In the words of Barney Stinson, “I’ll accept that challenge.” The challenge in question is an ultramarathon.
What is an ultramarathon?
In the most simple terms, anything longer than a marathon. But, the lengths of the races varies. In my case, my ultimate running goal is to eventually run the Western States 100. Which to ultra runners, is the ultimate. They give you a belt buckle as a finisher’s medal. For God’s sake, how great is that?
The challenge begins with the idea that I have to qualify for the Western States run. No small feat in itself. Like Boston, only bigger, badder, and longer.
File this under the challenge portion of my 2011.
Now, if you take a few minutes to Google running in its most general form, there is no shortage of advice…some good, some not good, some just totally worthless. But, when you break it down just a tad more specific, in this case, training for an ultramarathon, the advice gets a little more scarce. Which is good, if you don’t want to be screwed by bad information, but it also makes finding a good place to start a bit troublesome.
I found a good article on the Runners’ World website that gives a great overview of getting through your first 50 miler, but not on excelling at the level that it takes to reach the point of qualifying for the Western States.
So…from this point forward, I am going to work on trying to find the ultimate way to train for an ultramarathon. I will tag everything with the ultramarathon tag, at the least. And, hopefully I will be able to shed some light on this subject.