The Ultra Experience

Here's to the adventures of my life which are usually ultra marathon trail running or fly fishing but may include other trips, experiences, thoughts, opinions, or pretty much whatever I want. As co-founder of Altra Footwear my life and adventures seemingly revolve more around developing and promoting the best footwear in the world...and I love it!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Winter Run

I have been pleasantly surprised to have my best week of running so far this year. Four runs for 48 miles, topped by a 13 mile 3 1/2 hour snowshoe journey this morning. Decided that I would embrace this late snowstorm and pull the snowshoes back out. Ended up having a great run with friend Ben Corrales.

On a separate note, in the back of my head I had been thinking about doing Leadville 100. Turns out that they capped the race to 750 entrants, and it's FULL already. Crazy. Sounds like I waited too long to run Leadville and in the future it's going to be a year plan ahead. What really frustrates me about this is the finishing rate at Leadville. It's 50%. There are no qualifications to run the race so it's filled with unprepared non-ultrarunners. Now I'm all about expanding the sport but running such a race is an earned privilege yet the spots are being taken by people who likely are under prepared and won't finish. This never was a problem before because there never was a cap. Now that it's capped, it should be filled with people who are prepared. I propose that you must finish a 50 miler to even be considered to run Leadville.

Anyway, there is my little vent. Feeling good about this week though. Felt strong and ran well. Never let the weather change your running plans...

1 comment:

Mike said...

I couldn't believe it when I saw that at Leadville. Crazy. What's really annoying (to me at least) is that Leadville has a half-marathon, a full marathon AND a fifty miler -- all of which still have spots. Those races should be where first-timers go before stepping up to the big dance.

I have a suspicion that finishing rates at some of the signature hundred milers are going to start dropping significantly for exactly the reason that you say. Too many under-prepared people wanting to run the big races without putting in the work and getting the experience that it takes to finish. Hope it doesn't happen to Wasatch but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

-mp