All posts by TREX

The sport of ultra marathoning, i.e. by technical and literal definition any race that is longer than the established 26.2(ish) miles of a marathon, has grown quite rapidly.   In no small part it’s my firm belief because let’s face it these it’s a little cooler to say “I’m going to be running my first [50K, 50Mile, 100K, 100Mile] that there are a greater number of people who are attempting these distances.

But after purchasing and reading multiple books on the subject of ultra marathoning I find there is lack of information for folks like myself.  The published training plans are aimed at doing well in ultra marathons.   At finishing in the front pack, not the mid or back pack.

And a 100 mile ultra is yet another step toward my goal to see how far I can go before I break in the trying.

Websites with how to run your first 100 mile have anecdotes like “marathon time of sub 4” which frankly for a lot of us isn’t even a dream.  You can train for endurance, anyone barring physical disabilities can train to ‘go long’.  But to go fast requires a certain amount of physical ability.   To endure a 100 mile race that does not include a high level of vertical and technical terrain and do it in under the typical 30 hour cut off only requires an average of 18 minute miles.  A fair number of people, not me, can sustain somewhat easily a sub 18 minute walk.  Me, my walk pace is closer to 19 minutes.  So for me to do a 100 mile in the 30 hour cut off I have to run some portion of it.

For us mere mortals let’s ‘do the math’ and see what we have to accomplish in order to finish a 100 mile race purely from a moving pace perspective.  I think it’s not as bad as you might be assuming if you’re just looking into the crazy notion of moving 100 miles without stopping.

For me, let’s choose a moderate pace assuming some levels of moderate vertical and technical terrain.  A 6 minute run at 12:00m miles and a 4 minute walk at 20:00m miles is an average of 14:17 minute miles.  That’s a sub 24h 100 mile.   Granted that’s not possible for anyone to actually be able to finish at as there’s no AS breaks, potty breaks, food breaks, scenery appreciation breaks etc.  But still that leaves 6 hours for all the breaks.  (Again assuming a 30 hour cut off)

Drop the run pace a small touch so you average 15:00m pacing and you still have yourself a 25hour 100 mile.  Based on a 6/4 run/walk schedule that’s a 12:52 run pace and a 20:00 walk pace.

Which oddly enough a 12:52 is exactly my average pace for the very first 5K I did 2 years ago this month.

So for those of us who merely desire to do the distance these numbers should be of some at least small inspiration in that yes we too can aspire to completing an ultra marathon of even the bigger distances.

Many of the books and online guidance do have it right I believe, an Ultra, especially once you get past the 50k distance is going to be a combination of two factors.  Time on feet because our bodies, especially our feet, have to be prepared to be upright and mobile for these increased time frames.   And mental endurance to sustain the discomfort, boredom, fatigue that our minds will suffer from being upright and mobile. These are both very much trainable.

My ability to do boring things for extended lengths of time has greatly increased thanks to our long runs.  I can sit through 2 hours of kids choir concerts a lot easier now than I could 3 years ago.   You learn/gain the ability to speed the passage of time, an analog mode organic based time machine if you will.  While it passes at the same inexorable rate it always does, you no longer are part of ever tick.   Think of it like using an Acceleration Wand in Minecraft, except in reverse.  You’re decreasing your own ‘tick rate’ so that the world speeds up in relation to you rather than speeding you up in relation to the world.

Time on feet becomes more and more important in my opinion the larger a runner you are. Yes I speak from personal and painful experience.

It’s quite simple, more weight equals more impact because gravity is a bitch.  More impact is more stress.   So the larger you are the harder on your feet and every impact absorbing component of your body it is.  This physical stress is a lot more difficult to remediate. You can ‘will’ it away to some extent and medicate it away to a larger degree but the human machine that you are does have a point of failure.   I recently hit that this last weekend in fact where I started cramping bad from pushing things too hard over the course of a long day in my calves and shins.

Mental stress has more available remediation.  Simply finding someone else on the trail and hanging with them if they’re amenable can be a major boost for most runners although it’s my observation that ultra running tends to be a solitary sport to a larger degree than street running. Listening to audio of some kind, music, podcasts, books on tape can also help.  Or simply zoning out of everything but your focus on where you’re going to place your next 10 steps.   Just don’t zone out in general as that’s the fastest way to take a dirt nap.

