Fall Race Plans

So I am looking at a couple of fall race events and am now starting to commit to a few of them, it is critical that I get totally serious with regard to my training and staying on plan to avoid that normal --

:My next race is the Porcupine Mountains Trail Marathon in Silver City, Michigan on October 5th. It is an inaugural event and should accomplish two things, it will be my first trail marathon or greater event in a couple of years and it will allow me to click off Michigan as my 13th state. For the last 2 weekends I have gone down to Murphy and gotten in some longer runs. Week 1 was 2 hours and week 2 was 3 hours They were slow miles so I have a lot of work to do to get in shape to get through the Michigan event. I don't know anything about the course other than they have a 7 hr time limit. The way I am looking at it is that I have done Chippewa, Afton and other events within that time window but I have to train.

I am still working through the injuries but I think I am making progress, I have eliminated most of the foot pain but am still figuring out the calf. It often feels torqued but through self massage and foam rolling I seem to be getting through it. The real test will come in the next few weeks as I continue to ramp the mileage.

Beyond this marathon, I am debating between Surf the Murph 50k and 50M, I should do the 50k but the 50 miler has appeal for a couple of reasons. First I haven't done a 50 miler in 2 years so it would be a welcome back to ultras, of course I haven't done a 50k either but that's where the other thing comes to mind. Next May, they have added a 100 mile event at Murphy, it's called the Savage 100 and it might be my first 100. The advantage is I know the course (6 loops on the Surf the Murph course), it's on May 17th so the temps should be ok, it has a reasonably generous time limit (34 hours), it starts at 3 am which should mean a slower first loop which could setup the day.  Anyway, it's something to think about.