Tag: Ultra/Life Balance

How to Manage Stress

Dear Ann,I have a stressful job and personal life, but I also get stressed before races. I seem to feel better when I run, but I have a really hard time getting motivated. Do you have any thoughts on stress and running?...

Balance?

Balance is bullshit. There, I just came right out with it. Seems everyone’s preaching the virtues of balance these days, but I’m no fan. If you have equilibrium in your life you do everything okay. Congratulations. Wooho...

The Ultramarathon Juggling Act

Finding a balance between ultrarunning and life is kind of like trying to juggle a spinning chainsaw, an angry cat and an oily bowling ball. Because of the time demands of family, work and training for something as audac...

48 Hours in Vegas: Ultra Style

Here was our pitch to the family: you can run when you want to. You can walk when you want to. And you can rest when you want to. You’ll get to hang out with some really cool people. You get a medal at the end. And the a...

Spouses That Run (and Eat Mid-Race Fried Chicken) Together

I’ve been waiting for a good opportunity to tell you about my wife Mel. It is fair to say that Mel has a love/hate relationship with running. Approximately 3% is love. And the other 97% is hate. So you can imagine my sur...

Rebuilding a Ruin

If some of you follow my running you might have noticed a slight absence of race results in the past 14 months or so. What was initially a slight niggling annoyance in my left leg in April 2016 soon led to full blown hob...

Standing Up for Success

I’m willing to bet that many of you spend far more hours at a desk in front of a computer screen than you do on the trails. We rarely stop to think what effect all that sitting in a fixed position might have on our healt...

Shoehorn That Run into Your Travel Plans

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...

Family Vacations and Ultras

A while back, our family put on our tourist hats and went on vacation to California. We saw how astronauts go to the bathroom at the California Science Center. We tried to pet Jaws at Universal Studios. And we ate ridicu...

Reassessing Goals After a Did Not Start

As ultrarunners, we are often forced to plan out our race calendar many months, and sometimes a year or more, in advance. This can be because we are trying to get into races which require qualifiers or enter races which...

It’s the Journey

“What’s your next race?” “What are you training for?” “Sorry your race didn’t go as planned.” “Are you happy with your result?” So often in our sport, it’s racing – performing at our best on one particular day – that is...

Learning to Listen

For me, and I know I am far from alone, one of the big lures of trail and ultrarunning is escaping the busyness of daily life. We live in cities where traffic roars through our streets, where we never really see a starre...

Make Your Run a Reunion

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...

Training for an Ultra on a Busy Schedule

Time… wouldn’t we all love to have more of it? This can be particularly true when we have a full time job, family and social commitments and we decide to sign up for an ultra. We can start questioning whether signing up...

Finding Balance in Ultrarunning

“There were never any preconceived notions on what was normal or possible, so I never set limitations: I just did what my friends were doing and what felt right.” —Bruce LaBelle, on his beginnings in ultra-distance runni...

Managing The Ultra Lifestyle

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...