Comments on ultra running in the Jan 14th newsletter on FETCH, the Runners World web site for Runners! Link here.
In response to a query from Nightjar I'm going to see if I can dig out a few interesting nibbles on ultra running. Aside from being the perfect event to be sponsored by Always, an ultra refers to any race longer than 26.2 miles, with the exception of the London Marathon, which of course is the longest 26.2 miles ever. One of the difficulties of being part of a running community, is that your perspective of normal is skewed. Suddenly everyone around you has run a marathon, and there are dozens of stories of wonderful ultra running experiences.
Out of nearly 200,000 race performances in the database, only around 1% were longer than marathon distance. The longest continuous race performance I could find was the 153 mile Spartathlon, and the longest multi-day race was Run The Moose, 188 miles over six days, both completed by Binks. There's also a wonderful blog about the incredibly daunting Transalpine Run - an eight day 180-mile journey across the Alps - by ATOM. - it's well worth a read, and says more than any statistic.
There's no doubt that running must be a very big part of an ultra runners life, but do they turn in an enormous amount of mileage? I looked at the last four months of training, and runners in the sub-50 mile group ran a typical mileage of about 600 miles. Typical 3:15 marathoners usually run a similar mileage, so it's clear that our ultranutters are pretty dedicated to mileage. Runners of longer races do about 650 miles in the build up, which is not phenomenally more, but it's still about as much as I manage in a year.
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