Talk about a race that showcases a particular area of the country and its running community…and you’re talking about the Burning River 100/50 Mile in Northeast Ohio in the Cleveland, Akron and Cuyahoga Falls area. The...
Articles by Gary Dudney
A well-marked course is a prerequisite for staging a successful ultra. It’s something runners have a right to expect when they pony up their registration fees. It’s also a safety issue. You don’t want runners overnightin...
Just eight miles into the 106-mile Cruel Jewel 100, runners pass the White Oak Stomp aid station and encounter the longest unbroken segment of the race, a 7.6-mile stretch of the Duncan Ridge Trail known as the Dragon’s...
When you dress for success in business, it is all about appearance and image. Looking the part is half the battle. When you dress for success in ultrarunning, image and appearance mean virtually squat. Clothes do not mak...
I’m always leery of races that have words like “sky,” “hell and back,” “cloud’s rest,” “death,” or in this case, “FOURmidable” in their names. It’s like saying, “This race is going to be so hard we want to scare you away...
Running at the back of the pack in an ultra is like being way behind in a yacht race. You may not be winning the race, but hey, you’re still sailing around in a yacht. If you’re healthy enough and lucky enough to be doin...
You might think the first week of February is an inauspicious time to stage an ultra, but you would be wrong if the race location is the Ford Ord National Monument and Laguna Seca Recreation Area on the central coast of...
Some military phrases seem like they fit ultrarunning like a hand in a glove. Take the Marine Corp’s quote, “Pain is good; extreme pain is extremely good!” Can you beat that for summing up the right attitude to have head...
We prepare ourselves for the physical challenge of an ultra with long runs, hill training, intervals, fartlek, weight lifting, cross training, tempo runs, and back-to-back workouts, all done with capital “I” Intensity. W...
It’s virtually impossible to run a race and not hear someone say, “We couldn’t do this without our volunteers,” or “Don’t forget to thank the volunteers.” A race director might be the backbone of an ultra event, but the...
What sets James Bond apart from other run-of-the-mill espionage types is his famous “license to kill.” While other spies fret over pulling the trigger, Bond blithely blows away lowlifes with his Walther PPK 7.65mm, or pr...
It’s a lucky ultrarunner who gets to plan a trip exclusively around running an ultra. What a treat! You can focus on the race, the exotic locale, and the new people you’re meeting. Your itinerary can be designed to get y...
No matter what ultra distance you’re tackling, the long training run is going to be the heart and soul of your preparation. Developing stamina, conditioning the muscles, dialing in eating and drinking, testing out clothe...
The months of training, the punishing long runs, all the people you’ve told that you’re planning on running 100 miles, all the supporters out there helping you, your buddy on your elbow pacing you. You were convinced tha...
The dog days of summer, especially in August, when the heat can go through the roof, will put your eating and drinking practices to the test. Staying properly hydrated is a real challenge when you’re sweating profusely a...
Is it a race or is it a trail run when we toe the line at an ultra event? Or does that seem like a dumb question? An ultra is obviously a race, right? Well, even ultrarunning’s most iconic event, the Western States 100,...
The race promised a trot down idyllic trails winding through the oak and hickory woods of Chain O’ Lakes State Park in North Central Indiana in cool air under an overcast sky. The park is home to a string of charming, pe...
When you run an ultra, you’ve probably noticed a pattern of a descending series of mental and physical plateaus. At the start of the race, you are on a very high plateau indeed, feeling indestructible, bombing up even th...
Think you can’t handle the heat? Actually, you can, but it will take committing to some heat training before your race and then playing it smart on race day. High temperatures are going to slow everyone down, but they’ll...
For your average ultrarunner, the bedrock training technique is the familiar LSD, or Long Slow Distance, workout. You give up one of your precious weekend days to go really long, stay on your feet for hours, dial in the...
It’s January, and old man winter is clawing at the doors and windows. Serious running may not be happening for a while, but now is a great time to make plans and commit to some goals. Are you dreaming of setting a PR...
I’ll admit, the very name of the race – the Pumpkin Holler Hunnerd – and the out-of-the-way setting near Tahlequah, Oaklahoma, had me intrigued. The race was maturing into its fifth year, so I assumed the Tulsa Area Trai...
December’s bad weather and shortened daylight hours conspire to keep us indoors and off the trails. It’s a good time to pursue ultrarunning by other means – by reading about it. Here’s a short list of running books that...
The Hawk Hundred, staged at Clinton State Park in the northeastern corner of Kansas, is likely to confound your notion of what a 100-mile race is like in a state that is supposed to be all flat prairie grassland. Pict...
