I've read through this thread and a reoccurring theme is that ultras are mainly walked. Having completed several 50milers I can tell you that anyone in the top 20 of the race, say out of 200 or so, you will never see walking. A light jog up a steep hill maybe, but everything else is ran hard.
I think the large amount of hate for ultrarunners is the bottom third of those runners that you will see in any marathon or 5k etc. You're going to have people who run a 5 or 6 hour marathon and the same goes for the equivalent with ultras. For example, if you have a race like the JFK 50 miler where you have 1000 people competing, the first 250 people are really the true runners of the pack as the person coming in 250th place is probably finishing in 9 hours and 30 minutes, which is about an 11 minute mile pace and for 50 miles that's not too shabby. The top ten are going to be right around 6 hours and 5:45, while 15-150 place is running 7-8 minute mile pace. In 2015, Jim Walmsey ran the JFK 50 in 5:21 which is insane. No marathoner on earth could run a 5:21 at JFK simply by siginin up and having not competed a distance greater than the marathon. It seems that you haters just state that any marathoner at 2:25 could simply win a 50 miler by just signing up, and you are dead wrong. That just won't happen. Anyways, the remaining 750 runners are your typical fat, jogging, blogging person who tends to show off on facebook. As an ultra runner, I agree with you guys, that those people have their faults and are annoying, but so are the 6:30 marathoners at your races.
The final thing I would like to add here is that an ultra 9 minute mile is NOT equal to that of the marathon mile. For example, 9 minutes on the road is, well slow, of course, but 9 minutes running in the Eastern States 100 in Appalachia Pennsylvania through mud, stream crossings, jagged rocks, sharp turns on mountains, humid August PA heat, roots, thousands of feet of elevation and sudden elevation drops, you name it. It's not the same. I'm sick and tired of reading that ultra runners are wobbling and walking because they are doing a 9 minute or 10 minute mile. FALSE. It's not the same when running an ultra and the fact is ultrarunning should be considered a different sport than road racing and you guys shouldn't even be talking about it on this forum. In reality, ultrarunning is trail running, which is a it's own sport.