Anyone have experience doing an Ultramarathon (50 or 100 miles) and IM racing? Just wondering what the ultra would be like compared to IM Moo which I did last year. Seems like running (walking?) 100 miles would be the ultimate test of endurance, but then that’s why I’m asking those with experience.
Lehmkuhler
i’m interested too. i’ve looked online but haven’t found much. marathon and beyond (the magazine/book) is pretty good. otherwise i pretty much search specific races.
i haven’t done one yet. i’m doing imf in november and i’m hoping to do my first ultra (probably a 50k) in the spring maybe? not sure exactly… just know i want to do one.
if you find any info please pass it my way… thanks.
Here’s the premier site, oriented toward 100 milers but plenty of stuff for all distances:
There’s also a very active mailing list on the Dartmouth listserv. As to IM vs. a 100, here’s an article that might shed some light:
http://www.racingtheplanet.com/articles/which_tougher.asp
In my experience racing a hard 50 miler (on trails) falls into more or less the same category as an Ironman. You could also put a fast, hilly double century ride in that group. Similarly, you could collect a 50K trail run, a half Ironman, and a hard century ride together as having some commonality. A trail 100 is in another realm…something like the quad century at the LA Wheelmen Grand tour or the Furnace Creek 508 would be in the same league. There is no triathlon analog at the conventional distances. Ultraman maybe, but that’s spread over 3 days. It’s not that the 100 is that much harder intensity wise - it’s generally less intense, but it’s just so much longer and therein lie the difficulties, which can manifest in many different ways.
I’ve done over 40 Ultras since '78. Including four Western States 100’s. There is a similarity to IM in that you are out there for an awfully long time, but from there the differences became quite dramatic. In Ultras you are going to be on your own for the most part not surrounded by other athletes as they are generally much smaller fields (the largest Ultras in the nation generally have fewer than 500 people). The intensity is usually a bit lower especially over 50 miles. As for the difficulty, I would equate an IM with a 50 miler or 100km in terms of how deep you need to dig to get through it. 100 miles is a whole new ball game. WAY harder, and WAY harder on the body. So be forewarned if you are thinking this way, the event is going to last about twice as long and assuming you are doing one of the trail 100’s you are looking at some very challenging terrain. On the other hand, the experience of running all day and all night is something you never forget. The sense of accomplishment is just incredible. Go for it! You only get to be here once.
I did (emphasis on did, this was all in the 80’s) high mileage up to 100mpw or more including long runs over very rugged alpine type terrain, simulating the actual course conditions. The key to WS is handling the relentless downhill pounding in the canyons hour after hour. The only way to prepare for this is to gradually increase the length and quantity of the hill workouts you do. Start easy as this type of training will rip you up pretty good if you don’t allow for sufficient adaptation. Overall mileage is less important than specificity, on the other hand, just as with IM training you need to have a lot of endurance in the tank through weeks months and years of training. Hence, if you gradually build up your running base you should be able to handle a fair bit of mileage. But each person is different.
Larry, I would vary it a bit more making sure you get recovered. Emphasize big runs (sometimes back to back) on the weekends, and maybe have a couple 1 to 2 hour runs mid week at most, the rest is easy and short or off completely. Just as with IM training it’s very easy to get sucked in to doing to much and just ending up chronically tired and stale.
I know a guy who was planning on doing 140’s while prepping for Angeles Forest 100 next month - running 3 days a week.
Yes, I said 3 days a week, two runs a day.
But he is a freak of nature, and will probably win at Angeles. He is also a nine time IM finisher, including Kona a few times. Never asked him what was harder, though.
A couple weeks ago he did an 80 mile run along the Western States trail, starting in Auburn and heading toward Tahoe.
Curious, did you ever do the Bridger Ridge Run…Friggen killed me. 20 miler with 7600ft ascent 9200 descent. Was told after completing it that if you could do this a 50 is easy.(15 miles with hardly any trail,except for the start no swithchbacks,just up and down).Had no quads for a week. Did IM CDA 2 months earlier and this waxed me way worse. However I will do the Ultra’s now.
This is unbelieveable.
First, thanks Larry, for the reference to the coolrunning forum. For those of you interested in this kind of thing, read the looooong race report from the Cascades 100. Awesome.
What is so unbelieveable you are asking? Well, when I first saw this thread, I thought it was sweet. I immediately thought about an article I had read as a kid in my parent’s Runner’s World, about a guy who ran an ultra along fire-roads out west somewhere. Truly spectacular to me at the time, and for this reason ultras have always held an exceptional “mystique” in my eyes. So, I began to peruse some of the links above, and ended up at ultrarunning.com, which has the best race schedule I could find. I started looking through random races, and found myself on a site for Le Grizz, which is in Montana. Then I find this quote on their site:
"1987 - Don Kardong runs the event and wins. His awesome article about his experience soon appears in Runner’s World, and Le Grizz instantly has national recognition."
Unbelieveable, that must be the article I read as a twelve year old kid! Just a coincidence? Who knows, but I checked the race calendar near me and there is a trail half-marathon and a full yet to come this year. Not much to some of you folks, but to a short courser like me, it would be a good start. Hmmm, I need to crank up my running mileage. IM might have to wait a while…
I would love to hear from any more ultra runners.
I haven’t done any 100 milers yet, but I have done 90km run (with 12kg pack) and Marathon des Sables which includes a 80km leg (with 11 kg pack). I have a 100km in 3 weeks.
To me, Ironman is much tougher, but then I did Ironman first. Maybe if I went back and did another Ironman now I would feel different about it.
I can imagine that moving up from 60 miles to 100 miles will be significantly harder.
And what about those people a few years ago who ran 1000 miles in Central Park? Now that is crazy.