Helloo, just DNF'd my first 100 miler at 74 miles(not for reason below). Have horrendous chafing between my bum cheeks (im a bloke) ran numerous marathons with no issue. Dont see it being undergarments the issue. What do you all do? Just lube up your crack at every stop and start? Pretty crude post sorry!
Just found this sub and thought i might get some valuable insights here.
I’ve been hooked on ultra running and i like to have a challenge/ goal to work towards.
Short background - soccer player for 17+ years, currently 23 years old. Been running since ~ 3 years non consistent. After injuries in soccer i chose running as my main activity. Last summer i ran 2x Half Marathons and the Wings For Life run (23km). Fastest HM is 1:45.
Now i originally had the goal to run 100km next year on mostly flat & street but then found the UTMB Mozart. Now im thinking of choosing that as my goal and signing up next week (if i can secure a spot - idk how fast they sell out?)
I’ll obviously will train very specific to this event. Runs as well as strength and fueling/hydration. And i know cardiovascular system will adapt fast but knees and all other stuff might take a while. I had some knee problems in the past.
Now from an unexperienced person in terms of ultras, will i be able to finish with a decent time? I know finishing first, or even top 10 is a fantasy goal which i know i wont achieve but you know never dream too little.
btw. no Trailrunning experience yet.
*edited: so the main question is, will i be able to finish with a year of training?
I'm racing a 50 mile race on a fine crushed rail path in a few months time and trying to find a good shoe for my annoying feet. Most people tend to use normal road racing shoes and not trail shoes, as the surface is very smooth. Probably my favorite shoes of all time are the Endorphin Speed 3, as I felt like they were quicker but still comfortable. I've ran in all kinds of super shoes...endorphin pro 3, nike vapor/alphafly 3's, saucony elite 2, adidas pro 4, and while I really enjoy some aspects of all these, most of them end up hurting my toes or giving me blister issues after about a half marathon distance. My original plan was to go with the Puma Deviate Nitro Elite 4, as i've always found them pretty comfortable, but I just did a run in them yesterday and out of nowhere they started annoying my second toe (it's a little purple today). And yes, I have a full thumbs width of extra space.
So now I'm thinking maybe I want to search for a less than super shoe that maybe has a bit more comfort. I'm currently doing a lot of my miles in Asics Superblast 3 and Novablast 6, and love both of these, but their stack height is too tall to be legal via the race rules. I know a lot of people will say if I don't win it doesn't matter, but I'd like to stick to the rules just in case I could potentially age group award/masters/etc. My planned pace is hopefully around 8:45/mi. I think the asics do well for me because the toe box must be higher or something. I've got two pretty thick and mangled big toenails from my milage, so they can be very negatively receptive to a low volume toebox. I've also ran in and hated the Speed 4, Evo SL, and Hyperion Max if that's any help. From a lot of reading and research I keep coming back to possibly looking at the Rebel V5, as it's legal height and gets compared a lot to a Novablast. I'm not opposed to a super shoe of some kind either, but I feel like at that relatively slower pace mabye id be better off just looking for comfort for seven plus hours on feet?
So, any suggestions?
Oh, I've also tried the Mount to Coast H1...i like it, but it aggravates my Achilles. And I recently picked up the Pure Nitro from Puma. It's a little on the firm side to me for that distance, plus it starts hurting my big toes after a bit.
Hi all
I am about to go on a roadtrip, and when I go roadtrippin' I also tend to go running to explore new places. What's essential for that is some sort of navigation that I can wear on my wrist.
I currently have a Forerunner 745 but good lordy does that navigation suck a...
I am keen to upgrade, but there are so many that my head is spinning.
Literally all I need is a fairly simply navigation layout and the ability to connect to Komoot.
I don't care about my HR, my power, notifications, distance, or even what time of day it is. All I want to see is where I am, and where I have to go next. Battery life is not the biggest deal since my exploration runs are rarely longer than 2hrs.
