How Much Discomfort Can I Tolerate?!

get ready to smoke them on Saturday, Will ! I'm going to go out as soon as I post this for a little jaunt in the rain myself :) It's 42 and rainy here woot!

As for training for an ultra:

Here are my thoughts - since I've been reading a lot about the ultra scene as of late. I kind of want to do a 50 m in the next year. Basically with ultra running, as I'm sure any of our ultra runners like schotz or ultrajim will attest: it's about training the body to go long, really long; Consequently a lot of ultra runners do a majority of their mileage on the weekends or on a day off from work where nothing else will get in the way. On the rest of the days, they might do say just 3 or 4 miles. So it is entirely possible for them to log say 30 miles in a week, but 26 coming from one day alone. If you look at ultrajim, Jim runs frequently into and back from work about 2x a week, and generally gets in one nice 4-5 hour run in a month. Now I don't think 600+ miles in 3.5 months is all that much either if you're getting ready for a 150 mile race, but if you're going that long there really isn't a way to train, other than just slowly build up your endurance. No matter how much training you get, basically 99.999999% of even elite runners will tackle SEVERAL walls to get through that event. So you just do what you can to slowly build up miles. Having read a few books, I've found that a lot of the ultra runners basically follow a slow buildup to where they get in a 2,3, 4, then 5 or 6 hour run in progressing, followed by at least one "night run" to retrain the body to run when it has the urge to shut down in sleep mode. I encourage you to pick up a book on ultra running. It truly is amazing. Pam Reed's book and Dean Karnaze's books are really fast reads ( I read them both within three days or so ) and full of insight into the sport. Though they are the extremists of the bunch, you'll come to appreciate their grit and determination :) Best of luck tomorrow, Will!!

Fondly,

Benn

Benn - Thanks for the ultra training information. I have read Dean K.'s book, it was quite an inspiration, and it seemed to me he put in some mega training miles (70 mile all-night training runs, etc.) What you say makes sense, every once in a while do a long long run, and the rest of the days resemble normal mileage. I am thinking about running the Clinton Lake 30 miler next March. If I don't get injured this year I just may pull it off.