Ultra Discussion Thread

average_runner

Enduro wrote: »

Just expand on my previous answer a little...

Just like you can only be the olympic 100 meters champions if you win the 100 meters final at the olympics, to be the world 24 hour champion you have to win the world championship race. The open race is a seperate race that happens to run on the same day at the same time (I presume it will anyway). The open race is simply a support race which the organisers put on to allow more people to experience the event. No more than that.

More often than not there is no open race run in parallel with the world champs. And there has never been a case of anyone coming within an ass's roar of a podium worthy finish in the open race, never mind beating the champion's distance.

Now if you're good enough to run 270km+ next year to win the world champs then the good news is that it is going to be trivially easy to get into the world champs. All you have to do is turn up to a properly certified 24 hour race and run 220km, which is the standard required to get onto the Irish team (presuming you're male). Obviously for a 270km+ runner this will be no more than a easy training run for you.

If you turn up to this year's Belfast race and run your qualifier there you also get the advantage of running on the championship course in championship conditions (It's the Irish champs). Again, being a 270km+ runner, it should be trivial enough to break the Irish record while you're there to make sure of qualifying ahead of all the current Irish team.

You make it sound so easy, just 220km:D

Stablemaster

Enduro wrote: »

Just expand on my previous answer a little...

Just like you can only be the olympic 100 meters champions if you win the 100 meters final at the olympics, to be the world 24 hour champion you have to win the world championship race. The open race is a seperate race that happens to run on the same day at the same time (I presume it will anyway). The open race is simply a support race which the organisers put on to allow more people to experience the event. No more than that.

More often than not there is no open race run in parallel with the world champs. And there has never been a case of anyone coming within an ass's roar of a podium worthy finish in the open race, never mind beating the champion's distance.

Now if you're good enough to run 270km+ next year to win the world champs then the good news is that it is going to be trivially easy to get into the world champs. All you have to do is turn up to a properly certified 24 hour race and run 220km, which is the standard required to get onto the Irish team (presuming you're male). Obviously for a 270km+ runner this will be no more than a easy training run for you.

If you turn up to this year's Belfast race and run your qualifier there you also get the advantage of running on the championship course in championship conditions (It's the Irish champs). Again, being a 270km+ runner, it should be trivial enough to break the Irish record while you're there to make sure of qualifying ahead of all the current Irish team.

If I ran world record time there would it be recognised?

Enduro

Stablemaster wrote: »

If I ran world record time there would it be recognised?

Yup, it would. 305km is your target there.

Stablemaster

Why is the Qualification for the World 24hr so poor in comparison to other events? I've just worked out that the qualifying mark of 220km is 38.6% less than the WR of 305km. If we were to transfer that to other events it would be the equivalent of a 13.3 second 100m or a 2:50 Marathon by my calculations.

Enduro

Stablemaster wrote: »

Why is the Qualification for the World 24hr so poor in comparison to other events? I've just worked out that the qualifying mark of 220km is 38.6% less than the WR of 305km. If we were to transfer that to other events it would be the equivalent of a 13.3 second 100m or a 2:50 Marathon by my calculations.

That's the qualification to be considered to be picked for the Irish team, not for the WC itself. It's set by AAI (inherited from Ultrarunning Ireland). It was set at that mark as it's the IAU's B standard for grant funding of athlete participation in championship events (IAU being the international governing body for ultrarunning). National ultrarunning governing bodies are free to set their own criteria for picking teams. The UK standard is 239km AFAIK, for example. They have a much bigger pool to choose from though, lucky them!

To get into the WC you just need to be sent by your NGB.

It would also help if you dug in a bit more to understand why the WR of 305km is such an amazing distance. Yiannis Kouros had the exceptionalism of Bob Beamon and the consistancy of Ed Moses. Look at the gap to the next best distance by someone other than Yiannis. Re-run you're calcs on the sencond best athletes and see how it looks.

RacoonQueen

What's the distance for women over 24 hours? Presume it's somewhat less?

Ed Mc Groarty

RacoonQueen wrote: »

What's the distance for women over 24 hours? Presume it's somewhat less?

200km

Ron Gomall

Enduro wrote: »

That's the qualification to be considered to be picked for the Irish team, not for the WC itself. It's set by AAI (inherited from Ultrarunning Ireland). It was set at that mark as it's the IAU's B standard for grant funding of athlete participation in championship events (IAU being the international governing body for ultrarunning). National ultrarunning governing bodies are free to set their own criteria for picking teams. The UK standard is 239km AFAIK, for example. They have a much bigger pool to choose from though, lucky them!

