Eight Point Two

Ultra Marathon Top Tips

Andy Mouncey has written the following article; “From Marathon to Ultra Marathon” 20 Things you need to know.

Andy has also kindly donated 10 e copies of his new book “Magic, Madness and Ultramarathon Running” which will be spot prizes for anyone taking place in either the Mammut Ultra Tour of the Peak District or the OMM Intro Ultra, part of the Dig Deep Races –www.digdeepraces.co.uk

Andy signed off 17 years as a triathlete in 2003 by setting record stage times for the Enduroman Arch To Arc Challenge: A 300 mile solo triathlon linking London and Paris via an English Channel swim. Since then he’s been into his ultrarunning. He is an accomplished speaker, coach and published author who lives with his family in the north of England.

Find out more at www.bigandscaryrunning.com

From Marathon To Ultramarathon

20 Things You Need To Know

by Andy Mouncey

1. No Bluffing

You can’t bluff in an ultra – ignore your basics and the warning signs at your peril.

The stuff you can get away with over 26.2 miles can seriously compromise your performance and even cause you to DNF over 40, 50 & 100 miles.

That hotspot on the ball of your foot? Stop and sort it out before it develops into a bad blister that has you crying a few miles later when you still have 30 miles to go.

That flapping, noisy, ill-fitting kit? Will drive you to distraction and that means a waste of valuable mental energy.

That sense of humour failure? Probably means you need to eat and drink.

Over 100 miles, ‘mind over matter’ is a myth. Neglect your fuelling and your body will ultimately shut down and you will STOP.

2. Know Your Place

You need to be able to navigate in an ultra – and whole / part route reccies in advance of race day are invaluable.

If you are confident in where you are /going then you have more mental and emotional energy to give to the task of relentless forward motion – which after all, is the basis of ultramarathon running success.

This does not mean being a whiz with a compass: There’s stuff you can do before you even get outside just by turning the route info provided by race organisers into a format that works for you. Prefer lists rather than maps? Translate the map info into a route card of your preferred size and detail and bigger than normal font size. Then stick it in a plastic sleeve and seal the sleeve. Run holding the card with your thumb always on your present/next route feature.

3. Night Time Is The Right Time

You will need to be comfortable running at night in an ultra.

It is a different skill set for a different sensory experience. Many of your usual indictors of progress will be missing – the view ahead, for example. Learning to relax and enjoy the beauty and challenges of running at night can transform your ultra running. A way to start is to go out on familiar trails with a good light – minimalist lights are all well and good, but you want to see where you are going first and foremost, right? –  and with friends. This will give you other people to key off and focus on apart from oh look how dark and spooky it is, and I can’t seem to see where my feet are going.

4. Know Thyself

An ultra requires greater levels of self-awareness & greater skills in self-management.

Why? Because success will ultimately depend on managing how you feel – over an extended period of time when you are being constantly challenged in a constantly changing environment to make good on a big commitment.

There’s nothing like your own company for 12-24 hours as a way of getting up close and personal with the real you. Self-knowledge is of course only half the story – you then need to have the motivation and skill to act on that knowledge when the situation demands it AND do so in a way that is helpful.

Which means Making A Decision.

That’s right, your decision-making skills also get a workout. Of course, decisions only have meaning in the context of a clear and compelling goal. Which means dusting off your goal-setting skills as well. Sorry.

5. It’s OK To Walk

You will need to train to walk for an ultra. Even the top boys and girls walk at some point in the long races – though you wouldn’t think so from the incredible times! For us mere mortals this falls into two categories: Flats & climbs.

Walking efficiently in a race is a world away from your usual amble to the shops, and is therefore a skill to be practiced. Walking gives you a physical and mental moving break, and in ultras a break really can be as good as a rest.

During a recent coaching camp we came up with 10 different walk-run styles to use on a climb. TEN! Most people just run up till the hill beats them. Remember that you are in charge of the hill – the hill is not in charge of you.

