Things Are Looking Up

Although I haven't posted anything all Spring or Summer, this has been a fantastic training year.  Naturally, I'm still shooting for my first 100 miler, I am only 2.5 weeks away from Hinson Lake 24 Hour Ultra where I hope to cover 3 marathons (78.6 miles).

All summer long I upped my two-a-days and decreased my amount of recovery time between workouts. I stopped doing as many planned Saturday long runs, and would spontaneously turn any number of runs into 20+ milers.  I finally caved on my concept that if I were to do anything longer than 24 miles, I had better receive a medal and a tech tee.  I started developing the concept of "Marathon Thursdays" in lieu of the 6AM Dowd run, usual afternoon free run with Christi, and evening P-Stone run.  Unfortunately, I could not continue to weasel my way out of working Thursday nights, so I transitioned to the slightly more difficult "Marathon Tuesdays."  Tuesdays, I usually hope to get in the 5:30AM Miner's Run from Old Bell, hopeful late morning/ early afternoon mileage, and typical Tuesday evening speed work with Christi.  If I'm up for the 5:30AM run, I'm usually spent by the time I finish evening speed work, but it's been pretty cool fitting in so many days that I can intentionally drag out to 26.2 miles.

Christi and I both had a number of great races this year.  She subscribed to a 16-week training plan from Mark Hadley's Maximum Performance Running at the beginning of the summer and you can see a vast difference in her recent fitness/speed vs. Shamrock 4-Miler.  I have been pretty lucky to hi-jack some of these workouts as my ultra training has been thorough, but it really needed more structure than I was finding at the beginning of the year.

I really wanted to be mindful of my racing budget this season and spending "fewer dollars than minutes it takes to complete" the events, but I've found myself doing a few more races this year than last.  I had some great times with the Run For Your Life Summer Track Series and I found a lot of fun in simply cheering for friends at races and providing a lot of live action shots all along the course where paid photographers can't keep up much like Chris Lamperski did for us at LungStrong last year.  I've recently dropped my 5k time just 11 seconds shy of my lifetime PR and almost a whole minute faster than I was finishing last year.  My weekly mileage feels good around 70 now.  It seems like the only thing holding me back in mileage is time, not pain or fatigue.  There are certainly no guarantees for my future in my running career, but I am in a much better place in my life.  Like Jordan Kinley recently said, things are looking up, and I hope to continue glorifying God through every stride.