A normal 42-kilometre-long marathon takes hard work, determination and endurance. An ultramarathon orders that as an appetizer.
An ultramarathon is anything that passes the 42 km mark. They aren’t run on roads, but instead they take the runner through the twists and turns of nature.
Six days a week, St. Thomas English professor Andrew Titus can be found running, rain or shine. It all started two years ago when a friend told him three words, “Yes you can.”
“We were running on a very technical single track trail through the woods, and I happened to say to him, are there any races where we can race on things like this,” said Titus. “He said, absolutely there are all kinds of them, and he said I should come run one … I said, ‘I can’t do it,’ and he said, ‘yes you can.’”
The perpetration, in theory, is simple. It takes practice, practice and more practice. Titus finds time to run, while still having time for his teaching, as well as his wife and kids. No matter what’s going on, the 43-year-old doesn’t stop running.
“That means running before the sun comes up in the morning, it means running after the sun goes down at night. It means running in the pouring rain, and in the blistering heat, and in the middle of the snow storm. No matter what, you just keep going. Nothing stops me from running. Zero.”
Titus has run five ultramarathons and won the first one he competed in. He doesn’t find the first part too difficult, as long as he doesn’t try to go to fast. That can result in burn-out. For him, the hardest part is around the 40 km mark.
“You start to say to yourself, you’re never going to make it, what kind of fool are you, this is ridiculous, what kind of idiot runs all day long,” said Titus. “As you push through those, that’s really the limit where you find that that’s what we’re doing in this thing. Life, as far as I’m concerned is an endurance test, and the ultramarathon is a ritualized form of that test.”
He thinks anyone can do it, it just takes determination. He remembers a time, during an ultramarathon when he was struggling, but was able to fight through. Titus still had 15 km left to go, but self-motivation pushed him through.
“I was like, I only have 15 [km] left to go. Man, I run 15 K six times a week. Let’s just drop the hammer, and I actually ended up doing my last lap faster than I had done the one before it.”
For Titus, this is a perfect example of how ultramarathons help him, not just physically, but spiritually.
“If I can go for six or seven hours, and all of a sudden find new reserves of energy, and new power supplies, then what does that tell me about the rest of my life? When I think that I’m at the end of my rope, I’m actually not.”
