I love this winter photo taken near Dumbarton, my home town. Being in the middle of a stinking hot spell here in BC, it’s really hard to imagine deepest winter right now. As well, it’s really hard to imagine that in just over 4 weeks I’ll be putting my toe on the starting line of my 100 miles!! Wow! Scary thought!!! I signed up on 1st January, a crazy New Years thing and now it’s upon me. It is the hardest physical challenge I’ll ever have attempted. It’s scary. I have no idea if I’ll get to the finish line. I’m embracing that!
I did my LAST LONG RUN at the weekend, the Chuckanut Mountain trail marathon. That’s how close the race is.
I have been kind of following the 100 mile training schedule in Krissy Moehl’s great book “Running your first ultra”. I haven’t nearly managed to get in the total mileage that is recommended in the book. I’ve topped out at 100 Km on a couple of weeks. I keep telling myself that humans like me run 100 miles on less mileage than even I have done and I’ll be OK! Really, I’ll be OK!
Anyway, getting back to Krissy’s book. I love her words of wisdom that go along with each week’s schedule. For week 43 (which was last week for me) she writes some great advice which I wanted to share. (From page 156 of her book).
It might seem crazy having your last decent length long run this weekend, five weeks out from your 100-mile race. My plan for you is that you are rested and feeling very recovered come rest day, In your first 100, I encourage you to go in feeling rested first, strong and fit second. The trickiest part about this is that you may struggle mentally with confidence in your training. It is easy to doubt your fitness and preparedness as you get further away from your last long effort run. I have learned over the years of racing that my best performances are when I am the most rested and even feel a bit undertrained. It is my belief that one run too many (overtrained) is 100 times worse than 10 runs too few (rested).
Great advice from a legend of ultra-running. These words will be with me for the next 4 weeks. I’m working on my mental toughness seeing my physical toughness is a wee bit short!
Mandy's Running Blog 