When I was last really active on here you were smashing 5ks. Now you're smashing running ultras!!
yea. definitely pretty cool! 
now i'm looking for more potential ultras.. 
That's so awesome man. Certainly inspiring my new found love for running.
awesome man!
yea I remember you enjoyed it (trails etc), but IIRC also had some feet/calf issues as well?
i imagine trail running & even trail racing would be something you'd love.
with ultras especially, it seems like with such a crazy long race at a slower pace, might allow you to really take in the scenery/nature etc. that sounds pretty fun. not advising this for you at this point, just saying in general. marathon & shorter are fast, hard to really absorb if you're pushing it, at least from my experience. still very fun tho.
great to see that you're getting back into stuff!
peace!
You should definitely go for it, you clearly have a real talent for long endurance both from a physical and mental point of view.
thanks alot man!!
yea I will now maintain fitness for ultra distances. this means my weekly long runs are about to get.. nuts.
for example, i'm thinking about this over the next 4 weeks: (all grass/non road)
week 0: (6 hours, last sunday's race)
week 1: 3 hours
week 2: 4 hours
week 3: 3 hours
week 4: 5 hours
so just starting to oscillate it, with the goal of always maintaining fitness near 6 hours. i'd also be experimenting with different styles like, ie faster first half, slower second .. or flipped around etc, or trying to go fast at the end etc.
also, i plan on doing some of those runs on paths with hills etc.
Did you do anything specifically to slip into that mind set of being able to run for that long, like any psychological tips you used, meditation etc... Or did it just come kinda naturally?
nope, just lots of mileage without music, by myself, no fluids/calories etc.
so just lots me-and-my-own-thoughts solo running.
I do really love trails and the scenery, there's something liberating about flying through nature so yeah, it definitely appeals. It is something I kind of have on my radar for some day, I'm still only like 24 so I'm not gonna rush into them but I'd love to do one one day. I have some plans this summer to run some of the mountains in the UK with some friends so that would be a nice intro into the longer distances.
awesome man!!
and ya, "flying through nature" feels way different than flying on a road.
The mental aspect of it appeals, even with the 10ks the kind of meditative state you go into is so enjoyable and I imagine with ultras it gets pretty intense. My supervisor through university was into ultras, think he did some pretty big ones like tour de mont blanc and he'd talk about the mental aspects of it.
ah nice. i had a professor at uni who was into triathlons/competitive cycling etc, but i wasn't into endurance sports back then, so didn't truly grasp what he was into at the time. i saw some photos of him ~11 years later, dude still looks like a beast.. probably in his 70's now.
i've only done one proper 10k. might do another on saturday. want to try and do as little 5k's as possible this year.. which still means lots of 5k's. but it just means, if there's a combo distance event 5k/10k, choose the 10k. if there's a two races a 5 miler & a 5k, choose the 5 miler. etc.
that's one thing i noticed the old school folks did differently. they always seemed to go after the longer races, even if they were miler's and such. they loved just going out and competing in an 8k, 10k, 15k etc. i need to get on that.
Something I've always noticed about ultra is there's always a few jacked guys, likw the guy in that photo. What's behind that? Is it just because it's not so.. Max speed dependent? I feel like we may have talked about this before in fact haha.
ya i've noticed that too, you're definitely onto something with that.
it's interesting. lots of these "jacked ultra dudes" are former military, at least here anyway. so, they have all of this muscle, lift, but have this mindset of wanting to do stuff that's borderline "survival".
even if they aren't military, i guess it's that "survival" addiction. a 6 hour race is probably very survival-ish to most people. for me, i'd imagine that would be 12 hours or 24 hours, i mean that sounds insane. 6 hours didn't seem scary to me at all, lol.
i definitely see "jacked dudes" at 5k's too etc. you'll see crossfit guys running with weighted vests and such, it's cool but also funny. race events are great, so you see all kinds of people.
Sorry that kinda turned into a long post!
all good! good post!
sorry i typed that before leaving work, got distracted a few times.
pc man
