About me: Road marathoner and 2:41 PR
Ran my first 40 miler trail ultra yesterday with 7k of elevation.
Some thoughts: Brutal stuff. My hamstrings and quads are wrecked. My heart rate never redlined though so it was rather odd the entire race was basically muscular rather than cardiovascular.
These ultras trails are relentless and unforgiving. You go up a rolling dirt hill in the woods and then down it but you can’t get a rhythm because you have to cross a semi dry creek bed and then repeat it, at least on the course I was on. Once you do finally have a nice downhill or switchback to crush, it ends with a huge uphill that’s lasts half a mile. I’ll admit I walked those uphills cause I had to. Trying to run up them works until you get halfway up and realize your destroying your reserved energy for the remaining course and people hiking the hill really aren’t that far behind you. It’s much better to just wait to sprint the downhill. My feet are also sore as anything. That hardpacked dirt on single track just pounds the crap out of your feet especially when its covered in mud and your socks are wet from rain!. I did notice that you cant stutter step on steep downhills, you have to sprint them with full stride and hope your feet don’t snag a branch or land on a loose rock. It’s engaging.
Mile 27-35 were the absolute toughest mental running I’ve done. I had zero kick and could barely lift my legs plus if I did I knew I had 5 more miles after the final aide station so it wasn’t worth burning out
Mile 35-40 was fun I actually produced some kick the elevation never let up but I was running on fumes to make it to the finish. No I know why these runners are emotional at the end you basically have to be if you wanna finish fast.
We had to go through a waist high mandatory creek crossing 5 miles into the run. The drop bags were’nt until aide station at 20 miles so for 15 miles I was running in wet shoes when I was supposed to be fresh. Not fun! It also decided to rain from mile 20-27 after I had changed clothes booo. These are the thing I never expected . I thought I was to stay dry the whole time, it really screwed up my pace.
If you asked me to go another 60 miles for 100 miles there is no way in heckl I could do and not without serious distance training. Even If I had the chance to walk the remaining 60 miles once that sun went down I would of gone delirious and quit. I’m not sure I would of even maintained a 15 min mile for another 60 miles.
So, is this ultra stuff running? Jury is out for me maybe it is maybe it isnt....I will say there’s this tremendous paranoia to constantly move forward. For 10 miles I was alone in the woods with no one passing me and not catching up to me. And this is with 200 people running You feel a since of dread that some pack of runners you had previously breezed by is going to catch up to you.
Wether it is running or not in a high school track sort of way is irrelevant, it’s one tough thing to do.