Fit After Little Bits

One hundred miles. It’s a lot of miles. When I get in the car to drive that far, I have to pump myself up a little bit! Riding a bike 100 miles, that’s long too. But having done that on many occasions at this point, it doesn’t intimidate me anymore. Running 100 miles? That’s a different story. That is a serious amount of time on your feet and to be honest, it scares me. More than a little. So, why not try it?

If you were to ask my family if I am adventurous person, you would probably get mixed feelings. Yes, I like to see cool things and go incredible places. BUT I also like when it is calculated and safe. I have some pretty serious anxiety when it comes to heights and falling. Interestingly, I am much better about these (and far braver) when I am alone. Maybe I feel like it is just myself that I am putting in danger and I am okay with that. The major struggle comes when Ken or Brooke are with me. If they are close to the edge, I cannot even watch. Panic mode engaged. My heart just cant deal.

Driving on narrow mountain roads with steep drops off the edge: not for me. Being in the backcountry solo with the (mountain) lions and tigers (okay, maybe not here) and bears (definitely here!): oh my! Even riding my bike (mountain, gravel or road) in areas with a lot of exposure: no thanks. Am I a wuss? Yeah, maybe so. BUT I do like to see what my body can handle. I do like to see how far I can push myself. And I do like the challenge of training to get there. So, enter in a new challenge. An unknown. A “maybe and hopefully” possible goal. Something to encourage me to train through the winter. Something to make me excited to strive for. Something big.

Training is not something new to me. Having run multiple marathons, a fifty mile trail race and a couple of longer gravel racing events, I understand all of the basics. Lots of miles, lots of time, lots of recovery. But this goal has some new challenges. More time, more recovery and trying to balance a serious amount of fatigue with the rest of life! Never have I ever done so many double digit runs back to back. And really, I am just getting started with training. It is definitely going to be something I have to get used to-and figure out how to make work. Also, figuring out how to eat. Never have I been so hungry?!

When I trained for my 50 mile trail race (Run Rabbit Run) in 2019, I spent the early part of the summer training and racing on my bike. There was maybe a run or two thrown in each week, but I didn’t really start with my feet on the ground until about 8 weeks before the event. Some people thought I was a little nutty, but it felt right and I had a great race. I kind of have a feeling that it might not work the same with 100 miles. While I am a HUGE proponent for cross training and will absolutely utilize many non-running forms of cardio to get ready for running 100 miles, I do think that there will be far more running miles in my future this time around. And maybe even some stretching. Maybe. (IYKYK)

Enter my outside help: Running Your First Ultra by Krissy Moehl.

I used this book as a baseline when I did my 50 mile race. She has awesome weekly training plans in there with workouts and recovery laid out. It helps to take out a lot of the guess work. I have jumped into her workouts and am able to alter them as needed to make me feel comfortable with the training. While I thought about seeking out a coach for this endeavor, I have decided against it for now. I really think I would be terrible to coach-ha! While I am good at following a plan, I like flexibility. I feel like I know my body pretty well and what it can handle. I like to be able to switch out some running miles with some skate ski miles-or skinning miles or trainer miles. So for now, it is me and the book.

Over the course of training, I am planning to keep track of things here. The good, the bad and the ugly 😉 One of the reasons is to share it (because I have stalked so many blogs trying to get tips and hints for this process), but the main reason is to be able to look back (fingers crossed) after the fact and have something tangible about the process. See what worked and maybe what didn’t. Accept that not every workout went to plan, but hopefully enough of them did to make it successful. And to use it as therapy-because the mental component is huge for this!

So here we go! Cheers to making big plans. Not being afraid to fail. And to learning something about yourself along the way. (And to hopefully still love running at the end 😉 ). Follow along for fun adventures, poorly taken training pictures and bad advice only! Kidding, I hope!

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Last Week’s Workouts:
M: 5 miles steady, treadmill
T: 6 miles total, hills. Pyramid workout: 1,2,3,4,3,2,1 minutes with equal recoveries
W: 4 miles easy, treadmill
H: Race! 6k Turkey trot (second place female-on icy roads) plus 1 mile warm up, 2 mile skate ski with Brooke
F: 7 miles skate ski
S: 12 miles, treadmill. 7 miles skate ski with Ken
S: 10 miles, treadmill