Extended cutoffs for MountainMan Ultra 2012

Good news for back-of-the-pack trail plodders: The MountainMan Ultra 50-mile (80.3 km) trail running event in Switzerland will add 90 minutes to its overall cutoff on August 18th, 2012. The time window will be thus extended to 16.5 h, and all cutoffs along the course will be also adjusted accordingly.

As I wrote in my race report last year, the unfortunate DNFs caused by the slightly too strict cutoffs were a bitter pill to swallow for many runners. It's great that the race organization is welcoming constructive feedback and therefore keeping the event live and growing. As they say, "Our goal is to make you sweat and smile!"

Now as the finish will close at 23:00 instead of 21:30 on top of Mount Pilatus, I'd be willing to try this extremely scenic route again - if I hadn't already qualified for CCC on August 31st. As I'm not like Mike Wardian, who can recover overnight, it's not realistic for me to expect sufficient recovery in 12 days between these two super hard races.

But if you are even slightly interested, by all means take a look at the aerial photos from 2011 race. I'm one of those tiny dots on the huge mountain (click the photo below to enlarge), and I'll never forget the amazing scenery at "Panorama World". Although not all runners were fast enough to finish on that hot sunny day, they were able to enjoy the magnificent views towards Lake Brienz and the famous mountain trio of Eiger, Jungfrau and Mönch.

Anton Krupicka on Ultra Quest

The latest Ultra Quest podcast is a recording of Anton Krupicka's presentation about ultratrail running in Charlotte (NC) on January 11th, 2012.

Infinite Snowtrail

This was filmed during a recent long winter trail run with my trusty old iPod nano with its kaleidoscope videocam effect - I thought it might visualize "runner's high" in an entertaining way.

 

Clif Cookbook

That Dakota Jones presents: The Clif Cookbook. Pure ultra trail genius.

 

Nordic Ultra mag 4

Nordic Ultra magazine 4/2012 is online.

Talk Ultra podcast

Talk Ultra is the latest addition to the rapidly growing family of ultra/trail running podcasts. It's presented by Ian Sharman and Ian Corless, who both have lots of ultra experience and are thus familiar names to most of ultraheads.

I just downloaded the first show from iTunes to my iPod and had a good time listening to all 1 hour and 38 minutes of it. There were many interesting sections, like an interview with Ryan Sandes and "Meltzer Moment". The sound quality is good.

Highly recommended.

Sh!t Runners Say

Three Americans at Spartathlon 2011

Michael Arnstein has posted an entertaining race report about his Spartathlon race experience in September 2011. These three friends sure had fun following the footsteps of Pheidippides (an Athenian messenger sent to Sparta 490 BC), Yiannis Kouros (4-time winner, record holder), and Scott Jurek (the only runner to win 3 times in a row)...

...sort of. None of them finished in 36 hours. That is a very strict cutoff for a 246 km road race from Athens to Sparta, especially as it throws in some serious mountain trail running at night around 100-mile point. And all this in a country where nothing works they way it is supposed to.



I'm looking forward to part two of this adventure - yes they are trying again in 2012, and have even set up SpartathlonUSA for that purpose.

CCC 2012 - yes I'm in!

I can't believe that I actually won one of the coveted 1,800 running bibs in the CCC 2012 lottery. Now all I need to do is sort out the medical certificate and I'm ready.

CCC comes from the names of towns: Courmayeur (Italy) - Champex (Switzerland) - Chamonix (France). The course is the last 98 km of the UTMB course. The race will start at 10 AM in Courmayeur on Friday, August 31. 166 km UTMB will start at 6:30 PM in Chamonix, so these two races won't overlap.


Afficher CCC® 2011 sur une carte plus grande

In the registration form I stated that my goal is to finish in under 17 hours, although I have no idea what my actual speed will be. It doesn't really matter, as long as I'll stay within the overall time limit of 26 hours. A finish would give me 3 points for the UTMB 2013, which now requires 7 points.

Allez! Bravo! Super!

Suunto Ambit - finally a GPS for ultratrail runners?

The new Suunto GPS watch to be released this spring is marketed as "The GPS for explorers". It sure seems interesting from the perspective of ultra trail running.

According to Ultra168, Suunto Ambit offers the following features:

• Rapid response built-in Waypoint GPS (SiRFstarIV chip) 
• Built-in FUSED Accelerometer (linked to the GPS)
• 50 hour battery life (with 60 second interval GPS use) 
• 3D Compass 
• Accurate Barometric Altitude 
• Real time Heart Rate Graph 
• Temperature Measurement 
• Highly responsive Speed and Pace training function using FusedSpeed integrated GPS Accelerometer 
• Advanced Heart Rate Monitoring with built in PeakTraining Effect and Recovery Time function 
• Water resistant to 100 meters 
• Available in Black and Silver 
• Built to Last Technology and sleek design.

In addition to this, some sources mention there is a positive/negative display switch.

This sure sounds like my dream GPS. I already have Suunto Core, but a GPS with ultralong battery life would be more fun to play with. Garmin Forerunner 910XT has about 20 hour battery life with continuous GPS, and Suunto Ambit will be in the same ballpark. They both use an USB cable for battery charging and data loading.

However what's really interesting is the new "60 second interval GPS use", which might well be good enough for a race like UTMB, where the cutoff is 46 hours. Still, I'd like to know some more details, like the size, weight and price of the watch...