Barry in SD wrote:
Can I share this little story.
I always woundered what sort of talent did you need to be a REALLY good ultra marathon runner. I've seen a lot of ultra races and the form that people seem to get by on does resemble a death march.
How can they keep that up for 100miles? and what would happen if you got a truely gifted (in our traditional sense of talent) athlete to run these ultra's. Surely he/she would rewrite the record books.
So I went to work to convince the fastest runner I could find to run an ultra. Specifically the Perth 24hour track race in 1986. I spun it that he should be able to break the Australian 24 hour record (I think it was about 235 KM back then). Anyway, I got a bite from the best candidate I could have hoped for. Alan Thurlow was a 33YO ex Kiwi transplant with 13.30 5km and 28.20 10km and 2.13 marathon credentials. He had represented NZ at World Cross and had grown up running up and down the mountains around Dunedin (on the South island).
Anyway, he committed to do the race and jumped in to do some "distance" training with a few of the local ultra runners in the community. These guy's idea of a long run was to run 1-1 1/2 hours in one direction and then turn left. After repeating this process 3 more times they assumed that they would return to where they started. Anyway his training prep went well. His goal was to run at least 250 km.
The race started at midday. I helped crew for Alan. Right away he clipped along at sub 4.00min km pace. (he had discovered in training that running any slower than this actually fatigued him more) - this is a rookie mistake, but the guy was so talented, you had to support his race plan. So he is cursing along at around 6.10-6.20 pace for the first 4-5 hours. His 50mile split was 5hours 25mins. Then he came off for a proper meal and a rub down.
Thats when the wheels started to chip away. Getting back on the track, and getting some additional mileage at "pace" was getting increasingy difficult. We put in some timed walking breaks, but getting him going again was getting harder and harder. After 8 hours he came off the track and said he wanted to stop. I had done this race the previous year and assured him that everyone wants to stop after 8 hours of running. The trick is to accept that all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
Meanwhile, all likelyhood of Alan breaking the Australian record was fading fast. He was putting in hourly lap counts of 8-9km's and coming off the track every 20-30mins. Then when he got back on he was begining to resemble an old man, constantely bitching, on his way to an early grave (literally). He got worse and worse until around 14 hours when myself and the other handlers pulled him off and throw him in the caravan we were based out of. The leaders of the race had long since passed him. It was now time to decide to set another goal of perhaps covering "just" 100miles - before calling it a day.
He bitched and whinned and bitched some more. He was sobbing, crying and chocking on the whole experience. This was a bit of a shock to me because I had seen Alan decimate hard core fields on the track and the road. He was an animal, and had nothing to prove to us. All we could do was appeal to his own self pride. In the end he walked in the 161 laps needed to complete 100miles in less that 24hours (21 hours and change). Nothing we could say, do or gesture could make him go any faster, no matter what little mind f&uck game we played on him. In the end it was his own decision to keep going after turning his attitude from racing to shear survival.
So here's to the Ultra runners, especially those that push hard, and want to get the best out of themselves. They are a diferent breed, quite possibly from another planet.
Alan never ran another ultra again, and did encourage me to stop as well.
So his stupid pacing shows that ultrarunners are incredible athletes.