Ultra Question

You might look here:

http://www.marathonandbeyond.com/

or here:

http://www.kickrunners.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=31

 we might be in the same boat, I"m doing IMKY at the end of august and I"m seriously thinking doing sunmart 50 mile trail run with I think is the end of November this year,,, It really depends on how my IM marathon goes, though.

I"ve asked a few people that have done the longer stuff and the big thing I get is just get used to spending time on your feet...

So there's THREE of us nutty IMKYers thinking about extending the insanity?

Thanks for asking the question!

My friends who do ultras and triathlon say that recovery time is really important ... they don't train much differently than for marathons except that they might throw in a slow marathon as a training run, extend the time between long runs, and, depending on the actual distance (say, 50 miles instead of 50K, do a slow 50K a few weeks before).

A couple of them never train past the marathon distance but do the ultra-ultras anyway: they say it's important to keep up the maintenance running, though.

I'd suggest you sign up after your IM to see how you recover.

It took me awhile to recover and until I finally took 4 weeks off running did I feel okay. No way could I have done a 50K run 2-3 months after an IM but that is me.

That's the beauty of most ultras; there aren't crowds of people dying to sign up so it's easy to get in shortly beforehand

Yeah, I might be sitting on my couch staring absently at a blank TV eating potato chips for a while after the IM ...

I thought you we looking at the Chicago 50/50 for a minute there.

50k training is not much different from marathon training.  sometimes people will do 22 miles vs 20 miles.  Chicago 50/50 is done 3 weeks after the marathon so you can use the marathon as your long run. 

After doing my first IM I was more mentally tired than physically to be honest. Granted, I ended up walking a lot of the marathon....

I didn't really start training again for about 6 or so weeks after it. So, I agree, sign up after your IM and see how you're feeling.

I did IMLP in 2007 then I did the Virginia Double Ironman in October of that year.  I found it difficult to keep and improve my fitness from the end of July to the middle of October.  I think I would have enjoyed it more if the Double was a month after the Ironman. 

I'm going to get a chance to see if this theory is right.  I'm doing Wisconcin this year, then I'm going to attempt the Virginia Triple Ironman one month later.