Why Ultrarunning is Dumb

1. You might think that ultramarathons are not worth the bother but clearly many people do. The sport is big and getting bigger.

I don't think hockey or soccer are worth the bother but there are millions upon millions of people who watch them.

2. I agree that someone like Geb could dominate at 30 but not so sure at longer distances. The longer you go the more you are tapping a different type of talent.

Whether I am right or wrong on that, perhaps you should refrain from attempting to putting your words in Haile or Paula's mouth. Unlike you, I don't think they are so harsh in their judgements of running events they've never tried. That's the thing makes them classy.

Clearly the talent pool in ultras is thinner than in marathons. But the talent pool in the marathon is thinner than in 5k. There clearly is a talent for ultra running that is different than for even marathons. Yiannis Kuouros is a perfect example of that. There were many runners, even ultra-runners who could beat him at a marathon. None of them could touch him at 100 miles or over. Clearly there is some other talent level coming into play.

3. Soyou can't tell me the name of winner of the Ultraman? So what? I can't tell you who won the last Hawaii Ironman. The fact is, if you stopped a hundred random people on the street and asked them who won the Beijing Olympic marathon, you would be lucky to find even ONE who could tell you. Don't kid yourself.

5. I don't consider Dean Karnazes anything but a self-promoting huckster showman. Neither do many people in the ultra-community. But Scott Jurek is no Dean Karnazes. He's no fan of Karnazes either. Dean Karnazes is just so much noise to this debate. Attempting to equate ultra running with him is setting up a straw man.

In the end, ultra runners show up to try to beat the other guy. Yet this so upsets the inhabitants of LetsRun that they must label the sport dumb. It's still just a race.

copyrighted - no video wrote:

This is why you don't hear Olympic milers ridiculing marathoners.

Right, because it isn't necessary. Marathoners aren't arrogant like ultrarunners often are. If ultrarunners would uniformly exhibit the right level of humility then nobody would need to put them in their place. Stay in your lane, clown.

Ultrarunning is for pussies.

If you want to impress me by surviving outside for 20 hours with no sleep and eating on the go while carrying a back pack with some sh** in it, make yourself useful and join the military.

I'm a former collegiate sprinter (45.96 PR at 400 meters) and was a green beret in the US Army for 8 years and I get fu**ing sick of hearing ultrahomos brag about their special blend of athleticism and survival skills. Please. I may be one of the biggest perceived hardasses on the planet and I would NEVER race an ultra, or a marathon for that matter, just in hopes to fool someone into thinking that I am a "bad ass," a term that I hear in reference to ultrajoggers all the time.

I've gone 6 consecutive days with ZERO sleep. None. And I didn't get to order a pizza from a cell phone. Pizza and cell phones don't exist in Afghanistan. I didn't carry a fuel belt for 100 miles....I carried an M-16 with an M-2 attachment in my hand and a 45 pound pack on my back. All of that so you ultraf****** can "run" your stupid races and brag about how big a hard ass you are in freedom.

Ultrarunning is worthless.

Ouch! That is harsh. But I have to agree. Ultrarunners should never brag. Here's a little Socratic dialogue with an ultrarunner:

K: Ultrarunning is crazy.

U: No, it isn't.

K: So, why do it?

U: Because it is an achievement.

K: Why is it an achievement?

U: Because an ultra is so difficult to complete. 100 miles of trails, snow, or blistering desert is extreme. It takes a special type of person to do it.

K: A crazy person?

U: No, no, you twit.

K: Well, I find enough suffering in the marathon. Those ultras are too hard.

U: No, they aren't. They are easy. I've done four myself.

K: Well, if they are so easy, where is the accomplishment?

U: You are doing something that is hard.

K: But you just said they were easy. Which is it?

U: F*ck you, Kilgore.

Out.

agreed wrote:

If you want to impress me by surviving outside for 20 hours with no sleep and eating on the go while carrying a back pack with some sh** in it, make yourself useful and join the military.

Maybe they're not into killing people and bunking up with other men.

I'm a former collegiate sprinter (45.96 PR at 400 meters) and was a green beret in the US Army for 8 years and I get fu**ing sick of hearing ultrahomos brag about their special blend of athleticism and survival skills.

So you're saying in military you were surrounded by ultrahomos for 8 years? Don't ask, don't tell, buddy.

I'm so sick of hearing military types talk about how hardcore they are.

"I went 41 days without sleep (take that Moses) and I walked from Iraq to Australia (no pussy ass boats for me... I walked on water) carrying a tank (who-yah Master Chief). And I did it without water or food (I drank the tears of the weaker soldiers)."

Apparantly going six days without sleep makes you a champ. Or it makes you a ridiculous hypocrite since those 6 days without sleep accomplished nothing in the grand scheme of things, I'd say less then an ultrarunner.

damn you are dumb wrote:

Right, because it isn't necessary. Marathoners aren't arrogant like ultrarunners often are.

agreed wrote:

Ultrarunning is for pussies.

If you want to impress me by surviving outside for 20 hours with no sleep and eating on the go while carrying a back pack with some sh** in it, make yourself useful and join the military.

I'm a former collegiate sprinter (45.96 PR at 400 meters) and was a green beret in the US Army for 8 years and I get fu**ing sick of hearing ultrahomos brag about their special blend of athleticism and survival skills..

Speaking of arrogant...

He's a sprinter, what would you expect?

