80 miles and somewhere between 14,000 and 16,000 vertical in 4 days . . . good times. Ironically today's relatively mellow run of 7 miles and 1,600 vertical was one of the most enjoyable runs of the cycle and recent memory. There was something that simply felt natural about today's run -- little/nothing in the way of thinking about pacing, drinking, eating, or route finding. I was simply running. The foothills were beautiful. Clouds, wind, rain in the distance, and everything turned ever green . . . just one of those days when everything came together despite the recent miles and tired legs. As I crested the ridge in City Creek, it felt like my body/mind forgot all the running of the past few days and simply wanted to be free and move without thought.
In other news, I am nervous about the BH100. After last fall's surrender at Bear, I am nervous about how my mind/body will react when the push truly gets to shove -- this is probably in reality why I have suddenly started writing again after a rather long hiatus (to clear my head). There is something amazing about the connection between training and racing. There is also something amazing about what seems to be the disconnect between the two. Recently, I have been looking back at running logs from the past couple years in an attempt to find clues pointing to good/bad race efforts. Not sure there is much rhyme/reason. Signs of burnout? Signs of overtraining? Signs of undertraining? Reading it all in hindsight, the signs are obvious. But in reality, I am not sure how the info would all read if the results had been different. I was surprised to see that before both Wasatch a couple-three years ago (caused because of injury) and Bear last year (caused by burnout?) there were unusual drops in my training followed by and/or connected to random periods of overly intense training. In contrast, my more typical training follows a fairly gradual increase in terms of overall mileage (with mini-recoveries thrown in from time to time) until reaching peak training about 3 weeks before the race followed by a taper that goes 80, 60, race week. Shocker: it seems that consistency might be the closest thing to a key for me.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Thursday, May 24, 2012
hello?!
If you forget your password, it has obviously been a while since you wrote anything . . .
Training is in full swing for the Black Hills 100 coming up towards the end of June. Today I ran around 3500 vertical in about 17 miles as a kinda BH100 simulation. My thinking goes and/or went as such -- I need to get used to quick bursts of up-down activity and the course I ran today simulated this idea by including about 9 climbs and descents in a rather short amount of running (each climb consisted of roughly 300 to 400 vertical feet and was followed by a similar descent). Although the BH100 doesn't look massive in terms of big time climbs, the elevations seems to be ever-changing and I felt the need to at least somewhat mimic that idea today . . . in terms of getting ready for the Black Hills, too much of my everyday running probably consists of big climbs and/or descents that come natural to the terrain around here.
Training is in full swing for the Black Hills 100 coming up towards the end of June. Today I ran around 3500 vertical in about 17 miles as a kinda BH100 simulation. My thinking goes and/or went as such -- I need to get used to quick bursts of up-down activity and the course I ran today simulated this idea by including about 9 climbs and descents in a rather short amount of running (each climb consisted of roughly 300 to 400 vertical feet and was followed by a similar descent). Although the BH100 doesn't look massive in terms of big time climbs, the elevations seems to be ever-changing and I felt the need to at least somewhat mimic that idea today . . . in terms of getting ready for the Black Hills, too much of my everyday running probably consists of big climbs and/or descents that come natural to the terrain around here.
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