What would you recommend? Ideally the watch should cost less than 300 USD/EUR.
On my shortlist is the Suunto Race (S), but open to suggestions!
^((FYI, pictured is the Beeline moto 2, a minimalist motorcycle nav unit. I chose it as a reference because I love their minimalist map design.))
Is their a best/proper way to tie? Any way to avoid feeling like it's choking?
Many thanks.
I do ultras that are hilly but generally runnable (or at least not super technical/scrambly). I'm fortunate enough to live in an area with lots of different options for hills/mountainsides to train on. I'm trying to figure out which is optimum to use.
There's one particular route that all the "big dogs" do laps on, while other routes are considered inferior. It climbs about 1900' in 1.25 miles, with the lower half being super twisty/technical. I am able to run maybe 5% of it. A light, nimble person with a big stride might be able to run a lot more.
I guess my question is, if the climbs in races are runnable (or at least hikeable at a decent rhythm using poles), am I better off training on similar terrain that allows me to move with a rhythm? Or does steepness trump all? Will I end up stronger for having trained steeper, even if there's not much rhythm to my movements? A lot of fast people around here say go steep or go home, but I'm not sure I agree. Thoughts?
(Yeah, of course a variety is best. Which type of terrain should I be spending *most* of my time on?)
Hi! I am running with unisex salomon vest for a couple of years and start looking for a new one. there are options of woman version of the same vest - is it worth to look in? are those really more comfortable?
and does someone have an experience with salomon active skin or adventure skin? they are both 12l and I can't see that much of a difference.
Some context - i’ve been running since 3 years non competitive.
Last year i ran 2x half marathons and the wings for life run (23km) - fastest HM was 1h50min.
Then over the fall/winter i had some knee issues and went to physiotherapy.
I know started running again since ~ May. Current max. long run is 11km.
Im planning on signing up to UTMB Mozart (Full Distance) and prep for the next year.
For my long runs i take a bottle because i’m running more than an hour. Now i’ve been thinking of getting a running vest (Salomon Adv. Skin 12?). Obviously it would be an “invest” in the future so i can use it for the Ultra aswell. But it may be overkill? It’s just annoying to run with a bottle haha. I probably don’t need a vest for know but later when running further or prepping trail running i guess one would be good.
Alternatives to the Salomon or just bite the bullet once because it’s quite “expensive”.
I'm in a bit of a pickle. I have Eastern States 100 coming up in a month. I've been doing all my training in The North Face Altamesa 500's. Really liked them, but they completely came apart on my last run. My foot fell right out of the side of them. Now I'm stuck. I've always ran in Speedgoats but the 6's tore my feet up at No Business 100. Eastern states is a super technical/rocky course. I''ve always ran in Brooks Ghost for flat running. Does anybody have a recommendation?
Last month I posted here recruiting for my PhD study developing an acute and chronic scale measuring mental fatigue in sport. First off, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who took the time to fill it out. The responses have been brilliant and a few of the comments made me see the problem through a different lens, especially as my background is in climbing and weightlifting so seeing it from a runners perspective was really helpful. A few people also asked how the questionnaire was put together and what this round is doing, and I should have laid that out from the start. Full references are in a separate comment below.
Where the items came from
The scale is being developed following Boateng et al.'s (2018) framework for scale development, which is a detailed primer explaining how to develop and validate scales in behavioural and health science. The starting point was a wide search of the literature. I pulled items from two main sources: 16 measures of mental fatigue and mental load used in the general adult population (identified through Diaz-Garcia et al.'s 2021 systematic review), and 19 measures used in sport-specific contexts (identified through my own systematic scoping review of mental fatigue and mental load measurement tools in sport. I am looking to publish this soon). On top of that I added items developed from my readings of six papers that describe how athletes experience mental fatigue and what drives it (Van Cutsem et al., 2017; Martin et al., 2018; Pattyn et al., 2018; Russell et al., 2019; Gantois et al., 2020; Habay et al., 2021). That gave me a pool of 462 items.