6. It Ain’t Over If You Blow

You can blow up and recover fully in an ultra. Really. Even if you lie down and have a little sleep ‘cos it’s all getting abit too much – what’s 30 minutes over 12 or 24 hours?

Back to ‘Know Thyself’ and knowledge of what to do when this happens. Here’s a brief checklist:

Know the signs

Heed the signs

Slow down, walk, eat and drink –
let everyone go – you’ll see ‘em later

Reduce the size of the chunk of the race you are focused on

Talk good stuff to yourself

Be patient as the fuel goes to work

Change something else if you need to be really sure

Keep talking – have faith

Re-start slowly telling yourself what a clever sausage you are!

7. It’s OK To Sleep On The Job

See above. Usually preferable to do this under supervision at an aid station – though I do know people who just couldn’t wait and crashed out in the undergrowth. Risky and it scares the tourists. Set an alarm on your watch or tell a member of the aid station crew what you are doing – few things more alarming to a volunteer than to discover a body at their checkpoint – and ask them to wake you at a time of your choice.

8. Be In The Present

It’s more helpful to focus on the Journey rather than a Destination in an ultra, not least because the final destination tends to be a very very long way ahead. So far ahead sometimes, that we can barely get our head around it.

So focus on the stuff you can control, get your head up and enjoy the moment – which is, after all, unique. Helpfully, most ultras take you through beautiful landscapes which means there’s much to enjoy and take in, if you have the wit to do so.

If The End is a very very long way away, then it can be spectacularly unhelpful to focus on how far away it is and how long you need to travel to get there. That’s the deal you signed up to when you paid the entry – it ain’t gonna change.

9. Black & White v Shades Of Grey

It can be more helpful to focus on subjective rather than objective measures. This can be quite a challenge because much of marathon preparation and racing is around splits and heart rate and mile markers and training zones and minute per mile pace and ‘The Wall’ at 20 miles. Absolutes where it either ‘is’ or ‘is not’.

In ultras there are so many factors to juggle with over such a long time that giving yourself a mental break and room to manoeuvre just becomes good sense as well as helping you enjoy the journey. Hitting absolute indictors time and time again can become a very stressful way to operate: Managing how you feel suddenly opens up a whole new world. ‘Cos we do this for free, right?

10. Decisions, Decisions

An ultra requires that you really are a good / decisive decision-maker. See above.

11. Wish You Were Here

You get more / more of inspiring landscapes in an ultra. Unless your thing is going to be those 24 hour track races, of course.

I know of few things more effective at taking your mind away from the miles than the majesty of Mother Nature. And before you think I’m gonna turn tree-hugger on you, think on this: I’m not talking about rubber-necking through a car window. You will be part of those landscapes with all the sensory experience to go with it. Areas that you think you know will take on many more shades of meaning once you have your own journey to thread through them.

12. I Want To Be Alone

You have a greater chance of running alone during part of an ultra. Yes, the field size is growing as more and more people go longer and go off road, and the probability remains: You will need to be cool with your own company and confident in your ability to motivate and look after yourself. Unless you are racing in the States or Europe you are unlikely to be regaled at regular intervals by cheering crowds and a manic MC. We are, after all, the repressed English. Practice the art of self-reliance, dear reader.

13. Get Sorted

Personal organisation: You need to get the ‘faff factor’ to a minimum, because if it’s a faff, 40 miles into a 50 mile race when you’re not thinking straight you wont do it – and that could be curtains.

A reason many people don’t/can’t navigate? It’s a faff doing all that stuff with a map.

A reason many people have problems with blisters and chafing? It’s a faff stopping, getting the kit out and doing the repairs on crappy feet.

A reason a good friend of mine had dehydration problems on nearly every race till he figured this one out? It was a faff to reach his drink bottles stashed on his rucksack.

In ultras, personal organisation is (nearly) everything. Test, refine, and test your kit choices and equipment stash locations till you can reach / do nearly everything while on the move.

