It Never Always Gets Worse: Kilian Korth on the Reality of Ultrarunning

There’s a saying in ultrarunning: It never always gets worse.

It sounds a little ridiculous until you’ve experienced it.

Kilian Korth remembers hearing the phrase before his first 100-mile race. At the time, he could understand the idea intellectually. But understanding that a low will eventually pass and actually believing it when your body is falling apart dozens of miles into a race are two very different things.

His first 100-miler gave him proof.

Kilian ran the first 50 miles in about 10 hours. The second 50 took him 21.

It was a rough day.

By the third of four 25-mile loops, he was deep in it. He kept reminding himself that it didn’t always have to get worse. Somehow, his fourth loop ended up being faster than his third.

That experience changed something.

“You can come out of a mental and physical low and feel better at mile 90 than you did at mile 70,” Kilian says. “Once you experience that, you can tell yourself in the rest of your races: this is true. You know how to ride that.”

Some Things You Can’t Learn in Training

Kilian knows a little more about going long these days.

Last year, he won the Triple Crown of 200s, completing the Tahoe 200, Bigfoot 200 and Moab 240 with the fastest cumulative time ever recorded.

Interestingly, he doesn’t consider the jump from 100 miles to 200 the biggest leap in ultrarunning. For him, going from 50 to 100 was harder.

But 200 miles introduces an entirely different variable: a second night.

Most runners can stay awake for 24 or even 30 hours while moving. Get closer to 40 hours, and things can become considerably stranger.

Kilian has hallucinated during races. During one second night, he found himself mentally standing in a German bakery ordering bread while simultaneously running through a forest. During another race, the imaginary people he was seeing in the woods went from looking friendly to looking angry.

That was his cue to take a nap.

No training plan can tell you exactly how your brain will respond to that kind of sleep deprivation. You don't know whether a short dirt nap will reset you or whether you'll need significant sleep at an aid station.

You find out when you get there.

That unknown is part of what Kilian loves about increasing distance.

“Training can only do so much for you in a race,” he says.

You can prepare your legs. You can practice fueling. You can dial in your gear and study the course. But you can’t realistically recreate miles 150 through 200 on a Saturday training run.

Eventually, you have to enter territory you haven't experienced before and figure it out as you go.

When the Low Isn’t Happening in a Race

This year, Kilian encountered a different kind of low.

After running Cocodona 250 in May, he learned that he had torn a tendon in his ankle. Surgery followed in June, and the races and mountain adventures he had planned for the rest of the year disappeared from his calendar.

For someone whose life revolves heavily around running and the outdoors, the adjustment wasn't easy.

For about three days after receiving the diagnosis, Kilian says he mostly moped. He thought about the trip to Italy he would miss, the time in the mountains he would lose and everything he suddenly couldn't do.

“This is the situation, and I can either suffer through this with a bunch of self-imposed misery, or I can try to make the most of this and do other things.” So he created structure.

While recovering from surgery, Kilian completed 75 Hard and added a couple of his own requirements: writing for an hour and meditating for 30 minutes every day.

Meditation didn't replace running. Nothing really could. But it gave him somewhere to put his attention.

It also helped him practice something that matters in both ultrarunning and injury: accepting where you are instead of constantly fighting against it.

You Don’t Have to Find the Silver Lining Right Away

There is a version of an injury story that is easy to tell once you're on the other side.

You’ll appreciate running more.

You’ll discover other parts of yourself.

You’ll become more resilient.

Kilian believes those things can be true. He has even told injured athletes he coaches the same thing.

But he also recognizes something important:

Nobody wants to hear it when they're in the worst part.

“You’re going to come out from this better. It’s going to make you appreciate running more, you’ll figure out other things about yourself, and all of those things can be true,” he says. “But it’s very hard to see those silver linings in the moment until you’re sort of at the tail end of the process.”

Maybe that's another version of it never always gets worse.

You don't have to pretend mile 70 feels good.

You don't have to convince yourself an injury is secretly a gift while you're still grieving what it took away.

Sometimes you're simply in the bad part.

The perspective comes later.

Finding More Than One Way Forward

As Kilian's ankle has healed, his world has started opening back up.

He's been gravel biking and plans to keep it in his routine even after he returns to full running. For the first time, he's considering intentionally not running seven days a week when he's back in peak training, replacing one of those days with biking or another form of cross-training.

The injury also forced him to confront how much of his identity had become wrapped up in running.

That's still a work in progress.

But another major life change has helped put things into perspective: Kilian and his wife are expecting their first child.

Suddenly, an ankle injury feels a little smaller when compared with the fact that an entirely new person is about to enter your life.

Kilian doesn't know exactly what that chapter will look like either.

And maybe that's fitting.

Ultrarunning has repeatedly taught him that there are things you simply cannot understand until you're in them. You prepare as much as you can. You pay attention. You adjust. You learn what works through experience.

And when things get bad, you remember what previous hard moments have already taught you.

The low you're in right now isn't necessarily the low you'll be in 20 miles from now.

Or next month.

Or next year.

It never always gets worse.

Listen to the full conversation with Kilian Korth on the Maybe Running Will Help? podcast.