Ultra team strategy

As a first time ultra team we're not sure of the best strategy. Run more shorter legs or fewer long legs? 

Any insight or perspective appreciated.

create a spreadsheet with the 6 legs for each runner 1st runner is legs 1,7,13,19,15,31

2nd runner legs 2,8,14  etc.   Rate each leg as easy, med, hard & color code each.

Now you have a spreadsheet with all legs highlighted for each of your 6 runners.

Rate each position as easy, med, hard and assign positions accordingly based on the

strengths & weaknesses of your team. Worked good for me for 5 years of ultras.

I think the question was more along the lines of, is it easier to run three double legs (e.g. position 1 runs legs 1&2, 13&14, 25&26) instead of six single legs (e.g. 1, 7, 13, 19, 25, 31).

I've never done an ultra so I can't comment authoritatively, but I see advantages and disadvantages to each.  Running single legs gets you (obviously) shorter leg distances but no down time.

I am definitely curious to hear how ultra teams do it...

Our experience (having run pseudo-ultra with 7 in '07 and true ultra last year) is that single legs is the way to go... and I think this reflects most people's experience as well.  For sure it was true last year of us, the ultra team we beat by about 1 minute for last place ultra, and our sister team which won the ultra (and was 4th overall).  Everyone I've talked to or heard from second hand who did double legs regretted it.

Basically, it seems to boil down to: running a half marathon is a *lot* harder on your legs than a 10k.  What you give up is down time to eat (so try to start stuffing your face as soon as you stop running) and sleep (I can't really sleep well anyway, so this isn't a huge deal--bring plenty of caffiene!)

My two cents... maybe there are teams out there who can extoll the virtues of the double legs.

Andrew, Pity the Fools

Thanks for the tips, yes the original question related to whether combining legs was a sensible strategy. I think we'll probably not combine the legs, although if anyone has any contrary perspectives would love to hear them.

Cheers

J