Third Time’s a Charm This is my third consecutive April 100 miler where I’ve been gunning for a sub-24 hour finish. My first attempt resulted in a DNF and I walked in the last 30 miles of my second try. Both times I was pretty confident that I had it in the bag so I’m obviously…
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…
2017 Naked Bavarian 40 Mile Race Report
I’m driving over to the race start Saturday morning watching the outside temperature drop from 20 degrees to 17 to 15 degrees. I was giving my wife who was running the 20 mile race the play-by-play, but I don’t think she was enjoying it too much. Needless to say, there wasn’t much socializing before the…
2017 Naked Bavarian 40 Miler Preview
They say the third time’s a charm and it would be pretty cool if that was the case. I’ve done this race in each of its first 2 years of existence (2016 race report) and can’t wait to go back again. It’s weird because when I first started reading about ultras, I would see people go…
2/25/17 MAF Test
I had a fantastic MAF test over at the local high school track yesterday morning. The weather was about perfect (low 50s, cloudy) with only the occasional wind blowing. I typically perform these tests every 4 weeks or so, but it’s been almost 2 months since my last one mainly because I do them on the weekends…
How It Begins
Thoughts are sneaky insidious things. Now thoughts by themselves are neither good nor bad, however they’re usually just the beginning. Thoughts lead to actions and those can be great and wonderful or dark and evil. Of course, there is a third alternative. Thoughts can also lead one off the well trod path and into the land of padded rooms. …
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…