August 17, 2010
The Training Plan
In my continuing look into my upcoming race, the Leadville Trail 100, today we focus on the training!
I have been talking about all the other stuff that goes into this race but at the end of the day, you actually have to run the damn thing. So that means training for it. I am not going to go back over the details of everything. If you have followed my blog, you have seen all that run by run, week by week. Just thought I would try to summarize some of the preparation totals and how I got here.
Going into the year, I knew I would need to just run a lot more miles than ever before to prepare for this race. By putting Boston on the calendar, I got running earlier in the year than ever before. I was logging good consistent miles each week. Hitting the hills in the snow for the first time ever. By the time spring came and people were getting back outside, I felt like I was really into my season. That was pretty great. I never felt behind all year.
Post-Boston, I tried to kick up the raw mileage as much as possible. Because of the time requirements, I mostly stayed low and around home but put in my biggest weeks ever. I knew this was key for me because once summer rolled around, there would be a lot of interruptions to the cycle. I needed to take advantage of this final big block of time. It was far enough out that I knew I would be able to absorb all of the intensity of the training before the big day.
Summer came and vacations started. Racing again in the SJS50 was so debatable. I am glad I did it but I still am not sure if it was the best thing for Leadville. Might have been better off with more solid training miles instead of the taper/recovery cycle. But I left those months feeling like I had gotten past the point where I had to worry about finishing Leadville. I just need to focus on sharpening up for time now.
Over the last month, its been harder to run. Motivation has wandered at times. Let’s race already. Mileage has come down. It wasn’t a taper per-say but I just felt tired and a bit sluggish. It was hot out. Blah blah blah. I might have lost some small bit of fitness as my graphs show but I hope it gets me to feel more rested and relaxed on race day. The key is not going to be running fast, its going to be running long. I think rest has a lot to do with that. Plus, my hip started bugging me and I didn’t want an injury so I backed off with confidence in what I had put down so far.
So to date, I have covered 2,140.91 miles this year. In 2009, I covered 2,232 miles for the entire year. I will surpass that total somewhere during the LT100 and its only August! Garmin vertical (which is always off) says I have done 213,378 this year. All that in 342:42:55 hours, or 14 days and change. That’s a lot of time moving my feet.
Oh, and a graph. I haven’t posted one in quite a while. I know you miss them. But I have been keeping it up to date. I don’t study it though. Just a reference. The thing I tried to monitor was how my fitness was hanging in there. Ultra training is a weird thing for these graphs. They are based on HR intensity mostly — higher HR is better. You get more points for harder HR workouts. A 30 minute all out around the block is going to get you more daily points than a 3 hour workout where you stayed in your easy/recovery zone. So I don’t think this format accurately portrays fitness for a 100 mile run or the training involved, which is a lot of slow days. That was the lesson learned here.
My CTL and ATL have come down but that is to be expected but it was a bit more than I thought I would have because I started nursing that hip a bit before the taper started. My TSB is the highest of the year, as I wanted it to be. So the end result is that I am pretty fit and pretty rested. I probably just don’t feel fast…but I haven’t done speedwork in months. Not going to stress about it.
So that’s how I got here to the start line in Leadville. Let’s see if its enough to bring home a buckle!
