The difference between endurance rides and ultras
| October 7, 2014 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
For almost a year I’ve had one foot in the trail running ultra world, and one foot in the trail riding endurance world.
While the two sports are very similar at the core, there are some surprising differences. Here’s what I’ve learned this year.
Ultras aren’t short
Oh sure, there are exceptions on both sides…but I’ve ran far more trail races that were at or above advertised mileage than under.
The exact opposite is true of endurance rides.
If you sign up for a 100 mile or 50 mile ultra, be prepared to go at least a mile or two longer. However, at least in my region, it’s a rare endurance ride that is actually the full 50 or the full 100 miles (Tevis is an obvious exception). If there’s a choice between going 2 or 3 miles under, or 2 or 3 miles over when planning the course for an endurance ride, I will bet cold hard cash on what the outcome will be.
A question of cutoffs
Depending on the expected finishing times, there are a variety of cutoff times for finishing an ultra.
- Western States 100 has a 30 hour cut off.
- Pine to Palm 100 100: 34 hours
- Leadville 100: 30 hours
- Angel Fire: 32 hours
- SF 100: 33 hours (this is the course that I did the 50 miler on, they also offered a 100)
- Tahoe Rim 100: 35 hours
- Hardrock 100: 48 hours
- Javelina 100: 30 hours
What should be apparent is that depending on the difficulty of the course, a reasonable amount of time for finishing has been determined. This isn’t unique to 100’s, it’s just easiest to google search popular 100’s rather than the other distances. Most of these 100’s have an “extra special” version of whatever award they give out (usually a buckle) if you can do the course faster (usually sub-24 hours).
This is of course in contrast to endurance, where we have 12 hours to finish a 50 and 24 hours to finish a 100 regardless of the course. This may be the biggest reason for our courses to more often be short. With no leeway in the cutoff time, the mileage is surreptitiously adjusted instead?
When it comes to mileage and time, I’m not judging – merely pointing out a quirk in both sports.
Rudeness
This is one I am going to pass judgement on. Sorry endurance peeps, but we at endurance rides take the prize for rudeness. I don’t see nearly the amount of rude people at ultras. The stress of wrestling an uncooperative 1000 pound animal has something to do with it, but really there’s no excuse for the behavior too often seen with riders being short and downright grumpy with volunteers and vets. If the ultra runners can mostly keep it together in a civilized manner, then we can too.
Cost
The entry cost for an ultra and an endurance ride is really similar. Even though the specifics of what you get for you money is different, I think the relative value is about the same.
At an endurance ride you usually get fed a meal, camping for a night or two.
You might pay for your own parking at an ultra and rarely do I get a full meal, but fully stocked (food and basic supplies) aid stations every hour or so along the course more than make up for it.
Refueling strategy
In both sports refueling and mini-recoveries is key.
In endurance most of the refueling and relaxing happens at mandatory holds – usually in one or two chunks of significant time. The key in endurance is to use your holds wisely since they are mandatory and you are going to be there anyways. You go a lot longer without aid/crew/refueling on the trail. I’ve done 35 mile loops that were unsupported, which depending on the day or terrain might mean I’m out there 5-6 hours by myself.
In ultras, it’s up to the runner to use their time wisely and strategically without the benefit of mandatory rest periods. Do you blow past some aid stations and stay longer in others? Spend a couple minutes in each? Because aid stations happen a lot more frequently than vet checks, strategizing aid station time is important – Just spending an extra 3 minutes in each aid station for my upcoming 50 miler (FOUR days!!!) would add over 30 minutes to my finish time. Remember my comments about time on the feet in yesterday’s post? An argument could be made that aid station time is recovery time….but that time has to be balanced against still being out there when you could have been done 30 min or an hour ago.
Sense of Adventure
Alright endurance peeps. It’s time for some more honesty. Wanna know the other reason I think endurance rides are short rather than long if the choice has to be made?
Because ride manager know that a long course (or even an accurate course that is tough and feels long) will result in a significant amount of bitching and moaning on the part of the participating endurance riders.
Now, ultra runners have an advantage that most races (at least the ones I’ve done in this area) provide an elevation map. I can take a look at the course, decide whether I can do it within the cut off time, and then I put on my sense of adventure and off I go (or not…).
