Ultramarathon

My brother and I had talked about running the CanLake 50km ultramarathon about 9 months ago, but fter my marathon in May I decided that I just didn’t want to invest the time in training that such an event would require and so I pulled out. He continued training and ran the race last weekend, and I couldn’t be more proud.

A few months ago he asked me to crew for him, and maybe pace him during the race. I hesitated for a while but eventually decided that I’d do it. My main concern was that the race was being held on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, so when my family opted to have Thanksgiving dinner on Monday instead of Sunday I felt I could go.

Strength, stamina, fitness. These are the words that endurance athletes evoke, but these attributes play a much smaller role than one may think.

Endurance sports are about enduring pain.

It takes many hours of training to build up sufficient strength, stamina and fitness to be able to complete an event like a marathon or an Iron Man, but these will only take an athlete so far. Once you can run for an hour or two, you can run all day provided you can work through the pain.

Here are some races I’m considering as preparation for the Vermont 50 miler. Prior to this year, my longest event was the Toronto marathon 8 years ago.

1. Sun May 5: Toronto Marathon
2. Sat May 25: Sulfur Springs (Hamilton 50km). Not sure about this one yet
3. Sat June 22: Niagara 50km road race
4. Sat July 6: Creemore Vertical Challenge 50km on hilly trails
5. Sat July 13: The Limberlost Challenge (Huntsville, 56km trails on a scenic 14km loop)
6. Sun Sept 29: Vermont 50 miler

Creemore and Limberlost look awesome and they’re only a week apart! The Vermont 50 miler will be the pinnacle of my season this year.

My brother and I have recently started discussing the idea of running an ultra-marathon in 2013. 50 miles (80 km). Holy shit.

I’ve read a few books about ultrarunning including “Born to Run” and “Ultramarathon Man” but never really thought that I’d be able to do it myself. Sibling rivalry kinship practically demands that we follow through with this. I’m not going to be the one to back down.

The first question that came to my mind was, “How the f*ck do you train for an ultra?”. It seems that that it boils down to a few simple things: