So I ran my third marathon. It was only a training run, my peak mileage, for the Bear Mountain 50k at the end of April. The course was downhill for roughly the first 2-3 miles and then rolling hills until mile 9. Mile 9 was a bit of a climb but it was extremely short and then it flattened out through the end.
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Here comes the part of my training where I just break down. I train so hard, I improve so much and then I break down. It is almost like I should do my goal races in the middle of my training instead of the end. My body just does not last the amount of weeks my plans contain.
After finishing so poorly at the NYC marathon I felt trained and underutilized. My performance there was not reflective of what I could do. I felt like I wasted my training running that race. I didn't want to wait until next fall to do my next big race; putting so much time between high intensity training made training more difficult in some ways. I also missed the feeling I had while training, and running, my first marathon. I trained with so much passion and I didn't care about times – I only cared about completing the race. It was uncharted territory and just merely finishing the race was enough for me. I had so much fun every step of the way. Scheduling a bunch of races in a short period of time caused me quite a few injuries in the past. I tend to steer clear of that and have a few main focuses; however, with this ultra coming up my plan is constantly calling for something. Since my peak mileage is 26 miles I decided to do a marathon on that date. Why not? It is motivation to finish, you get a few people to run with you and you get some swag. My plan also calls for a race controlled half, 10k and 5k during my taper down weeks. While I already had a half scheduled (the Syracuse Half) that I like to run every year, I decided to throw in a 10k too. If I did it by myself I wouldn't push and I think I really need to try to get my legs moving after all of these long runs. I know that these "races" won't be the best times since I don't have fresh legs but it will be nice to have a some camaraderie on my training runs. Tallied up I have 4 races in 6 weeks!!! LOL. It is safe to say that I won't be getting any PRs. What I am really curious to see is how I run a marathon without a taper. Hmmmm. Stay tuned.
This weekend Jared and I went to Bear Mountain to preview the 50k course. I had 24 miles scheduled for Saturday and just about 90 mins to run Sunday before we were to head back. Saturday morning I got up and ran a little before we got on the road. I was worried how far I would be able to go at Bear and didn't want to miss my mileage. We got to the Anthony Wayne "Aid Station" and headed onto the trail. Only a few minutes in and we were lost. After a couple miles we found our way to the correct trail and we were on our way. The trails were extremely rocky - jagged rocks and boulders were everywhere. While the terrain made you hop from place to place causing you to fatigue pretty quickly the fact you had to pay such close attention to your footing almost made you forget that you were exhausted…almost. |
About me:Aspiring adult with a love for running, travel and food (especially peanut butter!). Training for her second ultra marathon. |