Hey Gang, I am thinking about running my first 50K, probably at Germantown. Anyone want to share their experiences or give me some advise on what to do and what not to do ? What to bring ? What to plan on running into ? etc... I would certainly appreciate any advise anyone wants to share.

By the way, I started running the trail races this year with ORRRC and have loved them. I run marathons so running the trail runs gives me some off road time. Plus, have met a lot of great people running the trails.

Thanks, Mike.

Hi Mike!

I've only done one 50k, so I'm probably not the ideal source of advice. But I'll share my limited perspective on it. Hopefully Jeff McPherson or Joe Smindak or Linda Barhorst or Ken Seidl can pipe in too.

I ran the John Bryan 50k in 2008. For me, that was a great venue because: 1. It was in April, so the weather was relatively cool (compared to today, at least...) 2. It is relatively flat (with the exception of the climb out of the gorge on each loop) and 3. The 4 loops of the double-loop/figure-8 course meant that we crossed the start/finish line 8 times. So we always had our own stuff no more than 5 miles away. This made it easy for me to stop, eat, and drink some Gatorade on each loop. And that race is one of the few long races where I did a decent job of staying fed and hydrated.

That being said, my advice is:
1. Stay fed and hydrated.
2. Walk the hills early and often.
3. Let your legs just run. Don't feel like you are controlling your pace with your brain. (Excluding those walk breaks, of course. You'll need brain intervention for that.)
4. Have fun and enjoy the scenery. But...
5. Keep your eyes on the ground to avoid race ending incidents.

That is about it. I really enjoyed my JB50k experience. I was actually planning on doing it again in 2010, but I had a sore IT band after the Xenia Marathon, so I decided to take it easy.

Gtown has a lot more elevation change than John Bryan. So be sure to train in the hills.

Thanks for the advise. Lots of good stuff in there. Also, do you remember what kind of long runs you did to train for JB50K ? How long was your longest training trail run ? Longest training road run ? Thanks again for your help.

Anyone else have any advise ? Thanks to all, Mike D.

Mike,
Not sure how John attacked it training wise. Here are my suggestions. If you can run a marathon... you able to do a 50k with that same training.

1) water /calories are your friend... what you eat/drink in the first 90 minutes effects how you feel at the end.
2) If you feel like you need to add additional training: Add 15-30min to your longest long run. Walk if you need to... it's all about feet time.
3) Train on trails.
3) Like John said: walking up hills is smart. Esp in the first 15 miles.

If you want a time under 5 hours you need to put more miles /time in but not a huge amount.

Hey Jeff, thanks for your input. I really appreciate it. By the way, you all do a great job on the trail runs. Jenny Hess and I started doing them this year and we have had a blast. Thanks for all of your hard work. Mike.

Mdeblasis wrote:
do you remember what kind of long runs you did to train for JB50K ? How long was your longest training trail run ? Longest training road run ?
Well, technically, I had been training for the Xenia marathon in 2008 and decided to jump into the JB50k at the last minute, since I was already in decent shape from the marathon effort. So my longest run prior to the 50k was the Xenia marathon: 26.2 miles.

Most of the Xenia training was on trails at Englewood MetroPark. But I run for time more than distance, so I'm not really sure of the mileage. I ran for 4 hours, so maybe twenty-some miles.

I'm a pretty big believer that time spent on your feet is more important than an exact mileage count. To be honest, I spend way more time now walking my dog through Hills and Dales MetroPark than I do running. But I still manage to race half-decent.