What does an ultrarunner think during the race?
Fairy tale Lipiäinen, 27, gets to answer the question often. Performance lasting from seven hours to a day is so difficult for people to grasp.
The runner from Lappeenranta has had a strong run this year. At the beginning of October, he finished third in the world’s toughest running competition, the 246-kilometer long Spartathlon. In May, he ran a 12-hour run for a new world record of 153.6 kilometers.
It’s quite a different thing to seriously compete in 100 kilometers than to take part in an ultra running race just to test your own limits. For an ultrarunner like Lipiäinen, it is a competitive performance that requires concentration, not a battle for survival. There, thoughts do not wander to the post-race meal or the past work week.
– I run around a lot of numbers in my mind. I thought about speed, distance and heart rates. I also try to calculate the remaining time in my mind, says Lipiäinen.
But it’s not an ultrarunner either.
“Many times during the race there are moments when I’m desperate and in a bad mood. And it’s not terribly unusual to cry during the race”
“That’s when I start counting steps. It’s calming. I usually count to 500 because it’s about a kilometer.”
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12…
In the legendary Spartathlon, Lipiäinen did not have to rely on counting steps. The sky, which he had dreamed of for years, folded in an almost zen state.
The start of the race was at seven in the morning from Athens, the capital of Greece, and the finish was in the city of Sparti, 246 kilometers away.
Lipiäinen spent 23 hours and 48 minutes on the journey – three hours less than his goal.
– At the Spartathlon, I must have counted for the last six hours whether I would make it to the finish line before sunrise. It was great when I had time. After that, it was a bit unreal. This was it, this was nothing more than that. But afterwards I realized that it was really great.
However, it was not a given that an avid trainer who suffered from stress injuries became one of the world’s best ultra runners. Mirroring Lipiäinen’s background, ultrarunning sounds like a downright dangerous game.
Spartathlon was quite an extreme performance even for the guardian. Husband Kalle Lipiäinen started preparing Sadu’s maintenance plan already in the spring.
During the race, Kalle stayed awake at the wheel of the rental car all day and was opposite Satu at every service point.
During the 246-kilometer race, Satu consumed up to a couple of kilos of sugar in the form of gels, sports drinks and marmalade.
The guardian must be quick and precise in his movements, which is not always easy.
– When it’s four o’clock in the morning and the temperature is about to drop to freezing, the guardian is very tired and exhausted. That’s where you have to try to concentrate with all your might, says Kalle.
Overfit ruined a promising running career
In the fall of 2012, Satu Lipiäinen from Siilinjärvi, then Kähkönen, sat at the reception of a medical center in Kuopio and gloomily listened to the sports doctor’s words: “Strain injury of the shin, six weeks’ break from running. You can do as much compensatory training as you want.”
The last sentence brought hope to the lower school of the 16-year-old Lipiäinen, who had just started sports high school.
In the following weeks, Lipiäinen skied, swam, water ran, cycled and did a fitness circuit in addition to going to school for up to six hours a day. He spent all his free time in the pool, on the track and on his bike. Lipiäinen thought that with the help of hard compensatory exercises, he would be in the running shape of his life by next summer. Viheliäinen’s distemper was still bothering him even after six weeks, so Lipiäinen continued his drastic compensatory exercises.
The motivation was strong, because the previous summer Lipiäinen had tasted success by becoming the best in his age group in all the trips between the 10th and 10th. At that time, he celebrated two youth Finnish championships and appeared for the first time in a national team shirt in a youth match against Sweden.
An old proverb for endurance runners goes “The heart doesn’t know what the legs are doing”. It has often been true, but Lipiäinen’s heart seemed to know what his legs were doing. During those weeks, the heart had to pump blood to the muscles so hard that it began to tire.
Before long, Kähkönen was in top shape.
Although he tried to make a comeback for a long time, he never recovered to become the best track runner in his age group.
– It was a damn difficult time for a high school student. In a way, my identity and the basis of life were taken away from me. After four years, i.e. in the fall of 2016, I decided that nothing would really come of this. I had cried for four years after every race.
Can a runner have a treat?
Just before his stress injury diagnosis, Lipiäinen had met a middle-distance runner from Imatra on the road to St. Petersburg Kalle Lipiäinenwho became her husband eight years later.
Kalle and Satu got to know each other when Satu was going through the most difficult period of her life. Kalle remained supportive, but was at a loss in the situation himself.
– It was really difficult when you didn’t really know what to say or do. Recovering from overwork takes time, says Kalle Lipiäinen.