The name “Eastern States” certainly invites comparison of this 100-mile, summertime, wilderness trail run to California’s classic Western States trail run, though the organizers at Eastern States didn’t play up the conne...
It’s a long-standing tradition in the United States that during November, turkeys get the short end of the stick. However, not long ago, I found out to my horror that, birdbrains or not, turkeys can sometimes get the upp...
Buying just the right running shoes can be tricky. Figuring out when to get rid of them can be difficult as well. Sometimes a running slump and loss of motivation can be cured by getting out of tired and flat shoes. I...
The days, and even weeks, after completing your big all-out target race can be hazardous to your running health. I like to think of a hard race effort as casting a shadow over the days that follow: the longer the race, t...
As hard charging, fiercely driven, superhero ultrarunners, we love to pile up the miles, train until we drop and skimp on rest days. But one of the great ironies about…
As hard charging, fiercely driven, superhero ultrarunners, we love to pile up the miles, train until we drop and skimp on rest days. But one of the great ironies about long-distance running is that the resting done betwe...
Ride the Wind is a desert race through and through with cactus, kangaroo mice, wadis, coyotes, painted rocks, lizards, one hundred percent exposure, and a UV index that could strip paint off the space shuttle. Even the cactus was dying out there.
The San Francisco 100 pits you against the elements of nature but at the same time reveals all Nature’s glory in the hills and coastlines of the Marin Headlands just across the Golden Gate Bridge from the “City by the Bay.” Tony Bennett might have left his heart in San Francisco, but the 100 milers left their blood, sweat and tears in Marin.
In marathons and shorter distance races, most runners have one goal in mind: speed. Holding a particular pace right at the upper edge of their abilities for the duration of the race is the end-all and be-all. Things like...
How you handle aid stations can have a significant impact on how well your race goes. If you are speeding through a 50k looking for a PR, the emphasis at the aid station should be on how quickly and efficiently you can load up on food and water and get back out on the course. Taking the food with you, for instance, can save a lot of time.
There’s truly gold in them thar hills and it ain’t the shiny kind. It’s the super-efficient, multi-faceted, demanding workout kind that hills deliver. Lifting yourself up the slopes is strength training. Cycling through the hard climbs and descents is like interval training. Throw in some uphill sprints and you replicate speed and fartlek training as well. The trip up the hill puts a tremendous load on your hamstrings and calves. The trip down will strengthen your quads. Muscles, tendons and ligaments in the lower body are all strengthened in concert with one another.
The lottery for the 2015 running of the Western States 100 Mile, the granddaddy of this country’s 100-mile trail runs, will be held this month (12/6), but as most entrants…
I could see the plank was tilted. I could see the slip marks in the black mud on the end of the board. I could see the footprints next to the plank where other runners had stepped to avoid the danger. I was telling myself, “Don’t put your foot on the board.” But I put my foot there anyway…
You’re in Virginia running through a dark forest on a ridge above the Shenandoah Valley. You’re exhausted. It’s about 24 hours into the race and the first hint of dawn…
Ultrarunning is an endurance sport and as such it requires you to push yourself up to your limits. As you approach these limits and work to overcome them, you will find yourself facing similar physical and mental challenges over and over. Ultrarunning is testing you to see if you are learning from your mistakes, if you are equipping yourself to better deal with these challenges.
Whoa, whoa, chill out. First, don’t be messin’ with my tunes. Second, don’t ever be messin’ with my tunes. Lots of ultrarunners plug into music while they’re training and while…
Ultras don’t always go as planned; in fact, they seldom go as planned. Overcoming the unexpected hurdles during an ultra is half the fun and a lion’s share of the…
One great thing about our sport of ultrarunning is the variety of places and conditions that we have to choose from when we sign up for a race. Running 50…
The Bighorn Trail 100 is Wyoming’s signature ultra and well worth the trip out to the uniquely beautiful Bighorn Mountains. The race begins in narrow Tongue River Canyon with weird…
The surprise isn’t that ultrarunners get lost once in a while. The surprise is that they’re not all lost all the time. Imagine marking 30 to 100 miles of remote…
The Miwok 100K is a longstanding ultrarunning classic for good reason. It draws a big field (450 entrants) and it’s competitive (past winners include Scott Jurek, Nikki Kimball, Hal Koerner, Anton Kupicka, Dave Mackey, Kami Semick, and Ann Trason). It’s also challenging with 12,000 feet of elevation change packed into its 61 miles and unpredictable weather.
One way or another, we all face the need to reconcile our running passion with what is going on in the rest of our lives. We have to find a…
Like anything, practice makes perfect, and perfecting your rough trail running skills will lead to better racing and might just save you an unpleasant trip to the hospital.