As of my last update post, I was working on two upcoming race weekends (Indiana and the yet-to-be-written Arkansas races) and was working through some tough training weeks. Now we’re only 1 month out from race day and I still have 2 more races on my horizon, though these are much closer to home – this weekend’s race at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte and the following weekend’s race in Raleigh. This month has certainly flown by and a lot of that could be due to the fact that I was traveling 3 of the last 4 weekends, including a trip up to Asheville to work at the expo for the Biltmore half & full answering runner questions and sharing my experience with the Backyard to Vineyard Challenge from 2016.
My running totals have been increasing each week and while I’m still doing a terrible job at including strength training / core exercises and stretching into my weekly routine, the miles do seem to be getting easier. I’ve been averaging 40-50 miles each week, and while mentally that doesn’t seem like enough considering I’ll be doing over 50 in one day in one month, I can definitely feel myself getting stronger.
I had my first real deviation from the training plan this past weekend – it called for a 50k on Sunday, but after looking at some local races and deciding it wasn’t fiscally responsible to fly out to Utah to do the Antelope Island 50k (someday!) – I ended up just splitting the mileage between Saturday and Sunday instead. Sunday’s trail run was tough near the end and I started feeling myself wander into the “how am I going to do 52.4 miles in one day” territory, so I slowed down, ate some more food and kept going. My legs were tired when I finished and I absolutely took a nap, but I felt pretty good when I woke up and haven’t really been sore after my runs which has been a really amazing transformation from my previous marathon training cycles. The next two weeks are big mileage weekends calling for marathon distances both weekends and then I’ll start to officially taper!
It’s crazy to think that the double marathon is coming up so quickly. I’ve got my hotel secured and I know about when I want to leave in order to do the 4 hour drive to Richmond, get to the expo and then get to the hotel to rest, so now it’s all about finalizing those details – fueling, race strategy (something more than ‘don’t die’), pacing, how to get enough rest for a 1:00 am start time and then stay awake and moving through the second marathon that starts at 7:30 am… all the fun stuff. We’ve started getting some emails about the double marathon, asking us for our official start times and estimated paces. The goal will be to attempt to pair us up so that no one is running alone overnight, but with only 60 participants and two start times it will certainly be a quiet night.
- Total mileage: 474.4