In terms of training most, even perhaps all, of the plans available on the internet are created by and aimed at front packers.   Front packers are just literally the folks who will finish at the front of the pack.  They’re the ones who have the physical and mental resources to travel 100 miles in under 20 hours, in most cases well under 20 hours.

These leaves a gap for those without their level of abilities, i.e. the mere mortals.  When we try to do their training plans we end up injured, burned out or find out we can’t hit those 70-80 mile weeks and those 30+25 back to back weekends that we simply cannot do an ultra marathon.   And I believe that couldn’t be further from reality.

It makes for an easy rationalization to pull back to the safe distances we’ve done and if we need that rationalization / opt-out then there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.  You do you as the saying goes.  But you’ll never know how far you could have gone if you don’t push yourself.

If you’re still with me then I think as long as you can achieve the following with an average pace of under 17 minute miles including all breaks and recoveries then you can be an Ultra Marathoner.  Granted for the typical cut off times you just need to average 18 minutes but realistically you need to allow for a little slack for unexpected events, terrain etc that might cost you some time so I feel an average pace of 17 is a good value to shoot for as your upper edge-

• 50K – 3-4 weeks prior to the race having done 20-26 mile long run.
• 50Mile – 3-4 weeks prior to the race having done 30 mile long run.
• 100K – 3-4 weeks prior to the race having done 30 mile long run.
• 100M – 4-6 weeks prior to the race having done 50 mile long run.

Is this a very simplistic rule of thumb?  Yes of course it is.  It’s yet another one size fits all kind of blanket statement.

Now to get to the above long run goals then you need to build your training plan based on your own abilities.  The “I’m an elite and this training plan is how I train” plans are unlikely to work for most of us, at least in the early years, especially the first year.

You can obviously pay to play and hire a trainer and there’s certainly value in having an experienced open minded trainer helping chart your path to your first or 100th ultra marathon.  Unless you live in a small town it’s likely there are plenty of runners out there in your area who can offer thoughts and recommendations on trainers.

If you’re going to roll your own plan then take any online plan with a big dose of salt and skepticism.  Unless the author goes at length to indicate it’s aimed at someone of your current ability then assume it’s going to be a good plan for the upper 25% of ultra runners.  If you fall into that category then no issue but if you might not be there yet then I’ll offer the following recommendations based on my own experiences.  Much like every other plan and guidance out there come at it with salty skepticism that it will work for you (this assumes you have at least the ability to do a 20 mile long day).  If you can’t do that much yet then jump on any of the 3 to 4 day week, 4 month marathon training plans out there.  You don’t have to race the marathon, just have the ability to do the distance –

1. dial back the weekly mileage to something manageable (you’ll have to judge this for yourself but a reasonable guidance might be start with 20 miles a week and peak at 50 not withstanding the race week in #10 below)
2. have at least half the weeks with 3 or 4 runs instead of 5 or 6 and potentially average 4 workouts a week.
3. weekday runs should in general be speed runs (400’s/800’s, thresholds, intervals etc) to improve your VO2 max and running efficiency.
4. restrict your double long run / back to back weekends to 2 per month
5. do not increase your total mileage per week by more than 10%
6. do not have a long run more than 30 miles in general, exception one 50 mile long run a few weeks out if you’re doing a 100 mile race.
7. do not have a back to back weekend of more than 50 miles
8. do not have a same day back to back runs of more than 30 miles
9. one recovery/light week a month at the start of the plan with one recovery week every 3 weeks as you hit your peak mileage.
10. Add in a race if you can manage it in that 3-6 week time frame of a lower distance before your target race.   So a marathon before a 50k, a 50k before a 50 mile/100k, a 50 mile before a 100 mile.

After the last year of training to move from a half marathon to something bigger these are my personal truths based on my own abilities right now.  I’m a 27m 5k, 60m 10k, 2:15 half, 5:30 full runner.   I’m 6-3 and currently 238 lbs as of this morning.

And a 100 mile Ultra is yet another step toward my goal to see how far I can go before I break in the trying.

