Originally published at: Top ultra-marathon runner got lift in car | Boing Boing
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I get how travel followed by a big run could make you loopy.
After my last run, if someone handed me a live honey badger I’d have been like “oh, thanks…for me? to drink? What? Can I die now? Is this to help with that?”
But you should have recovered enough in the next hour or so to go “wait… this isn’t mine”
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My brother is a marathoner(rock climber/ice climber) who is not loopy enough to ultramarathon, but he has helped a friend by pacing him during an ultra. He says ultramarathon people are an order of magnitude loopier than normal marathoners and hallucinating is not uncommon. You would think, after a week they would have figured out what had been real, and that wasn’t actually a honey badger that offered her a lift. I would totally buy that at the minute, she had diminished capacity to realize she was doing something against the rules.
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My suspicion is; in the week afterward she knew that she had taken trophy without deserving it but was too embarrassed to return it. But, I don’t know. People don’t usually get THAT out of sorts during 50 milers. It’s usually in #hundos where the cumulative fatigue, plus the sleep deprivation, catches up and folks start to lose their brains a bit. 50-milers are still mostly physical battles, but it’s usually not until after 100k that the real mental strain begins to show.
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You may be right about it being a lot more common after a hundred miles, versus 50, I have personally known two people who experienced hallucinations after what I would consider less grueling than a 50 mi race, one after an all day outdoor karate seminar (he saw a classmate balancing on a fence and doing continual jumping spinning kicks), the other was a cyclist who had ridden all day, lost his glove, but then kept seeing his missing glove off the side of the road, and would have spent time looking for it if friends hadn’t stopped him. More examples, as you say, these seem to kick in after > 50 miles: Running hallucinations: 5 funny and frightening examples
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an 50 miler after a flight from Australia would certainly give me an out of body experience.
I would normally remove my race number if I pulled out of a race (happened 3 times on ultras) so even if I then recovered and decided to continue it was very clear I was no longer in the event.
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I’m hallucinating right now - where’s my trophy?
Oh it’s alright, I can see it now.
It looks like a tiny Paavo Nurmi wearing an admiral’s hat and a long coat of synthetic furs and Italian shoes, riding a giant naked hamster across Lake Constance. Made completely out of butter, everything. It’s so beautiful, I just… I just can’t.
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