To get into the WC you just need to be sent by your NGB.

It would also help if you dug in a bit more to understand why the WR of 305km is such an amazing distance. Yiannis Kouros had the exceptionalism of Bob Beamon and the consistancy of Ed Moses. Look at the gap to the next best distance by someone other than Yiannis. Re-run you're calcs on the sencond best athletes and see how it looks.

That 305 kms is amazing, roughly 13kph for 23.5hours, am allowing time for answering the call of nature, eating and drinking. So roughly 4.40/km pace for 23.5hours straight , shakes head and tries to consider that. Have any Kenyans or Ethiopians competed at 12 or 24 hour events yet ?

Ed Mc Groarty

Myself and Yiannis share birthdays.......ok carry on.

Enduro

Ed Mc Groarty wrote: »

200km

Which is picked for the same reason as the male standard... the IAU's "B" standard for athlete funding.

Enduro

Ron Gomall wrote: »

That 305 kms is amazing, roughly 13kph for 23.5hours, am allowing time for answering the call of nature, eating and drinking. So roughly 4.40/km pace for 23.5hours straight , shakes head and tries to consider that. Have any Kenyans or Ethiopians competed at 12 or 24 hour events yet ?

It's amazing alright. A look at a (slightly out of date) all time best list of 24 hour performances really puts in in content.

I'm not aware of any Kenyans or Ethiopians that have competed at 12 or 24 hours. Expecting them to be good at 24 hour running because they're good marathoners would be like expecting Jamacans to be good marathoners because they are good sprinters though.

I make a divide between "speed" ultras and "endurance" ultras, where speed ultras are the ones where marathons style training and ability is the key. Once you cross to endurance ultras your in a different world. A bit like the cross-over from sprinting to middle distance. I have read that Yiannis has a similar opinion (He doesn't think that 100kms is a proper ultra apparently!). I reckon the Kenyans and Ethopians you're thinking of would be "speed" ultra types, and wouldn't be well suited to edurance ultras.

A Kenyan team did take part in the commonwealth utra trail running championships in North Wales a few years ago. Makes for interesting viewing. Their performance was predictable enough for someone who understands ultras, but would probably be quite surprising for anyone who thinks Kenyans are inevitably going to win. Just found the coverage... the ultra trail is towards the end

ArtieFufkin

Enduro wrote: »

I make a divide between "speed" ultras and "endurance" ultras, where speed ultras are the ones where marathons style training and ability is the key. Once you cross to endurance ultras your in a different world.

Very good point. I was just making the same comparison this morning when thinking about how you train for a 100mile vs a 39mile race.

RacoonQueen

Enduro wrote: »

Which is picked for the same reason as the male standard... the IAU's "B" standard for athlete funding.

I've never done 24 hour race but 200km seems very soft. That is 7 min kilometres!!!

TFBubendorfer

RacoonQueen wrote: »

I've never done 24 hour race but 200km seems very soft. That is 7 min kilometres!!!

Then go for it. If you find it easy you'll be a brilliant addition to the Irish team!

Enduro

RacoonQueen wrote: »

I've never done 24 hour race but 200km seems very soft. That is 7 min kilometres!!!

Of course it is! Off you go and show us some real speed

Enduro

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

Then go for it. If you find it easy you'll be a brilliant addition to the Irish team!

Snap!

Stablemaster

RacoonQueen wrote: »

I've never done 24 hour race but 200km seems very soft. That is 7 min kilometres!!!

I have not run one either but would be happy to let you have a look at programme I'm following

Enduro

Stablemaster wrote: »

I have not run one either but would be happy to let you have a look at programme I'm following

Can we all have a look? (Are you training for Belfast this year?)

BeepBeep67

Enduro wrote: »

It's amazing alright. A look at a (slightly out of date) all time best list of 24 hour performances really puts in in content.

So I know this list is 3 years old and even if you exclude Yiannis as an outlier, it looks like performances have stagnated and there's very few from 2010 onwards making it onto that list, about 6 in the first 3 pages.
I would have thought through a combination of advances in popularity, science, technology and nutrition that performances in general would be improving.
If you look at the all time list for marathons there's only 4 in the top 20 that haven't been achieved this decade: http://www.marathonguide.com/history/records/alltimelist.cfm?Gen=M

Why do you think that is?

