When I started to count up the number of weeks until the Miwok 100K, I had some crazy notion I was staring down something like 16, possibly 20 weeks until race day. Boy was I wrong!!! 13 weeks until I head up to San Francisco for the biggest race of my life thus far!
And I am one GIANT bag of mixed emotions.
Nervous. Excited. Scared. Very scared.
At this point, I’m trying hard not to psyche myself up with fear because I missed a couple of weeks of training. But the truth is, I have a lot of work ahead of me to get ready for this race.
62 miles is no effing joke! What the hell was I thinking???
“Calm down Christina.” That’s what my head is telling me and what I need to keep telling myself.
13 weeks is not that long, but it’s long enough.
This was my first official week back into training mode and my plan so far is to run 5 days a week and incorporate strength training, core work, and stretching. Somehow. Not sure how to tie those all in but I’m guessing some double workouts are in store for me now and then. Since next weekend I’ll be busy watching the Men’s and Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials on Saturday and along the course of the LA Marathon cheering on runners, especially my running club, on Sunday, I don’t have much time, if at all, to devote to training. I’m thinking this week is probably the perfect time to hit up some double workouts so I don’t miss out on valuable training by missing the weekend. I might just aim for Tuesday through Friday but we’ll see how creative my workouts get this week.
If you listened to Episode 4 of the Ultra Ordinary Running Podcast, you may have heard me briefly mention my approach to training. In the past, I’ve floated somewhere between following a concrete plan and winging it, probably siding with winging it more often than not. This time around I’m focused on following a concrete plan. The reason being I don’t think my “winging it” approach helped me much in terms of getting better at ultra running and training, and I figure there are ultra runners more experienced than myself who follow concrete training plans, and coaches who are more knowledgable about what they’re doing, than I am. However, I’m sure there are some advanced ultra runners who wing it just fine and it works for them, and some even find themselves at the tops of podiums. Obviously I’m not one of those people. Hence, the use of “ordinary” in the podcast title.
However, this week, I winged it.
I haven’t completely set up what my concrete training plan looks like, it’s still a work in progress (much like myself), so I gave myself a general number of what my training should be and I figured a good 25 to 30 miles this week would ease my way back into the higher mileage.
Mondays are generally going to be my rest day so Tuesday morning I was able to pry myself from my warm cozy bed to hit the gym at 4:30AM. Running 3.4 miles was enough for me. When I woke up earlier on Wednesday morning I couldn’t understand why my legs and tush felt so sore. Oh yeahhh, I totally forgot I worked on lower body strength training after my run by adding in squats and lunges. When you haven’t done either in a really long time, your body makes you pay for it. Needless to say, I didn’t make it out on Wednesday for a run.
But I sure did on Thursday! However when my alarm kicked off at 3:40AM, no part of my body was feeling it so I opted for a very rare appearance with an evening run of 3.15 miles. Ooh wee, that was even tougher to get to than the morning run.
Due to an appointment I had mid-Friday, I was able to get in a run later in the day and another 3.4 miles. Honestly I don’t really plan for these numbers, but apparently 3.4 was my number this week.
Saturday morning I knew was going to be a bittersweet run for me – it was the final group run before next week’s LA Marathon. While I won’t be running the marathon itself, I’ve had the pleasure of training with an amazing group of people who are. Well, some are running the marathon and others will be spectating and cheering, and volunteering. It’s hard to believe 26 weeks seriously flew by in a flash, which tells me training for Miwok will fly by in a flash as well.
Once LA is over, my weekends will be filled with trails, trails, and more trails, but until then, I was able to get in a short trail run on Sunday with my friend Fernanda.
This was my first time back on dirt since San Diego and I could feel it. My body felt tired but that could’ve been from the day before and not drinking enough water. My body knows when I don’t drink enough water. But going into this trail run I knew it was going to be a fairly short one. 9.41 miles total for the day and I’m pretty happy about that.
And I’m happy I ran hit a total of 25.5 miles for the week and reaching within my goal. Considering the week before was my comeback with 11.46 miles, I’ll take it!
Thank you for reading and Happy Running!