Here goes nothing.
I’ve consistently done six ultras per year since I got into this sport/community/hobby (fine, obsession) a decade ago. Of these, I’ve typically raced three 100s since I graduated to that distance in 2015. The past two years I’ve managed to up that slightly to four races. This has been spread throughout the year though with seven or eight months separating the first from the last. My shortest turnaround between hundreds has been about 5 weeks. And then a nice long break until the next one.
All of that as background for what I’m currently attempting:
- June – Sri Chinmoy 24 Hours (115 miles completed)
- July – Viaduct 100 Mile
- August – Eastern States 100 Mile
- September – Wild Goose 100 Mile
Four months, four hundreds. I know a lot of runners who do this all the time, but this is going to be a big challenge for me. My strategy for attacking these races is first not to attack them all. I’m approaching Sri Chinmoy and ES100 as A races. Viaduct and Wild Goose I’m thinking about more as git ‘er dun races. I typically go into each race with similar mindsets of running easy and having fun. So the A race / B race mindset is something new for me. As I sit here, I’m still trying to figure out how a B effort hundred would be different from my normal ones. Start slower? More rest during the race? It’s not like I’m dropping the hammer at mile 70. This is normally where I’m in full on grind it out mode. Not sure how I could take this easier. Something for me to give some more thought to.
Before I can even get to the next race though, I need to recover from my last one. Great news on that front. My legs felt almost back to 100% within a week. I had a couple blisters so my feet are a little bit further behind. Nothing that bothers me during my daily runs, but mildly noticeable. Some of my Garmin biometrics (HRV, body battery) are still somewhat out of whack, but that’s to be expected. I could probably have run an ultra the following weekend, but it wouldn’t have been my smartest decision.
Training between races will be 100% maintaining. I will not be doing any long runs and I doubt I’ll run more than 40-45 miles per week. I’ll still try to get 25-30 miles of 4mph walking in, but I consider that maintaining and not training. The only exception will be strength training. I’m still disappointed I haven’t been more consistent with that since I tried to start that at the beginning of the year. I’m going to try to get 2-3 sessions in per week excluding the weeks before/after races. Fingers crossed it’ll finally stick for me.