miwok 100k training: 11 weeks to go

I can honestly say last week’s training went as I had hoped. Turns out planning kinda helps! Because I’ve had some low mileage weeks, due to being out sick and recovering from the San Diego 50, I wanted to ease back up to training and not immediately jump from zero to 40 or 50 mile training weeks. My goal was to hit at least 30 miles and I actually hit the 50K mark (31.36 miles) for the week! Not upset with that at all.

When the bustling weekend was over, I was so jazzed up about starting the week and couldn’t wait for Tuesday to come around to run. Now I did give it some thought about running on Monday, but I was pretty exhausted from cheering and spectating at the LA Marathon and the Olympic Marathon Trials so it was a fleeting thought.

Tuesday rolled around and my alarm went off at 3:32AM (yes, I’m an odd one when I set my alarms) and I had another fleeting thought – oooh if I could sleep for another 2 hours – but fleeting it was, and I dragged my tired body out of bed. Wednesday and Thursday the same feeling came over me, but again, I’ve got my eyes on the prize and no race can be run by sleeping in and getting to training “tomorrow.” At least not in my world…although for a long time that has been my world. Not anymore.

What I was mostly looking forward to was getting back on the trails! But not just getting on the trails – getting on the trails on a Saturday! With the finality of the LA Marathon, came the end of my running club season and the return of my Saturday mornings to hit the dirt. With the exception of a couple of ultra races, it’s been a good 7 months since I’ve been able to go trail running on Saturdays and it felt good again. Sooo good!

Now I feel like I can focus solely on Miwok getting the miles and hours in for training with the long back-to-backs on the weekends. The Miwok 100K scares the shit out of me so getting as much time on the trails as I can get is what I need. This Saturday I only got 8 miles under my feet but that’s ok. It’s a start.

Sunday morning I had a lot more company with me. While I know there are times I’m going to have solo runs and I need those solo runs, it was nice to have some wonderfully funny ladies with me and we kept each other laughing for 10.08 miles (according to my Garmin).

While my goal was to be out there for at least 3 hours, I fell short of it, and for a moment I felt slightly disappointed in myself — for a moment. And then I remembered I haven’t gone long on a trail in a month and these were my first back-to-back trail runs since, uhhh, I can’t remember. For some reason I want to say it wasn’t too long ago, but I’m not about to go searching for my old running journal to see exactly when.

I enjoyed the company and the laughs and tried to get out of my head. There were moments a couple of women ran up ahead, some women were behind, and some in the middle. One thing is for certain, all of them are much faster than me, and I was thankful for that. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone is something I need to get used to for the next several months, if not, the rest of the year.

My friend Wendy even took us off the path and found us a little single track which lead to some beautiful wildflowers in an area I’ve never been to before. They were so pretty! And of course, we had to take a photo with them.

Less than 11 weeks to go until Miwok 100K and I’m turning up the volume of my training this week and will continue to do so to get ready for it. Training is getting warmed up.

Thanks for reading and Happy Running!