I’ve decided that I’m not in a training cycle so much as I am in a maintaining cycle. I spent 5 months building for Umstead and was probably in my best physical/endurance shape heading into it. It would be great to take a step up from there, but the timing is a little tricky with…
Head Games
I think I’m pre-injured. Recovering from Umstead is starting to feel like I normally do during my tapers. I’m not injured, but my legs just don’t seem to feel right. Yes, I know. They call this recovery for a reason, but I got back to 95% or so within 4 or 5 days (i.e. really…
Old Dominion 100 Mile Training Plan
The timing of my three 100-milers this year (4/1, 6/3, 8/12) doesn’t really give me whole lot of time to train in between each one. Especially, since I’ll need a portion of that time to recover from the prior race. So I’ll need to be a little creative in my running over the next 8…
Project 14Forty: Taper Time
The long runs are done. Long live the long runs! I’m not really sure if yesterday counts as a long run or not. I ran 10 miles followed immediately by 2 hours of hiking. All on roads or fire roads. While 10 miles is more of an intermediate run when you’re training for ultras, the…
Project 14Forty Update: 52 Mile Weekend
My peak weekend is now behind me. Bring on the taper! It’s a little hard to believe that it’s been 20 weeks since I started training for Umstead with the goal of finishing inside 24 hours (24×60=1,440). I’ve executed my training plan almost to the letter. The only major changes was adding in an extra…
Lessons Learned (or Relearned) from Naked Bavarian
I’ve been running ultras for three years now and I’ve managed to learn a couple things. Normally this would be a good thing, however I seem to keep forgetting those couple things which forces me to relearn them at inconvenient times. Like in the last 5-10 miles of races. Tune-up races can serve many important purposes…
Project 14Forty: 27 Miles
My long runs are the one and only key workout that I do. I don’t do hill repeats, I don’t do speed sessions on the track, and still think fartlek is something middle school boys do to annoy their parents. So everything comes down to executing well on these runs. OK, execution is a bit…
Project 14Forty Update: 45 Mile Weekend
Training never seems to go exactly how you have it planned. The miles might end up where they’re supposed to be, but the effort/ease/pace can be vastly different. Maybe it’s all about the expectations, which I’m still working on being able to manage appropriately. I was borderline dreading this weekend’s two runs – 25 miles…
Project 14Forty: January Update
This weekend may end up being the make-or-break weekend of Project 14Forty. It wasn’t supposed to be that way as I was only scheduled for 6 miles (5 Saturday, 1 Sunday). When I created the training plan, I had a tough time trying to figure out the11 weeks between Phunt 50K and Umstead. I’ve been doing…
Digits: Year of 2016
Happy New Year! I love numbers with a passion that’s a little creepy. This leads me to track just about everything I can, especially running related. I have several spreadsheets that I use to track my running and cross training activities. I haven’t really done much with this data yet, but it’s nice to use…