Forums >General Running>Des Linden smashes 50K WR
Are we there, yet?
+1. As a native of MI I am so proud she has remained there. Very happy for her to get this great result, she deserves it. Now on to the 100k WR...
That's going to be a lot tougher. It's 6:33:11 by Tomoe Abe of Japan. No one else, including Ann Trason, Courtney Dauwalter, and Camille Herron, has ever broken 7 hours.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
Just for fun I plugged some numbers into the Jack Daniels Vdot calculator. Desi's WR corresponds to a Vdot of 66 and an equivalent marathon time of 2:30:32. The 100k WR above corresponds to a Vdot of 60.5, and a marathon equiv time of 2:42:12. I think this calculator breaks down for higher distances though, since to get to a Vdot 66 for the 100k (the same Vdot as Desi's WR 50k) a time of 6:06:00 was needed! That's a few minutes faster than the men's WR for 100k. Does not make sense that holding 5:47 pace for 50k is the same Vdot as holding 5:53 pace for 100k.
2:52:16 (2018)
I got curious about other calculators and plugged her 50km record into the McMillian calculator and it has a much more reasonable equivalent 100km performance of 7:13:36 or 6:59/mile which might actually be too far in the other direction.
I tried to check Tinman's calculator and it says the 50k record is the same as a 2:30:08 marathon but doesn't list equivalent ultra distances which is a shame.
1600 - 5:23 (2018), 5k - 19:33 (2018), 10k - 41:20 (2021), half - 1:38:57 (2018), Marathon - 3:37:17 (2018)
That is interesting; I agree the McMillan estimate is probably too slow. It is interesting that the marathon equivalent of her WR is still quite a bit slower than her actual marathon PR, suggesting she can probably do much faster than 2:59 for 50k. It's exciting to see really fast marathoners like her try out even longer distances. Walmsley is a good example from the men's side. Now what would be really cool is if Kipchoge tried the long stuff after he's done with marathoning....
I don't know how many people I've had the discussion with where they don't think the marathon elites can compete in ultras because it's somehow a different sport while I've maintained that running is running and the same things that make you good from 5k-marathon will allow you to race ultras competitively especially with a specific training block and the main reason they haven't is because the money just isn't there in the ultras.
Count me in with those people. This is cool, but 50K is really a long marathon, nothing like a 100-miler, let alone longer races. (Kouros believed ultras started around 24 hours. I can't tell you how many times I've witnessed a hotshot 100-mile runner totally fall apart when trying 24 hours.)
IMO yes, it is a different sport, especially at the elite level, where you are not elite unless you are optimized for your event. The energy system is different. The limiting factors are different. The mental game is different. A million more factors play into it as well, that can be mostly ignored for up to marathon.
Sure, some marathon near-elites can make the transition. Magda Boulet is a good example. She's run 2:31, and also won Western States 100. Camille Herron is an even better example. She has the 100-mile and 24-hour WRs... but she was "only" a 2:37 marathoner, before moving up. Kouros, the indisputable greatest ultrarunner of all time, had a marathon best of only 2:24.
My bet is that Des Linden, a 2:22 marathoner, is too optimized for marathon, but who knows? It would be great to see her try longer stuff, but I doubt that will happen. Yes, there is no money in it.
Also, it must be said, this mark was very soft; 50K is not a distance that is seriously raced (even compared to longer ultras). Shattering it is what would be expected of an elite marathoner making a serious attempt. If the Africans had a go at it we would see it fall further. But now that she's done it and got some press... maybe she will start something? One can hope.
Sure, some marathon near-elites can make the transition. Magda Boulet is a good example. She's run 2:31, and also won Western States 100. Camille Herron is an even better example. She has the 100-mile and 24-hour WRs... but she was "only" a 2:37 marathoner, before moving up. Kouros, the indisputable greatest ultrarunner of all time, had a marathon best of only 2:24. My bet is that Des Linden, a 2:22 marathoner, is too optimized for marathon, but who knows? It would be great to see her try longer stuff, but I doubt that will happen. Yes, there is no money in it.
