Crown / Black List journey that will include the lost Eastern States footage from the damaged camera.

Change is law – Breakneck Point Trail Run – 2026

Change is law – Breakneck Point Trail Run – 2026

Published by Patrick Durante on May 8, 2026

It’s year 2 of the Breakneck Trail Marathon, and it was amazing. This was the exact feeling I had after I had completed my 2nd Broad Street I’m sure. For the 2nd year in a row I decided on Breakneck over Broad street. Broad street was a Philly race that is the fastest 10 miler in the nation run down the center of the city by some 40,000 people. Why would I head back to New York? I will answer that in this post.

Broad Street was a family tradition I enjoyed for several years, but the more I hit the trail, the more I enjoyed being out in nature, the more I developed a love for the sense of awe that comes from trail racing. Trail running strikes a nerve that road running never did. While if you told me my son or daughter wanted to go run Broad Street I would have to go, but these 2 races are worlds apart, just like I am not the same person that ran Broad Street 20 years ago. Change is law, and it came from this quote.:

“If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.” – Socrates

So yes, I could have kept doing exactly what I have done every year, and got exactly what I had always got. A fast run down a loaded road with thousands of people. I know exactly what that run tastes like. Breakneck is the new kid in town. Will I be saying the same thing after 20 years of Breakneck? Maybe, or maybe not? I don’t know, but what I do know is that my breathe is taken away at the top of some of those views. My limits are pushed on those descents, and as Bud Wilson will tell you, there’s no point in broad street where you feel like doing this:

via GIPHY

If you ran Broad Street, congrats to you. One thing I also broke in my habits is caring about the clock. The goal of this race was DO NOT CRAMP, not PR, seriously, it was to not cramp from going out too hard on hills too steep. How awesome of a race goal is that? I took my time, I took it all in, I enjoyed every damn moment of that race again for a 2nd time. I even took a friend with me. I convinced Bud Wilson, and many others from my video last year that this race is a race that you need to experience. It was a blast seeing a person experience it for the first time, seeing the look in his eyes once he was finished, and also hearing how the race kicked the crap out of him.

Each year I plan my adventures in December for the following year, and I put this one again because its worth the trip and effort. I met so many awesome people in the race and so many of you thanked me for showing them the race through filming it. I was glad that it was inspiring, but thank the people who put this on, the race directors, the volunteer at the aid stations, and most of all the catering at the end. Good lord that BBQ at the finish was great and its almost worth the trip up there for that meal. I hope they keep putting on this event, because it was the highlight of my week, my month, and to many even their year.

For my race report, here are my what went right, what went wrong, and what I did differently this year. I used my own custom high carb gels, and forced myself with a zone 2-3 HR for the first 6 miles until I got to the rock scramble. Those are the 2 things that I did that lead to not over extending myself in the beginning that would have lead to an inability to run later in the race. Hyner 50K with its 6,800 ft of climbing taught me that if a race starts with a massive climb, it has the ability to wreck you, that you struggle to recover from the entire race. Run the first few miles as you would like to be running your last. Why do I still struggle to remember that?

You can find my Gel formula here: https://ultraruncoach.com/gel

Click here to enjoy my 2nd, and final filming of Breakneck. I’ll be back next year, but without the camera.