Friday, June 24, 2011

Training for ????

Ok, so I've been sitting on my ass a little. Eh, I earned it. After HURT, my plan was to basically take a little break then maintain my fitness level going into 2011. Oops, my bad. I sat around for a month after, then I started to run a little but it was like 10k per week. I had some personal things to take care of which I promised myself I'd do when I got back from HURT, which I did. It was hard to focus on running so I've pretty much taken it easy the last few months. I did run Pick Your Poison 50k in April, but I was way undertrained and out of shape by that point. I had originally planned to run 100 miles at Sulpher Springs at the end of May, but in April I knew I was nowhere near ready for it. I changed plans and was going to do switch to the 50 miler, but I still hadn't trained properly and having someone watch the kids that weekend turned out to be complicated, so I just pulled out. I then ran Niagara 50k in June, my lack of fitness compared to a year ago was evident. Here's a quick summary of the races:

Pick Your Poison:
This was on April 30th.  I really hadn't been training and I signed up 3 days before the race.  I didn't even look at the race details, turns out it's at Horseshoe Valley and has lots of hills!  I'm fine with hills still, at least I've retained that from HURT training.  Great course, I really liked it.  Brutal time for 50k, finishing 6hrs 11min, but with those hills and no training I couldn't expect much else.  I had fun anyway!

Niagara 50k:
This was just last weekend, June 18th.  I did NOT enjoy it!  This is the flattest race I've done since I did it last year!  I should really stick to the hills.  Still haven't been training properly or often enough, it showed.  I wanted to use this race to gauge where I'm at.  I did, and I suck.  I finished 10 minutes slower than last year, and last year I had horrible calf cramps and had to walk a bunch near the end!  I didn't feel really fatigued this time, but my leg muscles had no energy.  This is due to my lack of training, but I also think I didn't eat enough.  I ran the first 25k without stopping at any aid stations, I just drank my eload and ate my gels.  Usually I load up on chips and bananas, so this was a bit of an experiment.  A miserably FAILED experiment.  At 25k, I ate 2 orange slices, then another 2 at anout 40k.  Guess I really didn't think that one through.  I think my legs were just starving.  Final time was 4h 56min, crap for a flat smooth course.  And to think when I qualified for Boston, it was 8k shorter but I did it in 3h 13min!  Not quite there now...

Next ???:
So, here we are.  I was planning to enter some bigger races this year, but I waited too long to figure out what the hell I wanted to do and races sold out.  I was hoping to do the Canadian Death Race, but I missed registration by a few months.  Not sure what's next for me, I'm looking at 100 miler around October.  Summer is too soon to get myself in proper shape.  I don't want to plan for one in September, as last year I'd signed up and paid for Haliburton 100 but had to pull out when both of my kids had their soccer final fall on the same date as the race!  I'm not even going to attempt one in Sept this time, so that leaves October.  Next weekend I'm doing Creemore 50k (NOT flat), then 2 weeks later Limberlost 56k, then 3 weeks later Dirty Girls 24hr.  Last year I did 130km at Dirty Girls, I'd like to beat that this time, but I've got some serious training to do.  Maybe something else near the end of August or early Sept, otherwise just long training runs then.

Time to Get Stupid:
Traning still isn't easy.  I'm currently separated and splitting time with kids 50/50, so when I'm with my munchkins I can't run, nor do I want to!  This means I can only do long runs every other weekend, and weekdays are all over the place.  I've thought about buying a treadmill, but I hate them.  I've only used a treadmill twice, but both times I was waiting for it to end.  My other problem is I used to work from home a few times a week while traning for HURT so I could run at lunch, but since then my position has changed and I now rarely work from home.  I'm now considering getting a gym membership near the office, just so I'll have a place to shower, then I can squeeze in 5k runs at lunch.  I used to workout or run 2 to 3 times daily, right now I'm lucky to get that in a week.

So here's the stupid plan (barring any unforseen circumstances!).  I'll need to settle on a race soon for October, commiting to that will really get me motivated.  For now I'll train with the assumption I'm doing one in Oct.  I'm going to attempt to get at least 1 or 2 workouts in per day going forward.  This means some early mornings and late nights. I'll need to run my ass off when I don't have kids (this means a mix of hills, stairs, tempo runs...not just long slow runs like I've been doing lately).  I play soccer once a week, so that helps too.  When I have the kids, it's back to the weights and my old friend, the exercise bike. I've currently got a little more around the midsection and a little less muscle than last year, that needs to change fast.

We'll see how it goes.  I definitely don't have nearly as much time to train as I did last year.  Working from home used to give me more time in the morning, more time in the evening, and lunch to go for runs.  Splitting time with kids now takes away time also. I'll do what I can.  I've already signed up for Dirty Girls 24hr in just over a month, so let's get to it!

Mo