Those 462 items went through a deductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) at the latent level to identify the underlying domains, which reduced the pool to 105 items. During a team review with my supervisors, it became clear there were two distinct constructs that needed separating: acute mental fatigue (the momentary state right now, before or after a session) and chronic mental fatigue (the longer pattern that builds over weeks and months). The five themes that came out of the analysis were inputs contributing to mental fatigue, motivation, perception of effort, decisional balance, and the influence of mental fatigue on behaviour.
Expert review with subject matter experts
The next step was getting six subject matter experts to review every item. The panel was deliberately mixed: researchers in mental fatigue, an exercise physiologist, a cognition specialist, someone with scale development expertise, a professional coach, and an athlete as end-users. Putting athletes on the panel was important, because items that make perfect sense to experts can land badly when you try to use them in a training context. Each item was rated on appropriateness, representativeness, and clarity using Hardesty and Bearden's (2004) sum-score decision rule, and items that didn't make the cut got removed. Some items were reworded based on expert feedback (for example, "tiredness" was changed to "fatigue" across several items to keep the construct clean). That process left 43 items for acute and 51 for chronic, which is what's currently being distributed.
What this round is doing
This round is about dimensionality and item reduction phase. The data from everyone who fills it in goes into an exploratory factor analysis, which takes that wide item pool and works out which items group together and load cleanly onto meaningful factors, then cuts the ones that don't. The finalised scale is a much shorter and captures the underlying structure without the redundancy. The goal is well under 20 items total across both acute and chronic. Although I am at the mercy of the analysis as to what the final number will be.
As such the current length isn't an accident. Starting wide and cutting based on real participant data is the only way to do this properly. But I'm fully aware that it makes the experience heavier than the final tool will be, and that's a trade-off I'm asking participants to accept to achieve high rigour.
I received feedback that some items felt unclear or hard to map onto their own experience. I want to be upfront that this is useful information. Items that don't sit naturally with athletes tend to be exactly the ones that don't load cleanly in factor analysis. So, they should be removed through this process naturally.
What comes after
Once the analysis is complete and the scale is reduced, there's one more round after this focused on validation, looking at concurrent validity (does the new scale correlate with established measures of mental fatigue) and test-retest reliability (does it produce stable results across time). I'll be writing this round up as a paper either way, and I'll come back here with a summary including which items survived and what the final scale looks like. Happy to answer questions in the comments on the methodology or mental fatigue research in general too.
For anyone who hasn't filled it in yet, the link is below. It takes 10-15 minutes to complete and will help us get 1 step closer to understanding how work impacts the sport we love.
https://derby.questionpro.eu/t/AB3vCJoZB3waVr
Cheers.
Cam
What methods do you use to practice taking a lot of gels (and finding if/when your body will start rejecting gels) for ultra training without spending $40 per long run (and if you do back-to-back LRs then the price gets crazy).
I tend to just use cheap carb drinks like Gatorade an like 2 gels even on 3-6hr runs. Do you just do this one day a week once a month? Do you dedicate the money every few weeks to practice your full race nutrition profile? Do you end up spending a good chunk of money? Have you added aid station food like chips into your long run training?
Also random bonus question: do you test things like Imodium or is that strictly for race day emergencies?
What type of headlamps are you all using for generally technical single-track terrain, with lots of roots and rocks?
Anybody cold plunge midway through running a marathon or an ultramarathon?
I'd hate to think that all ultras are like this.
It was the Underground Circus 100 outside of Atlanta. I think it was 4x of a 25 mile out and back or something like that, on the Silver Comet rail trail.
It started at 4:00 AM. I cycled past several runners at around 2:00 PM, 10 hours after the start. Most were walking very slowly. In fact, I don't think I saw anyone actually running.
I returned past the start line around 5:30 PM to find one of the organizers yelling "Shame them! Shame them on Facebook! Shame them into finishing!" into her phone. A competitor was standing with his hands on his knees and the same organizer implored me, "Shame him!" into continuing.
