June

So... 6 months of training are complete. I've come a long way. I've lost 35 pounds, logged 1316 miles. I ran for 163 consecutive days. I broke the string, intentionally on June 11th. It had to happen... with my focused training (increasing long runs) days off would be needed. So be it! Shorter days of 6 and 8 mile runs have morphed into 15 milers. I have run a bunch of them this month. My long runs have grown longer. The third week this month, I ran a 26 and 30 miler in the same week... racking up 87 for the week. I have never run two marathons in the same month... never mind week. All good. However, despite all the hard work and base building.... it gets harder from here. My first ever 24 hour race is in 27 days... looming large and menacing. Sure, I have run upwards of 6 hours and likely could have continued for a bit... but, for 24 hours? Thinking about it is like staring at the end of your nose... it's familiar and nearby, but hard to bring into focus. Someone once said that "ultramarathoning is 90% mental, the rest of it is in your head". I like that saying, but I suspect that I am going to find my self in a very new place as I explore these uncharted waters. So... here's the plan. My diet has to be tightened up even though I'm comfortably at my BMI, I expect to lose another 6-8 pounds before the race. Sweets, wine and salty snacks... three of my favorite things... gone. Easy 6 mile filler runs... gone. A steady diet of middle (15-18 mile) and long (25-35 mile) runs interspersed with rest days, nothing else. Perhaps I should shave a monastic bald spot on my head for good measure. I need to run middle distance runs on consecutive days. This past week I ran two 15 milers back to back (b2b). This week I will run three, b2b2b... you get the idea. It's a lot tougher to do than it sounds... but it builds endurance, just what the doctor ordered. Then the week before the race... back it down, the big taper. So, that's the plan... we shall see. Kudos to Bill for his good work, he has asked me to run a 10K with him in the beginning of August... I will be there.