A candid, funny, and thoughtful look at a late-50s runner training for her first ultramarathon, questioning everything from influencer culture to race gatekeeping, all while navigating hunger, back-to-back long runs, and the occasional Waffle House-fueled epiphany.

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Chapters

• 00:12 - Encountering Influencers on the Trail
• 01:40 - The Rise of Running Influencers
• 03:38 - The Evolution of Running Culture
• 05:01 - Exploring the World of Ultra Marathons and Unique Race Experiences
• 06:16 - The Struggles of Training and Nutrition

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Welcome to Mama Runs in Ultra.

I'm a runner on the downhill side of my 50s, training for my very first ultra marathon.

And this podcast is me saying all the things out loud of what the hell am I thinking?

So I had my first experience of someone who I guess was a running influencer on the trail where I ran this weekend.

I haven't run into this before, I have in a road half marathon, but that was mostly what I'll call like running fashion influencers.

It was people who dress alike and obnoxiously stop and take photos regard to anyone around them in the middle of the race.

And I'm all about stopping for a photo in the middle of your race, but not where you're blocking the entire way and interfering with other people's events.

So yeah, not a fan, but this one was just kind of weird.

And I guess it's weird because I'd never thought about what it looks like when you're on your own.

So I'm running along on a trail, not in the middle of nowhere, but the trail itself is fairly empty, and I hear this guy running up behind me talking abnormally loudly.

Like if you were running with a friend, you would not be talking this loudly.

And so I kind of step aside even though it was double track, just because I was like, why is he talking so loud?

And I realized it was someone.

I have no idea who this was.

So clearly not enough of an influencer to be on my radar.

At any rate, running along with one of those drones that follows you and fills in the AI video, you know what I'm talking about Anyway.

But watching someone run along and narrate their run when they're by themselves watching it in real life looks really odd.

And I've watched plenty of these videos where people have done that, but I never thought about the process in real life of how strange it is to be running along in the middle of a trail all by yourself, talking abnormally loudly to your camera.

I don't know.

I don't know why that's weird to because my entire career has been sitting in my closet talking to myself.

So I get the irony.

But it got me thinking about the role of running influencers in the world of running.

And this is much more of an issue in road running, I imagine, because I'm not clued in enough to trail running and ultra running at this point to really know if y' all have been taken over yet by this phenomenon in general.

I don't have strong opinions one way or the other about the existence of running influencers, I think it's a little odd.

Most of them don't really bring a whole lot to the table that I'm looking for.

And I'm going to go with the likelihood that women their late 50s are not the target market for most of these folks.

But I used to go to a gym that had a lifter who was a wannabe influencer.

And I cannot tell you how obnoxious it was that that person filmed every single thing we did.

They didn't stay very long.

They kind of came in as like an influencer coach and then quickly moved away.

But the vibe was just very strange.

As one of my friends joked recently, we are not meant to know this much about each other.

I was like, oh.

But it got me thinking about when I wanted to be a runner back in the early 80s.

And if you go back to episode one, you'll hear the story about that.

With my parents convinced that my uterus would fall out and therefore I was not allowed to.

At any rate, what I guess we would call running influencers now were kind of gatekeeper people back then, it was much more like, no, you're not good enough to be a runner.

And a whole lot of heads up, I'm getting ready to make a lot of people mad.

A whole lot of what I would call the Boston Marathon attitude.

I am just not into gatekeeping.

Running in that way, get it that people want to be fast, and I get it that that's a goal for a lot of folks.

And I'm glad that the charity aspect exists so that other people can participate.

But just the concept in general that you have to be good enough to participate in a recreational activity just is not my vibe at all.

So, yeah, by the time this comes out, I will have 100% watched the entire Boston Marathon because I do care about women's elite running in the US But I don't care about that race specifically.

It's just an exclusionary vibe that just.

I don't like it.

Again, I'm not the target audience.

So from a safety standpoint, I understand the need to properly train for long distances.

And I'm not into the whole, like, I ran a marathon without any training.

I mean, like, do you.

But that's stupid.

And that's objectively stupid, not subjectively stupid.

But that being said, I get it why there's cutoffs on races in terms of the logistics of what's needed with safety support along the roads and all of the other things that go into putting on a massive event that Part I understand that's not the same as needing to be able to do a specific thing in order to be eligible to participate in the event.

And I'm a little bit fascinated by the logistics alone of these ultra ultras that I've only recently even discovered existed.

So I only recently discovered that races of 100 miles exist, let alone these 200, 250, 300 mile races.

And I'm not for or against them.

I don't understand them.

I'm like literally I don't understand it.

How?

Like I don't.

I'm completely baffled.

And the first time I really learned anything about them was a filmmaker named Hillary Yang.

I think was like a race director for one last year sometime.

And it was the first time I'd ever heard that this even existed.

And I only know of her because the film that was supposed to be aired at the Western States lottery or something like that.

Anyway, one of my real life friends ran Western States last year.

Shout out to you still super.

Just mind boggling how amazing you did at that.

And so I was suddenly clued into western states that I previously had never heard of.

So I'm not ultra, ultra marathon curious by any means.

I'm more like sort of the way you get interested in people who climb Mount Everest.

It's that level of holy cow, I get it that this can be done, but none of this comp me.

So I think about these things when I'm doing my back to back long runs because it's such a joke that like my back to back long runs are probably less than their aid station to aid station distances are.

I inadvertently did a stage race one time.

I mean not the kind of stage race like this, but I thought it would be fun to have my running club go from Waffle House to Waffle House.

And only after the fact did I discover that this is a thing.

Apparently in other places they do Taco Bell to Taco Bell.

But I mean we're here in the south, we got Waffle Houses and frankly I'm a fan of the Waffle House to Waffle House run.

And I wish more people near where I live found this as amusing as I do.

Cuz honestly I would do this regularly just for the sake of it.

And if you don't live in the Southeast where we have waffle Houses everywhere, literally Waffle houses across the street from each other sometimes.

And yes, they have different vibes if you know, you know.

So I do have a favorite Waffle House locally and yes regulars.

And I am a bacon hash brown bowl, eggs over hard, no cheese.

Thank you.

Peppered.

And I probably could keep running after eating that.

I don't know the ultimate question this week.

If there's a Waffle House stage race or event, I'm not looking for the race part of it so much as the participation part of it.

If there's a Waffle House stage run, we'll call it that.

Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, maybe Alabama.

Let me know because I'm 100% gonna do it after I'm done with this training here.

Because the weird thing to me about this training is that I am starving like two or three days after my double long runs.

It's weird because my over mileage is not any different than what I always do in like a half marathon training block.

It's just that most of it is stacked on those back to back long runs.

I could eat anything that is not nailed down two or three days after those runs.

I don't understand, but I'm to the point where I can't pull my shorts up so it's an issue.

I will take advice on that.

I recognize that is a subject many people don't like, but this is a problem at this point.

Not what I expected anyway.

It's always something as mama runs an ultra.