Training

Some days, I look at what others are doing (I know, I know, we are all in different places and on different plans, and no one is doing it the exact same way, blah, blah, blah) and wonder how it is that they are doing it all! Really, by all, I mean the running.  I try not to compare but whew, some people just run serious miles and race after race after race, and here I am just happy hitting 50+ miles a week for a few weeks on end and thinking of that as a good block! I've never been a huge mileage runner but in the past few years I've definitely upped the ante of my own personal running levels in terms of how much mileage my body can handle and I'd like to think I'm a stronger runner now than I ever have been, even if the trade-off might be loss of bit of speed. I feel like I'm putting in the work, but my mileage and how many major long runs/ultras I'm doing in preparation for this 100 and for past races seems like it just pales in comparison to how others are doing it. Ultrarunning truly is a unique sport in that you can go about your training in so many different and variant ways, and that is part of what I love about it, but sometimes it is trying to look at everyone else's training and think about how you "stack" up and if you are doing "enough." Sigh. In any event, despite my sometimes doubts, I feel like I'm in a decent place. Perfect, nah, but solid.

Last week was 54 miles/10 hours/7000+ feet of elevation and although I decided to skip a run on Monday morning before we left Acadia as I was just darn tired, it was more of an overall tired, probably brought on by camping and hiking and being out in the air for 4 days on top of my running, and not an oh-my-goodness-this-is-too-much-I'm-overdoing-it-running kind of tired. So I'm happy with that. The plan for this week is to hit closer to 60 miles, capped off by an UXBBA run on Sunday (all three dirt courses in a row). I'll be doing the Bruiser with the rest of the racers so that should keep things interesting and hopefully alleviate at least a little bit of the pain of the Island and O Trails (I can hope anyway, right?! ;))!

After Sunday, it will be a recovery week and then it is on to the VT 50 on September 24th, which will be my longest effort before Pinhoti. I'm nervous, I will admit it, but I know it will be a good training run and I'm looking forward to running some new trails in a new place!

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Tuesday morning came early, and it was dark. With an overcast sky and sunrise moving ever so slightly later as we head into fall, the headlamp stayed on for a loooong time as I ran on the trails through the Cathance. Saw two deer and ran into a whole lot of spider webs ;) (9.1 miles)

By the time I hit the Heath the second time around, it was light enough for a photo.

Love the sea of cotton sedge amidst the grasses.

Wednesday morning was another run started in the dark, this time with 10x Mt. A. on the docket - 5x up and down each on Chicken and Suicide hills with a bit of flat recovery in between. I wasn't going for any sort of speed, but more of a steady round of hills, and feel I accomplished that. (6.1 miles)

This morning dawned dark and rainy and I just plain decided not to get out of bed. I had put in a few extra hours this week at work already and our servers were down for maintenance from 2:00-4:00 today, which is a totally inconvenient time of that sort of thing, so I brought my running clothes to work, left early and headed over to Bowdoin for an afternoon run out through the Commons to Simpson's Point before picking up Sam. After the early morning rain, the day cleared out nicely and it was bright and sunny, if a bit windy, out along the Pennelville fields as I ran down to the ocean. One my favorite places to run roads, and beautiful as always. Because the route is essentially pancake flat, it was a fairly quick paced run, but it felt good. (10.0 miles)

Simpson's Point vista