My 50 Mile Training Plan

I felt a bit intimidated after signing up for the Buffalo Run, my first 50 miler coming up on March 26th. There are a ton of websites and books about marathon training, but not nearly as much about training for an ultramarathon. I looked around for training plans and found a few possibilities. My goal is simply to finish under the 12 hour cutoff so I chose one of the milder plans and mirrored my plan off of suggestions from the website http://www.scrunners.org/ultrasch.php

(Another EXCELLENT website with training for an ultramarathon is http://www.fitnessintuition.com/howtorun.htm )

The most interesting thing I learned about ultra training is that most plans recommend having the longest training run be around 30 miles. But most marathon training plans recommend a max of around 20 miles....and then you can make up the extra six miles on race day with the adrenaline (which is a lie - because those last six miles hurt).

I can see that if you're well-trained, you can just make up the extra six at the end of a marathon. But that is radically different than making up an extra TWENTY MILES to finish an ultramarathon. I am very interested to see what happens in those last 20 miles.

I made a few adjustments for races but I weekly mileage from sample training plans stayed the same. Here is my rookie 50 Mile training plan: