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Category: Training

Negative 100-mile Splits

splits
In running, a negative race split is when the second half of a race is faster than the first half. Runners generally strive for negative splits in road races — marathon or shorter.  Most world records at these “shorter” distances have been achieved with negative splits.  Galen Rupp set the American record in the indoor 5K of 13:01:26.  His mile splits were 4:14, 4:12, and 4:04.  Some coaches feel that negative splits should be achieved not only by elite runners, but also by the recreation runner.

Achieving a negative split doesn’t mean that at the halfway point you need to speed up, but at some point in the second half of the race you do speed up.

A Runner’s World article stated, “Anyone can and should run negative splits.  Unfortunately, most runners don’t. Instead they start in a near sprint, hang on through the middle and resort to a survivor’s shuffle at the end.”

Should you try to achieve negative splits during a 100-miler?  I’ve seen many do that survivor’s shuffle at the end and in a few races I’ve done it too. Certainly it is possible to do a negative split 100, but I have never come very close to achieving it in all my 89 100-mile finishes.  I believe I could do it if I purposely held back significantly during the first 50, but I believe my overall time would end up much slower.

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Miles and Miles

milesIn 2002, I started to keep track of the number of miles I ran, starting with my very first Mount Timpanogos hike in Utah. That kicked off my desire to stay fit and run on trails. At first when recording miles, I was somewhat of a trail snob, only keeping track of miles run on trails. Somehow I put in my mind the thought that unless the miles were on trails, they didn’t count. But I soon came to my senses and kept track of all my miles. For that first year I ran 691 miles. As I strived to lose weight, I also kept track of swimming miles and over the first three years swam 333 miles.

People have attempted to find the person who has run the most lifetime miles. Because proof with running logs are not very good, the best documented record probably is held by Dr. Herbert Fred of Houston, with more than 250,000 miles by the age of 85 in 2014. He kept many logbooks. His biggest year was in 1966 when he ran 7,661.5 miles. In 2011 he ran 2,886 miles at the age of 82. In April 2014, he surpassed 250,000 miles. That is further than running all the way to the moon (238,900 miles).

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Running against the Aging Curve

old-manI attempted to run my first 100 at the ripe old age of 46. It was a failure full of introspection. I had experienced enough early failures ultrarunning (finishing nearly last or not finishing) that it caused me to conclude that I was probably too old to become an ultrarunner. But in reality, the average finisher age for those who ran my first 100-miler was age 44.

So at age 46 in 2004, I mistakenly considered myself too old to be a serious runner. After all, I knew that for most professional sports you are over-the-hill by your mid- 30s. I was still recovering from a torn meniscus and believed that I would always be a back-of-the-pack runner because of my age, and my knee.

As I started to love the sport of ultrarunning, I wished that I could have found the sport when I was much younger, wondering how well I could have performed without an aged, broken body. I wished I didn’t have a bad knee, believing that it would always limit my speed and distance.

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Urban Running

city

During the winter, one of the most frequent questions I receive is: “Are you still running during the winter?” Since I started running in 2004, I have never considered taking the winter months off. I usually do the complete opposite and step up my training to new levels, putting in more miles during the winter months compared to the summer. Putting on holiday weight doesn’t become a worry and the result is a solid mileage base for the races in the new year. As of 2016, I’ve run year-round for more than twelve years.

But my approach is different during the winter. Many runners in Utah in recent years have enjoyed to continue to push up to the peaks in deep snow. Perhaps that is fun, but for me, it does not contribute much toward continued 100-mile race training. I move my training down into the valleys and find ways to do creative, interesting long urban runs.

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Dangers and Safety

dangers

I DO NOT agree with this common statement

Even more fun than running 100-mile races for me is doing solo adventure runs. My first long solo adventure run was in 2002, to Kings Peak in Utah. Over the years I gained more and more experience and learned how to run with minimal weight on my back, but enough food and emergency items to keep me out of trouble. I’ve now run thousands of miles solo in the back country in Utah and Arizona. I’ll routinely do runs of 50K to 50 miles and at times up to 100 miles.

I’ve been criticized for going out alone for such long distances. But those who know me understand that I’m actually very conservative as it comes to safety.

One year a local road runner who experienced the Grand Canyon for the first time was so excited about the experience that he scheduled a large group run for a Grand Canyon R2R2R in the heat of June, inviting anyone interested, including people he never had met before. Dozens of first-time Grand Canyon runners expressed interest. I was very vocal about how dangerous this was at that time of the year and how improper it was to organize group runs with strangers into dangerous areas. I had read and followed very closely all the canyon rescues and deaths from heat exposure. That runner and his friends slammed me on social media. Eventually someone informed the NPS authorities. Thankfully this large event never took place and soon the NPS started to require permits for these type of group runs.

The vast majority of my runs involve routes and trails where I know, where I can run into people, so I’m rarely really alone. I know my limits and take what I think are reasonable precautions. On certain runs I’ll take a rented satellite phone or a SPOT tracker. Other things are taken like signal devices, fire starters, and emergency blankets.

