Ultramarathon Daily News for Mon April 3
Justin at iRunFar had his work cut out for him this morning! So many results from so many ultramarathon and trail (and road!) races this past weekend. Impressive to me was Allie Ostrander’s second place at perhaps the most competitive 5k in the country–Carlsbad 5000. Allie isn’t a road runner who’s jumping over to the trails….she’s a mountain runner who happens to be really fast on the track and road and that’s a differentiation that’ll be apparent when she lines up for trail races this year.
I’ll add that equally impressive was Arlen Glick’s dismantling of Mike Morton’s CR at Umstead. I get the feeling that a lot of new-ish runners don’t appreciate just how stout Mike Morton’s records are and what type of performance it takes to beat one. Arlen’s on fire right now and his run this weekend is evidence of that.
Meanwhile, another incredible sub-ultra trail runner Grayson Murphy wins the Mill Town Half Marathon outright with a 1:10:34, besting the best man by a second. Whew!
Add one race to the list: Van and I lined up for the Escape from Prison Hill 10k in Carson City, Nevada on Saturday. While my wife and daughter are away on Spring Break, I asked Van what he wanted to do. Mini golf, cart racing, orange chicken, and a trail race were his requests. The course was a lot more technical and rocky than I’d expected with a few solid climbs and an awesome old school vibe. I pulled away from Van at mile 2 and felt pretty good until…”hey dad!” as the dude came FLYING down a long sandy shoulder to pass me at mile 5, beating me by 14 seconds at the finish. No orange chicken for him.
Next up: I’m racing Sunny at Paiute Meadows 1/2 marathon next month and I’ve got no chance. None.
Right away, one major difference I noticed between pacing Dibaba at Hayward Field and pacing Lucy at Western States is that in an ultra, pacers start at the second half of the race. Instead of revving up the athletes and letting them go, in an ultra you’re there to scoop up the athlete when the going gets tough.
—When an Olympian becomes an ultramarathon pacer.
I tweeted this weekend about why our sport (at least in the US) sees such a low number of youth participation. No, I’m not expecting 9 year olds to run 50ks, but where are all the kids for the 5 and 10k distances? Twitter responses seem to point to money, but there’s plenty of kids at road races, so why the difference? Some good responses in the thread that make me really appreciate RDs who go out of their way to develop the next generation of trail runners.
Sprint freak Karsten Warholm set a 200 PR en route to his 400m European Record time. Incredible. Hey, I set my marathon PR on the first “26.2” of the American River 50 many years ago…Suffice to say my second half wasn’t nearly as swift.
Courtney Dauwalter sat down with Cam Haines for a two hour interview. Haven’t listened to it…anyone want to provide a recap?
Big snowfall means big changes to The Canyons course.
I don’t particularly like using treadmills for recovery, but I can get through a workout. Pool running? Nope. Not gonna happen.
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