Don't overlook Kara Goucher, a 2:24:52 marathon best, who finished 5th at Leadville. I think Linden can and will be a success at longer ultras, though whether that will translate to the trails is another issue. She's more a grind it out strength runner than a fast 5K-10K runner who moved up to the marathon.
Ah, good points, thanks.
Mother of Cats
Count me in with those people. This is cool, but 50K is really a long marathon, nothing like a 100-miler, let alone longer races. (Kouros believed ultras started around 24 hours. I can't tell you how many times I've witnessed a hotshot 100-mile runner totally fall apart when trying 24 hours.) IMO yes, it is a different sport, especially at the elite level, where you are not elite unless you are optimized for your event. The energy system is different. The limiting factors are different. The mental game is different. A million more factors play into it as well, that can be mostly ignored for up to marathon.
I am not an ultramarathoner myself, but it seems to me that there is a broad range of what falls under the heading of "ultra marathon," including stuff like:
a) a 50K on pavement
b) 24 hours on a track
c) Western States ("traditional" 100 miles on trails)
d) the Barkley (as much orienteering as running)
e) the Marathon des Sables (multi-day stage race)
A good marathoner running a good 50K on pavement isn't that surprising. It's like a good miler running a good 5K. Not that big a gap between the two. But the other variants of ultramarathons involve different challenges not associated with marathoning - technical trails, running in darkness, sleep deprivation, navigation, tolerance for salted potato. You can be a really good, fast runner, and also completely unable to handle the aspects I've listed above.
I would say that the dividing line is NOT the distance of the race per se (over 26.2 v. under) but whether it is normal and expected to change your shoes and socks in the middle of a race.
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And...if you want a running Instagram where all the pictures are of cats, I've got you covered.
Yeah I agree with most of that. But I would also say that even keeping most of those variables the same, there is still a transition that occurs once you get much beyond a marathon distance, even if you stick with flat road races. For one thing, burning fat becomes a lot more important, as does getting in calories. You can fuel a marathon, but not longer, on mostly stored glycogen. The mental skills you need to be a good marathoner are IMO pretty different from what you need to be a good 24-hour runner. As the distance increases, VO2Max becomes less important. Fatigue resistance is much more of a limiting factor.
I agree with DWaves points that there are tons of different types of ultras and IMO the more rugged trail races with technical footing are probably going to be the biggest chance to specialize and outperform the traditional road runners (can anyone touch Killian Journet?) whereas something like Comrades is ripe picking for an elite marathon who then dedicates 4+ months or up to a year to prepare for it. I'm not sure if/when/where that would appear in longer events.
Bhearn, I'm sorry I don't believe you cannot run a marathon that qualifies as "good" to elite runners on only glycogen stores. Every single good runner brings fuel to the marathon and science has pretty well proven that with some individual variation you will bonk around mile 20 while racing a marathon. To your second point about VDOT and Fatigue Resistance, while elite runners in general have excellent V02max a pre-requisite to entry, there's some variation there and there seems to be some correlations between higher VO2 and lower running economy (and vice versa) which partially explains why the person with the highest V02 doesn't simply win every event. I'm actually not aware of any articles on fatigue resistance in general but isn't that mostly built by training LT and specific race pace?
Personally I'm a bit more curious about the mental side of things as in 100 milers everyone seems to go through a super rough patch at some point and I'm wondering if the mindset they bring to the marathon would allow them to persevere or if it's sufficiently different that a new skill needs to be learned. I was listening to freakonomics podcast the other day and they were interviewing a psychologist that claimed that one skill that high achieving business people and high level athletes share is the ability when things aren't going well to assess the situation and accept reality. There was little denial that "I trained for this pace" or that things wouldn't be painful but they were able to accept the reality of a given day very very well.