One of the things running through significant levels of pain in training can cause is over doing it.  For whatever reason it’s possible to have important pain points silenced or muted that under other circumstances would tell a runner to slow it down or come to a dead stop.

It might be pain killers or just one pain point that shouts down all the other pain points due to volume.

So to say I shambled the last 5k of our 40K day would be generous.

There have been a couple of times in the last 18 months give or take where I’ve hit that point.  Where one pain source was so loud everything else go lost in the background or even worse, one was so loud that I had to artificially lower the volume to keep moving forward which drops all the other pains to a dull whisper.

This last weekend we did the Tulsa Run, both the 5K and the 15K and immediately after we added another 20K of trail running.  The Tulsa Run is a street race.

Due to the damage I’ve inflicted on my feet about 4 weeks ago I required a ‘little’ help to keep moving for this run.   I felt and still do feel, the risk was worth the return as I really do not care to go into my first 50K being forced to take the 7 weeks preceding it off.

The payment to the Piper though is that the pain killers enabled me to really over do it.  I ran the 5k+15K at my half marathon race pace.  The follow up trail run, at least the first 3/4 of it was also at trail race pace.

Around the 35K mark for the day was when things shut down and shut down hard.  Literally every muscle below the knees started hard cramping at the same time.  Calves knotted into Hulk fists about to punch Thor in the face, shin muscles like steel bands.  Trying to lean into either one to stretch it out just made the other side madder and also triggered the hamstrings to knot up like an old gnarled tree that’s suffered a hundred years of ocean storms.

So to say I shambled the last 5k of our 40K day would be generous.

The pain medication on top of the pain of my feet made it impossible to really hear the rest of my body’s complaints.  As a result I pushed to and through that point of physical failure of the nerves that manage and maintain muscle contractions.  They start misfiring causing contractions when they shouldn’t and there’s literally not much one can do about it except haul back the reins sharply and grind things to a walk and give them a chance to recover.

It’s not a hydration thing or an electrolyte thing, it’s fatigue of the ‘wiring of the engine’ that isn’t used to it.  Too fast, too hard, too long for the current level of ability.

Part of that was also in no small part due to the forced break in training from my foot injuries, specifically a combination of metatarsalgia and Morton’s Neuroma that I’m currently suffering; both from over-training combined with using the wrong shoes for an ultra long run day.

So while I am obviously going to do a “giving advice that I don’t use myself” here, I would like to just reiterate that every bill does come due so if you spend foolish during a run and order the caviar and champagne then don’t be shocked if the next day you can only waddle around like a dad penguin trying to carry an egg on his feet.  If you happen to forget your long distance shoes, go back and get them.  The hour it might take to go home, change and come back isn’t worth the 3 weeks off you might have to suffer from running a marathon distance in 5K race shoes.

If you can’t hear all the parts of your body then maybe you need to stop and listen harder to the kids at the back of the room and ignore that loudmouth at the front.

Or… if you have your first 50K and 50M races coming up, maybe you do what you have to do, you put gag orders on the pain points and you can recover afterwards.

Ultimately the choice is yours.

While we’re signed up for our first 50K, the Dead Horse Ultra and our first 50Mile, Rocky 50 we, you know, haven’t actually done those but still I’m looking forward at the future.

The next run for us would be a 100K.  There aren’t as many 100K’s out there as I might like due to our particular qualifications such as monster vertical is a problem since we can’t train for it easily or well.

Although to be fair I’ve found reclined indoor bikes to at least seem to be pretty good at strength training the old quads for vertical.  That’s based on the soreness after doing an hour of bike at the 50% to 75% maximum resistance settings followed by an hour of elliptical in the same resistance.

a lot of my height is waist up, not waist down.

SO… maybe that’s our vertical option?  We did 2000′ of Carls over the weekend which works out to right around 10k but it’s such technical terrain that it took almost 3 hours to do.   Interestingly one side of the hill is easier going up but some scary stuff coming back down.  We were out and backing it instead of looping it to get the the most elevation in the shortest time frame.

My feet are still a concern unfortunately.  After Saturday’s power hiking we did the Snake route on Turkey Mountain, the 5k loop version, not the 3.5mile version (basically cut out that short narrow loop out near the end).   Including a loop down to the restroom at the main site we did 22KM with an average of 13 minute miles.  We were on pace to break into 12’s as we were consistently getting more negative with our splits.   It was an attempt at our current thoughts on our Ultra pacing which is a half K walk to start with to get things warmed up, then run 1K and walk .25k and every 6k extend the walk to half K.  Lather rinse repeat.

Bottom line is the hike went okay but the run every step was painful, not in the walking on ground glass pain but in the deep bruise that someone is thudding with a medium weight hammer way.

#injuriessuckballs

What it works out to for us once we get warmed up is a 6 minute run and a 90 to 120 second walk.  My walk pace is slow, a lot of my height is waist up, not waist down and I am not built like a Kenyan but more like a line backer.

*ramble alert*

So back on topic, for the future I’m looking at 100K’s.   Of interest is the Zion 100K as the terrain looks gorgeous and the vertical isn’t too bad at under 4k although a big chunk of it is front loaded in a short section that if we don’t do it smart will burn us for the rest of the run.

I also found Antelope Canyon which doesn’t have a 100K but it’s an even more spectacular terrain and scenery.   So it’s either a 50 mile or a 100 mile at that one, anything less isn’t worth the expense of getting there to me.

Things like that make it very hard to try and determine where I can go.  It’s a time issue, a training issue, a money issue.

I’m still dealing with the fallout of the my injuries unfortunately.  It’s been 3 weeks since I’ve really run any distance.  This is more than mildy depressing due to the our upcoming 50K and 50M races we’ve already planned out, paid for and been training for.

I went to my GP who bascially said, “Beats me what’s wrong.” and prescribed Naprosyn aka Naproxim aka Alleve as an anti-inflammatory.  He did get me a referring to a sports injury specialist who was also “Beats me what’s wrong”.   I have so little faith in our medical industry and based on personal experience justifiably so.   WebMD has proven to be as valid if not more so in my findings.  I won’t go into my medical history but trust me, my opinion is justified based on my interactions with the doctors I’ve had over the last 20 years.   Anyway bottom line is X-Rays didn’t show any stress fractures of the bones which barring a more detailed analysis using MRI or something called a bone scan (might be the same thing) indicates the problem is stressed and inflamed nerves and tendons/ligaments and irritated end caps on the bones.  This translates to metatarsalgia and Morton’s Neuroma.  The cure?  Stop doing whatever it was that caused it.

But my ability to go long is taking the hit I’m sure.

In the last 2 weeks I’ve been doing various low impact sports, indoor bike, two types of elliptical both with inclines, water jogging and various weight machines for upper and lower body strength training.  One thing I’m finding is training for an ultra gives you the ability to ignore the passage of time to some degree.  You can do something incredibly boring like pedaling a ‘bike’ indoors for an hour without much mental effort.

One of the oddities is I’m having a very hard time cranking my HR up due to lack of musculature development for these particular exercises.  My muscles give out before my cardio system starts to get taxed.  An hour of bike at level 12?  100 BPM but quads are tore up.   Followed by an hour of inclined elliptical at level 15?  105 BPM with quads, hams, calves hurting.  Not remotely close to breathing hard.   An hour+ of aqua jogging?  98bpm but calves cramping up.

It’s getting better in terms of I’m seeing fairly rapid capacity in my ability to bike and elliptical for longer times, it’s just different muscles than I use for running or rather they’re used in different ways, just enough to be pretty interesting from a science/technical perspective.

I feel I am improving my ability to go vertical, my quads especially are feeling the heat with that background burn that indicates you’re tearing down and building muscle fibers.   But my ability to go long is taking the hit I’m sure.

Another interesting factoid is how quickly my resting heart rate started climbing up.  It’s 3 beats higher now than it was pre-injury.   How quickly we start to lose our capacity is just interesting to me in a morbid kind of way.

This weekend I’m going to do some Carls, at least 2 or 3 hours if I can.  On Sunday I’m going to run some easy trails and try out my new shoes, Sketchers GoRun MaxTrail 5.  Sketchers?!  WTF?!  Well a fair number of runners say these are sleeper shoes and are far better than one might think considering the brand.   Sketchers apparently has upped their game in the last couple of years and their shoes are getting pretty good.  Allegedly.

