I was putting the finishing touches on my latest post (“2025 Viaduct 100M Preview”) when the email hit my inbox: Race Cancelled. Apparently, the region got hit with some nasty storms and there’s a bunch of trees down on the course plus most of the area is still without power. This is now the third straight year that I’ve had a race cancelled on me (Vermont in 2023, Eastern States last year) so it’s not like I don’t have experience dealing with this. At least I’m not standing at the start line this time. I also don’t have to worry about partial refunds of entry fees since there were none for this race.
This announcement doesn’t hit quite as hard as prior ones as I was planning on using Viaduct as a training race. I had a new pacing strategy that I was going to try out to help prep me for ES100, however that’s now out the window. I have four weeks to get ready for a beast of a race and Viaduct was going to be my primary training stimulus leading up to it. So now I need to pivot.
Plan B (aka Don’t Try This At Home)
I still want to get the training benefit of running 100 miles, however I don’t want to just go run a 10 mile loop ten times to get there. What I enjoy most about running hundreds is the race atmosphere and community. Doing it around my neighborhood just seems a little silly to me. Ideally I’d have a route or FKT lined up, however the only thing that’s tickled my fancy is a Lancaster Covered Bridge tour that I haven’t completely scoped out yet so that’s a no go.
What I’ve settled on is running 25 miles on four consecutive days, which will get me to my hundred mile target without doing it all at once. I had scheduled off work Friday and Monday so I have the time this weekend to execute this without squeezing it around my job. I’m planning to start and end at my house so it’s convenient.
- Friday: 25 miles; 120ft/mile elevation gain/loss; 13:00 pace
- Saturday: 25 miles; 120ft/mile elevation gain/loss; 12:30 pace
- Sunday: 25 miles; 120ft/mile elevation gain/loss; 12:00 pace
- Monday: 25 miles; 120ft/mile elevation gain/loss; 11:30 pace
Now ideally I’d go run a route with 200ft of elevation gain/loss per mile to mimic the ES100 course. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything like that near where I live. Heck, it’s probably going to take a couple hill repeats to get me up to 120ft since most of what I have is about 100ft/mile. The good news is this is much more than the 40ft/mile that Viaduct was going to provide so this should be a better training fit for me than that race was going to provide.
Pacing is going to be the key consideration for me with these runs. This is a lot more miles than my normal 50-60 mpw so I’m not going to run them at the 10 minute pace that I would typically execute a long run workout. My goal with Viaduct was to execute a fast finish to train myself to do this at ES100 which has lots of runnable terrain at the end so I’m going to attempt to do each run at a slightly faster average pace. I’m going to start at 13 minute pace, which is a little faster than my hundred mile pace for similar terrain. I’ll then pick up the pace 30 seconds each day to simulate ramping up my effort as my fatigue increases.
Now this is going to be a huge training experiment for me and is something I’m comfortable attempting based on my extensive running experience (12+ years, 60+ ultras, 1600+ miles already in the bank YTD). While I recommend trying new things, don’t be stupid. I will definitely pull the plug and cut mileage if I feel I’m pushing too far. This is not something I need to do to finish ES100 or even enjoy my trip around the course. This is something I want to do because I think it’ll be beneficial for me.
Worst case scenario you get a great post next week.