Where’s our sense of adventure in endurance riding? Is it so buried under concern for our horses? Or maybe it’s related getting a nasty surprise because our maps are often line drawings on a white piece of paper handed out at the ride meeting? Even from the first time I rode Tevis I realized it wasn’t that tough of a course – partly because I knew what to expect having studied the elevation maps. Imagine going through the canyons at Tevis at mile 55ish and not really knowing whether the trail was going to continue to do that crap for the next 30 miles?
Or maybe it’s the lack of runners high in general among endurance riders?
Distance Wars
At an ultra, I don’t have to listen to people discuss whether a trail marathon should be considered an “ultra” distance because after all it’s hard and is an accomplishment. Or whether it’s unfair that the 50 milers got better swag than the marathon event. Or that the 100 milers got better swag than the 50 milers.
Everyone chooses the event that suits them the best on that particular weekend, knowing that choosing the marathon distance means you might just get a finishers medal, while running the 50k ultra at that same event might have netted you a finishers medal AND A COASTER.
Seriously folks. I’ve never heard an ultra runner who just does marathons and 50k’s complain he’s a second class citizen to the 50 miler even though they are paying close to the same entry fees for less (no extra fancy finishers thingy, perhaps no free meal at the end). And if they did, I think the reaction by the listener would be a very strange look and the comment “well, run the 50 miler then.”
Swag
I’ll tell you the area that endurance is “da bomb”. Finishing swag. I have to admit I’m mostly tired of buckles and finishers awards. Buckles are fine and traditional for the big name races….but I love the endurance tradition of handing out practical awards. Another great thing about endurance? The ride photos. It’s a rare ride that I go to that doesn’t have an awesome photographer taking GREAT photos for a reasonable price out on the course.
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I love both sports dearly. Both are incredibly special and I’m lucky to live in a place where I could do one or the other any weekend, in any season throughout the year. In fact, this kind of access to these communities is a major reason I’m choosing to stay in this area after graduation.
GOD this hurts to say, because it’s something that pissed me off for years when I first started, but: the reason endurance riders (as a group) are whiny about actual distance/perks/etc is because they (as a group) aren’t athletes.
I hated people who said that, years ago, because I thought it was mean and unnecessary and exclusionary. I still think that. But it’s true. We (as a group; please assume that every time I say “we” for the rest of this rant I mean “we as a group”) condition our HORSES to go the distance, but not our selves. We are really not equipped to even ride properly for, oh, 10 hours. It’s not an ultra; nobody’s going to have a popup with chips and salt pills and water every five miles, but there are plenty of riders who go forth on 20 mile loops with ONE WATER BOTTLE.
I wasn’t an athlete when I started endurance. I figured any idiot could keep one leg on either side of a well-conditioned horse for as long as it took to go 25 miles – and I was completely right, and it’s a great stepping stone, and don’t even start about the invisible disabilities many of our really accomplished riders face and how not everybody can run with their horses, I KNOW all that. But I wasn’t an athlete, and I got tired of being a really bad partner for my horse, and I became a better athlete because I wanted to do better by her. Not in order to finish.
Endurance is better than ultras in many ways – I love the compassion that the majority of us have. Ultra runners can get SO fucking hung up on finishing or placing in their AGs or winning or whatever that they just DESTROY their bodies, and cruelty to yourself is still cruelty. The majority of endurance riders are not cruel to their horses, yay! And it’s a partnership, and it’s HORSES, and yes, even if you can’t run an ultra, you can ride over the same terrain and feel the same amazing adrenaline rush, so endurance is better… but it’s whinier, because we aren’t athletes.
Wow, I don’t know where all that came from.
Really good points. I realized at the end of the post that I said more negative things about endurance than ultras, but endurance really does have the one up on ultras because there is a horse. And that trumps no horse *almost* every time. But I rewrote a sentence about a dozen times about how much a sport, just by adding a horse, changes – and for the better, but I couldn’t make it sound right so I deleted it.
I toyed with the idea of whether ultra runners really are more competitive/intent on winning than the endurance rider and i’m not sure. I care more about my time and placing in ultras than endurance. But, overall I can’t say that I’ve seen any real difference between trail runs and endurance rides I’ve been on between the number of competitive-run-their-horses/bodies-into-the-ground types, and people who are out there just to finish.
