Why Ultras Appeal to Older Runners
A retired marathoner thought 50 miles at age 50 was going to be a big deal, but it’s actually pretty basic
After eight hours on the trail, I encountered a despondent woman sitting in the mud.
“You injured?” I hollered.
“Nah,” she replied. “Just sick of this bullshit.”
Indeed.
We had come to run that day, but the torrential downpour that started shortly after noon made much of the terrain sticky, goopy, with one swampy, ankle-deep puddle after another. Un-runnable. It sucked (literally, the shoes off our feet).
My mud-caked competitor would rise and trek another four hours, passing me once, providing friendly competition on the final five-mile section of the 50-mile footrace. We finished hand-in-hand singing Kum ba ya. Just kidding. I bested her by some 20 minutes. We had fun.
A runner reborn
When racing marathons seven or 10 years ago, I was obsessed with all the numbers — pace per mile, finishing time, overall place, age group place, age graded performance, splits, racing weight, calories, current weight, heart rate, maximal oxygen consumption, outdoor temperature, course elevation, BQ times, PR times, other people’s times, you name it.
That can be fun, motivating — when you’re fast and still improving, that is.
But when the data begin to show a gradual decline in performance, no matter what you do, it can be crushing.
Not long after running a one-hundred-percent-effort 3:09:44 marathon in my mid-40s, it dawned on me that there was no physical way for me to keep going faster. So I discontinued my pursuit of better marathon, half marathon, 10 and 5k times. And because that was what drove me, I stopped running, made some bad decisions, and entered my bum era.
Once I grew bored and disgusted with my own mid-life crisis, I fell in with some trail and ultra people.
Trail runners, especially ultramarathoners, are weird, so it was a good fit.
My idiosyncrasies went relatively unnoticed among folks who say things like “Oh, I’m only doing the 50 miler” and participate in 300-mile relay races — alone (“because I just couldn’t find many races over 200 miles,” as one woman put it).
Now I’ll find myself explaining to my sister, for example, that a 50-miler is less stressful than racing five kilometers or a half marathon, “because you don’t have to go balls-to-the-wall the whole time,” while she squints and questions, “Are you sure you’re OK?”
I ran part of the race with a guy the same age as me who—after many fast road races through his 40s—by 50, was no longer collecting personal bests. So, at 51, he decided to try 50 miles. And here I thought I was unique.
We all have our reasons, but I found through a dozen or so informal interviews with runners over 50 that I am not alone in choosing the longer, slower, suppler trail ultramarathon topography as the place to reclaim my athletic pride in older age.
Training and finding time
I prepared for this relatively flat 50-miler by prioritizing time on my feet over miles/pace. Mind you, my only goal this time was to finish feeling good.
For general peace of mind, I never wore a watch, haven’t charged up the ol’ Garmin in more than three years. But I carried a phone, both for safety and to keep an eye on time.
I never ran more than three hours at a stretch outside of a couple winter races. After recovering from a hard mountain race in January, I started to train about two hours a day, typically at an easy pace, mixing in some hill strides, hiking, stair climbing, and one weekly three-ish hour session.
My children are grown and I work from home, which makes time management less problematic than it was a few years ago when I worked full-time while raising two kids, but I still have a busy life. Finding daily two-hour blocks for training is a challenge.
I sometimes split my workouts into two (or more) sessions, also a reliable way to prevent overuse injuries.
I fit in minutes of running when I need to go to the drug store, post office, movies, or (we’re being frank here) therapy/support group meetings.
Multitasking. I have written or edited freelance assignments or Medium articles while fast walking on the (uncrowded) beach or track, and I am always listening to audiobooks or podcasts or returning work-related calls and texts.
Unlike the old days, I did not freak out if life thwarted my daily run. In fact, interruptions occurred just often enough to provide adequate rest, which, since I had so few hard workouts, was not really part of my program.
Stomp the ego, walk proud
I think the fast walk can be a secret weapon for ultrarunners.
Every couple weeks I would do a 10-mile walk, on hills, as fast as I could. At times during the 50, I found I could walk in stride with other’s jogging pace. It does not look cool. But it allows me to alternate which muscles I’m employing. I’m no kinesiologist but incorporating fast-walk “rest periods” seems to delay the onset of fatigue and doesn’t (at this stage) significantly slow me down.
A comment from Olympic marathoner Ryan Hall years ago stuck with me. He said that once he had enough confidence to run slow in training (about two minutes per mile slower than his hard-effort pace) his racing times improved. The way I understand it, long slow runs build a better foundation for adding speed later. In my case, I have not yet added speed-specific training. But as I acclimate to ultra distances, allowing myself to jog and walk makes it much easier to hit higher volume without injury or burnout.
Note: I’ve read two articles this week on Runner’s Life that explain better than I the virtues of incorporating a lot of easy runs.
Race strategy
Considering that I am still building a foundation for ultramarathoning, I was happy with my Grasslands 50 results. My primary goal was to feel good at the finish and I did.
I also placed third among women, although my time was 12 hours 45 minutes, which still seems insane. Because I did not wear a watch, I never fretted about those 20-minute miles in the mud.
Had I paid more attention to the weather, I would have run faster during the early hours before the storm turned grasslands to quagmire.
“It’s always the pace, not the distance, that kills,” veteran ultrarunner Doc Cole says in Flanagan’s Run. With the fictional 55-year-old’s words in mind, I started off extremely slow. However, had I five more miles under my feet before the rain ruined the trail, might my overall time have been an hour or two faster? Maybe. Or I might have just worn myself out.
Trail ultrarunning is running, but it’s almost a new sport because of all the unfamiliar variables that one must master — pacing while facing numerous weather conditions in a single race, related gear decisions, off-grid navigation, nutrition, wildlife encounters …
Even considering that I might meet a snake out there, this sport is what I needed.
Nothing pulls me out of a slump like learning a new thing. Usually it starts with some drastic move, like signing up for a class or an event (that’s how I started with marathons too) and then my desperation to not look foolish takes over.
Being a newbie, seeing that big return on investment, a clear-cut path for improvement stretched out before me—that’s what motivates me to wrest my own arse from the mudhole and move again.