Running An Ultra

Why I ran a 33-mile race...and liked it!

The Race

Over the past weekend, I participated in my first-ever Ultramarathon - a 33.5-mile trail race in Durham, North Carolina. If you think that distance sounds crazy, the MST 100 Endurance Race, where I competed, had three distance options: the 50k I ran (more like 33.5 miles due to trail changes), the 50-miler, and the 100-miler. I guess you could say I was the least crazy of the bunch 🙂

The race was held on a part of the Mountain-to-Sea Trail in North Carolina, and the total elevation on my Garmin was around 2,800 feet, which is pretty tame for a trail ultra. I enjoyed the race, although there were difficult moments, especially during miles 26 - 30. But I had signed up for an adventure, and an adventure was what I got.

Part of that adventure turned out to be the weather. It alternated from drizzling to pouring rain the whole time I was out there. The course was an out-and-back, covering the same section of trail. It was wild how different the trail was on the way back as water levels rose and the trail got sloppier.

I did a quick Twitter thread when I finished the race, which includes some pictures and videos of the trail conditions and weather: 

https://x.com/2Hats1Mike/status/1766587138152231068?s=20

The wet and mud added to the challenge of the race, but it was also fun. I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all at a few points. Even though it wasn’t ideal for running, I felt like a kid out there with an excuse to play in the rain and mud. Something was thrilling about running through puddles carefree with mud splashing all around.

Why?

Why did I sign up for this race? Whenever people asked me what I was training for over the last several weeks and I informed them, the typical response was an incredulous “Why?” or a “You’re Crazy!”. So why did I sign up for this race? It was a combination of reasons. 

First of all, not to sound too much like a Twitter Thread Dude, but I’ve embraced the “Do Hard Things” mantra that has become popular in the self-development world over the last few years. It’s true it’s easier than ever to become complacent and seek out comfort at all costs. Comfort is so accessible, but constant comfort stymies growth, and well, it’s a bit boring.

I am not a cold plunge person nor am I someone to shy away from most of the comforts of modern living. So for me, finding a legitimately difficult endurance challenge is the way I seek out some discomfort, both mentally and physically.

It works out that these challenges also require a lot of physical training to help keep me in shape along the way. I weightlifted twice a week and ran about 300ish miles over the past four-ish months in preparation for this race. This also funneled down to my nutritional and sleep habits. My diet is not great, but the need to be ready for certain workouts has a way of forcing you to at least be reasonable in what you’re ingesting before a run. And the last thing you want to do is waste a workout by not eating or resting/sleeping properly afterward.

I forget where, but I read how it’s much better to have one overarching goal that flows through everything you do, rather than having many small goals. This top-level goal somewhat dictates everything else. To some extent, I felt the power in that throughout training for this race. I didn’t necessarily need to have a goal to sleep better, for example, because if I was going to handle the training I needed to do, I didn’t have a choice but to get the right quantity and quality of sleep.

Some pushback I got on training for an ultra is “Is this really the healthiest thing to do?”. Putting aside a lot of myths about the impacts of distance running and endurance sports in general, I feel like this type of question misses the forest for the trees. It’s exceedingly likely that if I was purely optimizing my health, there would be a better workout regimen and a better set of fitness goals to accomplish. This is a classic example of letting perfection be the enemy of progress. Training for and competing in an Ultra leaves me way healthier than I’d otherwise be. It captivates my interest in a way the “perfect” workout routine might not, and I’ve found a community to help me in this pursuit, meaning I’m not only receiving the physical and mental health benefits of exercise but the social benefits as well.

If you can find a pursuit that gets you doing more than you were before, moves you in the right direction, and appeals to you, then it is a worthy pursuit.

Another reason I found an Ultra the right challenge for me: I enjoy the logistics and teamwork of it. The training was more complex and deliberate than I’ve done in the past. To help me with that, I had a few coaches work with me throughout my training (shout out to Melina for running, Carley for strength training, and Taylor for PT).

For the race, I had to figure out what gear to wear, my nutrition plan, and pacing strategies. I had my family crew for me. It was a race where most 50k runners were self-supported, but having my family involved made the race much more enjoyable. It was great to have their support and physically be able to see them at a few aid stations during the race. Tangibly, it was much easier for me to get the nutrition I was familiar with and to do things like change out wet sneakers than it would have been otherwise.

Blocking Out Time

One of the biggest positives of an Ultra for me, though, is oddly the deterrent for many people - the amount of time it takes. I’ve been thinking about time a lot recently, and how the amount of activities I do with a nearly singular focus that take up a lot of time (multiple hours) has dwindled. For example, when I was younger I’d go to the movies frequently. That’s a 2-3 hour experience. Now, I rarely go to the movies. And when I do watch a movie at home, it’s quite rare that it’s a singular focus. I often pause the movie to attend to something else or multitask (working or on my phone) while watching.

Training for an Ultra requires plenty of long runs, out on the trails or the roads by yourself. I wouldn’t say I was 100% singularly focused for all of these runs; I enjoy listening to audiobooks while I run. But I was able to detach from my work and my phone (god, I have a bad phone addiction, there’s a post coming at some point about that), and be outside in nature for large blocks of time.

For me, it’s easy to get caught up in jumping from one thing to the next and mistaking multitasking and task-switching for productivity. I also constantly check my phone - refreshing email, Slack, sports news, etc. As a polar opposite to that, I’ve found myself drawn to and fascinated by activities (part of the reason I love to golf so much) or stories of other people who have a completely different relationship with time.

The idea of a full week's vacation can seem like a hauntingly long amount of time to be away from day-to-day life, yet when I read about travel in the past that took people months to do what we can now do in hours or I read about people today who take a summer to hike the Appalachian or Pacific Coast Trails, there’s a part of me that thinks they might have it “right”. 

I’m not sure where I am going with this. I felt like I had a much more salient point in my head, but I am having a tough time putting it on paper. Ultimately, the hours at a time spent on the trail were a big positive of running an Ultra for me, but I also think there’s an even broader future post/conversation I’d like to flesh out about how quite frankly weird it is that we don’t spend more large chunks of time (hours in some cases, weeks or months in others) dedicated to singular tasks or to detach from the routine of day to day life that can lead to days turning into weeks into years into decades.

What’s Next?

Another question I’ve received commonly is - “Would you ever do it again?”. It’s hard to believe, but I did enjoy the experience - the race itself and all the training and collaboration along with it. So, my answer is a strong “Yes”. I hope to do another 50k, hopefully, a bit faster and with a bit more elevation gain. My longer-term stretch goal is to do a 100-mile race in Colorado for my 40th birthday (in about threeish years), and to do that I need to start building up speed and getting used to larger climbs than were present in my first race.