Running 26 miles nonstop was a normal fitness level for thousand of years?

For who? The Greek pantheon?

Actually, by lots of people. Every village had runners to communicate to the surrounding villages. Sometimes news had to travel a long way.

Read this. https://www.ultrarunning.com/...ng-native-americans/

And anyway, the way you train for 26 miles is to run some nearly everyday and spend lots of time on your feet. Since that's what people have been doing since the beginning of time, 26 miles is no big deal for a human that's living like we were. It's just jogging to the next valley over to find out where the buffalo went. If you're not a fat-ass and run a lot already, it's no big deal. Takes half the day, but it's worth it.

Only a smaller percentage of people liked to run that much, so they were made the messengers for the village. If you know somebody who loves to run, they'd have been one of the village messengers a thousand years ago.

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

So no, not by lots of people. And no, certainly not a normal level of fitness.

And while I wouldn't doubt that a very select few could run quite a long distance in a relatively short amount of time, I'm not taking the accounts of 150 year old newspapers retelling stories of people running 90 miles between sunrise and sunset or running 68 miles in 8 hours or running while carrying 60 lbs of lead, etc., as anything other than some very tall tales.

What's your point? People running like they do now is totally created by aliens in the last decade? Dude, if you want an excuse to be slow and stop after 1 mile, you don't need my permission. Go for it.

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

Personally I think the popularity of both Ironman and Marathons and the fact that things like 10K and 10 mile events aren't even discussed is a testament to how active we are getting as a whole. I don't think its' a bad thing.

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Pete Githens
Reading, PA

A friend of mine, who is a 2-time Non-Cheating Badwater Finisher, always says "100-Milers are all Gallowalking festivals"

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Love it! haha

And addressing the Gallowalking festival - I ran my first 100 last year, and went into it kinda dumb and blind. During the "race" I felt like a loser because I was walking so much. I had no idea that everyone else was doing it too. Including the winners.

First used here Nov 8, 2012 in the T3 thread [rather appropriately]

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...=twitchhunt;#4273844

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Indeed.

I distinctly remember trending water in Kailua Bay, going up and down in a rolling swell before the start of my first Ironman in 1989 - wondering what kind of crazy thing have I taken on? Can I do this? Can I finish it?

My other key memory from that first Ironman was the day after - when you looked at and bought your finish & race pictures from the actual prints - imagine that. I was looking at all my pictures and a woman peering over my shoulder said, "Wow, you finished in the day light. You must be fast!"

It was all very epic. The long travel. The trip over to Hawaii for the first time. The daunting distances. Ironman used to send out a booklet a month or so before you went. In that little booklet had the "recommended weekly training distances" for swim/bike/run. I was averaging about 1/2 - 2/3 of those recommendations! I was a bit concerned. Still - I managed a time in the low 9:40's for a first go.

I must admit after that first one the awe, and epic-ness were gone.

Hopefully for the first timers that's still all there.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

" I guess the increase in number of races and availability has caused some of the mystique to be lost? "

Wasn't the estimate some where around 100,000 people or so have done an IM? It's not exactly an exclusive club any more. Even more have done a marathon.

That's a lot of 140.6 stickers

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I wonder how much money Mick Jagger makes just on royalties alone, from Race Directors playing "Start Me Up" at IMs/HIMs, Marathons/HMs, 10Ks and 5Ks, weekend after weekend after weekend

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

The club has grown but it hasn't changed how hard the race is. And like someone above said, I think it is cool that more people are learning they are capable of doing so much more than they thought possible.

What bothers me is the tendency on here to minimize how hard the race is and what it takes to do them. A recent thread proposed that any reasonably fit person could finish under the cutoff without any additional training is just one example. I've always said that any reasonably able person can train to finish an IM with a year's notice.

I'm not sure if people are just trying to prove that they are too cool to be impressed by it or what.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

"That's a lot of 140.6 stickers "

Also a lot of tats. :-)

I disagree. People are not more active. People used to train 6 hours per week, for a year, to run a 43 minute 10k. Now they train 6 hrs/week (on average) for a year, to complete a 17 hour ironman. They are not more active. They have simply chosen to complete a "big" event rather than reach a certain level of competence in a shorter event.

In the past, after racing the 43 minute 10k, a person might "step up" to a marathon or Ironman. Or maybe try to "perfect" that 10k.

But what do you do after you have "completed" an Ironman? Complete another? Do you go back and try to race that competent 10k? Why would you? You are already an Ironman. You have completed the ultimate event.

This new approach is good news for major marathon promoters and WTC. But not necessarily good news for local running and triathlon clubs. Probably not good for the sport of triathlon or good for the individuals involved. After all, the goal should be to have healthy numbers of good quality athletes competing in masters sports for long periods. Not just large numbers of people who cross marathon and ironman off their bucket lists, and then move on to wine tasting, amateur painting, cross fit and golf.

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Bwain's right but it was a time when you didn't have people telling you you couldn't do it without extensive training and expensive wetsuits, bikes, etc. I got the Ironman Manual upon arrival in Kona in October 1987 only to discover that my carefully-recorded training program was only 8% of the recommended swim, 10% for the bike and 12% run.
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Nevertheless, as a skier who was in pretty good shape anyway, I'd been running one marathon a year for the past ten years all on the basis of the single 13.1 mile training run recommended for non-competitive fitness runners by the 1978 Winter edition of the now defunct The Runner Magazine. In addition, I'd climbed three local mountains nonstop in 19 straight hours that summer so wasn't worried about maintaining the necessary pace for 140.6 miles.
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Ran parts of that Ironman with an older guy who'd never run one before and had only tried to get in because his son had qualified too. We both finished in 14 hours.
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However, the next time, at a mainland IM, on not much more training in 2004, it took nearly all 17 hours of dog-paddle-speed swimming, soft-pedaling and Gallow-running and now, ten more years later, at age 70, it's become impossible without a serious tri-training commitment I'm not willing to make while having so much fun in ultras, . . . up to 100-miles so far (that, without needing wetsuits, tri-bikes, travel, $600+ entry fees, etc., are much better on a retirement pocketbook too).

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- jon