Time started to merge in my head. Week 3 week 4, like in ultras, miles and time just become a one big blur. I could not tell when one week ends and when another one starts.
Week 4 is mostly mirrored week 3. We had the two back to back holidays.
The roller coaster I did on Saturday knocked me out most of the week. Sunday, was Christmas Eve. Originally, I wanted to use that day for another hard training, but my body was broken. Rest was the right call.
Monday being Christmas and for once we had very good weather. Alas no training either. I was mostly procastinating and putting on weight by eating whole day after being knockout the whole Sunday.
Tuesday. Forced myself out and had an hour of low impact running. I always felt good once I ran. It was raining a bit and I ended my run early.
Tuesday night. skipped due to having to work late
Wed. Another day like previous. It was rainy and wet. Got my run done in about 1.5 hours. Personally I think it was good and much needed to be done. I was out of breath on some sections.
Thursday and Friday was a blur. I probably didn’t run. Work was quite hard.
Weekend, I had some hard runs. I did the Boyers Furnace fatass, 40 mi run. Then Monday a red eyes 50k. Probably a separate blog for each or both of them.
Sunday was “resting”. I walked for 4 hours. Most of my body was still sore from the Saturday run.
I blame the holidays. I did not get much out of this week training. Now it is the first of 2024. I really have leas than 25 weeks onward (we don’t count the last week before the race). The past few weeks were a bonus to get me started on this. I love it. It got me up to a mini peak. Now I could reset for another month and go again to get that base training for some real changes.
My goal is really aiming to be ready by May. Of course, I will be doing the MMT 100 and likely OD100 before Western States. Originally, I was going to skip those for sake of Western States, but now there is no way I am avoiding a run. There is no reason other than I want it all! High risk high rewards. My own grand slam. Go big or go home they say.
Change: I need to get back on the horse for week 5.
I know I am tilting a bit (not doing as well as I wanted).
Don’t ask me why. Maybe I lost interest. Maybe getting up in the morning is hard. I had a hard week at work. Because I had to cover for a coworker. It was almost hell and because I don’t have much time. Balls being dropped on my watch, not fun to be in the hot seat, but the week is finally over. TGIF.
Yes I know I need to push through everything and all distractions to get my trainings done. This week is really where the rubber meets the road. Things got tough and unfortunately I could not respond well to the challenges.
They say if you want to form a habit, 21 days is usually when things break. I hope to get past it and reach 40 days. This is the magic week. There is also a magic of carrying past 40 days (2x 21 days). It is number that stands for hardship. Once past that, then of course, if I could reach 90 days, that normally will be where we see result. All exercise plans boast of changes in as little as 90 days, like weight lost or sliming down the tummy. My training carries to 2x 90 days (25 weeks). I don’t expect just physical changes, but by the end of 180 days to see unleashing of performance I always dream about, which is the end goal. However, at the present, I am suffering.
Monday – I was way too tired from Naked Nick, so no training
Tuesday – I could have done my training today but I skipped it to let some wear and tear healed
Tuesday Night – things got heavy at work and I could not make it to my evening training run. Emotionally I was drained.
Wednesday – Morning training was rough, beingbthe first training of the week. It was also very cold. It took me an hour and half to push myself out the door by 5:45. I had a good 1:15 run. 4-5 miles. It was a very good run on tired legs
Thursday – Work really went downhill. I had my hardest day of the week. But training was also my strongest. I had a strong morning run and I was happy
Thursday night. Had to work late so I didn’t finish until late at night. 12+ day. Meaning no night training, I normally do.
Friday. very demotivating due to work. I skipped my run both the day and night. My legs should be fresh and strong.
Weekend. Where magic happened. Probably was the hardest training I did in the past three weeks. I went out to what is known as the Roller Coaster of the AT (Appalachian Trail), at mile 1000 from Springer Mnt, Ga. Luckily it is like a 40 minute drive for me from my house. The section is 13.5 miles with 3500 ft of elevation change. I should be have it done in short amount of time. On paper, it seems like any other races I did. I did an out and back so, plus added a mile to the parking lot, so it was about 29 miles, 7000 ft. But this took me 13 hours! I was broken mentally and physically by the end.
