Consistancy and Race Planning

The past three weeks, I’ve been gradually running a bit more consistently. I’ve also bumped up my weekend mileage gradually and so far so good. My right leg is still having some hamstring pain, but it’s more muscular than anything and stretching things out has worked well both during and post run.

My weekly mileage since my last post has looked like this:

Feb 15-21: 24.7 Miles

Feb 22-28: 31.7 Miles

Feb 29-March 6: 35.9 Miles

March 7-13: 37.3 Miles

I’ve had a couple of people ask me how I’m training to run 100 miles, and the key is going to be stacking my weekend days with long runs. My weekend days will be spent on the trail and the peak-week of training has 60 miles stacked over two weekend days.

The past few weekend bricks have looked like this (sat/sun mileage): 6.5/13, 15/7, 17/7, 9/18

My heart-rate and cardio system are falling in line where they should be. I did a tempo run this week at 7:15 pace along the Cherry Creek Path and felt surprisingly awesome. It has been a long time since I’ve pushed pace so I was happy to see that things are falling in line.

I’ve been working on a pacing spreadsheet for Leadville which should give me a window of goal times for the race and each aid station. I broke down a 24-28 hour finish window into pacing for each stretch of the race. I hope to memorize the first 50 miles of the plan prior to race day, and let my crew and pacers help me stick the rest of it.

It’s overwhelming thinking about it all, but I suppose one day and step at a time and I’ll get there.

Comments

An Excited Heart

It’s no big secret that I was not feeling super great heading into my last race. It was the perfect storm in many ways. I had a stressful week at work two weeks prior working on a massive deadline followed by a heavy training volume week where I nearly doubled my weekly mileage and then fell behind in sleep the week leading into Quad Rock. I was super stressed out heading into Quad Rock due to the distance and vertical gain. I felt comfortably trained up to the 35 mile distance, but I had failed to put in the back-to-back days in training that would have given me confidence to make the jump to 50. The night leading into my race I had some significant arrhythmia while I was lying in bed. The feeling was not new to me. 10-years ago I was diagnosed with benign PVC’s. The condition takes place when nodes in the ventricles fire off signals that interfere with the main SA pace-making node in the heart. The result is a feeling of a skipped heartbeat followed by a hard thud in your chest ...

Tall Trees and Tough Trails. The 2024 Cascade Crest 100

Welcome to Easton! The welcome sign that we stopped to take a picture of just about summed up our experience here. On the hour or so drive up from Seattle, Julie and I couldn't stop taking about the amazing trees and dense forest that lined the highway. The trees were so tall that you couldn't even catch a view of the entire towns that laid just behind them. Definitely a contrast to Colorado where the main attraction are the 14ers that line our skylines. I'm so happy that Cascade Crest 100 found me. The idea to travel to Washington for a 100 mile race started when I looked into doing a race close to a good college friend of mine that moved to Washington several years ago. I hadn't seen him or his family in years, and it would be an excuse to both see them and have an epic adventure at the same time. I had heard about the Cascade Crest 100 from a couple of friends that had raced it previously. As a Hard Rock 100 Qualifier, the race had a reputation of both difficul...

100 Miles Across the Sky

The Starting Line I was laying in bed with my eyes wide open when the alarm went off at 2:50AM. For the past six hours, I had been mentally running through every segment of the run between a few short sleep breaks. It was going to be a long day and I was ready to finally race. I had a pit in my stomach knowing the event was finally here. I ate a Clif Bar and went downstairs to heat up some water for coffee. My crew and pacers were still sleeping and it looked like a college slumber party downstairs as I stepped over bags and sheets making my way to the kitchen. Sipping on my coffee I went back upstairs and put on the rest of my clothes. This included my standard run gear, arm warmers, wind shell, gloves, beanie and headlamp. The rest of my crew would be waking up shortly, so I sat on the bed for a few moments, closed my eyes and did some deep breathing. Julie came over to me and put her arm around me and laid her head on my shoulder. “ You will do great baby .” She whispered in my...

Spokes

Search This Blog