I was training for Seneca 50 Mile run over the weekend. The good news is it will take place. The race organizer won the appeal and gathered all tge necessary permits.
I signed up last month when they posted they got the permission from a local school to stage their start and finish line on site.
It is kind of a late signup. Nornmally this race sold out quickly once announced. I was lucky maybe due to COVID uncertainty that throughout the summer the race was only accepting entries as wait-list only, meaning those who signed up are not charged until the race is definitely is going to be held. Not too many people jump on the wait-listed registration. Neither did I.
Remember I signed up their sister race in the spring and ran it the week COVID broke out in our area. At the time, we were on edge whether the race would be canceled. things were going downhill the whole week leading up to the race. But we held it and ran it. I don’t remember if there was any COVID mitigation plan at all. Did I even wear a mask?
With COVID dominating the news cycle running an in person race was pretty low on the list.
Then now, we kind of think we got this. We have this and that races started up again. I did the Gettysburg Marathon in PA. Seneca will be the first one here in the Washington DC area.
They say all the eyes will be on them to do this properly.
So yeah, I was excited when I felt we can do it.
We all joked around on the race Facebook page, that now we start to train for the race with about two weeks remaining before the race after hearing the news that the race will be on!
Me too. It finally sinks in of how am I going to run 50 miles. Given I have done it once and did it in 11.5 hours, this race should be easy right? But last year, I specifically was training to run it. This time around, I don’t have the confident. I have not been training that hard.
Over the summer I was running in Atlanta, all the paces I was calculating were off. My point is I don’t think I am that tough guy as last year. My pace sucks. If given enough time I could run 50 miles, but to run at a certain pace and finish by a certain time, I don’t think I can do it.
The race limits us to 13 hours. That seems plenty right? I checked previous year results. Some people took over 14 hours. I think there will be a lot who will not able to finish this year. 13 hours is tight for me. I have to run a perfect race, in my opinion. I hope to reach half way by 6 hours and use 7 hours for the last half. Of course if I could do it faster the better. There is no way I will get to mile 50 in 5 hours.
So last weekend both Saturday and Sunday I headed out on the race trail. It was good the race is local and I could use the trail as much as I want. It is kind of late to train, but any little bit helps. Saturday, I did 13 miles. It was hard. My body refused to run fast.
On Sunday, I did about 14 miles on a different segment. This was even harder because I kept getting lost. (Those who has access to my public Strava data can see I was walking back and forth trying to find the right trail. It was a good experience though. I rather getting lost in the practice than on the race day. I remember how painful that was getting lost in Atlanta, while my clock was ticking down. I don’t want a repeat here.
Why? even though it is a local trail, I have not been on it. It is in the Maryland side. As I mentioned before, we Virginian have very little association with the Marylanders. They are like a foreign country to us. Every time I go to Maryland, I get lost (exaggerating a bit), but normally, we stay out of Maryland.
I plan to go back out this weekend. There is one or two places I am not sure about. I checked the race course on Strava, and it looked fishy because the course shows it was going over people’s houses and backyards. I need boots on the ground to confirm.
In awe 