In April of 2013, I finished my first marathon. It was pouring rain in Nashville, TN, and nobody was out. It was cold, lonesome, and my feet were soggy. It’s kind of what you might expect a country song to be about regarding running a marathon in Nashville. The only difference is that my dog was okay, my wife didn’t leave, and I didn’t have a broken-down pickup. When I say that it rained, it didn’t just rain; it rained four inches during the race. It was pretty terrible.
This race was part of the popular Rock and Roll marathon series, where there was supposed to be bands playing at every mile during the race. That didn’t happen. My feet hurt, my body hurt, I couldn’t walk properly for several days…I was pretty miserable. However, there is something indescribable about the feeling of crossing the finish line of a marathon, especially your first marathon. Although it’s indescribable, here I go. It’s like every emotion you could possibly have hit you at one time. It’s this along with this unbeatable feeling of euphoria, almost like you have left reality for several minutes.
Sure, it was terrible, but it was beautiful at the same time, and as soon as I crossed the finish line, I knew that this was just the beginning. I had already set my sights on ultras. If you don’t know what an ultra-marathon is, technically, it’s any distance greater than a marathon. Although I don’t know of any 26.3’s, I guess they would qualify. They are typically 50K, 50 miles, 100K, and 100 miles. Most runners don’t just jump into ultras. The usual progression is marathon, 50K, 50 Miles…you get the picture.
Ultra-marathons are usually run on trails, although there are some really weird ones that are run on concrete. I don’t know why you would ever do that to yourself. Catching the bug of an ultra meant that I needed to find one, and I needed to start shifting my running from the road to the trails. In 2014, I found a 50-mile race close to where I was living, along the limestone bluffs of the Mississippi River in Iowa. So I took the leap and put it on my calendar.
Marathon Training
For non-runners, marathon training is just a lot of running. Nothing fancy, you just have to know that you can do this and train safely. That’s not to say that there aren’t some intense marathon runners that split up their days with speed workouts, weight training, VO2 max training, and cross-training. I’m not one of those people, though. I’m a middle of the pack runner, someone who runs to clear my head and get away from stress for a while.
Many injuries happen during marathon training, mainly stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, and the worst, IT-band syndrome. I’ve had all of these in various places and different levels of severity. While they are not fun, they’re part of the price that you pay for those few minutes of euphoria at the end of the race. Although 2013 was my first marathon, I had trained and entered a couple of marathons as far back as 2010, only to have been sidelined weeks before the race with an injury. I almost had to drop Chicago twice due to injuries but ended up just running injured one year.
I’d never been a runner in high school. I hadn’t run in college. Not to compete, not for fun, nothing. I was not interested, and I never thought I’d ever get into it. However, when I met my wife, she had run a marathon, and so we started running together. From there, I got into it, no, really, I REALLY got into it. From 2011-2015 I ran three seven-mile races, one half marathon, five marathons, and three ultras.
Typically, when you train for a marathon, you slowly build up your per week mileage until you can run a 20-mile run a couple of weeks before the race, then you taper down and rest before the run. During these runs, you only really need water, so it’s pretty easy to manage. Many marathon training programs that you read in the rags will outline a 16-week plan. This is usually done to avoid injury.
Take it from someone that has been injured A LOT. If you’re interested in running a marathon and don’t currently run much (I would say less than 30 miles a week), the 16-week plan is not a terrible idea. You can risk a stress fracture if you do too much too soon because your bones just aren’t used to the repetitive abuse that you put them through during marathon training. I also made the mistake early on of not replenishing properly after a run. In long runs, you need to repair your muscles, so make sure to get a good amino acid supplement for your cool down and increase your protein intake. This is especially important if you are a vegetarian runner. Vitamin D is also great for keeping your bones healthy, so don’t be a weirdo that runs at 4 am. If you are able, run with the sun.
Ultramarathon Training
This was confusing for me, and I didn’t realize why until I ran a 50-mile race, but training for an ultra is a lot like training for a marathon. Again, it’s pretty much just a bunch of running. However, you would think that since you were attempting twice the distance of a marathon that you would need this massive plan that would take half a year where you would run a 40 mile run before the race, but that’s not the case.
Why not? Well, from what I’ve been able to piece together, there’s not a magic threshold. I think that marathon plans just want to make sure that you’re really in and can do 20 miles before you go for the race. However, if you are running an ultra and already run a marathon (which is 99% of people who run ultras), you know you can run a long time. However, with an ultra, you’ve got to be mentally tough.
Running a marathon is physically painful. There’s no sugar-coating it. Your feet hurt, your legs hurt, your whole body hurts. After my first marathon, I couldn’t walk down the stairs forward. I had to go down backward. Running an ultra isn’t more painful; it’s just that same pain for a much longer time period. Yeah, not just double; it doesn’t work that way. I’m not running a 6-7 hour 50-mile race. I’m not an elite athlete. Think more like 10-12 hours. Running…for 10-12 hours. The mental part comes in when you hit about three hours, and you realize that it will hurt like this for another seven or eight hours.