If it’s simple and easy you’ll do / use it – if it ain’t, you wont.

14. I Gotta Go!

You need to be OK with a wide range of toilet skills and locations. One of my most vivid recollections from my early ultra days was racing in the US and seeing a lady runner peeing successfully from a standing position just a few yards off the path. She just hoiked her shorts to one side and…you have a picture, I’m sure.

You should expect to have to go. Physical effort plus mental stress plus oft strange foods plus miles and miles can play havoc with your insides. The only way to find out which foods agree with you – and this could differ according to effort level and how hot it is – is to experiment. You might have to go through some unexpected and messy results before figuring this out. So carry your toilet paper in a little plastic bag (see faff factor above). Please.

The general etiquette is to go away from the path. Some races are specific: At UTMB in France all runners are given a mesh bag which can be threaded to a waistbelt for litter and toilet paper to be disposed of at checkpoints. As environmental awareness becomes more mainstream, our racing footprints will be required to be ever lighter.

15. Compounded & Complicated

There are more and different factors to plan for / deal with in an ultra. Some of the differences I’m covering here. Then we also have the compounding effect which is simply a function of the greater distance.

There are more aid stations. More kit to carry ‘cos you’re out for more time. More choices to make. More food to eat. More drink to drink. More weather to deal with. More time to think. More stuff to forget. More opportunities to give up…

Just because there are many many more miles to go.

16. Train To Get Down

You really need to train for the descents. It’s the downhills which are the quad-killer, and if your upper legs are shot then it’s pretty much hobble time from there on in. Remember the compound effect? This is where you pay with interest.

Descending effectively and efficiently is a different skill set from say, the full-on styles seen in shorter fell races in the north of England. In ultras the emphasis is on conservation and preservation of the muscles and the energy systems. This means the technique is different.

And if you don’t have hills to train on? Move house.

If you can’t move house then help is at hand: There is a bunch of stuff you can do in a gym and outside to condition those quads.

17. The Normal Rules Do Not Apply

Be prepared to experiment – the normal rules do not seem to apply over the big distances. Ever wonder why there is a stack of ‘How to train for the marathon’ books, and relatively little choice for ultras? Because the curious among us are still figuring it out, and much of the research is still pretty inconclusive.

Sure, there is some consensus:

Run. Run as often as you can – and run is the standout one for me in Tim Noakes’ ‘Lore Of Running’.

But after that?

Heck, I know people who race off junk foods and others who have nothing but gels.

I know people whose long run is all day, and others who achieve on two hours.

Listen, if it gets you the results you want in the way you want ‘em and you can make those results stick over time – then whatever you’re doing is a legitimate strategy for you. Even if it’s totally different from the next guy and you can’t find any mention of it in the manuals.

18. Be Special

The field size is smaller for an ultra race. So that start line you’re on and those people you’re with? It’s a pretty unique place and a special bunch of people.

19. Ladies: This Sport Is For You!

Ladies get more cheers – because there are less of them in the races – and those that are present perform relatively better over ultra marathon distance.

A higher % will finish – partly due, in my experience, to the fact that women do self-management much better – and the gaps between the top men and top women in the sport are very small.

Women have won ultras outright. The only marathon case I am aware of in the UK was the Severn Sisters off road marathon on the south coast sometime late 1980’s / early 1990’s.

20. Finish First

The finish % is smaller for an ultra race. Much smaller. It’s normal for one out of two people to DNF at the longer mountain races. Whatever your aspirations and level, remember this: You need to earn the right to finish first. Anything else is a bonus.

Andy specializes in coaching ultra-marathon runners and triathletes in person and by telephone so that their training has balance and their race performance becomes more consistent. Andy is also the resident running coach on Alpine Oasis trail running camps which run in the UK and France. For more information please visit http://www.bigandscaryrunning.com

Available from Amazon and all good book shops RRP �9.99 or signed copies direct from the author’s website.