November, 2015

November, 2015.  That's my goal now.

Let me start at the beginning. 

If you've seen any of this rather short blog before, you'll know I'm a fat 30-something that wants to run 100 miles, all at once.  I've got friends who run 100+ miles per week and somewhere buried in my closet is a jacket proving that one year I ran 100+ miles a month for a whole year.

Now I want to cut out all the lazy days in that month and push all those miles together.

I first tried this in 2012.  I had intended to in '11, but got married and decided I'd rather not miss the first year of marriage while out training.  I made it to about a month away when one night after a rather lazy day I was stretching and managed to damage some tendons and that was that.  8 or 900 miles of training gone as quickly as I could sit down.  

I dunno if anyone has been sad to not see a blog post since then.  I've been sad, but I've been really mad and haven't really wanted to share it.  My wife has gotten to hear about it some, we're both sad and frustrated that my injury has taken such a toll. 

For the last couple of months I have SLOWLY begun to run again.  Both slowly in the sense of fewer days a week with less mileage than it feels like I could, but also slower in my pace.  Any recovering runner will tell you, that's the hardest part to getting over an injury.  What?!  I can't run as fast as ____ can now?  WTH?!?  I used to have to slow down for them!!! 

I was bored the other day, so I pulled out my spreadsheet and started dreaming.  Not too big, I don't think, but dreaming none-the-less. 

There is a run I like to do every year, The Flying Monkey Marathon.  The race is harsh, the course is beautiful and the people in it are amazing!  I was probably more sad that I had to miss last year than I was about missing the 100.  So I started with that marathon as my goal for 2013.  I laid out my training plan, trying to be as easy on myself as possible.

If you've never set up a training plan for something like a marathon, it's a scary experience.

Let me explain... a marathon is a long race, granted.  Not many people on this planet would call 26.2 miles easy.  But when you're training for it, you have to run lots and lots of long distance training runs.  I'm claiming anything over about 15 miles as long.  On my plan I've got 9 Saturdays that are 15 or over; 7 in a row.  That makes a body strong [and a mind weak].  Seeing it on paper is scary, knowing how tired and sore the days after will be.  When I first trained for one of these, I didn't really know what was going to happen, so I just did it and survived.  Now I see it and I get a little squeamish at the thought.  But oh well, I survived it once, right!?

When I finished planning out to this November I decided to think a little ahead.  See, once you're trained up enough to run 26 miles, it seems silly, to me at least, to stop.  It takes lots of miles to get ready for that many miles, so if I'm going to try to run something after, might as well be pretty close so I don't lose momentum!  [insert weak mind joke here]

Alabama has several 50k's.  There are a few that are just classic and have been around for a while.  Mountain Mist, Black Warrior, Oak Mountain, Cheaha, Dizzy 50 and Recover From the Holidays to name a few of them.  Those are my next goal.  So over 2014, I figure, I'm going to tackle 300k (somewhere around 190 miles).  Graciously, there aren't many long races in the warm months here in Alabama, so I'm hoping to hit a couple in early 2014, then the rest late '14-early '15.  Which meant I extended the spreadsheet all the way through March 2015.

Then it occurred to me.  November, 2015.  Lord willing and the creek don't rise, there will be another Pinhoti 100 in November.  So I kept tallying up miles until I built a plan straight through to then.

I have a roadmap that has stops along my favorite races right up till the end of 2015.  Now if I can just keep healthy long enough to get there!