RIVER VALLEY and OZARK AREA — Dustin Speer of Conway ran 100 miles earlier this month, but he didn’t do it alone.
Speer said he had a lot of help from the Arkansas Ultra Running Association.
The club’s goal is to promote ultra running throughout the state.
Ultra running is any distance greater than marathon length, 26.2 miles, group member Chrissy Ferguson said.
The club has been active for many years and became affiliated with the Road Runners Club of America in the early 2000s. Ferguson’s husband, Stan, is the club’s current president.
Chrissy Ferguson said almost all 150 members of the club have run an ultra distance of at least 50 miles. Many have run several races.
Two weeks after his first ultra race,Speer said he felt rested up and ready to do it again soon.
“It can tear your body up pretty good,” he said, “but not necessarily in a bad sense. It’s just a lot of exhaustion and a long way to go.”
Chrissy Ferguson said running “100s” can be incredibly addictive.
“It’s like having kids,” she said. “Once you’ve done it, a week later you forget how bad it hurt, and you want to do it again.”
She said many ultra runners have obsessive personalities.
“They choose the running and use that as what they are addicted to,” Ferguson said.
The Arkansas Ultra Running Association sponsors several ultra runs each year, and Stan and Chrissy Ferguson have been co-directors of the races for several years.
“We have the Arkansas Traveler 100 and the Ouachita Trail 50 and the Full Moon 50K,” Chrissy Ferguson said.
Several of the race routesinclude parts of Faulkner and Perry counties, which many of Arkansas’ ultra runners call home.
Ultra runners enjoy traveling all over the country to races. Speer’s race in early June took place in Wisconsin, and the Fergusons plan to travel to South Dakota this summer to run a race together.
Chrissy Ferguson said longdistance running isn’t for everyone.
“A lot of people who run these distances run shorter distances first,” she said. “Maybe they can’t run as fast as they used to, and they are not able to compete much in the overall distance in shorter races. The goal changes. Instead of, ‘CanI win?’ it becomes, ‘Can I finish this?’”
But many do finish, and some, like Speer, cross the finish line wondering what they were thinking.
“You think, ‘Why did I sign up for this? Why am I doing this? I could have done it better,’” he said.
But now, like others, Speer is ready to go for it again.
“You pretty much are going through every emotion you can possibly think of,” he said, “along with telling the Lord that if you get through this, you will never do it again.”
Chrissy Ferguson has run 31 100-mile races.
- czilk@ arkansasonline.com
River Valley Ozark, Pages 61 on 06/24/2010