Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Ultrarunning History
Episode: 8: The 50-Miler History
Description: By Davy Crockett
Both a podcast and a full article
The fifty-mile race is a distance most of today's ultrarunners eventually run. In 2017 there were about 300 50-mile races held in America with about 16,000 unique finishers. At nearly twice the distance of a marathon, it truly involves a different approach than running a marathon both mentally and physically. Ultrarunning legend, David Horton once wrote, “Most ultra-runners, me included, consider that real ultras are 50 miles or longer.” Since the 1960s, the shorter distances (50K, etc.) were typically used by aspiring ultrarunners to train for completing at the 50-mile distance.
When did the 50-mile...