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| 2012 Rouge-Orleans: Ran on Six-Lady Team |
Andy Mac: Advice
for 50 mile race
- The biggest difference I noticed in running an ultra is the amount of walking you do. When most people train for a marathon they want to run the whole way if possible. No one (well no one as slow as me, at least) runs a whole 50 miler the first time. I don't know for sure but I'd guess I walked close to half of my 50 and I finished okay. So one thing I'd definitely recommend is to practice walking as part of your long runs. It is a lot easier to run 30 miles either walking the up hills or walking 1 minute every six or whatever than to just run it straight.
- Practice running slow. I still don't feel comfortable running below maybe 9:30 pace, but late in a 50 miler it is important to be able to shuffle along.
- Practice walking fast. There's a tendency to just slowly walk during breaks. I like to try and keep up a good pace. In preparing for my 50 I even practiced walking fast on a motorized treadmill. I got to where I could walk at sub 12 minute/mile pace. Of course that's on a treadmill, but still it got my legs used to long, quick strides. I noticed during the race that I was passing a lot of people on the up hills because I could walk faster than they could.
- Practice trail running if you are doing a trail race. I didn't, I wish I had.
- Worry about your feet. I never had blister problems with long road runs, but really tore up my feet on the trail (also see #4). Next time I'll try NuSkin or Second Skin or whatever and also change shoes and socks during the race.
- Practice eating and drinking and carrying water. Very important.
- Just keep moving. Depending on the cutoff, you don't have to move very fast to finish a 50 miler. At Ice Age, the required pace was just under 15 minutes/mile. You could hike that fast, although it might be hard to keep it up for 8 hours. But you don't have to run most of it or run too fast to finish; the key is to just keep going.
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