A friend sent me this today. Explains why it's been harder to get into the popular trail runs.
http://www.runnersworld.com/racing/is-100-miles-the-new-marathon?adbid=10152784429401987&adbpl=fb&adbpr=9815486986&cid=socRac_20150518_46003726&short_code=30jsw
tbd.
Are we there, yet?
I've seen a little bit of the "you aren't a real ultra runner unless you've run 100M" like I've seen in mainstream running "you aren't a real runner unless you've run a marathon." I'm still relatively new to ultra running and I know running 100M was something I briefly considered after I finished my first ultra.
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.
KillJoyFuckStick
"Run" 100 milers. Hahahahalolololol
Very few participants run 100 miles in my experience. Yet I still have no desire to Gallowalk 100 miles.
You people have issues
Tim
What's better than the article are the replies.
Hopefully the readers will not run 100's as a fad and do them because they love to run and test their physical and mental limits.
“Paralysis-to-50k” training plan is underway!
I think that is more of a headliner, attention grabber type statement, but certainly ultras and 100 mile races are becoming more and more popular. Hopefully that article doesn't make it more difficult to get into events.
I haven't been doing ultras that long (2007) but even back then the big races were lotteries or signup quickly or get shut out with some exceptions. Now though it's sort of crazy. Laurel Highlands (70 mile ultra) for instance closed in 2 weeks this year... in 2010 I emailed the RD and signed up a week before the race as it wasn't anywhere near full yet. I guess the popularity is good for the RD's but bad for runners who want some flexibility in planning their schedule. It is what it is I suppose. Anymore I just target one big race a year and look for smaller less popular events that I can sign up on short notice. I haven't done many 100 mile races (just 3) as those are big commitments and I look at them more as adventures than anything else.
FSocks - What is your experience with 100's? We call that hiking you know. Can apply to any distance on the trail, not just 100's.
In dog beers, I've only had one.
Le professeur de trail
I agree the title is more of an attention grabber.
Not sure if "hundreds" are a fad or not but there is nothing wrong with more people wanting to up their own personal challenge. Now articles like this that make it seem so easy to do - just follow the 10 simple steps and you can do it. Hopefully this doesn't increase the number or people ill prepared and take spots for those that put in the work. Having said that - that amount or focus of preparation is different for each person. For instance - some people can do it on overall low mileage, some with no long runs, etc.
Maybe going forward part of the whole challenge of it all is simply getting in to a race, not just finishing it.
My favorite day of the week is RUNday
What is runnersworld.com?
LB2
Faster Than Your Couch!
To me it seems ultras have become more popular, and it is almost impossible to get into a 50k or 50M unless you sign up the day registration opens, best within less than 2 hours of the opening.
Fortunately this does not apply to 100-milers yet, so at least there seem to be a few weeks usually, but it is still difficult if you don't want to fully commit to a race many months before it is actually held.
It seems to me that some people sign up just in case they decide to run it. At the MMT 100, originally there were around 350 applicants. Lottery put 228 of them onto the provisionary start list, then something like 70 or 80 on the wait list. Two months after the lottery, the 55 people ahead of me on the provisionary start list and the wait list had "disappeared", and I got into the race. That was in mid-April, six weeks before the race. Three weeks later, all of the wait list applicants, plus at least two "open" (after the wait list) registrants had gotten onto the start list of 208 runners. At the start line, there were then 199 runners.
So out of the more than 300 applicants who had originally made it onto the provisionary start or the wait list, only 199 ran the race, the rest withdrew or eventually DNS'd (there were 9 no-shows).
I think we might have to get used to some kind of "provisionary sign-up" = sign up if you can by any means, then just cancel whichever race you don't intend to run.
This adds a lot of unnecessary administrative work for the RD's, and a lot of planning insecurity to the runners' minds, just so that some people who think they might run a 100M one day can feel like they had really tried, but their plans got derailed somehow (I don't think that many withdrawals could be caused by injury or job assignments, but rather by lack of commitment and taking it seriously).
It is that lack of determination and commitment, and the failure to foresee what it would take to run a 100M (popular running and endurance magazines make it seem easy and simple, and present it as some prestigeous accomplishment) that I don't like seeing popping up and blocking serious runners from getting into races.
If it was as simple as following the 10 easy steps, why would so many people withdraw?
As for me, I don't like seeing it becoming a "fad", or something that adds to the "prestige" of a runner.
Run for fun, people, 15 years down the line, nobody will care how far or how fast you've run.