The runner looked at me and I said, "Yesterday I cycled 30 miles and then ran a 5k with my heart rate through the roof. I can't imagine what you are going through in this heat. I'm not shaming anyone." He thanked me.
Several runners walking slowly were passed as I cycled on the way back to my car. One was headed outbound, away from the start line, limping badly and using poles to help him move forward. A recreational runner was asking him if he was okay and so forth. She eventually left him to his misery and went on her way.
I don't run ultras but I do like to suffer on a bicycle, mostly deep in the woods where there's no cell phone service. I get the challenge, the test of will, and I know ultras are hard but this a one-off, right? Or is this really typical.
I do apologize for my update being late today! I was taking advantage of the cold morning to do yardwork.
Yesterday was on/off wind/smoke all day. And we had no fireworks that I heard at all this weekend! So good job on everyone who resisted the urge to go full 4th of July hogwild.
The picture included is from Mnt View Coffee at 630am. As you can see, it is smokey and gross already. From the Sheriff's latest report: it seems like the firefighters are worried most about the southern (and south east) edge, second most worried about the northern edge.
In other news: Bishop's Castle in southern Colorado in the Aspen Acres fire has not been lost!
As we wrap up this holiday weekend: I sincerely hope you all have had a wonderful 4th (and surrounding days). I also sincerely hope to see many of you at the race series, but I think the races should not happen for the rest of the summer out of caution.
Have a wonderful day, y'all!
I'm 7 days out from a 50k and have had worsening runners knee pain for the last couple weeks. When it flared up I drastically cut mileage but it's still coming up.
Any recommendations on what I can do this week to help?
Had a flight from Cortez to Denver this afternoon, and with the cancelation of Ouray 100 and concerns about AQI for Hardrock (and the fire fighting efforts in general) I wanted to make sure I was able to see from the plane. We could smell the smoke pretty strongly in our plane at one point (a small 10 seater).
I ran 250 laps around a track starting at midnight on 4th of July in honor of 250 years of American Independence. Glad I finished with plenty of time to enjoy festivities.
Completed my first Ultra in the North of Spain yesterday. It was 46.8km long but my watch decided to shorten it a bit lol.
This was by far the toughest thing I have ever done. I have been training in Saudi where it’s completely flat and completely underestimated how hard the elevation would be. It completely demolished my legs very early on and then it was an all out fight to beat the cutoff times.
Another big one was that I didn’t take poles, I hadn’t even considered it. Everyone else had them and I have never tried them, but they really did look like they helped.
Also, the rules said we weren’t allowed to have earbuds covering our ears, so I didn’t take music and felt very dumb when I saw people using Shockz.
Finally, I got to the race with no time to spare and didn’t have time to put sunscreen or vaseline on as the bus for the start line was leaving, so I am burnt to shreds.
All in all, now I know I can do very hard things and push my limits to the brim. I am very proud that I didn’t drop out, although for a few hours there, it was the only thing I thought about.
I used to find people who did ultras very impressive, but now I have the biggest respect for you guys, this is crazy.
Hello , never made a post here before but I’m in need of help or advice if possible . I ran my first marathon 4 months ago and then did a 18 mile trail event yesterday , both of these runs I ended up bad dehydrated causing me to bonk , I finished both but it was brutal . In my marathon and 18 mile run I was taking in a liter of water an hour . My marathon I did LMNT packets in each flask so about 1,000 mg of sodium an hour . I had bad stomach issues halfway during that marathon so thinking it might I have been too much sodium I opted for 500mg an hour during my trail run . And for the last hour of the trail run I just took plain water in both flask . Ended up struggling bad the last 3 miles of the trail run due to dehydration. I am a heavier guy 5”10 205 pounds and am a very heavy sweater . I am doing my first 50k this November and wanting to get this issue taken care of before I run it . I’m thinking I’m just not taking in enough water but am unsure . Was hoping for some advice . Thank you in advance 🙏🏻.