Satu Lipiäinen considers his struggle with overfit as a typical story in Finnish endurance running. In Lipiäinen’s opinion, the fact that many promises run away can be explained by endurance athletes’ goal-oriented nature and sports culture.
– The environment is a bit like that, it is put on a pedestal, who gets the most kilometers and training hours and does the hardest training.
Lipiäinen got the feeling in running circles that a good runner should be as light as possible.
– There is a comment from the audience or even from close friends that when you lose a couple of kilos, the results start to improve. I’ve never really had an eating disorder, but I was very concerned about how an athlete should eat and whether I can eat something. I was on a gourmet strike for seven years, because I felt that of course an athlete can’t eat delicacies.
The Healthy Athlete website according to athletes’ eating disorders or disturbed eating behavior often originate from the effort to eat healthily. It is often accompanied by a desire to improve performance and optimize body composition. Athletes in weight-sensitive sports, such as endurance runners, are a risk group for disturbed eating behavior and a relative energy deficit.
Lipiäinen noticed that like-minded competitors wrestle with similar ideas.
– When you combine hard training with watching your eating and maybe with completing it at school, the end result can be pretty bad.
The decision to quit didn’t last long
In the fall of 2016, Satu Lipiäinen was serious about his decision to quit.
He studied energy engineering for the second year at Lappeenranta University of Technology. Suddenly, life wasn’t dictated by two exercises a day.
– For two months I gave up sports and went to group exercise classes. I took a mental break from competitive sports. It felt like during that time the mind and body recovered.
In October 2016, Lipiäinen’s batteries were so well charged that he decided to realize his long-time dream and participate in an ultra-running race for the first time.
Although everything was kind of new, Lipiäinen felt that he had finally found his place.
But how on earth can ultra running be suitable for Lipiäinen, who has a history of overfit, stress injuries and, so to speak, being pulled over?
Lipiäinen has proven that the sport suits him with his steep development curve and by staying amazingly healthy. It has required a big change in attitude towards training and recovery.
– I understand my limits and that I have to take care of myself. Well-being is emphasized in ultra running. There can be no incipient stress injury or malnutrition. When you have to figure out a long race, you just have to make sure that I have enough energy day after day.
Does a person need to relax?
In Lappeenranta’s Pikisaari, it feels much colder than the thermometer shows because of the wind. It is at this time of the year that many exercisers have to dig for motivation with all their might, in order to hide themselves in the frozen darkness.
On the other hand, if Satu Lipiää doesn’t feel like going for a run, something is probably wrong. The blue shoe boxes stacked against the wall of the study and the awards decorating the windowsill tell that the jogging terrains of Lappeenranta have been used diligently. In winter, Lipiäinen mostly works out on a treadmill in the gym – so much so that once the mat started smoking in the middle of fifty runs. At that point, Lipiäinen had already run 35 kilometers.
Satu and Kalle Lipiäinen’s living room is twenty meters to Saimaa. Lappeenranta University of Technology is located four kilometers in that direction, Kalle points out.
The people of Lipiää work as postdoctoral researchers at the university. A year ago, they got their PhDs in technology every month. A joint workplace has its advantages, because Satu can jog to work while Kalle carries his things to the office. Running the most direct route adds up to eight kilometers.
Satu Lipiäinen has stated that a demanding academic career and a couple of hundred running kilometers a week give each other a sufficient counterbalance.
– I don’t know if a person needs to relax, Lipiäinen says and bursts into laughter.
– Well, yes, I sometimes like to go to a berry and mushroom forest in the summer and listen to an audio book, says Lipiäinen, who enjoys nature.
Lipiäinen admits that he is a doer in the sense that he enjoys getting things done. On the other hand, he finds the researcher’s work and running so meaningful that everyday life doesn’t feel like work. Ultra running doesn’t involve any money, but even if it did, Lipiäinen wouldn’t leave his day job.
– Even though it looks like I’ve had time to do a lot, I only do small things every day. They will become quite big things in a year or two.
– However, I also want to say that no one needs to do this much.
Stories about super students and CEOs taking advantage of the early morning “winners’ hour” have been joined by plenty of honest stories about burnout and slowing down.
– Burnout seems to be very common these days. Of course, it scares me too when I’ve heard examples of everything going well and suddenly not being able to get out of bed anymore. I’ve been hoping that knowing how to whistle when you’re tired can avoid that.
Even the seven-year gourmet strike has ended during my ultrarunning career. He is still a pedant in many ways.
Or what would Satu Lipiäinen think of a run that, according to the GPS clock, would be 9.9 kilometers long?
– I wouldn’t be able to do that. It’s just not possible to leave Lenki at 9.9 kilometers, Lipiäinen laughs.