Enduro

BeepBeep67 wrote: »

So I know this list is 3 years old and even if you exclude Yiannis as an outlier, it looks like performances have stagnated and there's very few from 2010 onwards making it onto that list, about 6 in the first 3 pages.
I would have thought through a combination of advances in popularity, science, technology and nutrition that performances in general would be improving.
If you look at the all time list for marathons there's only 4 in the top 20 that haven't been achieved this decade: http://www.marathonguide.com/history/records/alltimelist.cfm?Gen=M

Why do you think that is?

You can fill in the Gap using DUV. Have a look here for the most recent best, with a nice graph at the top (which very much backs up your conclusion on trends). Digging in from here lets you discover all sorts of stats.

So if nothing else, excluding Yiannis the best performance ever was 2014, which isn't as bad as the out of date page shows.

The position 100 graph shows roughly a steady upward movement. This to me does reflect what I've seen at the world championships over the last decade or so, which is that the general standard is definitely rising. It's getting much harder to get into the top 20 or top 10 in the WC. That's probably a reflection of increasing participation in general, I would guess. So popularity is having an impact... it just doesn't seem to be pushing up the very top.

IMHO very little of the advances in science and nutrition that would apply to sub-ultra applies to endurance ultras. (Similarly to the way that very little of the advances in science and nutrtion WRT marathons would apply to sprinters... different disciplines, different approaches required). That's one of the things I personally like about endurance ultras. The undiscovered country! The ability to self analyse and learn can be much more rewarding because the science is so thin. Of course it is realtively difficult (and expensive presumably) to conduct good scienetific experiments on ultra running performance, given the timespans involved.

There seems to be a huge variety of training methodolgies in use, even amongst the top lads, so you wouldn't see anything near the uniformity of what you'd get with top marathoners. So there is no real orthodoxy which everyone is building on.

RacoonQueen

Enduro wrote: »

Of course it is! Off you go and show us some real speed

Ha I was going to add that I wouldn't hit it, but that's mostly because I would have absolutely zero interest in running slowly for 24 hours straight. My ultra running days are long behind me.
The fact Ruthann smashed that to qualify shows that it is soft (not to take away from Ruthann - she's extremely talented). You cannot possibly say that 6 hours per 50km is not a soft goal for someone trying to qualify for a World Championships!!

TFBubendorfer

RacoonQueen wrote: »

The fact Ruthann smashed that to qualify shows that it is soft (not to take away from Ruthann - she's extremely talented). You cannot possibly say that 6 hours per 50km is not a soft goal for someone trying to qualify for a World Championships!!

The fact that for last year's championships only 1 Irish woman got to 200k* shows you that it isn't anywhere near as soft as you might think.

* Susan McCarthy got selected with 197k

RacoonQueen

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

The fact that for last year's championships only 1 Irish woman got to 200k* shows you that it isn't anywhere near as soft as you might think.

* Susan McCarthy got selected with 197k

I'm not sure what that proves Thomas? Other than not many Irish women / talented women / fast women target 24 hour / ultra running. There are dozens of Irish women who would have the ability to do well (by Irish standards) in ultramarathons (based on their marathon times) but they wouldn't touch ultras.

The fact you don't even have to hit the B-standard to get selected is even worse. If people aren't up to standard, they shouldn't be sent to world champs!

Ruthann has twice exceeded 200km and then some
http://www.ultrarunning.ie/live/records/

What are the A standards?

TFBubendorfer

I can't tell if you're pulling an April Fools prank or not.

A standards are 240k/220k

RacoonQueen

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

I can't tell if you're pulling an April Fools prank or not.

A standards are 240k/220k

Why would I be pulling a prank? Merely discussing the 'standard' of a B standard - which I think is proportionately softer than the B standards of other distances.
It's quite disappointing that you can't actually discuss it but will just post jibes back rather than actually developing it or posting actual answers. There really wasn't much need for the first response I got from you or Enduro on the topic, all your responses say are that you have no interest in discussion, which kind of defeats the purpose of having an Ultra discussion thread..

As you know, I've done Ultras, off a lot less run training than I do now, I know what ultras entail...anyway, it's clear there is no option to actually discuss, so I'll leave now..

