Buckle Up: Our First 50K.

This week on The Back of the Pack Podcast, we officially step into the ultramarathon world with our first traditional 50K at the Kansas Rails-to-Trails Ultramarathon in Ottawa, Kansas. Running along the Prairie Spirit Trail, the day begins with a stripped-down ultra-style start, a mandatory hydration vest, unfamiliar gear, and the realization that this is a very different world from the big road marathons we are used to. Once the race reaches the crushed-limestone trail, what initially feels like a beautiful fall morning slowly becomes a very long out-and-back adventure filled with endless trees, farmland, lonely miles, and plenty of time inside our own heads. The biggest problem appears early when we realize that just seven days after sweeping the Garmin Kansas City Marathon, the legs have nowhere near the energy or bounce needed for another 31-mile effort. Along the way, we discover some of the best parts of ultra running, including incredible aid-station volunteers, bacon, waffles, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Coke, pickles, and the surprisingly serious business of managing food and hydration when aid stations can be many miles apart. The return trip brings warmer temperatures, dwindling water, increasingly tired legs, and a final seven miles that turn the race from difficult into pure survival mode. The finish time may have landed well outside the original goal, but crossing that line meant completing something completely new and earning the traditional ultramarathon prize waiting at the end: a Kansas Rails-to-Trails 50K belt buckle. We close with the lessons learned from stacking too much endurance work into three weeks, the decision to finally give the body some real recovery, and one very important conclusion: this first 50K may not have gone according to plan, but it definitely will not be the last one.