As I’m desperate to find shoes that I like with the demise of my Lone Peak 3.5’s I’m willing to take a chance on them.  And if they don’t work out then back they go.

I tried the Hoka Bondi 5’s given their ridoculous stack height which I hoped would equate to more protection for the damaged feet and frankly there wasn’t anything about them that I liked.  Nothing I disliked but nothing I liked.  And they left pain points on my arches toward the heel side just walking around on them.  They weren’t very ‘cushy’ feeling either given their stack height.  Almost like a brick in comparison to the Hoka’s I tried on back in early 2016.

I have a pair of Hoka Napali’s waiting for a shot as well as so many people seem to think they’re a throwback to the Clifton 3’s.  Frankly just standing in them I don’t feel it but I’ll withhold judgement till I can get them out on the street.

With less than a month till our first 50K I’m not really feeling that great about it.   🙁

42 days and counting till we’re on a plane to Moab Utah.  Technically a couple of planes to get there.   All our travel races so far have been in cars where we have the luxury of bringing pretty much the kitchen sink with us.

Trying to keep things to carry-on luggage means we have to be a little more select in what we bring.  Trying to bring two pairs of shoes (Altra Olympus 4.0 and Altra Lone Peak 3.5’s) along with Oofo recovery flip flops is an imposing start to the pile I started today.  Since I can’t run trying to recovery my feet I’m taking the time to work on seeing how well things pack.

So take those three footwears and add 2 long sleeve shirts (temps will range from 30 at the start to 50 at the height of the day), two shorts (Altra 2.0’s), 2 pairs of socks (Injini), 2 Halos, compression tights (Recovery UX), a pair of uber soft sweat pants, an after race shirt, coming home shirt, socks.  The doubles are because well while I’ve never had a problem, I don’t want to end up running naked because of an GI issue from some unknown foods.

Now let’s talk gear – VaporKrar vest, bladder, soft bottles, FAK, meds, wet wipes, go pro, gimbal, batteries.

Then there’s the fuel bags – Single serve nut butters, Ultima, SaltStik Chewables.   We’ll also pick up some Carb Balance low carb tortillas and PB to make real food for the run when we’re there.  Then whatever non-carb loaded food at the AS’s that looks good will provide additional calories.

My RW and I need to settle on attire, for our race firsts we’ve always ran as twinsies. We’re probably going to go with REI brand quarter zips.  They’re super soft and comfy, they’re lightweight so you can layer if you need to or pull the sleeves up and cool off.   They’re great shirts for cool weather running.

So 42 days out is probably a little early to be test packing but I feel like I have to be doing something since I can’t run.

So…. I haven’t run since this last weekend.  That really long weekend three weeks ago tomorrow where I ran a 5K, 10K races followed by a 20K followed by a 15K (ish), a total of 28 miles I think for the day and did it in my race shoes (Escalante V1) kind of messed up my feet.  To the point where each foot strike is like landing on a bottle cap, with bare feet, with the jagged open side face up.  I ‘should’ have taken some time off but I decided to push through it and ran another 40 or 50k the following weekend.

sucks major donkey balls

So what ended up happening is to try to take some of the pressure off my forefoot I would claw my toes to take some of the impact.  This had the obvious in hindsight problem of stressing the tendons and muscles that control the toes.   Then to soften some of that I would shift to landing on my midfoot and side foot which stressed my arches.

To say it’s a giant flustercuck is a mild understatement.

Now I’m in the position of having to take time off.  In the last three weeks that we should be hitting our peak for our first 50K.   Obviously this is going to impact my abilities.  Hopefully not too badly.  Worst case I walk my first 50k.

I have the resources to medicate the pain to a dull roar, enough to let me run it.  But then that risks longer term damage and we have our first 50 mile in Feb.

Bottom line and I know you’re heard this before but until you go through it it doesn’t really ‘mean’ anything, regardless of the impetus to keep up with the training, the drive to not break your schedule, it will usually be in your best interests to take a short time off and recoup than push through serious pain and be forced to take a longer time off.

The trick is knowing which is which and when is when.

I’ve been running (moving faster than a walk) for the last 2.25 years.  Per SmashRun my average runs per week during this time is 4.2 days with an average of 4.5 miles.   Just shy of 2500 miles in 28 months.  With a total of about 8 missed run days, 6 of those during a 2 week injury from major ITBS problems.