TFBubendorfer

RacoonQueen wrote: »

Why would I be pulling a prank? Merely discussing the 'standard' of a B standard - which I think is proportionately softer than the B standards of other distances.
It's quite disappointing that you can't actually discuss it but will just post jibes back rather than actually developing it or posting actual answers. There really wasn't much need for the first response I got from you or Enduro on the topic, all your responses say are that you have no interest in discussion, which kind of defeats the purpose of having an Ultra discussion thread..

As you know, I've done Ultras, off a lot less run training than I do now, I know what ultras entail...anyway, it's clear there is no option to actually discuss, so I'll leave now..

Where did I respond with a jibe?

The international standard for 24 hrs is easier than for many other distances, that is certainly true. The reason for that is that you can fit a lot more runners onto a mile or 2k loop than you can fit into a, say, 1500 on a track.

However, it's still not that soft. The fact that only one Irish woman made it for last year DOES proof as much. There have been plenty who tried and I know Donna McLoughlin was disappointed not to be picked despite being the Irish champion.

You think 200k over 24 hours is easy. Then go and try it. You're not the first one to have a look at the paces that are achieved in a 24 hrs race and think that it's easy.

6 hrs for 50k is dead slow.
12 hrs for 100k is pretty moderate as well.
24 hrs for 200k is a different animal altogether. A 50 mile ultra doesn't really compare, it's a completely different way of racing. After running virtually non-stop for 16 hours a single 10-minute mile is pretty damn challenging, never mind another 8 hours more when you're already so exhausted that you feel like you're going to collapse.

I've run 7:20 pace over 39 miles, 8:06 over 50 miles, and 8:16 over 100k, all in training runs (i.e. races run as training runs, not entirely all-out). Averaging 10:17 over 24 hours was way, way, way harder.

ultrapercy

RacoonQueen wrote: »

Why would I be pulling a prank? Merely discussing the 'standard' of a B standard - which I think is proportionately softer than the B standards of other distances.
It's quite disappointing that you can't actually discuss it but will just post jibes back rather than actually developing it or posting actual answers. There really wasn't much need for the first response I got from you or Enduro on the topic, all your responses say are that you have no interest in discussion, which kind of defeats the purpose of having an Ultra discussion thread..

As you know, I've done Ultras, off a lot less run training than I do now, I know what ultras entail...anyway, it's clear there is no option to actually discuss, so I'll leave now..

To some what address your questions I would say that the ultra distances you (and I for that matter) have done have no relation to 24 hour running. My longest run duration was 8.16 in a 100k that went badly wrong for me, despite feeling like it went on forever I was still finished in time for dinner a fair few pints and a nights sleep. Breaking down a 24 hour race into mins per k doesn't really do it justice, 200k is a savage distance to run in a day, it's half my average monthly training. The endurance element is 100 times that of a marathon, the dietary and sleep depravation and sensory changes like day to night to day again make it uncomparable to marathons or short ultras. I take your point about the softness compared to other events but percentage wise not many will hit 200/220 I believe.

TFBubendorfer

or to look at it from another angle, at the last world championship only 12 women ran the A-standard and another 27 ran the B-standard:

http://www.iau-ultramarathon.org/images/file/Turijn%202015%2024H/MONDIALEFEMMINILEgenerale.pdf

That's 39 of the best 24 hrs runners in the world. Does that really sound soft?

ThebitterLemon

I ran a 100 miler a few years ago after a decent bank of training and having run a marathon almost every second week for a couple of years.

Just actually finishing it was a massive mental and physical achievement. I couldn't believe how hard it was, if it wasn't for the fact that it was also a significant personal milestone I'd have pulled the plug.

Beforehand I was calculating the respective paces I'd need to run to hit my targets, after about 15 hours I didn't give a sh1t about paces or targets, I was just in some primeval survival mode.

Don't think I've the mental strength to ever do it again, Ultra lads are just wired differently!

Hoping to get a 7 mile long run done on Sunday

TbL

davedanon

ThebitterLemon wrote: »

I ran a 100 miler a few years ago after a decent bank of training and having run a marathon almost every second week for a couple of years.

Just actually finishing it was a massive mental and physical achievement. I couldn't believe how hard it was, if it wasn't for the fact that it was also a significant personal milestone I'd have pulled the plug.

Beforehand I was calculating the respective paces I'd need to run to hit my targets, after about 15 hours I didn't give a sh1t about paces or targets, I was just in some primeval survival mode.

Don't think I've the mental strength to ever do it again, Ultra lads are just wired differently!

Hoping to get a 7 mile long run done on Sunday

TbL

And lasses!