Unique location, unique wildlife, unique logistics: the Buffalo Run 100 Mile is a wholly singular and satisfying experience. The course tours Antelope Island, the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, and features sweep...
Articles by Gary Dudney
One benefit of the ultrarunning boom of the past 10 years is that there are now a plethora of ultras to choose from spread across the calendar and all over the country. You can pick just about anywhere you want to travel...
Aid stations are totally awesome, as are the volunteers who staff them. Really, it’s the aid stations that make the whole ultra thing possible. You run almost completely unencumbered by equipment for 30, 50, or 100 miles...
Ultrarunning is rife with setting and pursuing big goals. It might be the conquest of that first ultra finish, the first mind-boggling try at 100 miles or maybe a time goal such as a sub-five hour 50k or a sub-eight hour...
Drive on down to Evangeline Parish in south central Louisiana, tune into a Zydeco radio station, stop in for some viande boucanée, pull into old Ville Platte, capitol seat of the parish and then set your sights on Chicot...
When you take up ultrarunning, there are three things you must do to prepare yourself for the sheer physical demands of the sport. First, you need to run trails. The uneven surfaces, ups and downs, obstacles, rocks a...
Race Director Joe Prusaitis makes no bones about the nature of the Cactus Rose 100 Mile Run. His website intro page warns, “No Whiners, Wimps, or Wusses: A nasty rugged trail run,” and the first line of the race informat...
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 they’re...
There are so many well-organized, convenient, epic-cool ultras on the calendar nowadays that you can pretty much pick and choose to your heart’s delight. Still, circumstances arise where you are intent upon a certa...
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 lifestyle that equitably balances running goals with obligatioas to friends, fam...
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 trail for a bunch of strangers who are mostly c...
Ultras don’t always go as planned; in feet, they seldom go as planned. Overcoming the unexpected hurdles during an ultra is half the fun and a lion’s share of the satisfaction. Like they say, if it was easy,...
Hills and ultrarunning go together like peanut butter and jelly, shoes and shoelaces, sweat and tears. Many ultras feature jagged elevation profiles. For these races, running downhill well needs to be part of your arsena...
Our high school cross-country coach used to have us do laps around a city park. It was rolling terrain with some woods on the far side. I would get to the woods, out of sight of the coach, and walk a short stretch. It fe...
Not that an ultrarunner would ever want to brag, but the fact is that once you’ve mentioned that you’ve run a hundred miles—yes, in one stretch—then not a whole lot more needs to be said. One hundred miles is such an awe...
Phew! You’ve got the holidays behind you: the shopping, the meal prep, the traveling, the gift returns, the aggressive eating and drinking. Now you’re ready to get serious about planning your ultrarunning for...