I stumbled upon this google sheet online within the past week. Well, restumbled upon as I had seen this at some point in the past. It’s a listing of runners who have finished various ultra distances with the longest time between first and last races. There are runners who have finished hundred milers across a span of almost fifty years. This doesn’t mean they’ve run races in 50 straight years, that’s just how long their careers lasted. There’s one guy on there who has a 50K career of almost 60 years. It’s just mind blowing to think about.
I’ve been interested in ultrarunning longevity since I got into the sport. I was a relatively new runner when I started doing ultras way back in 2014 and as a newbie was quite insecure with a massive imposter syndrome. I just assumed that every other runner I saw at races had decades of experience on their side. It wasn’t until I started logging average race histories for entrants in my hundreds that I realized that most ultrarunners have only been active for a couple years. And most have only run maybe a dozen or so races.
My interest in long ultra careers is also stoked by my goal to run a hundred 100s. This is something that will take me 20+ years (best case) so in order to accomplish this, I need to crack the ultra longevity code. Is it due to a certain workout philosophy? More of a mental thing? Diet? Family/friends support? Maybe overall involvement in the community? I sure hope it’s not due to strength training and stretching, which I absolutely suck at. In reality, it’s a combination of all these things. Every person has to find their own balance. This balance will also shift over time so you need to stay flexible and adjust as the years move along.
Another way that longevity appeals to me is that it seems like an achievable goal. I didn’t pick up running until after I turned 40, which is another way of saying I’ll never be the fastest person in a race. I burned out of marathons after only a couple because it was so time focused for me. While I always want to run “good” times and to the best of my abilities, I’m not focused on getting to elite times. The amount of work to achieve that is well beyond what I want to do. But longevity? Heck, I just have to keep showing up. That’s something I might be able to manage.