That I’ve missed 3 runs over the last 2 weeks and will miss another 4 runs at least before I feel it’ll be safe to try again sucks major donkey balls.

My RW’s are helping, we’re doing strength training now and stationary biking this last week.  It’s all pretty much strength training for me, I’m having major issues getting my HR up above zone 1 before the difference in how you pedal a bike versus run a mile causes too much strain.   It was funny I set a cardio program on the bike with a target of 140 BPM.   My HR was around 80 5 minutes in and it really started cranking the resistance up as a result to the point where I was literally standing on the pedals to try an get them to go down and around.   I had to kill the program and do a manual one with a resistance of around level 4-5 out of 10 to find a setting I could sustain for half an hour.  Even there I hit a whopping 120 bpms before I hit that point where it felt like I was doing more harm than good to my quads.

If you taken nothing else away from this post, then just take the fact that sometimes a little break as much as it sucks, sucks far less than a long break.   So take the little break.

I’ve been reading race reports of 50+ races and last night I read one that was filled with ‘do not do this’ kinds of events.  The runner started out well but then a litany of things went wrong leading to a decision about 2/3rds of the way of whether to even try to finish or not.  Much less placing like the runner had planned on at the start of the race.

Several runners apparently had to be hauled off by emergency services due to the heat and dehydration so that’s not a great thing.

• Went out too fast
• Didnt use the aid stations
• Didn’t carry enough water (temps were 90’s)
• Didn’t carry fuel
• Missed route markers
• Race had no water or ice at the finish line

Obviously the runner had no say in that there wasn’t any water or ice at the finish area but the other things were something he could have changed.

My very first 25K is where I learned do not trust aid stations being there.   There was supposed to be an aid station around mile 3 / 12.   Temps weren’t super high but they weren’t cold either.  As a result there was a 6 mile stretch between the last aid station and the finish.

6 miles doesn’t seem like that much.  If you had planned on that.  As a result I wasn’t hydrating properly and ended up overall pretty severely dehydrated and a case of rhabdo.

It was that race that showed me that always plan for issues.  In the race above the runner got lost and ended up with an extra 40 minutes or so of trek and then had to take a bit of a lie down which added even more time before he was able to get water.

In a local race put on by our zoo, this was driven home to me again.  We ran it carrying just a small flip bottle (10 ozs) assuming the aid stations would be there.  We came back around on the second loop of a section and they’d already packed up that aid station.  And we were still well in front to mid pack, not trailing the pack by hours.

So now, I always carry at least two bottles for any race longer than 5k.  For a long run >20k I always carry a bladder although I may not fill it at first. But I have it just in case.

I think the race report drives home the fact that some lessons are hard learned.   For me it took two instances of missing aid stations, a case of rhabdo, a dangerous level of dehydration that I now don’t assume everything is going to go smoothly at a race or in a run.

A little preparation can make the difference between a finish and a did not finish, it can make the difference between a back pack finish and front pack finish.

As mileage goes up as we’re working through the plan the wear and tear is becoming a thing. Our last two weekends were short by a few miles off the plan. There was still 50 miles last week but it should have been 55 for example.

Weekend before last was an especially hard day and having the wrong shoes by mistake didn’t help and I ended up with extremely sore feet, as in a sensation like getting stabbed with a dull knife every time my foot landed.

One of the odd things I’ve had going on with me for quite some time is off and on I’ll get a sensation that at first feels like the sock or insole of my right foot has folded up causing a crease under my forefoot. The first time I had this was probably 18 months ago and I blamed it on a new pair of socks I was trying out (Darn Tough Socks). As it turns out there is nothing wrong with Darn Tough Socks it was my foot.

Anyway… I made the decision to cut last Sunday’s run a bit short, 26K instead of the 35K we had on the plan. And I took yesterday off which was a split 20K of 10K in the morning and another 10K in the evening.

So… this is the one exception I can allow to my mantra, “If it’s a run day you run.”. Injury that might lead to being forced to take an extended time off and you cannot ‘run through’ is the one thing. Case in point, this weekend was a 32 mile weekend even with the short day and I ran it with a cold/flu. It’s physical injury that can make me take pause and reflect.

