As Tropical John Medinger astutely observed, ultrarunning is a hard sport for everyone – back of the pack, middle of the pack and those at the front – and it is this shared experience of suffering that brings all ultraru...
Tag: From the Editor
How many times do we see grisly photos of blistered and battered feet? You know the ones – with huge chunks of skin hanging and dangling, or maybe a balloon-like blister filled with who knows what gnarly fluid. Maybe a t...
With the growth of ultrarunning has come the increased popularity of 100 mile races, with 152 different “hundos” in our North American Ultra Calendar for 2016. Everyone seems to be doing them. But in fact, that is hardly...
Toeing the line and completing an ultramarathon is a huge accomplishment. But racing an ultra is an entirely different proposition. Both are wonderful and life changing endeavors, but since this is our racing-themed issu...
If nothing else, ultrarunning constantly presents challenges. This includes the big things like choosing to take on a crazy-long distance. Or to train hard and give one’s all on race day to cover that distance faster...
The UltraRunning Race Series records the race results of every ultrarunner in North America and calculates points for each one based on all relevant factors. It adds up every ultrarunner’s best scores at each of the prim...
Doing ultras is a huge deal, and only driven people and those who dream big are drawn to it. Often, the people having the most fun with it are those who find kindred spirits and form a like-minded and similarly capable g...
Late last year, I was pacing the leader of a 100-mile race when we went off course at mile 75. I had joined her at mile 68 and she was naturally tired and feeling a lot of fatigue and pain, but she was still cruising in...
We recently had a “strategic planning retreat,” which in our case really meant that four of us got together in a fun setting (Sunriver, Oregon) to do some running, eat good food and hang out with local ultrarunners. Oh,...
At age 62, having just completed a grueling 100-mile mountain race in which he finished first in his age group, Fred Brooks died suddenly when his car crashed on an interstate highway just hours after the race was comple...
The race is over. It was an epic day (and possibly night) after months and months of training, planning and preparation. It’s all you can think about and everyone wants to know how it went. Now it’s time for your next ul...
Recently, during a 100-mile race, I hit rock bottom. At mile 38, when I started to push the pace, my right calf tightened up. The vise grip increased with every step. This same problem occurred at the previous two ultras...
Running Times published an article earlier this year entitled “Is 100 Miles The New Marathon?” That made me smile—so the rest of the running world has finally found our crazy little corner of the running world? Then I co...
Of all the important relationships in life, my relationship with the trails is one of the most complex and profound of all. Some days running the trail is like a magic carpet ride—every step easy and flowing and I’m one...
When I was facing a huge life decision, my mom encouraged me to choose my destiny over my fate. I really didn’t know what she was talking about and when I looked the words up in the dictionary they were basically synonym...
A recent Wall Street Journal article looked at the use of marijuana to mitigate the challenges of ultrarunning and enhance performance. The point was that THC is a banned performance-enhancing drug, so to use it during c...
Training is the real litmus test for ultrarunners, because you simply can’t do this sport without putting in tons of miles over several months. Progress is measured in slow increments, and you won’t really know if all th...
It’s the time of year for making resolutions and setting big goals, an especially important time for ultrarunners. When we share our goals with others sometimes it makes them ‘more real’ and helps generate support (press...
Other than death and taxes, change is one of life’s big, dark inevitabilities. But unlike the other two, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, even though it is almost always hard at first, it’s something we are bes...