I’m a creature of habit. I sit in the same chairs at home. Order the same meals when I go out to restaurants. Run the same routes every week. If I find something that works for me, I’ll keep at it. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it is my motto.
And while it’s good to rely on the old tried and true, the only way to get better and improve is to try new things. I had two decent sized experiments last year that worked out pretty well for me; one race related and one in training. In races, I dramatically slowed down my pacing in the early miles. I’ll never know for sure whether this resulted in faster overall times (my guess is maybe +/-5%), but it definitely improved my overall race experience by making things more fun for longer. I also tend to believe this has derisked my overall performance by reducing the chances of me blowing up.
My training related experiment was to add doubles to my weekly miles. I had always done 100% of my runs in the morning, but by adding some running mileage in the afternoons I was able to increase my overall run volume. This isn’t something that I do all the time now, however I’ve pulled this out of my training toolkit this month to replace some lost mileage by either sleeping in or schedule conflicts.
Since those worked so well, why stop there?
The Hundred Mile Training Run
I was originally signed up for TWOT next month, but backed out when I decided I wanted an extended training cycle heading into a very busy year of racing. A couple weeks back, Angela Ivory Memorial Runs hit my radar. The course is much easier than TWOT (3k elevation gain vs. 30k) and I started wondering if I could run it extra easy as a training run. The goal would be to get back to my normal training volumes in 3-4 days rather than 7-10 days. So instead of going out and running a 20-21 hour race, I’m going to target something just under 24 hours. Ideally, a training run effort would be closer to 25 hours, however I’m just not wired to not go for sub-24 when the opportunity is there. This will be the first time I’ve gone into a race not attempting to run my best time. As I start to ramp up the number of longer ultras I’m doing each year, I need to start running some of these races at easier efforts. I think this will keep me a little fresher and let me keep my weekly mileage higher in between the races, which should lead to overall improved fitness and translate into better overall race performances.
Or that’s the theory.
This race will also provide me an opportunity to experiment with my nutrition. As I’ve gained more experience in hundreds, I’ve been able to improve my execution pretty much across the board. The one thing I’ve consistently struggled with though is maintaining steady nutrition in cold and/or crappy weather conditions. I like to get most of my calories via liquids, however the colder it is the less I’m drinking. This means I’m more reliant on getting solid foods down. The challenge with this though is that I’ve got to take gloves off to unwrap/open/shovel food into my mouth. Guess what I don’t want to do when it’s cold and or raining out. Yeah, exactly. So what ends up occurring is that I get enough calories down to keep moving forward, but not enough to feel good. It ends up being a slog. The trick I’m going with for this race is to have all of my solid food cut up into bite sized portions and to place them in backup water bottles. The goal will be to have my food available such that I don’t have to take my gloves and mittens off.
I don’t know if either of these experiments will work out. I’m mildly optimistic, but won’t really know until after the fact. Regardless of the outcomes, I’m happy to just have the courage to try.