Running Reality Check

Sometimes you get in a groove and everything comes together as a race approaches and sometimes things don't. I am headed towards the don't right now. I have had to put in a lot of extra hours at work (a couple projects where I need 40+ hrs/week for each) which means a lot of missed runs.

I thought I was back on track a couple of weeks back and then I fell off the chart. Here are my last 3 weeks mileage and my projection for this week:

Week of 7/26 - 21 miles (1 run)
Week of 8/2 - 46 miles (4 runs)
Week of 8/9 - 3 miles (1 run)
Week of 8/16 - ~50 miles (5 runs)

So if I meet the goal for this week, I am back on track for Superior. I have two runs in for the week with 10 miles logged so all is well thus far. You can see that I follow the 10% rule for my weekly mileage :-) As to Superior I never planned on anything more than a finish and with the training I am getting in that is all I will strive to accomplish.

Stay tuned.

Running motivation

I found this looking for a little running motivation on you tube, kind of puts age and attitude into a different perspective.



Plus some additional motivation that I can file away until I experience it in future races.

Superior commitment complete?

So what does the title mean, it means I probably should get in to see a Doctor for an evaluation and I don't mean a physical exam but instead of doing that I am committed to starting and finishing the Superior 50 as the payment is in, camping reservations are complete and my crew (my wife) is set. The only thing I lack is training.

So how do I train for a 50 in 6 weeks? The answer is carefully as I want to get to the start line. I had a decent base until FANs and I am working my way back from the back issue. Last weekend I got in almost 21 miles at Afton on Saturday with Wayne and Karen, we ran Wayne's double hill workout. The premise of the workout was that every hill we ran down, we turned around and walked back up, only to run down it again. Same thing on uphills except we got to go up twice. Interesting workout and Afton is a great place to do this type of workout as the hills are a plenty and if you don't think so do this workout. According to my Garmin (as displayed in SportTracks), we got in 20.82 miles with 4410 ft of climb/-4401 of descent. The only problem with the run is that it also was my total mileage for the week so I have some base to get working on.

I did check the file I uploaded from Bill last fall on the Superior 50, it showed an elevation gain/loss of 7103/7257 (difficulty of 4.5, 52.6 miles) so the Afton run probably was some decent training. As a comparison I loaded the Afton run into Bim Active (wanted to compare apples to apples) and it shows the elevation gain/loss at 4550/4543 (difficulty of 4.4, 20.84 miles).

So the good news is I am committed and that I have some training to do and I think the bad news is I am committed and have some training to do.

Running songs 2

I posted a few months back on a few running songs with the thought I would continue once every few months or so and I haven't posted in awhile but I came up with a few more as I was thinking about sending in the entry for Superior. Hope you enjoy them too.

A recent running song from a favorite artist (Martina McBride) might take a bit of a stretch to figure out but to help you all out, I figured I would try to explain (actually all of my songs probably take a bit of imagination, oh well). The song's title is "Wrong Baby Wrong", if only she would add the line "run baby run" it would be perfect but the chorus from the song is my plan for Superior.

Come on now
Everyone falls down
Everyone crawls now and then
Then they get up again
You cry if you want to
That’s what we all do
But if you think you’ll never move on you’re wrong baby wrong

Here is a link to the video.

The second song also applies to my plans for Superior and is a different spin on an old favorite (I like the old version a little bit better) from my high school and college days. The title of the song is the line that will resonate at Superior.

Might even apply to recent days, weeks and months at work.

And my third choice is from junior high (early 70's), yup that old. It too will probably apply to Superior.

Final choice - John Mellencamp Your life is Now

I guess this means it's time to sign up for Superior................