In your own running you will always have to be the judge of if you need time off or not. From personal experience and the reason for my “run day you run” philosophy is that taking a day off is a very slippery slope and for most people very easily leads to another day off, then another and before long you’re finding other reasons to not run, some possibly valid, some not so much.

Everyone though has to ask that question, why am I doing this? Is it to lose weight? To get healthier and potentially live longer? To push yourself past where you thought you could? To find your own physical and mental limits?

The reasons matter and will drive the impetus to get out there each training day. But regardless of the why you’re running and totally regardless of how far you run, in the event of injury be as impartial and reflective as you can be before you decide on running through an injury and just as importantly before you decide to skip a day. You do not want to cause permanent injury either to yourself physically or to yourself mentally. The decision to take a break or just move on to something else shouldn’t be forced upon you because you broke something or because it was just the easy way out.

Although it’s very much a cart before the horse, we’ve been forward looking at our next distance milestone, in this case the 100k.

We’re already signed up and travel plans made for our first 50K, Dead Horse Ultra and our first 50Mile, Rocky Raccoon 50.

It’s a shame too as I would so win the best ass award.

But Ultras are a little different than shorter races in that there are in most (all?) ultra’s there is a small fixed number of slots for runners.  And these can be as few as 40 slots to as high as 500 (that I’ve seen).   So a popular race tends to fill up fast.   We were looking at a very pretty race in the great lakes area and it had filled up like 2 weeks after they opened sign ups.   And it was 8 months before the race date.

Long story not very short we’re trying to plan our races out in the long view so we don’t miss a sign up for a race we really want because that means another year before we can try for it again.

So assuming the 50K and the 50M doesn’t kill us (me really) then the next step is the 100K.

There’s some key pieces I’m looking for in our first 62 mile race.  I don’t want multiple short laps for my first race of any distance.   I want to get my monies worth out of scenery and experience.

There also can’t be a bad amount of vertical because we have no way to consistently train for long verticals around here.   So less than 8K mandatory, less than 5k preferred.

Technical terrain is fine, I’m slow anyway so it doesn’t hurt my pride/pace to have to slow down to crawl up a vertical cliff face.

Scenery is important, there has to be something worth seeing at the race if I’m spending money on a plane ticket.

Time of year is critical.  I physically would have serious issues with a warm/hot race.  The Javelina Jundred seems like a party race for example but 12 hours in the sun in the desert in the heat would probably kill me.   It’s a shame too as I would so win the best ass award. 😉   I need something between September and March and preferably between November and February.  This is due in large part that I have dehydration problems with heat.   My water intake mechanics are not on par with my water outflow mechanics.  i.e. I sweat like a pig and my body doesn’t keep enough resources in reserve to process water fast enough.   This isn’t a performance concern, it’s a serious health concerns.

Soooo I’m painstakingly going through all the race calendars I can find and filtering them for 100k’s and then going through each one and documenting their laps/route types, their total vertical, the time of year and historical temperatures for the race, distance between aid stations.

Another key piece is tracking down race reports for the races and seeing what other people thought of them.  Were the aid stations good?   Was the route well marked?  Were there any surprises?  How was the bathroom situation? And was the race enjoyable, as much as one can enjoy pushing oneself to such ridiculous extremes.

My current rough initial list is.  All of these need further looking into but they made the initial cut just based on vertical and time of year and cut off times.  Where I could find any I added links to race reports/reviews.

Secret Beach

ORegon
October early
6600 feet vert, 16 miles of sand running, 5 miles of road running
Out and back loops
17 hour cut off

Mines of Spain

Iowa
October late
8400 feet vert
20mile loop repeated
23 hour cut off

Cuyamaca 100K

California (SD)
October early
8800 feet vertical
3 separate loops
19 hour cutoff
highest 6500k

Race Report, Race Report, Race Report

Cave Creek Thriller
(Not technically a 100K but an 80k with the Double 50k + 30k)
Arizona
Temps in the 90’s
October mid
50K day run, 30k night run
Race Report Race Report

Ordnance 100K

California
2 separate loops (40 and 22)
7200 vertical
Aggressive cut off of 16.5 hours
Finisher medal is a glass
DFL award
Race Report, Race Report, Race Report

