after about seven solid months of training i'm about to tackle a brand new racing distance tomorrow (56km and on trails, no less). this is my goal race for 2014 and i'm excited about venturing into new territory.
i'm thankful not to be embarking on this alone - aside from the support that i've received from the barrie roadrunners, the barrie trail running club and the MEC barrie running ninjas, my extreme ultrarunning friend extraordinaire jim willett is coming up with me to run the same race as part of his training for his attempt at setting a new record for running the bruce trail end-to-end.
as far as how i've been readying myself for this event - i've shared some thoughts before on training plans before - and like any lazy yet semi-resourceful DIYer i googled ultramarathon training plan and wound up with results that would help someone gear up for anything from 50km to 100mi. the plan that i settled on using as a basic groundwork was the first hyperlink on the results page - the Runner's World "Ultimate Ultramarathon Training Plan". as i'm prone to doing, i beefed it up a bit with a few extra runs here and there ... even though the plan is set out for someone tackling a 50-miler (and i'm only going 35 miles). the one new thing that following this plan did introduce was tracking in imperial distances - i switched my garmin 305 so that my laps were no longer in kilometres. this was an interesting experiment, as i previously found a mile extraordinarily long when being used to training in kilometres - but during the past seven weeks or so i've actually come to quite enjoy that as my baseline distance.
carboloading has been a bit sketchy for this week - work has been intense and so i've often found myself eating late and skipping what otherwise would be my intra-meal snacks.
i'm still unsure as to what shoes will be on my feet, but i think that i will start out with the skechers GObionic trail and then pack the GOrun ultra in my dropbag in case that i want to swap out partway through. i'm also thinking seriously about wearing compression socks since i anticipate being on my feet for 6.5-7 hours, but it's also supposed to be pretty warm and i'm not sure that i want that much of a layer on my legs.
nutrition is a huge piece of the puzzle, and i think that i will rely on a combination of gels, shotbloks, granola bars and trail mix. depending on what the aid stations are stocked with i might also pick up a few treats now and again.
i'll be using a handheld waterbottle (the nathan quickdraw plus) as i've been training with one and it seems to work well for me.
that's it for now - my goal is to finish the race. period. but i will in the car with jim for about 100 minutes each way and he's already been planting in my head the idea that i could finish close to the leaders.
believe me when i say this - i'm out there to enjoy this race.
oh, and #GOlikeneverbefore!
Sorry I didn't get to wish you luck before the race, but a belated good luck Patrick! I was away and unplugged this past weekend, so just going to check Daily Mile to see how it went...looking forward to a recap :)
ReplyDelete