Koerner / Krupicka throwdown at Western States this weekend

Yeah, purely avoiding real competition.

idiots wrote:

funny how some of you disparage ultra/trail racing as somehow inferior when in fact mountain racing is far more pure than pounding concrete. if i have a choice between some stupid 10 k in the city or a chance to fly through the mountains i'll take the mountains every time

It'll be fun to see how this pans out. I know little about ultras. Anyone else I should keep an eye out for? Cool backstories?

I run primarily 5ks, but ran a 50k to see what it was like. It was a trail race, and I gotta say, it was pretty heart wrenching. It is very unlike track or road racing. The terrain and weather play such a huge role. I can't even imagine how difficult a race that long must be. I have nothing but props for those nut cases!

Geoff Roes is a backstory. Watch for him this weekend.

Nope, if you enter, they'll still run.

rimshot wrote:

Yeah, purely avoiding real competition.

idiots wrote:

funny how some of you disparage ultra/trail racing as somehow inferior when in fact mountain racing is far more pure than pounding concrete. if i have a choice between some stupid 10 k in the city or a chance to fly through the mountains i'll take the mountains every time

It's not about me, simpleton.

magnetic personality wrote:

Nope, if you enter, they'll still run.

rimshot wrote:

Yeah, purely avoiding real competition.

This is for the haters, not the OP:

You idiots realize race distances are made up right? The distance from point a to point b is something humans decided on. Just because you have a select group of people that can ran from a to b faster than another group of people, doesn't make them special.

There are places in society for everyone. You are no better because you can race an arbitrary distance faster than someone else. It's in your head that you are better than everyone else. The majority of society just thinks you're another skinny douche that couldn't play baseball, basketball, or football so you decided to run.

Much props to ultra runners. They do something that makes them happy. Why give someone shit for that when it's completely harmless to you? It sounds like you're a little insecure.

I've been reading up on Kilian Jornet.

My God.

That guy is an absolute badass.

He ran 850 km (with 131,000 feet of ascent) across the Pyrenees earlier this month. In about 9 days. Holy crap.

Assuming they are all healthy, I think it's goining to be a fight between Koerner, Roes, and Krupicka

He also beat Twietmeyer's Tahoe Rim Trail Record by over 7 hours.

Run Runner wrote:

I run primarily 5ks, but ran a 50k to see what it was like. It was a trail race, and I gotta say, it was pretty heart wrenching. It is very unlike track or road racing. The terrain and weather play such a huge role. I can't even imagine how difficult a race that long must be. I have nothing but props for those nut cases!

Agree. Reading the ultrabashers is like listening to virgins talk about their favorite sex positions.

You insecure hippies are so easy to hook, almost as easy as tridorks are.

killian FTW

Well, if you don't lead the way who is going to challenge them?

rimshot wrote:

It's not about me, simpleton.

magnetic personality wrote:

Nope, if you enter, they'll still run.

That's the point: nobody of note cares to. They're too busy with much more competitive race distances.

CHIP-seq wrote:

Piss off wrote:

You're not impressed by guys battling for the better part of a day running up and down mountains in high heat? If you think these guys are so slow, enter one of their races. Run step for step with them as long as you can. When they drop your dumb ass hopefully you can struggle to an aid station and catch a ride back to the start.

no.

ultra guys are the slow guys that could win at a distances that anyone cares about, so they created their own races at fantastic distances that no one with any ounce of elite running talent would train for/care about so they can feel good about themselves.

Yeah that describes Max King pretty well.

I think this will be Roes' coming out party after his year-long 2009 coming out party. But as usual, I will be cheering for all of them.

Ditto on the Roes FTW. He's run away from Max King like nothing in a couple races this year, though he got lost in one of them after pulling away.

How can you have a coming out party after a coming out party?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGhG92ju11Y

umm, HEL-LO! wrote:

If mountain bikers could win on the roads then they'd be racing on the roads.

As if personal preference for terrain has nothing to do with it?

Dear letsrun:

Other than giving Dean his due, you dismiss everything else ultra as something pursued by wannabes and freaks. For the most part, your followers latch on to your example and trash the sport. Look no further than the comments on this thread to see what I mean. You give more above-the-fold coverage to dirty sprinters and cyclists than to ultramarathoning.

Boo hoo for me. Right?

Well I'm a person who comes to this forum frequently. I'm someone who clicks through your ads to help you out. And there are a lot of people like me. There are a lot of ultra marathoners who lurk here. Betcha there are more of us than there are Tyson Gay fans. Betcha you aren't getting many sprinters clicking the ads. Betcha you don't have many sprinters doing much of anything on here.

So why not devote more of your website to ultra marathoning? Why not have a little box on the site for ultra news? As much as it pains you to do so, it may be a wise business decision. And you guys are businessmen so please think about it.