So why does it take so long? Well, as I said, I’m not Superman, and I can’t keep an 8:00 pace for 50 miles. Plus, there are hills. Yep, lots of hills. Unless you are crazy, early in ultra training, you learn to repeat the phrase “walk the uphills.” During my 50, there was 8,000 feet of elevation change. It’s not the craziest, but it was a lot.
The other thing that is different about training for an ultra is that you have to learn how to eat. With a marathon, you just really need water and maybe some Gatorade, but if you are going to run 50, you’ve got to learn to eat and run. There’s a bizarre thing that happens when you run that long, you essentially burn through your protein, so you have to continually consume carbohydrates and protein. Otherwise, your body starts to try and get energy from somewhere else. Your muscles are shot at a certain point, so the most comfortable place for your body to get energy is your brain. More on that later…
The Race
Race day was a chilly November morning. It started at 6 am, and luckily it didn’t rain. This course was essentially a bunch of out and backs (basically, you run to a point and run back) that were somewhere around 6 miles. That made it pretty easy to set up my car as an aid station, so I had everything I needed in the trunk. I would swap water for Gatorade every 6 miles, and vice versa, and get protein every other loop. I alternated protein for a special carbohydrate called Vitargo, a fast-acting carbohydrate, which is good for intense energy.
I ran this race alone, partially because I like running alone and partly because there was no way that I was going to find someone who wanted to run 50 miles with me. To be honest, I barely wanted to run 50 miles with me. I also decided not to have music until the last 20 miles, partially to enjoy the day and somewhat as an incentive to get me over halfway through. Everything was going well until around halfway through the race. I stopped at my car and realized that last time I stopped, I locked my key in the trunk. This was bad. Really bad. No protein at a protein stop. My key was in my trunk, and my phone was locked in my car. Luckily, I was able to get a phone from someone else to call my wife. I told her I would make another loop and try and be there in an hour or so.
However, continually abusing your body at 25+ miles without giving it protein starts to take a toll. Remember what I mentioned about your body taking energy from your brain about three paragraphs up? Well, that’s exactly what happened. I can’t remember much about half of that loop, and by the time I made it back to the car, I couldn’t form coherent sentences. Luckily, my wife was there and had the extra key. Like a neanderthal, I just pointed and spouted single words. “Trunk,” I pointed to the trunk.
I grabbed a protein bar and some more Vitargo and went over to the grass to sit down. I took my shoes off and laid down. My wife massaged my feet as I just stared at the sky for what seemed like hours. By my watch, after about 30 minutes of just laying there, I was able to talk and think. I was mainly thinking about how I just wanted to go home. The other prevailing thought was how much I didn’t want to get back on that trail.
“I want to quit,” I said.
“Okay,” said my wife.
“I’m serious; this is just stupid. Why am I doing this?”
“Well,” she said, “There’s nothing wrong with quitting; this is the furthest you’ve ever run, right?”
“Yep,” I said, feeling defeated. “I really wanted this.”
“If you want to, you can get back out there, but there’s nothing wrong with going home either,” she said.
I thought about it for a while. It would be really easy to go home. My shoes were already off. I was exhausted. It seemed like the right thing to do. However, at that moment, I realized that I could quit at any time, not just at that moment. I could get back on the trail, and if I felt that I couldn’t finish, I could just drop out. So I did one of the most challenging things that I had done up to that point in my life, I put my shoes back on. I went back to the car, got another protein bar and grabbed my MP3 player (which I hadn’t used yet in this race), blasted some Pixies, and got back on the trail.
It hurt the entire time. I walked a lot of uphills. Sometimes I walked the slight inclines and reasoned with myself that this seemingly flat piece of ground has a slight upward slope. I kept going and finished another 4-5 hours later.
Earlier in this article, I mentioned how it feels to cross the finish line in a marathon. For whatever reason, I’ve never gotten that feeling when crossing the finish line of an ultra. That day, I felt nothing. Well, nothing but pain. I realized that for me, the destination of the race wasn’t the point. The point was the race itself. The people I met, the challenges that I had overcome, the connection with nature, and the building of the mental toughness that is critical for many difficulties and challenges in life. The race was an excellent metaphor for life itself.
Why I (Probably) Won’t Do it Again
Life has a strange way of pushing and pulling you in and out of phases. To me, it’s impossible to remember years, but easier to remember different periods of my life where I was really into something. During this period of my life, I was really into running races. I got hit by a car as a pedestrian in 2016, and almost immediately, I lost my desire to race. I still have no idea why that event triggered my disinterest, but I think it was just a catalyst to push me into the next phase of my life. Shortly afterward, I started grad school, so I got really into that. Then, we had a daughter. Now I’m in the new dad phase.
I probably won’t do it again because I almost feel that getting back into it is revisiting a version of a past me and not the current me. People are dynamic. We’re continually changing and evolving into our surroundings. What you loved when you are a kid really may have no interest to you now. However, I say probably, because I know I did like it. I’m not sure if I loved it, but I was very involved. I still run; just now, it’s with a stroller. I’ll probably run until the day that I can’t run anymore. I have just lost interest in racing. Maybe that will change. Who knows? Much like the point in the race where I almost dropped, though, I don’t want to say that I’m completely out because I don’t have to drop now. I can do that at any point in the race.