What motivates you to train for ultras? How do you get out of bed before light when it’s raining outside? What forces you to do add that second (or third) workout to your weekly schedule? Or the extra repeat when your lungs are shot and your legs completely fried? The back-to-back long runs? How do you keep going when you’re sure you’ve already reached good enough?
For me, Eastern States always motivates me to do just a little bit more. I’m still eight weeks out, but my snooze button is starting to gather dust. I’ve just been mostly logging miles so far this year since I’ve been racing so often, however I’m starting to plan out some workouts heading into the race. Mostly hill repeats. I’m debating adding in some weekly strength training, however if I’m honest it’s probably not gonna happen.
Fear / Respect
When I first started running ES100, my training ramp was 110% fear based. It was far and away the hardest race I was doing and I knew that I needed to pull out each and every training trick I knew to either finish it (first couple years) or not be completely miserable running it (next couple). So extra miles along with hills, vert, and more hills. My fear of the course has morphed into respect as I’ve gained familiarity and experience on it. This is not a race that I will ever, ever overlook though. It’s not sneaky hard like some hundred mile races. It’s straight up in your face obvious. You know exactly what you’re going to get when you toe the line at this race: Heat, Hills, and Humidity. Your legs are going to be thrashed. Your mind will be tested. And your stomach will be pushed to it’s absolute limit. Then you leave Dry Run for the second half of the course.
So yeah, I know what I’ve signed myself up to tackle. I still have time to squeeze in a couple more hill repeats.