This weekend marked the end of the eighth week of training for my first 100-mile ultramarathon. That’s a full one-third of the 24 weeks on the schedule — now behind me, absorbed (hopefully) into my legs.<\/p>\n
This is terrifying, in the best way possible.<\/p>\n
It’s the same type of fear I had when I trained for a 50-miler the first time. The feeling where even though you know that humans routinely (sort of) run the distance, on some level it just doesn’t seem possible. Especially not for you.<\/p>\n
That’s the nature of ultrarunning though. You don’t get anywhere near the race distance in your training. For my 50’s, I never ran over 31 miles (50K) \u00a0in training. For this 100, I’ll do a 50K and one run longer than that — however far I get in a 12-hour race around a 5K loop that I’m doing in June. Hopefully 100K (62 miles), but anything over 50 miles will do. But that’s it for runs over 30 miles.<\/p>\n
And then on race day, you wake up, go out, and get it done. And here, “get it done” just means running 40 miles (!) farther than you’ve ever run in your life.<\/p>\n
No big deal … right?<\/p>\n
Shorts-staining fear aside, I’m really enjoying the training. I’m not doing any speedwork (but tons of hills), and most of the miles are done at a comfortable pace. Which means lots of time for thinking, listening, enjoying the mountains, and thinking some more.<\/p>\n
Here are 8 lessons I’ve discovered in all of that running (and thinking), one for each week of training.<\/p>\n
The training itself isn’t much different at all. Like I said, there’s only one run longer than 31 miles. It’s not much different from just training for a 50, running it, and then deciding you’ll do a 100 a month later.<\/p>\n
Mentally, though, the difference is immense.<\/p>\n
Right after I finished my first 50-miler, I asked a friend who has run many 100’s how it’s possible: I just couldn’t imagine what it would be like to get to the finish of that 50, turn around, and do it all again.<\/p>\n
“It’s a mindset thing,” he said. Great. And so very not helpful.<\/p>\n
I thought he meant on race day, and maybe he did. But I’ve noticed it throughout these 8 weeks of training, and after 16 more, I believe I’ll be mentally ready to run 100 miles.<\/p>\n
When I run now, I don’t think about pace. I don’t even bring a watch. I just go run, mostly mountain roads, until I’ve covered the day’s distance. I seek out hills (and they’re easy to find here), so that I can train myself to hike them efficiently, and to make the long run take longer.\u00a0The goal is time on your feet, on terrain like you’ll have to run on race day.<\/p>\n
I’ve even picked up a few shifts waiting tables on nights after long runs to get more feet time and acclimate myself to misery. Okay, that part’s not true. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Oh, how I would love to. My runs in my Brooks PureDrift<\/a> are so much more enjoyable than any others. That whole “connection with the ground” that barefooters talk about is pretty woo-woo, but I can feel it in these shoes.<\/p>\n The problem is I’m not ready to be an exclusively minimalist runner. The PureDrifts don’t have five toe slots and therefore don’t look ridiculous — in fact, they look pretty much like normal shoes — so it was easy for me to forget that they’re not.<\/p>\n I did every run in them for the first two weeks of this training program, and for another month before I started the official plan.\u00a0And then I started getting sore.<\/p>\n My lower legs ached after every run; tightness woke me up in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n I thought it was hills, so I did my best to avoid them for a few weeks. No help.<\/p>\n I did more foam rolling<\/a>. No help.<\/p>\n I scaled back the mileage for two weeks. It helped, but as soon as I picked it up again, the soreness and tightness occurred.<\/p>\n Finally, it occurred to me to try new shoes. So I put on my 890’s<\/a>, ran 18 miles, and felt just fine.<\/p>\n I still love my PureDrifts. I run in them as often as I safely can, and right now, that’s about two short-to-medium length runs per week (12-15 miles).<\/p>\n Funny that when someone asks me for advice about running in minimalist shoes, Rule #1 is always “Transition slowly!”<\/p>\n Ah, the taste of vegan humble pie.<\/p>\n Frank Shorter said this. But I never really got it — I just figured it meant, “Hills are hard, so you can elevate your heart rate and your exertion level without actually increasing your speed.” Pretty obvious.<\/p>\n But that misses the “in disguise” part. I think what Frank meant was that if you’re running hills, even when you don’t feel\u00a0<\/em>like you’re working hard, you’re still getting in a pretty good workout.