About a week ago, I ran the Woodside Ramble 50k which was my first foray into the ultramarathon distance, defined as anything longer than a marathon. As someone more accustomed to long off-trail hikes than running, it was an interesting way to “round out” my skills and spurred some new observations. In order to temper my bad habit of needlessly rambling, I’ll try to organize this into some sort of structure.

Background

I suppose I should start with some background. It feels weird to give a starting date for when I began hiking since it can be such a low-commitment activity, but the summer of 2019 feels like a good place to start. That’s when I “discovered” the High Sierra, mountaineering, long-distance running, and that really rad people do really rad things by combining all three. I didn’t have the chops to manage the running part yet, but I kept trying to get after it in the mountains every chance I could get. Over time, I got pretty decent at the long, often off-trail/scrambly nature of Sierra peakbagging. I also went farther in my day hikes, eclipsing the marathon distance 6 times this year, often with over 10,000 feet of elevation gain.

At the same time, I was also trying to somehow turn myself into a runner. My parents had forced me into cross-country in high school and I was terrible at it. I was either pitifully slow or injured my first couple years, but I started running on my own during the covid lockdowns in November 2020. I was still pretty slow, but at least I was enjoying it and not getting injured anymore. I managed a kind of respectable 18:32 5k time that year, but I didn’t really care that much; what I really wanted to do was to be able to run trails with lots of elevation gain. I kept running off and on for the next couple years, mostly to supplement my peakbagging/mountaineering goals in the Sierra, but I never got that good.

Alright if I don’t cut things off now, I’ll start telling my life story. Basically the TLDR is that I approached this ultra as a bad runner and an alright hiker.

1. Long hikes help with ultras, but they aren’t the same

With my experience doing similarly lengthed hikes, I sort of thought an ultra would be easy; if I can stay out in the mountains for 15 hours a day, surely a 6-7 hour day can’t be that bad. Right? Wrong. The problem lies in the fact that running is hard. Like really hard. Subconsciously, I kind of already thought I had completed an ultramarathon after my 33-mile dayhike to Ventana Double Cone in Big Sur–what would the difference have been if I had just jogged a bit of it like an ultra race? A lot, actually.

As I probably should know by now, running is a lot harder than hiking. With hiking, once you reach a certain level of fitness, it feels like you can go forever; it’s such low impact that even with lots of vertical, your legs don’t get that fatigued. But for running, at least where I am at with it, I most definitely cannot go forever. My legs started to hurt after just a few miles and from miles 20-25, my underbutt (not joking) was screaming in pain as I hobbled along. Ultrarunning seems to be much more about pain management whereas hiking is about boredom/overall fatigue management.

That being said, the experience of long hikes helped my mental game a lot. Rather than the race dragging on, it almost felt fast since the miles were going by way quicker than a slow 30-mile hike. Also, being accustomed to doing >5000 vert in a day without much thought was definitely helpful. One guy that I ran with for a few miles had much faster 5K/10 times and a much higher weekly mileage than me, but he ran 90% of his miles on flat roads. So while he absolutely lit it up on the flats and downhills, he struggled a lot on the uphills and I ended up beating him by 6 minutes.

Overall, though, the hardest part for me was the lack of breaks in a race. I’m sure everyone takes ultras differently, but in my mind, this was a race and I wanted to go as fast as possible. If I reached a pretty viewpoint, I couldn’t stop and take it in for a few minutes, I had to keep moving. I did walk some hills, which felt like breaks, but I’d estimate I ran probably 90% of the race (albeit slowly!).

2. Nutrition is hard

Nutrition during long hikes isn’t that hard. Pretty much the only thing I have to worry about is eating enough, which isn’t hard when I can bring deli sandwiches or gas station sushi or cheese and salami, or even leftover pizza slices.

Nutrition while running is a whole different ballgame, though. It’s very hard for my body to digest “real” meals while actively running, so I have to rely on artificial gels and powders with maltodextrin that my body can easily digest. During this race, I consumed 17mL of tailwind per 6 miles, one GU gel every hour, and Oreos, stroopwafels, bananas, and salt sticks at aid stations as needed.

But just because my body can digest them while running doesn’t mean my body likes them. My biggest mistake in this race was consuming way too much sugar. Just about everything that I brought had at least a good amount of sugar in it. After the first 10 miles, I felt queasy the rest of the race and kept having burps that were dangerously close to turning into throwing up. I should have brought less sugar and more salt, but I wasn’t necessarily deficient in salt, so I feel like more salt and less sugar could have just given me new problems. Always things to tinker with on future long runs.

3. Running lots of miles is fun

To prep for this ultra, I had my most consistent and “intense” stretch of running. I ran consistently for about 3 months, averaging 30ish miles per week for the first month then 40-60 miles per week in the last 2 months. It was really cool to feel the changes in my body from this extra running; new muscles started to appear that I never knew I had and I felt myself get noticeably faster.

All this running also gave some amazing structure to my life, especially given it was my first quarter of college at UCSD. There were so many new variables (living alone for the first time, new classes, making new friends, etc.) that often my morning run was the only consistent thing from week to week. And because I was running so much and had no car, I got to know the surrounding area on foot a lot better. I’m really lucky to live less than a mile from the ocean and some of my favorite runs were in Torrey Pines State Preserve. Though I might take a step back from such high mileage and focus on climbing (!) a bit more this next quarter, I’ll definitely be trying to keep up the consistent running.

4. Ultras have good vibes

I’ve been a little intimidated by running races so far because road races seem like they’re full of hyper-competitive people who only care about their mile splits and PRs. By contrast, the supposedly laid-back nature of ultra-running was what got me interested in ultras in the first place.

And sure enough, in the first half mile, I heard a couple of people behind me talking about how pretty the redwoods were and reminding themselves to go slow so they could enjoy the course without bonking. I knew then that I was in the right kind of race. There’s also lots of comradery among runners in an ultra. At the mile 20 aid station after a brutal climb, I was about to puke from the aforementioned excess sugar consumption, so I asked the aid station volunteer if he had any tips for managing it. Without hesitating, a nearby runner who overheard me offered up some antacid pills (ostensibly Pepto Bismal). It was such a kind thing to do and we ended up leapfrogging with each other for the last 10ish miles of the race. I doubt an interaction like that would have ever happened without the slower pace and grueling nature of an ultra.

In Conclusion…

Things I already knew were cool: mountains, trail running, vert, nature, and people who like those things. Things I now know are also cool: ultras, people who run ultras, and Mountain Dew at mile 25 of a race.

I think I still prefer the low-pressure nature of just going out on big adventures with friends rather than racing, but I also know lots of the pressure surrounding an ultra is self-imposed. I’m not committing to another ultra, but I don’t have access to many other forms of adventure for the next several months and now I know I can successfully train for an ultra at college, so who knows what I’ll get up to? But I do know that whatever the next adventure, it will naturally require lots of fitness. So, quite literally, onwards and upwards!

postscript: this is easily the most coherent and somewhat concise thing I’ve written in a blog format – my third iteration of trying to write about the mountains on the internet is off to a good start!