Run for fun.
Is it really that bad? Of the ultras I've run, the only one I needed to be ready to register for as soon as registration opened was the Ice Age Trail which filled in about 2 hours. All the others still had space up to a month before the race.
Oil Creek 50k was filled within 2 hours, the 100k within 2 days, and the 100M within 2 weeks after registration had opened.
The 50k and 100k are now filling within minutes. This year, the 100k actually did not fill within minutes but within 24 hours but ONLY because there were too many people on and the server crashed!
IAT and Oil City are well known and popular races. Last year I mailed in my entry for the Labor Pain 12-Hour only 3 weeks before the race and had no problems getting in.
Isn't this a somewhat normal progression? As one milestone is achieved you reach for the next and now that millions of people a year do marathons it's just natural that some will start reaching further.
I do agree though, that there are some problems with articles like this. All the examples the article cites of people jumping from the marathon to 100 miles are elite runners. IMO it's a lot easier for an elite to make the jump then the general working class runner who struggles to find the time to train for a marathon, much less understanding the logistics such as pacers and crew needs.
Three of the four marathon plus distance trail races that I've done had a large number of people that were not prepared for the distance on that terrain. By mile 8-10 I would be passing people who had went out too fast, and were now bitching that the course was insane and they would never do it again. Quite a few mentioned doing road marathons previously. The worst race by far for this was the Megatransect and this is a race that the server will crash on signup day because of so many people trying to get in.
Articles like this need to point out that the average runner often needs to go through a progression of increasing distances to test if they are capable of hitting the 100 mile mark. Can't believe I just wrote that as I despise road runners who discourage new runners from training for HM and FM until they have run several years of 5 and 10ks. However, I have found that the distance on the road from a 10k to a HM to be miniscule with the distance to the low 20s to be a little more taxing. Move to the trail and increase the distance to 31 miles and it's now a different beast.
One of the things that some of the longer ultras may have to do is to have qualifying standards. I think this would weed out some of the people that sign up but only start to train a month or two before the race.
WCRunner - Labor Pains I've signed up for on race day itself. It falls into those local events that are not a problem to get into. It's the bigger well established ultras that are popular that are difficult to get into obviously. I don't do track/mile loop type events so not sure what the situation is there. I suspect those do not fill rapidly like say Western States, Wasatch, MMT, and others.
Couch - You make a good point about MMT. I believe with their wait list policy many people do just throw their name in the hat and then decide later if they want to run. I guess that is good and bad. The good being that those who really do want to run and get shut out initially have good odds of getting in but have the nagging doubt of uncertainty. One year I ended up #2 on the wait list when it closed. I volunteered and paced that year and cashed in my training at Laurel Highlands a month later. Thankfully then you could still get into Laurel at the last minute. It would have sucked not to have been able to get into a race after all that preparation.
DayDreamer - Some ultras do indeed have qualifying standards. Mostly 100's (50 mile, 100k, or previous 100 mile race) have the standard but races like JFK give runners with certain times an early window to register.
I think that is more of a headliner, attention grabber type statement, but certainly ultras and 100 mile races are becoming more and more popular. Hopefully that article doesn't make it more difficult to get into events. I haven't been doing ultras that long (2007) but even back then the big races were lotteries or signup quickly or get shut out with some exceptions. Now though it's sort of crazy. Laurel Highlands (70 mile ultra) for instance closed in 2 weeks this year... in 2010 I emailed the RD and signed up a week before the race as it wasn't anywhere near full yet. I guess the popularity is good for the RD's but bad for runners who want some flexibility in planning their schedule. It is what it is I suppose. Anymore I just target one big race a year and look for smaller less popular events that I can sign up on short notice. I haven't done many 100 mile races (just 3) as those are big commitments and I look at them more as adventures than anything else. FSocks - What is your experience with 100's? We call that hiking you know. Can apply to any distance on the trail, not just 100's.
I think we can blame the Laurel Highlands popularity on the fact that now it's one of the few <100 miler WS qualifiers on the east coast. I also think it's quite telling of the sport that I almost feel guilty "taking" a spot at LH with the intentions of having fun and enjoying the trail, versus viewing it as a straight qualifier for WS.
I agree that it doesn't seem cool enough to some folks to "just" run a marathon anymore. I can't say I share that view because I think many road marathons are harder than some ultras, but I also know many runners who will run ultras just for bucket list reasons.
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NYCM: 11/4/2018