ultra marathon

Hi Jane,
I did the Discovery last year in a fairly comfortable 5 and a half hours. I did most of my training up to March off road on Dartmoor which ammounted to about 40 miles/week. Leading up to the big day I gently upped my road miles and included a Sunday long one of 20 miles every other week. I ran the course a fortnight before and took it very easy after that.Hope you can make it this year.

Take care

And it's only 32 miles!

We're doing Dartmoor this year - entered in 2004 but I carelessly broke my hip in 2 places mid May so we had to pull out (of that and everything else for the next 10 months!).
We only train 30 - 40 miles a week (sometimes less), but we have been making sure we get plenty of long runs in, mostly off road, which we find lessens the risk of injuring our decrepit old joints. We've already done some long races as "training" sessions - Four Trigs, Devon Coastal marathon and we are doing FLM and the Neolithic marathon in the build up too.
Really looking forward to DD, we were bitterly disappointed to miss it before as it was to be the start of our move into ultras.

My tips would be

1. Don't up your weekly mileage that much, too much risk of injury, instead practise ultra pace on your long run and get this up to 15-20 miles, ultra pace means 2-3 mins/mile slower than marathon, I do 9:30 min miling as opposed to 7 min miling. I've done 6 ultras on mainly 20-30 miles a week

2. Try a run walk strategy say 9 mins running 1 min walking you can use the walk to refuel

3. Sort your refueling strategy and practise it, for a short ultra like this energy drink and /or gels is prob enough BUT also practise running slow enough that you can do 2 hrs or more on just water

4. Cultivate stubborness, look out for chances to develop this skill while training e.g plodding along in shit weather, rather than shortening your run or not going at all

5. Go run as much of the course as you can, although it's fun to have the challenge of navigating a unfamilar route don't do this on your first ultra.

6. Run off road as much as poss

7. Keep it fun, most ultras have a really nice vibe and everyone is really supportive

Roger

You've commented on a thread that started over 6 years ago, and the last post was made 2 1/2 years ago!  Useful tips though...