Multi-Day or over 24 hour events would be a very interesting experiment. Maybe Des will run Moab 240 one of these daysl. =)
Personally I'm a bit more curious about the mental side of things as in 100 milers everyone seems to go through a super rough patch at some point and I'm wondering if the mindset they bring to the marathon would allow them to persevere or if it's sufficiently different that a new skill needs to be learned. I was listening to freakonomics podcast the other day and they were interviewing a psychologist that claimed that one skill that high achieving business people and high level athletes share is the ability when things aren't going well to assess the situation and accept reality. There was little denial that "I trained for this pace" or that things wouldn't be painful but they were able to accept the reality of a given day very very well. Multi-Day or over 24 hour events would be a very interesting experiment. Maybe Des will run Moab 240 one of these daysl. =)
Tangentially related, but...my previous sport was riding horses - specifically jumping in competition (hunter/jumper/big eq, for those who know the lingo). My time in the ring actually spent competing would be anywhere from 25 seconds to 2 and a half minutes.
When I swapped to running, one of the biggest challenges was learning how to mentally manage myself and maintain focus for a competition that could last anywhere from a bit under 6 minutes to 3 hours or more. Jumping horses was a combination of strategizing and reacting; running was the first time I had to learn how to manage my own thoughts for an extended period of time.
I have no doubt that there are similar challenges in shifting from a competition that is generally 2 and a half hours or less to one that is much much longer.
good
Trails
darkwave prior to finding ultras I did endurance and competitive trail with my horse with a little dressage thrown in. That helped with the mental but certainly not the physical as 6+ hours in the saddle didn't equate to my longest 12 hours of ultra walking. Still have the horses but they are retired.
6+ hours in the saddle, while not 12 hours of ultrawalking, is still nothing to take lightly. I'd be good and sore after that one.
True confession: I HATED riding outside of the ring. Just did not enjoy trails at all. Not my thing.
I worked for a while at a farm just outside of Middleburg Virginia when I was in my late teens/early 20s, and one of my tasks was to hack the younger horses along the back roads. Sounds awesome right? Nope, not my favorite thing (to be fair, most of these horses were far from bomb proof).
Then I started running, and discovered I hated trail running too. Go figure.....
I'm actually not aware of any articles on fatigue resistance in general but isn't that mostly built by training LT and specific race pace?
Well, maybe. There are thousands of papers on fatigue, but not so much on fatigue in ultras, and yeah, nothing I'm aware of on how to build fatigue resistance. This is a great Science of Ultra podcast from a couple years ago with Guillaume Millet, "the world's leading expert on neuromuscular fatigue in ultramarathons".
https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/60
There are some good papers linked there.
But, if we suppose that fatigue resistance is built by training LT and specific race pace, this is in contradiction to developing high VO2Max. The way I used to look at it was like this: mitochondria and capillaries make up on the order of a third of muscle mass. If my aerobic capacity is far higher than I will ever need during a race, that's just so much dead weight I'm carrying around. Worse, I abused my body much more than I needed to to develop that, when I could have been training more at race pace, building my fatigue resistance. (To put some numbers to that, you can run 160 miles in 24 hours, a world-class performance, never running faster than a 9-minute mile.)
The thing is, in a long enough ultra, as fatigue accumulates, you will need to use more and more of that "extra" aerobic capacity as some muscle fibers shut down. (I first fully realized this towards the end of a 6-day race, much longer than I think we are talking about here.) Finding the optimum seems like a real puzzle. But I have enough experience at 24-hour, at least, to know that someone with a fast marathon time, or even a fast 100-mile time, will not be competitive unless they have done a lot of work specifically for 24-hour. That extra aerobic capacity is a requirement, maybe, if you want to set a world record, but before it becomes relevant there are a lot of other bottlenecks.
My opinion is that it's a different mental skillset than for marathon. But yes, I think the mental side of things is more important than fatigue. It's also hard to separate out from fatigue. I agree that it's critical you have the ability to re-assess when things go wrong. You can get through a marathon with nothing going really wrong, but very rarely will that be the case for 100 miles or longer.
Turns out Des is thinking about longer ultras. At the least, she was looking towards Comrades this year (90 km), but it appears it won't happen.
Here's a great podcast with Paul Kentor (aka SteelTownRunner) on the significance of her 50k, with some discussion about where she might go from there:
https://www.gunksrunner.com/paincave/2021/4/16/episode-82-emergency-des-linden-pod-with-phil-vondra-and-paul-kentor