It was an entertaining post, too bad none of it is true. If you're such a badass you might humor us by posting your name, college, and company so we can do some fact checking. Otherwise why don't you go back to fondling yourself while you play your war video games.

ilgore wrote:

Ouch! That is harsh. But I have to agree. Ultrarunners should never brag. Here's a little Socratic dialogue with an ultrarunner:

K: Ultrarunning is crazy.

U: No, it isn't.

K: So, why do it?

U: Because it is an achievement.

K: Why is it an achievement?

U: Because an ultra is so difficult to complete. 100 miles of trails, snow, or blistering desert is extreme. It takes a special type of person to do it.

K: A crazy person?

U: No, no, you twit.

K: Well, I find enough suffering in the marathon. Those ultras are too hard.

U: No, they aren't. They are easy. I've done four myself.

K: Well, if they are so easy, where is the accomplishment?

U: You are doing something that is hard.

K: But you just said they were easy. Which is it?

U: F*ck you, Kilgore.

Out.

You're deluding yourself.

Out.

Let me edit this down to essentials for you:

ilgore wrote:

Here's a little Socratic dialogue with an ultrarunner:

K: Ultrarunning is crazy.

U: Jeez, you sound like a real prick. What kind of person sits around slagging people for finding fulfillment in something?

K: Someone who has nothing?

Out.

This may be common knowledge around here but who the hell is kilgore? What events do you run? How fast are you in these events? What do you do for a living that gives you the knowledge and authority to decide what is worthy?

Here are my completely uneducated guesses. You run 5k/10k primarily. You are a competitive age-grouper at best. You are not a professional, probably on the low end of the income range. You have no more than a standard 4-yr college degree, probably less. Why would anybody doubt what you say???

Who the hell is Kilgore wrote:

This may be common knowledge around here but who the hell is kilgore? What events do you run? How fast are you in these events? What do you do for a living that gives you the knowledge and authority to decide what is worthy?

Here are my completely uneducated guesses. You run 5k/10k primarily. You are a competitive age-grouper at best. You are not a professional, probably on the low end of the income range. You have no more than a standard 4-yr college degree, probably less. Why would anybody doubt what you say???

way to go, attack the messenger and not the message.

Way to not get the point.

The thread is an opinion piece. A value judgement. (Some might say it's a troll attempt but too late, it has already succeeded and Kilgore has always been basically a troll anyway to everyone but himself)

In an opinion piece the credentials of the person giving the opinion are very important.

Kilgore has none. But he's good at stirring things up.

What would be the point of knowing my name? What fact is worth checking? I had a pretty quick 400 PR, but never made the national final in the open, indoors or out. Both relays, yes, multiple times, but the open, no. So, why is it so important to know who a former 45.9 quarter runner is? The purpose of me stating that fact is to show that as an athlete, I was fairly accomplished at the D 1 level. But I have never met an Ultrarunner that was. I didn't even know what Ultrarunning was until I moved to the region of the US I now live in and it's really popular and I hear a lot about it.

All I hear about Ultrarunners is how tough they are, that's it. Not that they are innately talent. Not that they have inherent athleticism. Not that they have ever done anything on an elite or semi-elite track and field level. It's just a bunch of average recreational distance runners that either have no collegiate competition experience, or were a bunch of clowns that want to be good at something so bad that they have gone to an extreme level and run 100 miles at a time.

A guy that I work with talks non stop about his 12 hour long runs on the weekends and his back to back marathons on successive days and how tough he is. How what he does seems inhuman and should be celebrated.

Are you f***ing kidding me? I never hear the guy that gets 8th place at the local 10k road race brag about what a hard ass he is. But, oh man, meet a guy that "runs" 100 miles in 26 hours and I'm supposed to be impressed?

The fact that an Ultrarunner has to explain to you why he's such a badass and so amazing, really sums it up perfectly.

Ultrarunning is honestly, the biggest waste of time I've ever seen in my life and shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as true competitive running distances.

I would love to hear you discuss that with David Goggins.

OK, agreed, so you're saying that your collegiate sprinting experience and military experience is more badass than people doing ultras, right? Why not go pop a hundred miler out and then you can be in a position to speak with authority on the subject?

I don't understand the pride over running 1000 miles or whatever you call it, see who drops like a fly first race. It's a miss congeniality contest, when we all know what the beauty queen distances are. And also another thing, if the elite women can beat the elite men as is the case with ultras that makes it even worse.

Not understanding someone's pride in doing something doesn't make it dumb. If that were the case then as a rugby fan I would have to say American football players are the biggest pussies around, pretending they are badass with all that armor on.Ah, but the women issue, now we're getting somewhere with this thread. Does this happen a lot, as you seem to suggest? I don't think so. When Tomoe Abe set the women's 100 km world record she was a real elite marathoner who just missed making the Olympic team and did the 100 km on a lark since she was fit. She won and the time was pretty close to the men's world record, something that lots of people said shows that women approach men's performances as the distance increases. Considering that she was a world class marathoner at the time I think it really shows that the men's world records are relatively soft. For whatever reason, most likely that the money is not there, the really world-class men are not doing the longer distances, leading people to slag on people who do run them. If Kenyans were dominating 50 milers or 100 km or whatever the times would be proportionately faster and we would not be having this discussion. That doesn't change the difficulty or value of the distance itself.

half mary wrote:

I don't understand the pride over running 1000 miles or whatever you call it, see who drops like a fly first race. It's a miss congeniality contest, when we all know what the beauty queen distances are. And also another thing, if the elite women can beat the elite men as is the case with ultras that makes it even worse.