Why I'm Convincing Myself Ultras Are Good Value

25 Oct 2024 at 18:10 // under Running

I once declared I wouldn't do many ultra marathons. They're expensive, both in time and money. The race itself eats up an entire day, but it's the recovery that's the real killer. It is nearly a month after Glasgow to Edinburgh and I am still unable to train properly again, which doesn't exactly scream "value for money".

But then I got to thinking about the numbers, and they don't quite add up the way I expected.

Take the Glasgow to Edinburgh ultra, which cost me £100 to enter. The week before, I'd run the Linlithgow 10K for about £25. On the face of it, ultras are clearly more expensive. Four times as much, in fact.

But hang on a minute. While the ultra costs four times as much to enter, I was covering nine times the distance. That's already looking a bit better.

Then there's the "cost per minute of event". I rattled through the 10K in 40 minutes, job done. The ultra? Nearly 9 hours of plodding along the canal. And I was one of the faster ones - some poor souls were out there for 15 hours. When you think about it like that, you're getting an awful lot of event for your money.

Maybe ultras aren't such bad value after all. Just don't tell my feet I said that.

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