The part of my Burning Man I spent the most time preparing for by far was the Burning Man Ultramarathon. I had run the race six times before, so I knew I could finish it without dying. But I knew from past years my training rigor correlated strongly with how painful the race would be, and how long it would take me to recover. There’s little sense in putting in all the effort of getting to Burning Man only to spend several days of it barely able to move — though it would still be worth it if that were the only option!

I kept a low baseline of running throughout the end of last year and into this year. Low, but better than nothing. I think I was doing a 10 mile run every week or two. Once I secured tickets in mid April, the first thing I did was start analyzing my running. I needed to know how “behind” I was compared to where I should be four months out from a 50K race. Ideally I would have started a training program around two months prior, and from that perspective I was almost 200 miles behind.

In true procrastinator’s fashion, I wrote a JavaScript charting program to plot all my running from the 26 week periods preceding every 50K I did before. I used an export of my Runkeeper data for this. I intended to write a more in depth blog about this at the time, because I ran into a lot of frustrations trying to get the data from Runkeeper, which led me to start planning a switch to Strava. But for now, here we are.

I roughly plotted 4 months of training on my Google Calendar roughly following a Hal Higdon training plan methodology but adapted to the time I had left. I refreshed my JavaScript chart data every couple of weeks to gauge my progress, and found it extremely helpful. My final race time was even better than I estimated by the chart, which assumes there’s a correlation between miles trained and finishing time. Undoubtedly I was helped by the significantly cooler weather than other years. I was also a little more consistent at the end of the training despite traveling in Japan and Vietnam for the final month.

50K 26 week training histories: cumulative miles vs. days into training

Come Tuesday, everything went wonderfully! The preparation really paid off.

I woke at 4:00 and got up at 4:10. Alan wasn’t back yet. I drank two little cans of matcha tea, mentally prepared and headed out at 4:27. I would be running naked again, but wore a coat and sweatpants on the way. Funnily, I ran into Alan coming back to camp as I headed to Pink Lightning. That did make me think it would be unlikely he would wake in time to help take some photos of me though!

The race took a while to start due to getting everyone scanned, using a bar code this time. Started at about 5:15. It was cold.

The 50K is almost ready to start!

I remember being surprised and eventually a bit worried that I seemed to be hanging with the front chunk of the pack for most of the first half. I noted my lap times were 1:15 then 2:35ish. I didn’t think it was possible I was on track for a bit over 5 hours, but I also didn’t feel like I needed to slow down yet.

The ultramarathon went really well!

The ultramarathon went really well!

During the race I got to do many strange things: - I was buffed by 3 buffing machines at once at a construction pit stop. - Took shot of rum or whisky. - Jumped over a rope at variable height. - Accepted many foods from nice folks along the route: watermelon, tangerine, Oreos, twizzlers, etc.

The ultramarathon went really well!

Despite going before the race, I did annoyingly need to stop at the toilets after laps 1 and 2, and decided to hold it after lap 3 but then wished I didn’t. I managed to finish the race in about 5 hours 20 minutes, which was about 30 minutes faster than my best time so far. I also came in as the fastest naked runner, crazy!

Alan was there at the end, and we hung out at Pink Lightening mostly sitting near Cherie for about an hour recovering. We both climbed across a rope bridge across the street, which felt surprisingly good on my sore feet.

Then went back to camp, and Alan made sandwiches. I took a rag bath, he slept. Then we went to VICE at 15:15 for coffee and tea. But they had already run out of tea. :-(

But we found our new friends there and stayed talking for a couple of hours. I met Matt from ASS trash camp and agreed to meet him near our camp tomorrow at 11 for the nude bar crawl.

Then Alan and I went off to try to find Keyhouse, where his friends were staying, only I set off to the wrong side of the playa. Whoops. We ended up going back to Center Camp tea house instead and met his new friend Tammy there. We stayed talking about tea and guquin and music till almost 20:00 before going back to our camp to cook.

Made it out to explore some more after the ultramarathon Tuesday.

Made it out to explore some more after the ultramarathon Tuesday.

Made it out to explore some more after the ultramarathon Tuesday.

Made it out to explore some more after the ultramarathon Tuesday.

We ran into a couple walking two black dogs. I asked them how they could have dogs at Burning Man, and they said they are staff who have been here since May. Wow! I noted I had seen a bunch more animals this time than the usual, including a black bird, a large beetle and several flies, one of which bit me twice.

After dinner, I listened to some songs on the more portable speaker I brought this time. The neighbors across the small road introduced themselves to us and mentioned they needed to run the generator to charge their e-bikes. Also, one had run the ultramarathon with apparently no training. I’m not sure if I believed him about the training.

Alan made a simple meal by pouring some soy sauce directly into the soft tofu container. I didn't know it could be this easy!

Then went to find BAAAHS at about 2:00, but it wasn’t at Mystopia as we were told. So we went toward the playa, and we ended up at a concert at a camp called Entheos. I really loved the music, and the people dancing seemed to really know the artist. Initially we listened from hammock, then got up danced a bit till it ended around 3:30.

I didn’t know who it was, but felt like the music was a little similar to a guy I liked named Francis Mercier. But I didn’t recognize anything, so I thought it must not be him. I recorded a few bits of songs to look up later, but even before I could do that, I determined from Matt’s schedule it must have been a guy named Shimza. When I downloaded his albums later from the Man, I again didn’t recognize anything. Alas, it was a great live show!

Tuesday night.

Alan and my 2024 Burning Man camp Tuesday night.

Back to camp at who knows when, we retired till the Wednesday sun.

Entries in this series

1. Preparing for a simpler Burning Man (August 23)
2. Off to a great start in open camping (August 24-26)
3. Faster Burning Man Ultramarathon than predicted, than ever! (August 27)
4. A fabulous end to Burning Man 2024 (August 28-September 2)