u/StrikingYam4967

Just finished my first year as a licensed PT in an outpatient ortho setting and I have to be honest, I'm feeling a little burned out and underwhelmed by the support structure here. Before I accepted the job I was told there would be experienced clinicians to learn from, structured case reviews, and ongoing mentorship to help me develop my clinical reasoning. The reality is that I'm seeing 16 to 18 patients a day, barely have time to eat lunch, and the senior PTs are just as slammed as I am.

I genuinely love the work and I care about my patients, but I feel like I'm figuring everything out on my own through trial and error. I've been leaning heavily on continuing ed courses and journal articles just to fill the gap.

I'm curious how common this experience is across different settings. Did any of you actually find real mentorship early in your career, and if so what made it work? Was it the clinic size, the ownership model, a specific senior clinician who just made time? Or did most of you also end up selftaught by necessity?

Would love to hear what others did to accelerate their clinical development when formal mentorship wasn't available. This feels more like the norm than the exception, but hoping I'm wrong.

After running marathons for a few years I finally signed up for a 50k trail race this fall and honestly have no idea how different the training should look compared to marathon prep.

I have a decent aerobic base, usually running around 45 to 50 miles per week during marathon builds, and I can comfortably run back to back long runs on weekends. The race I signed up for has around 4500 feet of elevation gain, which is more than anything I have trained on before.

What I am trying to figure out is whether I should focus more on time on feet rather than pace and mileage, how much vertical gain to work into my weekly runs, and whether back to back long runs should be the cornerstone of the whole build.

I have been looking at a few plans including David Roche's approach but would love to hear from people who actually went through this transition. Did your marathon fitness transfer well or did the trails and elevation feel like starting from scratch?

Also curious whether people think a 50k needs a full taper or whether it is better to treat it more like a hard training day and not overthink race week prep.

Any advice from people who have made this jump would be really helpful.

I've been running marathons for a few years and I'm seriously considering signing up for my first 50 miler next spring. I feel like I have a decent aerobic base and I'm comfortable with back to back long runs on weekends, but I keep hearing that the jump from 26.2 to 50 miles is a different kind of challenge than I'm expecting.

Not just the physical distance either. I mean the mental side, the fueling strategy, how your pace changes, how you handle the middle miles when the excitement wears off and you still have a marathon left to go.

For those of you who have made that transition, what genuinely caught you off guard? Was it how much more important hiking becomes? The time on feet aspect messing with your sleep schedule during training? Stomach issues you never dealt with in marathons?

I've read a lot of race reports and training plans but the honest, unfiltered experience from people who have actually been through it seems more useful than anything I find in an article.

Also curious whether a 50k as a stepping stone is worth it or if jumping straight to a 50 miler is reasonable depending on your background.

Appreciate any thoughts from people who have been through it.