There's a saying among ultra-marathon runners: “It never always gets worse.”
It's a saying that Daniele Cherniak '83 and
Steve Szydlik '88 know well. Having
“been there, done that” about six times per year over the last decade in ultras,
they know a great deal about the grueling and often misunderstood sport. And now they are
among the world's best.
Last October, each was among the top American finishers at the 100-kilometer (62-mile)
world championships in Japan. On a hilly and scenic rural course, Cherniak finished eighth
among women in 8:45:23 while Szydlik was sixteenth among the men in 7:25:41. She led the
American women's team to a bronze medal; he led the men to a fourth-place finish.
An ultramarathon race is a test of endurance, strength, character, and patience. The
races are longer than the standard 26.2-mile marathon, and common problems include
dehydration, heat, indigestion, muscle pulls, muscle tightness, cramps, and exhaustion.
But by “running through the bad sections,” as Cherniak puts it, an ultrarunner
can “still recover and have a decent finish.” Szydlik agrees: “The nice
thing about an ultra is that you can feel awful and then it comes back.”
At Union, Cherniak and Szydlik enjoyed cross country and track, but the races — no
longer than 10 kilometers — never seemed long enough. “By the time the races were
over, I was just starting to get warmed up,” recalls Cherniak, who majored in
physics.
Szydlik, who graduated as co-valedictorian with a degree in mathematics, began
ultrarunning in 1989, the same year that he began his graduate work in mathematics
(“the multi-year ultra”). Cherniak, who also did a “multi-year ultra”
en route to a Ph.D in physics, did her first ultra in 1984, but injuries forced her to
keep the mileage down for the next five years. Since 1989, when she took up ultras again,
she has steadily improved. Now, after a decade of serious ultrarunning, she — like
Szydlik — is on the world list.
Ultramarathons are run on roads, trails, and tracks. They can be point-to-point, or
held on loop courses. Rules allow runners to “go as you please,” meaning they
may take walking breaks, pause to drink or eat and even sleep. The only penalty from a
break is the time a runner adds to his or her finish time. Runners compete over a set
distance (such as 50 kilometers, 50 miles, or 100 kilometers) or attempt to cover the
greatest possible distance over time (such as twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, or six
days).
The sport enjoys little media attention or commercial support. Runners like Cherniak
and Szydlik pay for much of their own traveling expenses with some support from running
clubs, ultrarunning organizations, and race organizers.
How do you bring yourself to run for longer than most people sleep at night? Training.
Lots of training. For Szydlik, that means running about 100 miles per week, including long
runs of 30 or more miles on the weekends. Cherniak runs twice daily, accumulating between
120 and 140 miles per week. Szydlik's running career has seldom been interrupted by
injuries, but Cherniak has not been so lucky. Her worst injury, she says, came in 1996 at
the world championships in Moscow, when a stress fracture (a microscopic break) turned
into a full fracture. The broken and displaced bone kept her on crutches for seven weeks.
Six months later, however, she was back to racing ultras.
Training means a huge time commitment (it can take twelve or thirteen hours per week to
train 100 miles), but both runners are blessed with flexible work schedules. Cherniak, a
research physicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, usually hits the treadmill for up
to an hour before work in the morning and does a second run on roads for up to two hours
in the afternoon. Szydlik, a mathematics professor at the University of Wisconsin,
Oshkosh, sandwiches his runs among lectures, office hours, and research.