How to juggle and run a 100-mile ultra marathon

Now that my latest marathon is complete and the Shamrock Shuffle is over, I’m looking for a new challenge. Yes, I plan to do the Chicago marathon in the fall but I was thinking of something a bit bigger.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but I’d like to joggle an Ultra Marathon. This year seems as good as any, so I’m making my plans now.

Checklist of things to do to run your first Ultra Marathon

(Not in any particular order).

1. Convince your wife (spouse) you’re not crazy.
2. Find a race & get permission from the organizers.
3. Create a training program and start training.
4. Define your motivation.
5. Learn how to run an ultra marathon.
6. Gather a team to help you with the race and validate your world record attempt.

Here is my progress so far.

1. Spouse support. Not sure I’ve been 100% successful at this just yet, but she isn’t vehemently opposed anymore. She is concerned for my health and the amount of training time involved. But she’s a reasonable sort and if I show her my plans and am conscious of family time, she’ll get on board. She may even be on my team.

2. Find a race.  I surfed the net and found a few good Ultra Marathon sites. One of the most comprehensive was Stan Jensen’s Run100s website. Looking around there were so many choices that I didn’t know what to pick. So, I sent him an email asking what the best 10-miler for a juggler would be. He suggested I do the Kansas Heartland 100. This race is the weekend after the Chicago Marathon. If I use the marathon as a training run, the timing should be good.

3. Training program. There aren’t a lot of 100-miler training programs easily found on the web. Runner’s World has a 50-miler training program which could be useful. I found this one which is a 26-week ultra marathon program. I’ll have to modify it a bit but I think it is quite doable.  I’ll have to figure out where to run those 45 and 55 mile training runs but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

4. Motivation.  No one has ever juggled a 100-mile ultra marathon so that is part of my motivation. That would get me in the Guinness Book of World Records which is something I’d like to do. But that doesn’t seem like enough, so I believe I should see if I can use the event to raise money for a charity. I talked with Global Business Assist and they are interested in working with me.  They give micro loans to people in third world countries.  Perhaps I’ll try to raise money for them.

5. Learn how to run an Ultramarathon.  That will just take a lot of reading.  A few good resources include…

Stan Jensen’s site
Ultrarunning.com
Ultra runner.com
Cool Running Ultra Runners forum

6. Gather a team. I’ve mentioned the idea to some of my friends, but haven’t asked for any commitments yet. Any body out in the JYAJ community interested in helping?

That’s it for now. I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

Joggle on