McNaughton update

McNaughton is less than a week away and it is time to plan. What do I need to bring and what exactly is my race plan?

As to the first part, that is a good thought, what do i need to bring? As of right now, I haven't started to pack and have barely given it a thought. First things first, here is the weather forecast for Pekin, IL from Accuweather.com

Sat 4/10/2010	Hi - 70°	Lo - 49°			Warmer with plenty of sunshine

So beyond worrying about everything else, I now need to worry about the heat. Well, thankfully I have had one day of heat acclimation so that shouldn't be a worry :-).

And here is my initial list of things I will bring (or should bring)

• Running clothes, sweatshirts
  
• 2 or 3 pairs of shoes
• Headlamp and flashlights
• Sleeping bags
• Sleeping mat
• Tent
• Chair
  
• Water
• Clif shot electrolyte - crisp apple
• Clif shot blocks - cherry and mt. berry
• Chocolate #9 Agave gels
• S Caps
  
• Ibuprofen
• Cell Phone
• Magazines/books
• Ipod nano with plenty of podcasts
• Ipod shuffle as a backup
  
• CD with some good ole music from my past
• Coffee
  
• Regular food?

I am sure I will think of many other things between now and Friday, the nice part is it's taper week which I always have to remind myself is another way of saying do no harm and another way of saying, you will have time to think about everything.

The weather looks good albeit hot, my body I am fairly sure is not ready, my mind might be, that will be my challenge, figure out a way to get to the finish. Right now I have 3 thoughts on how to approach the race. First, run slow and keep going until I get done (90% probable). Another thought is that I could run 30 or 40 miles on Saturday, then finish on Sunday (5%). My other thought is to run 30 miles, eat some dinner, relax, run 10 miles with Karen during the night, then 10 more in the morning (5%). Of course there is that other plan, run 50 miles, relax, eat and then go ahead and run another loop or two with Karen be it at night or in the morning, I am pretty sure that a few folks might think that is a good idea. All of the plans could work as to which one, good question, my guess is that I will decide on the way down with a bit of input from Wayne and Karen.

I may have said this before but I view this weekend as the start of my training for my first 100 (in a few years) as I will need to find something inside to finish this race at least based on my training. Which is what I think I will need to work on to take on a 100, mental training combined with some physical but I think it will be more mental. How do I keep myself believing and moving forward. What I think will be real neat is that I will get to observe those that are doing the 100 up close and I hopefully will pick up a few lessons from them.

I do hope to be able to figure out a bit more about fueling, finding out ways to recover, pacing, maintaining the positive attitude and just plain having some fun but my main goal is to just finish without causing an injury and to make sure that I use the race to gain experience.