I went to buy some new trainers yesterday at Runner's Need, Holborn in London. Absolutely recommend the shop - the sales assistant who helped me was excellent and I came away with shoes that were cheaper than the ones I'd planned on getting, but that fitted me better!
While the assistant was fitting me for my shoes, he asked about my mileage and the type of running I do. I told him that I was training for a couple of marathons at the moment, but had a 50 coming up in July.
He obviously thought about this, and then a little while later, the conversation went:
"You know you said you were running a 50...did you mean 50 miles?"
"Yep, my first ultra"
"Oh....Why?"
I tend to assume that, at least within the running community, ultra running is pretty much understood and if not the norm, it's accepted. I think that because I follow so many ultra runners on Twitter, it makes it seem more normal to me. I always forget that there are runners who concentrate on shorter distances and can't comprehend why anyone would be interested in, or put themselves through, running an ultra - they probably think we're crazy!
Anyway, today I find myself falling further into the ultra-running trap. I was looking through my training schedule for the few months before the Challenge Hub 50 miler in July, and realised that I had a lot of weeks where I was due to be doing some incredibly long runs on my own, and without the reward of a medal at the end ;) As a result, I've been scouring the web this morning, and signed up for a few more races, although I will be running them more as training runs rather than to try and get fast times.
This means that I now have the Brighton Marathon in April (where I'm aiming for my sub4hr time) the Halstead Marathon in May, the Kent Roadrunner Marathon four weeks later, and the Engima Ultra of 30 miles on 1st July before the Challenge Hub event two weeks afterwards. It's a lot of miles and I'm really excited about it, especially completing 2 ultras in one month...in my mind, that'll definitely make me an ultra runner, I might even change the name of my blog ;)
While the assistant was fitting me for my shoes, he asked about my mileage and the type of running I do. I told him that I was training for a couple of marathons at the moment, but had a 50 coming up in July.
He obviously thought about this, and then a little while later, the conversation went:
"You know you said you were running a 50...did you mean 50 miles?"
"Yep, my first ultra"
"Oh....Why?"
I tend to assume that, at least within the running community, ultra running is pretty much understood and if not the norm, it's accepted. I think that because I follow so many ultra runners on Twitter, it makes it seem more normal to me. I always forget that there are runners who concentrate on shorter distances and can't comprehend why anyone would be interested in, or put themselves through, running an ultra - they probably think we're crazy!Anyway, today I find myself falling further into the ultra-running trap. I was looking through my training schedule for the few months before the Challenge Hub 50 miler in July, and realised that I had a lot of weeks where I was due to be doing some incredibly long runs on my own, and without the reward of a medal at the end ;) As a result, I've been scouring the web this morning, and signed up for a few more races, although I will be running them more as training runs rather than to try and get fast times.
This means that I now have the Brighton Marathon in April (where I'm aiming for my sub4hr time) the Halstead Marathon in May, the Kent Roadrunner Marathon four weeks later, and the Engima Ultra of 30 miles on 1st July before the Challenge Hub event two weeks afterwards. It's a lot of miles and I'm really excited about it, especially completing 2 ultras in one month...in my mind, that'll definitely make me an ultra runner, I might even change the name of my blog ;)
It is excellent that you are now in the trap Naomi :-) However I do find that shop staff do tend to be mainstream runners doing track and middle distance stuff with no real understanding of the ultradistance stuff. I even had one assistant suggest that I wear spikes in a mountain ultra...yeah right ;-/
ReplyDeleteThanks Jerry :) I think it's a shame, because there's a whole world of running out there that people are missing out on, or, like you say, people who do want to ultra are getting bad advice from those we trust to help!
ReplyDeleteNew runners definitely need to be exposed to people like you - you're a massive inspiration! Thank god for the internet I guess :D