I gave a similar suggestion back on the 2022 survey at the end of year 2. A 50k version and/or a 50m version. I think a lot of people might find 31 miles a lot less intimidating than 60+. I also think it might give some people the confidence to attempt the 100k once they have conquered the 50k distance. Kind of like a gateway drug. That said, why just trail. It could just be any combination of courses that exceed 50k so long as no course is repeated more than once. And why not just still leave it as a 24hour challenge? For someone that has never done an ultra before that is still a solid challenge.
As for an award, I think it would be cool for it to be something people can actually wear. Like a hat or a shirt that says “I conquered the FLRC 50k” or “50m” or something like that. If they are undated, a batch could be ordered and used for several years?
It would also be nice to roll the Ultra challenge into the standard leader board somehow.
I’m in (in case there was any doubt). Would it also make sense to include a 50k road Challenge for the other half of courses, assuming there’s a way to make the distance add up?
Also, the trail courses from all four years of the Challenge add up to a hefty 101.1 miles — a good distance for a belt buckle. I’m just saying
This year the five trail courses with an extra Duck Trails totals 31.4 miles, a shade over 50K. That is a defined set of courses. I think a 50K road challenge is also a good idea @DamianClemons . The remaining road courses (counting all of Run Rabbit Run as road) should amount to about 33.7 miles - a worthy challenge! But, I think a defined set of courses for each challenge probably makes more sense to keep the logistics and scoring of the Challenge cleaner for @adamengst .
The Ultra Challenge was so much fun the two times I did it. For me, running all day from early morning darkness into the night over the variety of courses is magnificently interesting as the activity around you changes! It has always been a very rewarding experience for me. However, it presents some logistics that consider what order to do the courses, driving times between courses, likely night-time running, figuring out clothing layers, and the need to plan your own tailgate aid station. The biggest challenge for me, other than slowness, is my muscles stiffening up during the drives between courses later in the Ultra Challenge.
That preparation might be daunting for someone with limited ultra experience. Having the “50K” Challenges would encourage more people to build their experience with such a fun time…and maybe lead to more folks taking on the 100K Ultra Challenge. (I hope so!)
Magic mushrooms, trippin trails and gateway drugs… a lot of Skunkadelic-worthy themes coming up here!! Love it
As an out of towner who will be in Ithaca for only a week (and also running Cayuga Trails), this would be a fun way to see the trail challenge courses without worrying about the not so fun road options. I’d be down to pace someone for an attempt if scheduling works out or if @julie19 wants to do this together!!
Technically, I consider Lakefront Loops and FH Fox to be “mixed” courses, since they have some pavement along with trail (meaning “unpaved.” When I switch them to “trail” in my course spreadsheet, we end up with 31.4 trail miles and 31.7 road miles. I like that better than having to run one course twice. (In previous years, the “mixed” courses were a larger percentage of the whole in being roughly equal with “paved” and “trail.”)
I’m a little less enthused about a road 50K Challenge because most ultras are trail races, so it doesn’t feel like it would attract as many people or be as enjoyable for those who did do it. But what I think I’ll do is work my way up to a poll where we can see how many people think they’d go for one or the other or both.
Also, if I’m to prevail on @steve-desmond to enhance the leaderboard to track these additional types of completions, it needs to be single-shot coherent, not something that can be made up on the fly by running one course multiple times. Although I probably have some room in the budget to add such functionality (attracting more runners would help that!), it would be easiest to justify if it also saved me time rather than creating too much more work, and calculating the running and elapsed times for the Ultra Challenge efforts does take me a while to copy and paste everything into a spreadsheet and then manually update the Ultra Challenge page.
As far as awards go, the main issue with something people can wear is that the numbers will be pretty small, and I strongly suspect that many of the same people would do the 50K Challenge each year, so they presumably wouldn’t want yet another identical shirt or hat. The beauty of the personalized course signs is that I can start with the same blank and customize it for each year’s details easily. Unfortunately, making lots of individualized awards wouldn’t scale well from the effort involved, along with the fact that those signs are pretty expensive at about $20 each. The ideal award would be something that was undated but could be customized for each winner each year with relatively little effort.
A 50K road ultra is not that much of a stretch from a road marathon, which is probably why there are so few and why those are typically a subset of a longer road ultra (e.g., Can Lake 50). A FLRC Challenge 50K Road Ultra might be popular for just that reason… but it could never be as fun as a 50K Trail Ultra!!
My burning question is would @Petorius attempt a 50K Track Ultra, based on @heathercobb3’s idea to run the Sweet 1600 on as many different tracks in one day as possible, to do 31 different track courses?
I’d definitely be down for the 50K trail ultra challenge, running 25+ road miles is the biggest thing that has kept me away from the 100K!
I can already see this Leaderboard feature coming together in my head and helping automate some manual labor – @adamengst feel free to shoot me an email or start the convo on GitHub if it’s worth pursuing!
I would be game to attempt this “Trial by Trail” this year
I am one of the individuals a little intimidated by 100K so I think this would be perfect!
I do prefer a medal or plaque or some sort of Item I can use as decor, rather than a clothing item. Like you mentioned, I would probably attempt it every year and only so many identical clothing items I would want.
Any chance of getting a Dimond shaped medal that can mimic the look of the course signs?
I could imagine a diamond-shaped medal that mimics the sign design more closely with a space for a customizing sticker at the bottom, much like I do with the courses. The trick is to find something that matches an easily acquired sticker size exactly.
My 0.02 cents on awards… most of us have a ton of running clothing so I agree more isn’t needed. This sounds silly but I would really enjoy a selection of small accessories like generic FLRC branded gloves, beanies, socks etc that runners could choose from every year and may have a shorter lifetime than a tech shirt. That or perhaps a small discount to one of the FLRC trail circuit races? Just throwing ideas out there!