Granted I stopped for a bit for filtering my water. So maybe 12 hours of moving time. The last 10 miles, my legs were dead. I each step required conscious effort and I almost thought I could not make it back out. I kept telling myself I am an ultra marathon runner, I should be able to do a 10 mile. I was at a breaking point. Night fell. Wind got rough. Alone.
Maybe because of it was cold. Winter training is dangerous because of wide change in temperatures. Day time was fine around 45-50 F but night time, I think the temperature was more around 35-40, but might have gotten colder on the ridge and with the wind chill. I could see my breath. Every time I hit a ridge I was freezing and every time I dropped back down in a valley I was sweating. The temperature change might be as wide as 10-15 degrees.
I think it was also hard because I tried not to drink so as not to stop to filter on water. In my mind, I had thought it ahould be half a day. I tried to last on 2 L of water for the nearly 30 miles of trail. Also I did not pack much strong food but only some candy bars, a gel, and a small rice pack. They were not enough. By noon, my energy was drained.
I really thought the run was going take half a day. I struggled with calorie defficiency like at the end of a 100 mile race. This was the hardest 50K run (28-29 miles) ever especially during the second half.
It was plodding one step at a time. Last six miles were unbelievably hard. I know I run ultras, and could last on longer distances, but it was no joke when I was thinking, I might not make it out with only 4 miles to go. I might have to consider a second option to save myself like finding shelter, and to survive the night. Or I might die here.
Note on the way in, it only took 4 hours. I guess I slowed down quite a lot on the way back, 9 hours? That was crazy but kind of expected when I slowed down by that much.
Outake. I got to do it again. I think it was a great training run to test the exhaustion state where normally I don’t get to train on that except in a real 100 race (reaching lactic threshold and pushing beyond). I might in the future to run it again by dropping supplies at the southern terminal before the run, so I could refuel and on the way back with full strength. Testing failure mode is great, but I should not do it too often. It is too dangerous especially in the winter. It also ruin the next few days of training.
This week really brought out areas I needed some work. What happen if I don’t have time and when “real life” collides in? Failure point/breaking point testing. pen test.
I also realized I am not as strong as last year. A few races I did at the end of this year that were exactly the same as last year, but I got slower times. This was telling.
We always believe we can change and improve with training. Reality, is what if I am at my peak or near there. Any training would not bring me any closer or maybe only a little bit. A fallacy I got to watch out is that I can improve dramatically with more trainings. There is a possibility, by race day, I am just the same as today. I got to let that sink in. It might be the worse case scenario, and it might be quite realistic scenerio. I got to ask myself, how much have I improved these 7 years! Anyway, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t train. I will train but also should know its limitation and my own limitations.
A good training ground, only 40 mins away from my house. Underrated and overlooked. I struggled on this course (Roller Coaster). This is actually easy because you could step on rocks and hop from one to another. The hard part is stay on trail especially at night when I was tired
Nothing much to report. Been distracted by various things.
Into reading some wushu fatasy novel (I shall seal the heaven), on book 9 now.
Not much running done since the Burning River, only did about 4 miles in the last two weeks. Training for Iron Mountain and Grindstone this weekend. They are both super hard races. After what happened in Ohio, I have so little faith that I could do either of them, but the show must go on.
Eastern States Race is this weekend. Two of my friends are running in it. One will be my pacer for Grindstone. The other gave me the super duper headlamp I used in the Burning River. I am cheering them from afar. Of course, I would like to be present on the course to support and all, but I have my own training runs to do.
My friend Caroline dropped some ideas about which races to do bext year. Big Horn 100 in Wyoming in June (hopefully it won’t conflict with Old Dominion). Also Nebraska 100. I don’t know the detail yet. Nebraska would her last race she said and her last 50 states. I said I would pace/support her. Is she thinking about the Cowboy 200? That is the race I have been eyeing the past year.