<\/p>\n I won’t pretend to understand how it’s physiologically possible to work harder than your exertion level lets on, but I noticed something rather remarkable that serves, at least, as anecdotal evidence: After a year of so-so, only halfway-consistent training in Asheville<\/a> — on hillier terrain than I’ve ever consistently run in my life, a few weeks ago I ran my fastest half marathon.<\/p>\n In training. As part of a longer run. On hills.<\/p>\n Granted, I’ve never clocked a great half marathon time because I tend not to run half marathons. Prior to this, my fastest half marathon was both the first and second halves of my Boston-qualifying marathon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Still, I have no business running a PR half marathon without really trying. And so I credit the hills, the only real change in my training over the past year.<\/p>\n Gels gross me out. Even homemade ones, now.<\/p>\n But Mother Nature gave us another portable, energy-packed source of gooey, sugary, quick-digesting carbohydrate: dates.<\/p>\n Get fresh, medjool dates — the kind with the pits still in them. Even pitted dates that call themselves fresh are tougher and not nearly as delicious. The fresh ones are so soft you can push out the pit with your fingers, or just take a bite and remove it.<\/p>\n I carry a few in a plastic bag in my pocket and eat one every few miles. Each one has about 18 grams of carbohydrate, 16 of which are sugar. They’re like gummies, but real food.<\/p>\n Ultrarunners have known forever that walking up hills is often better than running them, since you save a lot of energy while losing only a little time (which you’ll make up on the way down).<\/p>\n But in my training for this race, there have been several occasions during my long, slow, hilly runs, when I just haven’t had the energy to run strongly up a hill. The choice is between running weakly and walking strongly.<\/p>\n Since I’m going to be walking hills in my 100 — all of them, if I listen to most of the advice for first time 100 runners — I figure it makes sense to train my hiking muscles. And if I can do that with good form, instead of doing that horrible, slouched-over shuffle thing that we runners do when we’re wrecked but really don’t want to be seen walking, so much the better.<\/p>\n I once wrote a post called How You Can Run an Ultramarathon (and Still Have a Life)<\/a>. Because I like having a life.<\/p>\n I’m different from many other runners. They like having lives too, I’m sure, but they also really, really, really like running.<\/p>\n I like running, too — for about an hour. That’s enough time for me to get the endorphins flowing, listen to an audiobook without getting bored, or think about life before my thoughts drive me crazy. Once it goes beyond 60 minutes, though, it’s work. Again, much more mental than physical — I just get bored.<\/p>\n Back-to-back long runs, which are used extensively in my training program (from Bryon Powell<\/a>‘s Relentless Forward Progress<\/em>), offer an interesting alternative.<\/p>\n The idea: instead of running, say, 5 hours on Saturday (1 hour of fun, 4 hours of work), then taking Sunday off, run 3 hours on Saturday (1 hour fun, 2 hours work) and 2 hours on Sunday (1 hour fun, 1 hour work). That’s 2 hours of fun, 3 hours of work.<\/p>\n Less work, more fun. Less feeling like your run (along with the after-effects) takes up your whole day.<\/p>\n And since my 100 is probably going to take me around 24 hours, I don’t think too much is lost by spacing out the miles over a 24-hour period instead of doing them all at once.<\/p>\n Like many runners, once seduced by trail running<\/a>, I went through a road-backlash. When the alternative was beautiful, unpredictable, peaceful, dirty trails, I never wanted to run roads again.<\/p>\n But now that I live in a place where the roads are interesting (complete with snakes, bears, and pheasant\/turkey things that I can’t identify) and offer climbs up mountains, I actually do much more road running than trail running.<\/p>\n I like that I can leave my house and just start running, without tacking 20 minutes of driving time onto each end of the run. I like passing houses and people and even running through downtown. And since my race has a large amount of roads, I think it’s important get my legs accustomed to them.<\/p>\n I’ll do some trail running too, and I’m sure I’ll swing the other way again and go anti-road. But for now, I’m back to roads.<\/p>\n And where we’re going, we don’t need roads.<\/p>\n Oh wait, that makes no sense and is the teaser for Back to the Future Part II<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n3. “Hills are speedwork in disguise.”<\/h3>\n
4. Fresh dates are a fantastic fuel source.<\/h3>\n
5. It’s better to walk up hills with good form than to run up them with bad.<\/h3>\n
6. Back-to-back long runs are the key to saving your Saturdays.<\/h3>\n
7. Ain’t nothing wrong with roads.<\/h3>\n