An Ultra? Can I even be serious?

The link to the Lighthouse 100 ultra marathon popped up in my newsfeed today on Facebook, and that, of course, launched me into a full hour's worth of fantasizing about running an ultra on the shores of Lake Michigan in early June. Of course! Who wouldn't? (My husband... he wouldn't...I get that it's a little bit nutty...)

My longest run is 26.2 miles. And I don't remember a single run of 26.2 miles that ended with me wanting to run another step. In fact, to be fair, here is my face at the end of my last mary (when I discovered that I had to climb 40 steps to get out of the stadium that was hosting the finish line): 

So it's not like I've ever really said to myself at the end of a marathon, "Yep! I wanna do that a second time! Right now!" or "Meh, I really need a belt buckle instead of a medal to hang around my neck." 

Yet somehow, the ultra marathon has always intrigued me. I watched the Badwater Marathon documentary  called Running on the Sun and was absolutely enchanted by the guy who had his toenails surgically removed because he was sick of losing them on long runs (I hate toenails anyway), or the older man who gave me the quote that inspires this blog-- "I always start these events with very lofty goals. Like I think I'm going to do something special. And after a point of body deterioration, the goals get evaluated down. I always get to a point where the best I can hope for is to avoid throwing up on my shoes," said by Ephraim Romesberg--Badwater Ultramarathon participant. Seriously, just watch the first two minutes of that video. "I don't think there's a thing about this that's good for the body," says the race organizer. It must be good for the soul.

I feel like I should dig into this idea more, but I also don't feel like I'm up to digging too deeply tonight. A couple of ideas are sitting right at the front of my mind. The first is that I have the foundation for the mental resume to do an ultra. I've done two races before that have taken me fourteen plus hours to complete. And I was on the verge of some pretty dark places in those races, but "relentless forward motion" (my mantra) pulled me through. I imagine the dark places on an ultra run are different from the dark places on an Ironman, but I sure would like to find out. 

The second idea on my mind is pace. My last full marathon (in April of this year) took me five hours and fifty six minutes to complete. That was nearly an hour over what I was hoping to do. It wasn't my slowest marathon, but it was nowhere near to my fastest (4:31). I ended up at 13:31 pace when I was hoping for closer to 12:30 pace. And lately, even my shorter runs have been in the 12+ pace range. That's miserable for me. I just am not at the pace that I'd like to be at. And in the same way that I am not at the weight I'd like to be at, I look at it almost like a clinician. "Hmmm, that's really interesting! I wonder what could fix that!" but nothing much changes from looking at it from that angle.

I'm not yet serious. But I'm thinking about it. I wonder if I'll somehow let fate determine my destiny on this one; if there are still spaces for registration after Dopey, and if I have the will do it it, perhaps I'll sign on. Two kinds of crazy in one year?