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Fueling on the Run

fuel

Proper fueling while running an ultra is somewhat of a religious topic. There are many things that work and nothing truly is sacred, to be successful. Some ultrarunners are vegans, and most eat meat. Some believe drinking soda is harmful, and most drink it freely during races. Some think you should drink constantly, others when you feel thirsty. Some think beer is heavenly liquid, others consider it to be unhealthy and dangerous. If you get a chance, volunteer at an aid station during a 100-miler and watch what people eat and drink from the aid station or from their drop bags. Fueling strategy can be all over the map. Figure out what works for you.
To be successful in ultrarunning you must keep in careful balance:

1. Calories
2. Fluids
3. Electrolytes

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Shoes and Foot Care

footWhen I started to run, I had no understanding about shoes or foot care. Somehow I had a strange belief that expensive running shoes was a scam and it really didn’t matter what you ran in as long as they fit well. I would just go to a big box store and choose a pair of cheap shoes off the shelf that seemed to fit well. My struggles were many, as I tried to go longer distances. My feet would get very sore and blisters were frequent. I became very discouraged.

Once I discovered the existence of ultrarunning in 2004, I subscribed to an email listserv named, ultralist (still in existence in 2016). This was the primary gathering place back then on the Internet for ultrarunning discussions. After my first year of ultrarunning, in 2005 I posted a long summary of my running activities and one veteran posted in reply: “After reading your race reports about your first ultra year, I’m amazed that you survived. It seems that you made many poor decisions during the year but still managed to grow and achieve success. You seem to be very determined and quite persistent, but be careful out there. Learning from your mistakes will help you eliminate a lot of the unnecessary pain you’ve been experiencing.” His comments were very true. I was gaining a lot of good experience through failures. I did read carefully the ultralist and learned a ton of knowledge from the experienced runners who shared their experiences and race report.

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The Frequent Long Run

long

What is a long run?  Obviously the answer varies for each runner.  As a boy, I remember my first “long” hike in boy scouts, a five-mile walk from close to my home, to Salt Water State Park on the Puget Sound in Washington.  It seemed like it took all day and was so very far. To me back then, a one-mile run was long. As a teen, as I began to do some regular one-mile runs, three miles seemed long. As I again tried to run regularly in college, a very long run became eight miles.

As I discovered ultrarunning, a long run in my mind was ten miles. A 50K run (31 miles) seemed to be a very long event that took careful planning to do. In 2005 I would look at the race calendar and started to think about traveling to participate in 50K runs which to me back then, was still a mega-distance. But as I gained a longer mileage base, and with more experience, that 50K distance seemed to grow shorter and no longer seemed to be a massive run.  50K eventually turned into my definition of “the long run.”

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Night Running

afraidAs of 2016, I estimate that I have run at least 15,000 miles during the night or early morning before the sun had risen. Once I started to learn how to run, I quickly discovered the unique experience of running safely during the night on trails.

My first experience was in 2002 on Mount Timpanogos.  My first trip up, that started about an hour before the sun rose.  It seemed like a strange experience going up in the dark but there were so many other hikers doing the same thing so I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I did miss a switchback and made a usual rookie mistake of trying to climb a steep slope near a Scout Falls, but I got myself back on track, feeling quite foolish.  Two weeks later I was more daring and went up again, an hour earlier and went much faster. I began to enjoy the challenge of chasing hiker lights ahead of me and it became a favorite game to push hard up the mountain racing after those ahead.

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2015 – A Year in Review

miles chart

2015 was a good running year for me.  For the past few years I have been slowed from continued consequences of the massive tibia stress fracture that I experienced in 2012. Opening 2015, I still was having some issues but as the year progressed, stability in that leg area returned and I worried less about it.  I still fear running faster than 7-minute pace, which seems to cause tears in the area so I’ve retired from face-pace running at short distances (5K, 10k, half-marathon, marathon, and even 50K).

With consistent training and long races I experienced a record year for me in miles, with 4,564 miles, far more than my previous best of 3,943 in 2011, one of my best years.  With new responsibilities at work in 2015, I found it more difficult to find time and motivation to do a lot of mid-week training and instead concentrated on very long Saturday runs, always taking off Sundays.  I probably averaged running less than three days a week.  I added many power-walks from the train station to work and back several times a week.

Frequent Long Runs

In 2013, I discovered if I did a very long run each week instead of a series of shorter runs that my body adjusted and I recovered from these long runs much faster than if I only did one about once a month.  My recovery from 100-mile runs was faster and the pain felt during them was decreased.  I never do “back-to-back” long runs (two runs in two days) because I believe it is important to recover between them to avoid injury, but once recovered, another long run seems to be very beneficial.

chart

Again in 2015, I have been doing weekly very long runs.  So far this year I have run at least a 50K run every week except for three.  In addition I have been doing mid-week training and have so far run further than any year before during the first three months of the year (1,120).  This March I ran 453 miles which is my highest mileage month ever.

3,000 miles for the year

miles chart

 

Somehow I managed to run 3,000 miles again this year.  It has been a frustrating year.  I had a few good months in the spring when my problem leg no longer bothered me and my speed came back, running a 20:34 100-miler and even led Salt Flats 100 at mile 44.  But the summer was challenging as I DNFed two 100-milers, mostly because of mental weakness.  The last two months of the year have been discouraging as my leg becomes sore, like a chronic shin splint in the area near where it fractured a few years ago.  The pain usually isn’t bad, but I know if I push it, it will only get worse. Running slowly works, but with speed, it seems to pull at the membrane on the bone.  We’ll see what 2015 holds.  I’ll try to run 100 miles this week at Across the Years and see how it goes from there.  I haven’t entered any 2015 races yet, other than the Wasatch 100 lottery.