Adventures on the road less traveled

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Cowtown ...... practice run

This Sunday I am running the Cowtown 50K. I took off Jan 29 - Feb 19 to rest my sore Achilles by doctor's strong suggestion.

Well now its race week and instead of a taper week I am ramping up to run it. Tonight will be some intervals, Thursday some road miles, Friday a bit longer run and Saturday a short shake out. I tried this method in 2009 after taking a month off for two bouts of kidney stones and turned in a decent 100 mile finish of 24:53. So Maybe this madness with work again.

The general plan is take it in three parts. Every ten miles pick up the tempo and turn in negative splits. Mentally, passing others is a big confidence builder. So that should be a good fuel source. Originally I had some crazy predictions and a good friend suggested go for a PR, which is about 90 seconds slower than my fastest goal. Sitting around for almost a month one gets well rested and eager to race probably faster than one should.

Well each day leading in to the race should help get a good indication of my current ability. Hopefully my endurance based survived.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

The training run

Resting up my Achilles for next weekend's Cowtown 50k I had not ran since the Benbrook Half on Jan 28th. Which I set an official PR of 1:35:40.

So tonight I thought I might need to get one training run this month to gauge my readiness. Tumbleweed and Majic joined me for night time Canton run. Temp was 40F and wind gusts up to 37 mph. The run felt smooth and at mile 6 I picked up the pace to see how much energy I had for the last 1.1 miles. Best guess I ran in under 7:00 minutes. Total run was 58 minutes for me. After asking Majic for his Garmin stats.

The next day I had some soreness but I think I will survive the race. No PR for this race but more of a long welcome back training run towards my journey to Leadville.

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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Leadville Back at it

I am signed up for 2011 Leadville 100 Mile Run.

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Signing up for Leadville is an exciting feeling. The enjoyment from running through the mountains can not be described into words. No matter how tough the race is the experience from it can't be taken away. This year I am set to take on the challenge again. Training will be based on how I feel each day. I have a general plan and will modify it as I go. Somedays push harder, longer, or maybe back it off a bit and stay physically strong as well as mentally strong. No matter the outcome I will be a better runner from it. In addition, I plan to enjoy every foot strike I take along the course. I started this blog page because of this race. Most of all my entries will be built around this year's entry. The journey awaits and I am ready.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Side-lined for a bit

Looks like the coach aka my doctor has sidelined me for a bit. Too much speedwork and hills in racing flats has lead to a yellow card with Achilles Tendinitis. The pleasure was worth the pain. In the past few months of training/racing; I set a new 5k (19:27) in Dec, 10k (43:01) in Nov and half marathon (1:35:48) last weekend, all new PRs at the expense of some discomfort in my Achilles.

So the next ten days I will not run or jog. Allowing myself some proper recovery time so I can race again later this year. Sometimes you have to stop and let the body rest. Even though most of us hate taking the time off or even the sound of the word taper. In the long course of life I know I will get more out of my running by sitting out the next several days. Not too bad for running the past five years with really no breaks except a mild taper here and there for races. Some races I even trained all the way up to race day and started the day following the race.

I even went and got a 90 minute massage today at the Aveda Salon. I think my entire benefited from the time on the table and is feeling better already. Later tonight I will pick a book Run The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel to help pass the time by. I have found that using my downtime by reading proves to be quite beneficial. I learn a bit more about running and pick up some useful knowledge that otherwise I might miss out on reading. Too bad I didn't read up on Tendinitis before it got me.

The nice thing about these recent days is that with the blizzard in effect; right now is an ideal time to sit back and rest. I plan to ease back in with some light running mixed in with some biking to offset the longer runs I want to do. At the end of the month I have the Cowtown Ultra so I have to build smart so that I don't end back up in this predicament.

Best wishes to everyone out there running!!

Thursday, January 6, 2011

2011 Goals

Obtain three new 100 Mile belt buckles
To log 3000 running miles
Set two new PRs
Complete a mile in under 5:20
Finish six ultras
Crew/pace a runner in an ultra

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Monday, January 3, 2011

What a year and the award goes to......

2010 is now in the books and is the time to reflect upon those twelve months.
*Closing out the year with a total of 2613.94 running miles
*Taking First in AG in the Muddy Buddy (the driving force behind all my running)
*New PRs in the 1M 5:28, 5K 19:27, 10K 43:05, 13.1M 1:33:10, 50K 4:43:51 and 100M 23:33:17
*First Sub 24 Hour 100 Mile Ultra
*Paced four marathons Louisville, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit & Mohican 100 Mile
*Ran across the state of Michigan Coast to Coast 206.2 Miles
*Made Marathon Maniac RUTHENIUM LEVEL (5 gold stars)

A lot of that time running was spent with several great people; so I thought that this year I would recognize five of them.

The Sidekick Award - Jay Alvarez for pacing me to a sub 24 in the Rocky Raccoon 100 Mile

The Sherpa Award -- Lauren Muir for crewing me across the state on my long run

The Informant Award - Keith Kohler for always finding the latest and greatest info on the net, magazines, DVD & TV and sharing it with me