Zion 100

Utah
April mid
7300 feet vertical
Large route, minimal out and back branches
Some major slopes from time to time
21.5 hour cutoff
Race Report, Race Report, Race Report

Crazy Desert Trail Race

Texas
March early
15 mile loop repeats
Has actual dinosaur footprints on it.
22 hour cut off
Race Report, Race Report

Black Canyon

Arizona
February mid
point to point
20 hour cut off
7000 of vertical
buckle for 100k
Race Report,Race Report, Race Report

Trail Trashed

Nevada (near vegas)
March early
31mile out and back
20 hour cut off
5900 of vert

Race Report, Race Report,

Grandmaster Ultras

Arizona
31 mile loop x 2
3800 feet of vertical
48hour cut off

 

At the risk of being preachy…

I was raised to think for myself.  Which was a miracle when you consider the time, location and general society I came from.  By all rights I should have been firmly entrenched in one belief system or another and lived my life according to that system’s particular tenets.

Just smile and wave boys, smile and wave.

But… for whatever reason my family both immediate and extended were all cut from other cloth.  Live and let live, choose your own path and allow others to choose theirs.  And different paths aren’t wrong just because they don’t align with yours.

This could be due to the fact that all my family and relatives on my mother’s side were voracious readers.  They were all dirt poor, too poor to buy a pot to piss in as my aunt said on many occasions but they could beg or borrow or buy (never steal) books.   Libraries, book mobiles, each other, discards from stores who would toss books that didn’t sell by their expiration date and send the front covers back for reimbursement, you name it they would find a way to get books.

As a result of all that reading you can’t not be exposed to so many viewpoints and life lessons and the like.   I grew up on The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Robert Heinlein, Louis L’Amour, books who’s heroes were heroes.  They fought for what was right, righted wrongs and got into wonderful adventures.

I never so wanted to be born a Sackett at that time than anything else in my life.

One of the things I’ve decided for myself at some point in my life is that people like to have their decisions and choices affirmed.   I think for a lot of people there is an innate need for affirmation for a choice and this leads to the friction that people have at all levels of societies.  No one likes to have a choice be wrong and what better way to be right than to have everyone else agree with you?  And if they don’t agree with you?  Then convince them to do so.

So you end up with the people who are ‘fanboys’ and go beyond that.   Whether it’s which console is better, or which religion is better or which [whatever] is better these differences of choice can create an over abundance of… enthusiasm in a person in trying to make sure everyone else agrees with them and makes the same choice.

“That’s great and all, but why are you writing about this?”

Good question, it’s because I’m watching YT videos about running.   And as I dig deeper into the videos available I run across the proponents of “This is the only way to [whatever]”.  It could be diet, or stack height, or simply the best way to carry water on a run.

Specifically what triggered this post are the videos on diet I’ve come across today by runners that are telling me that if I’m not [vegan/vegetarian/carnivore/keto/low carb/high carb/fat adapted/non dairy/nothing with a face] then I’m an idiot and wrong.

Obviously they can’t all be right because they’re 100% at odds with each other.  Each ‘food base’ points to their individual champions as proof and throws them out there as the end all be all evidence they’re right.

I’m here to say that I bet you could take any of these champions, they’re not even a percent of a percent, they’re unique and precious snowflakes, runners and they would excel regardless of what you fed them.   There are pivotal figures in ultra running who only get by on plants or meats or sugars and they’re so far above the rest of us as to be off the bell curve much less at the end of it.

Bottom line, my advice is, if you have a view point, then present it in a calm rational manner and explain how it works for you and do not imply or outright insist that any other choice than your own is wrong, only that it’s different.  

You’re not going to convince the people who already agree with you, by definition.  And your rabid insistence you’re right is going to turn away far more people than if you just presented your opinion as a personal choice and not one that if the listener doesn’t follow they’re idiots.

Let me reiterate, people do not like to be told their choices are wrong, doing so causes them to immediately shut down their thinking and listening centers and at best you’ll get polite nods and blank stares.  The human version of the “Just smile and wave boys, smile and wave.”

I’m perfectly willing to listen and learn and re-evaluate my choices but I don’t respond well to people who aren’t willing to return the favor.