To be fair….I’ve also never heard run management bad mouth the back of the pack runners like I’ve seen happen at endurance rides. If you don’t want to cater to walkers at an ultra, you make your cut off shorter. In contrast I get the sense a lot of times at a few endurance rides (and to be fair it’s just been a few) ride management wishes you wouldn’t show up if you are planning to take the entire AERC alloted time for their distance.
Compare the number of “the pain was so excruciating I could barely hobble along” and “I puked til I was dizzy and kept running for 20 more miles” stories to the number of “he quit drinking halfway through but I figured he’d be fine” and “well, he was off at the finish, but it’s probably just a cramp” stories.
(Yes, we do squeak NQR-lame horses through the finishes of endurance rides more than we should, but we also heap scorn upon those who whine and fight with the vets about getting pulled for said lameness.)
Part of that is because horses can’t talk and we’re just guessing: did you quit drinking because you’ve had enough for now, or because your friend just left the tank, or because OMG YOU’RE DYING?! and we err on the side of caution. But part of it, I think, is compassion for our horses that we often don’t show to ourselves.
I’m enjoying dipping my toes into the trail running world and curious to see how the similarities and differences play out. Right now, since I’m *such* a newbie at trail running and have only done short distances, I’m holding comments until I hit the longer distance point, which is probably a more accurate comparison point to endurance. (Right now my trail running distances are closer to endurance fun ride distances.)
I’m liking that there are more runs available to me in a very close radius compared to the number of rides…enough that I can basically find “an activity” to do, be it an e-ride or trail run, every month and thus keep myself fairly mentally stable. 😛
We should plan on you coming out and doing one of the Aravaipa Running races here some time — a definite change of scenery and the swag is awesome. Tech shirts for sign-up, and pint glasses for finisher awards. (One always needs pint glasses!) And they have race photos.
Agreed! that Javelina 100 that is up near your way actually looks like a lot of fun.
Javelina is supposed to be a good one, especially if you don’t mind repeat loops. You do that one, I’ll come crew for you.
At my second 50 I overheard a conversation along the lines of “that ride should have been a 55, we went at least 48 miles.” Um, come again? I also recently heard that ‘you allow about 12% of mileage to account for elevation’. Huh??
I *think* the 12% comes from older GPS that would read the miles “short” if you were climbing. But that really isn’t an issue nowadays…….at least as far as I know.
Tree cover, or even just steep canyons, will cut your satellite reception enough to make even a good GPS guess at the mileage, and it always guesses short.
With that said – huge eyeroll to Cyd’s overheard conversation. The RMs I’ve talked to don’t worry much if the riders’ GPS’s are 10% short, and they’re pretty conscientious about getting accurate measurements. My first 50 was shorter the year I did it than previous years, because everybody kept GPS’ing 53 or 54 miles – it was WAY more than 50, so they lopped off the last bit of trail and ran us straight back to camp, and “my year” I GPS’d it right at 50. Anyway, I think doing an honest-to-god fifty-mile-fifty for your first ride is great because it makes everything else seem so easy!
OMG totally agree on this. I did American River for my first 50 and it was absolutely not short
I’ve heard plenty of rumors (“accusations”) of short endurance rides, especially rides that are qualifiers for Something Bigger. I know that my GPS tends to measure short–about a mile short for every 12-15 miles. And I admit, there are some days that a 48-mile trail is Long Enough.
BUT
I think most of the endurance rides I attend are pretty accurate in terms of mileage measurement. And I know that when I finish something really fast, my first thought is always “that loop must be shorter than advertised,” rather than “I deserve more credit for that short loop!”
The other points are good points to ponder. I wouldn’t mind winning a buckle…but I don’t wear belts. Maybe if I did, I would. 🙂
I really treasure my tevis and Rnt buckle. And if I ever finish a big name running 100 I”ll probably feel the same way about those. So perhaps people actually feel that way about their smaller runs too – that they treasure those buckles as much. It might be like people who say they are tired of getting tshirts at endurance rides. I LOVE Tshirts and whish more rides gave them out, so this certainly personal perference.