What Does an Ultra Have to Do with a Marathon?

What Does an Ultra Have to Do with a Marathon?
 The Problem of Accurate Terminology in Trail Racing

by Tim Mathis

     The spiritual motivation for this post comes from a conversation I had with a friend at my job the other day, which I’m sure a lot of ultra runners can relate to.   I’m a nurse in a children’s hospital, and there must have been rumors going around, because he approached me on our unit and said, “Hey, I need to ask you something?  What’s the furthest you’ve run?  No, straight out, did you run 100 miles?!”  

     When people ask you things like that, a million thoughts flash through your head.  I think most of us are at least a little worried that saying “yes” to this kind of question will lead our peers to assume that we’re a little bit off.  I work on the psychiatric unit, and the guy who was asking me is a therapist, so it’s even worse - I’m sure he had at least five categories of illness he could immediately place me in just based on this short exchange. The question must be on a diagnostic questionnaire somewhere: “Do you hear or see things that other people don’t?  Do you worry that others are out to get you?  What’s the furthest you’ve ever run?”

     But at heart, the main reason that I felt uncomfortable answering “yes” to my friend’s question – even though I completed the Cascade Crest 100 Mile Endurance Run last year – is that it isn’t really true.  Like most people who complete a 100 mile race, I actually didn’t run anything like 100 miles.  I’d estimate that I ran 75 max, and I definitely didn’t do that continuously.  
   
     During the race, I stopped for sandwiches, walked pretty much anything with even a slight uphill slope, drank a beer, and spent significant amounts of time sitting in lawn chairs.  Even when I was technically “running” on the flats and downhills, my pace couldn’t be classified as anything more than a jog, and was frequently more of a shuffle or a labored hobble.  If you want to really talk about running, I’m not sure I’ve ever continuously run anything much over a half marathon.  After that, you can be sure that I’ll be stopping to walk on occasion, wandering through aid stations, and sitting down from time to time if no one is looking.  I have absolutely no inhibitions about hiking.  Maybe I’ve run a marathon.  I’ve completed dozens of ultra-distance “runs”, but I’ve never really run one.  Not all the way anyway.

     Despite all that, for simplicity’s sake, I said “yes”. The guy laughed, slapped my shoulder, and walked away.  “That’s insane, man!”  

     “Running” an ultra-“marathon”?  

     Outside of work, in the bizarre social circle of ultra runners that I live in, conversations about terminology seem to keep coming up.  I know several people who are participating in the Tahoe 200 Ultra that is being put on by Candice Burt this Summer, and some folks aren’t clear what it should be called.  Clearly, 200 miles is a different animal than 100 miles, or 50 or 31, so shouldn’t it be called something other than an “ultra”?  Is it an ultra+ or a mega-ultra, indicating some kind of affinity to its shorter brethren?  Or alternately, is it a stage race?  The vast majority (and maybe all) of the runners will sleep during the race for some amount of time, after all.  
   
     Along different lines, a conversation keeps arising about the pretentiousness of referring to oneself as an “ultrarunner”, as if moving for longer distances somehow makes you superior to other types of runners.  Even if your neighbor was really good at their job, and spent more time doing it than any of their peers, wouldn’t you think they were a Grade-A turd if they insisted on referring to themselves as an “Ultra-banker”, “Ultra-waiter”, or “Ultra-teacher”?  Deep inside I cringe a little bit every time I hear someone refer to themselves as an “Ironman” (I know  you’re just a swimmer/biker/runner/tights-wearer), but I’m no better with my claims to be an “ultramarathoner”.

     And while the term “marathon” has come to refer to a distance (26.2 miles or 42.2 kilometers) pretty generically, I personally think that it’s misleading to associate what happens in “ultras” with what happens in marathons by referring to them as “ultramarathons”. In most cases, it isn’t as if an ultra is just a marathon with more distance added.  In some ways they’re harder due to added distance and (usually) elevation gain and the occasional mountain ascent/descent, but in other ways they’re easier because no one judges you if you stop in the middle for a several mile stroll while drinking coffee and eating a bunch of cookies.  

     This is especially true with 100+ mile distances: when you can finish a race under the cutoff time while also getting a decent night’s sleep in the middle, it doesn’t have much in common with, for instance, Meb Keflezighi’s seemingly miraculous 2 hour and 10 minute speed sessions.  At the same time, it seems to do some amount of disservice to a mountain runner like Killian Jornet to compare him to a guy like Meb who destroys flats and asphalt.  They’re both beasts, but they’re clearly different breeds of beasts.  And culturally and spiritually, many “ultras” are no more “marathons” than my “stopping to eat a bacon pancake” during Cascade Crest was a “run”. 

     As it is though, trail runners are hamstrung by our terminology.  If we want to explain to our peers what we do with our weekends, there’s not a lot we can say concisely other than that we “run” “ultramarathons”.  I’m a firm believer in the need to delineate things – to distinguish what we do on the trails or in the mountains from what hikers do, or from what road racers do, or even from what those who race shorter distances do – but personally, I think that it would be great to start a larger conversation about terminology regarding these things we call ultras.  

     My proposal: Foot Races and Foot Tours
  
     Stylistically, I’m more into the classics and the old-school than the cutting edge, so my preference would be if we just stopped with the “ultrarunning” talk altogether, and went back to a designation that has a simple 1800s kind of vibe – Foot Racing.  If we’re organizing long events where the goal is to move overland without the aid of vehicles or other mechanical aids to locomotion, just state the distance and the approach: a 100 mile foot race, or a 5 mile foot race.  It’s all just movement on two feet, and an attempt to see who can cover the course the fastest.  

     But because I love nothing more than coining new terms (my goals in the trail running world relate as much to contributing to the community lexicon as to completing races), I would also like to suggest a new term, which describes other events and activities that don’t involve podiums and speed goals.  Drawing on ski terminology, I like the idea of referring to self-supported or unsupported long distance outings on the trails as Foot Tours.  The term is in the spirit of “foot race,” and complements it.  It’s basic, old-timey, descriptive and unpretentious, and it can be applied to a variety of activities.  It can encapsulate both hiking and running, and one-day or multi-day outings, but it suggests that a lot of ground is being covered.  And for some reason, if a guy at work asked me what I did over the weekend, I would feel more comfortable telling him that I went on a 30 mile foot tour than a 30 mile run.  

     As much as I’d like my own terminology to catch on, if I’m being realistic, the fact is that we’ll probably always be stuck calling what we do “running” “ultras”, because once something’s been branded in the public consciousness it’s almost impossible to make a change. At best we might be able to come up with a name for these new kinds of events, like Tor de Geants and the Tahoe 200 - that fit in a gap between 100 milers and multi-day stage races (any ideas?  I got nothing beyond “Foot Race”), but it’s still fun to have a go at coming up with something a little more apt, and a little more honest.

Tim Mathis lives in Seattle and is a regular contributor to UltraPedestrian.com. He has been running trails with his wife Angel for a couple of years.  One time they ran across Spain fueled mostly on pastries and espresso.  He blogs occasionally at alittlerunny.blogspot.com and has contributed to Uphillrunning.com and Trailrunner Magazine.