For those looking for my Vermont 100 mile race report, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. Due to severe flooding throughout the state, the race was cancelled this year. I had pre-published my last blog post before the announcement and it went live a couple hours before I saw the RD’s email the next morning. I decided to leave it up as my thoughts on the race didn’t change just because I couldn’t run it.
Let me take a brief second and say that I 100% support the race director’s and race committee’s decision to cancel the race. They had much more information than anyone else and are responsible for the safety of the runners and volunteers. After seeing some pictures of the course where roads were completely washed away, this was really the only decision that could or should have been made. These races take place inside local communities and Vermont was not capable of supporting an ultrarunning event at that time. Social media seemed to be fully behind this decision as well, which was nice to see. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone impacted by the flooding.
I’m obviously disappointed I wasn’t able to run VT100. I was expecting to love the race to such an extent that I was already expecting it to be a top 3 race experience for me. In the past, having something I’d built up with that much anticipation taken away from me would have devastating. This time? Not so much. Maybe I’m finally becoming more mature as I get older (stop laughing, wife!). Maybe all the COVID cancellations trained me deal with this situation. Or maybe it’s that I only have to wait a month for Eastern States. It’s probably a combination of all three with more weight to the latter.
The challenge now becomes what do I do with my training for the next month. Extending my taper for four more weeks seemed a little aggressive so I’ve jumped back into an abbreviated training block. One that lasts a whopping two weeks. I’m going back to what got me into great shape for Vermont – hill repeats. The first two workouts (2,000′ elevation in 7 miles, 4,700′ in 20miles) ended up being absolutely brutal. They felt much, much harder (and my paces were much, much slower) than similar workouts I did just a couple weeks back. I went from an amazing 8 miler on Wednesday to being unable to run just 2 days later. OK, it wasn’t quite that bad, but I seemed to lose all of my fitness gains over my 2 week taper. It wasn’t until I compared the temperatures during the workouts that I realized it was 10-15 degrees hotter last weekend. Yeah, that’ll do it. It’s easy to forget how much heat and humidity can impact a workout. No, I suddenly didn’t lose a bunch of fitness. The weather was just atrocious. Or more accurately, just what we’ll likely get at Eastern States next month.