When I wrote my race report, Burning River did not rub me that hard, but now as time sinks in, I am asking myself why I did not finish. The answer was obvious. All the what and how were mentioned in race report. But now the feeling hits me. I am feeling beaten up by it. It is like a black hole eating me up inside. There is nothing I can do. I just need to move forward. My two friends who had done the Burning River comforted me. One shared of her experience how she also did not finish it the first time she tried. She said she tried again the following year and finished it. My awesome pacer Amanda, also said she did not finish it the year she attempted it. I am pretty sure, if she tries again, she will be able to do it.
What am I getting at? I am itching to sign up races for next year.
Oh about me foot, The swelling has gone away. There is some pain still. It is not broken, but dang it still hurts. This is worse than in January.
Is it week 10 or 11 of my training? I lost track. Usually by the 10th week, everything fall apart. This time is no different.
I wrote this entry last week but lost it as I was about to publish and now finally found it again. How do you lose an entry? Ask WP. At that time, I didn’t know how, but now I found it was in the webpage folder instead of the blog post folder. So weird, you can’t move a post from one folder to the next. Does that make sense?
Bear with me if it seems to be the same stuff I wrote last week. I have short term memory.
total mile: 26
Monday/Tuesday rest: 0
Wednesday: 0
Thursday: forgotten. probably 0
Friday: 0
Saturday: 26
Sunday:0
It has been another crazy week. This week was worse than the last. I had ton of time, yet very little running done because of the coronavirus.
Now I don’t have a 3 hour commute (roundtrip) every day. It is almost a vacation I always dream about. Every day is a Saturday. Almost. Yet, the reality of being stuck at home is no fun. I didn’t get to do what I need/want to do. No one to blame but me, for being too obssessed with the news.
For running, I am doing the same route. There are tons of neighborhoods I can run to, but I have been sticking to running the boring same route of back and forth in front of my house.
By the way, our county finally closed all the public parks. We haven’t done so at the national level yet. It is getting there. They closed the parks for cars. There are parks I can still run to without driving there. Our quarantine enforcement in our area has no bite. There is no street closure. We do it in some places, but the idea is not to limit movement, but prevent people from congregate at a location. No one is being pull over by the police for violating the ‘essential’ travel only. That bother me when I look out at the street and see so many cars. Basically people still can go where ever and do whatever they want. That should be good for me, right?
Along with everyone, I just can’t wait to have it over with. On one hand, it seems impossible to get everyone following the quarantine order. The other hand, we have shutdown the city like never before. However, there are too many people deem themselves essential. It is a disease we don’t see affecting us immediately due to the long incubation period and the infected can be without any symptoms but still can spread to others, which many didn’t realize. It might bite them two or three weeks from now. We are not fighting today battle. What we do now affect in 2-3 weeks time.
So it’s supposed to last 2-3 more weeks according to the New York governor before it gets better. New York is taking the lead and all eyes are on them. Our area is now maybe a month behind them (4000 cases, to theirs 130000). NY seems to slowing their curve today. Our area is slowing a bit too, it is no longer doubling at every 4-5 days as before or even freaking every 3 days sometimes, so that is some good news, but it is too early to tell.
The cost of the policy to shutdown the state/country is huge. There is also a cost if we do nothing. Some states still do not have a stay-at-home policy due to the low count of infections in their states. There are some who question if it worth it. Mayor of New York, said yes. For each life saved is worth the economic cost.
There are some good news that a cure or vaccine might be possible. Hopefully, everything will be over when the summer comes around. Hopefully not too long, so we can all get back to work.
The week has been distracting to say the least with the coronavirus news. I only had one marathon canceled on me so far but it dealt me a major blow and I haven’t really run much. It shouldn’t affect me emotionally. I know I should run with or without the race, but it really took all the motivation out.
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 3.5
Wednesday: don’t remember. 0 mile
Thursday: 8. group run canceled
Friday: 0 traveling
Saturday: 20 walk/run in 6 hours. Rolled my ankle again and walked mostly the last two hours back to the car
In awe 