Intro to Dadrunning and My First 50K Run

My family and I hiking in Big Bear

Greetings and welcome! My name is Josh Bandy, and I am a #DadRunner. I am excited to announce that I just signed up for my first ultramarathon and will be documenting the process via the interwebs. I'll also sprinkle in a few dad moments and what beer I've been drinking along the way.

“What is a #DadRunner?” you ask. “What is an ultramarathon?” I know, I know. You have many questions. Rest assured the answers will come in due time. Until then, here are some of the basic details….

The Race

After hours agonizing over which race to sign up for and how long to train, I finally answered to the gentle but persistent calling of the Ray Miller 50/50. This is (from what I’ve seen and read) a beautiful 50k in the Santa Monica mountains at Point Mugu State Park, which leads us nicely to our first answer to one of your burning questions.

First (and hopefully not last) use of ultra signup.

The Distance

If the term is new to you, an ultramarathon is simply any distance run/raced further than a traditional marathon, which is 26.2 miles. 50k sounds kind of crazy, but really it's around 31 miles, less than five miles more than a marathon. The main difference is that most ultras are run on some type of trail terrain, as opposed to roads, so there is much more climbing and descending taking place than is the case with traditional road marathons. Ray Miller 50k, for example, has approximately 9,000 total feet of gain and loss throughout the course (Yikes!). Compare this to the Boston Marathon, for example, which has less than 2,000 total gain and loss, and you start to see a pretty wide disparity.

What the course looks like (done by Sarah Mista on Strava)

The Plan

The race is scheduled to start bright and early on Saturday November 19, 2017 at 6:30 am so I have approximately 6 months to train. This is pretty ambitious on my part, but I’m hoping not foolishly so. I’ve got plenty of trails and hilly terrain to train on around my house, and I’ve been training a fair amount already. Success of failure aside, this is the goal I’ve set, and I’m going to work my dadrunning feet to the bone to get there (mostly metaphorically).

I’ll be posting at least once a week to update on the highs and lows of the week as well as some background stories for fun.

What do you think? Have you done anything like this? What was your experience? Any advice to offer? I’d love to hear about it.

See you soon,
UltraDadRunner

P.S. I first heard about #DadRunning from @LateRoundQB and @CDCarter13 on twitter. They're definitely worth a follow for all kinds of hot taeks.

@LateRoundQB (JJ Zachariason on Twitter)