Running Ruminations

It has felt really good to train for something again. 

Like pretty much everyone else, when the pandemic began, I felt a bunch of sometimes conflicting feelings, but chief among them was the sense of the loss of control. Realistically speaking, of course none of us are ever really in “control” of our lives, per se, but we tend to have predictable patterns of behaviors, seasons of life I guess, and as runners, we often thrive off that structure. 

When the pandemic hit way back in March 2020, it felt like the world’s entire rug was pulled out from under me as I tried to make sense of everything, for both my family and for myself. I say that knowing full well that my family has gotten by relatively unscathed and that our privilege affords me the opportunity to say that in the first place. 

Nonetheless, running offered a predictable out, a way to intentionally carve time out of the day, away from family and volunteer and everything-else obligations, to help try to maintain some sense of equilibrium. The massive side benefits, of course, were all the other wonderful consequences that running gives us in terms of our mental and physical health and well-being. In a time in life when not a lot has made sense, running has always made sense. Fast or far, it doesn’t matter; forward is and always will be a pace.

During the earlier part of the year, Coach Lisa and I (and Janet, before she got pregnant with baby J) were training for a fast mile. Even though I showed up to do all the mile-specific workouts as prescribed, there was little else of my running that resembled mile-specific training, as I kept gravitating to doing what I had been doing: running an hour+ most days of the week and almost always on the trails nearby. I felt like I was training for a mile in name only, only on the track workout days, and it was 100-percent on me. I wanted to train to run a fast mile for a change of pace, literally and figuratively speaking, but I guess I also kinda didn’t. Again: 100-percent on me.

When I eventually had the eureka moment that encouraged me to register for, and begin training for, the 50k, I won’t say that a weight had been lifted because this is all self-induced pressure. Absolutely no one else on earth cares about my running as much as me; this I understand quite well. My running did begin to feel different, however. The volume of miles I had posted since the pandemic began made a lot of sense and now actually had some meaning to them beyond just “get out of the house for an hour every day,” which, admittedly, feels good for a while, but then the drive begins to wane. 

At any rate, the premise of endurance training being an exercise in cumulative fatigue was no longer something that I had only experienced in the thickest parts of marathon training, as it had kinda become the norm over the past year+. I think it made the transition from being “not in training” to being “in training” pretty seamless. I now had structure, more than I had before, some 50k specific workouts, and a long run plan that was a bit more intentional than running based on feel, how I slept the night before, and the weather. 

The only other time I trained for a 50k, back in late 2014, I did things fairly differently because I was in brand-new-to-me territory. I recapped my training a bit in the race week post I did in ‘14, and damn, things look different this time around. 

Three key differences stand out. Namely: 

Back-to-back runs looked a bit different this time around. During my first 50k training, I think I put a perhaps-outsized emphasis on the back-to-back long runs because everything I read at the time, or the stuff that seemed the most significant, praised this gospel. (How in the world did I run a 20 miler the day after I had outpatient surgery in 2014?! I remember doing that now, but …WTH!?! That was the day that I had surgery to retrieve a runaway IUD that had perforated my uterus, and when I woke up from surgery, my surgeon told me that he fetched the aforementioned runaway and that he also noticed that my appendix was on its way out, so he removed that, too. Cool. One anesthesia bill. I had it good, though, because another patient woke up to find out that the same surgeon removed a problematic-looking testicle. Good times! I haven’t thought about this in a while and definitely didn’t remember running a 20 after all of that happened). Anyway. I definitely didn’t do the hefty back-to-back long runs this time around simply because I have been running every day, usually for about an hour a day, for over a year now. If volume and consistency and accumulated fatigue are the point in running back-to-back long runs during training, I hope what I’ve done is sufficient. I guess we’ll see.

Workouts! During the first go at 50k training, I didn’t do a single workout for the entire training season: no pickups, no strides, no sprints, no repeats, absolutely nothing. What I read at the time — and what I probably still agree with — is that for your first time at the distance, worry more about volume and the time on your feet and simply finishing the distance and less about how fast you cover it. This time around, I typically did a structured workout a week and/or added in additional strides or pick-ups at the end of some of my runs. Additionally, I ran almost all of my workouts on trails, on ascents and descents, so while the pace may not have always (or ever) mirrored or resembled road speed, the effort was there. In terms of what the actual workouts were, more often than not, they were from Krissy Moehl’s Running Your First Ultra book (highly recommended; I remember reading through it when it first came out what feels like forever ago now).

Way more time on trails. In 2014, I ran some of my long runs on trails, but I still ran a lot of roads and many of my long runs, even the long-long-runs, on roads. Roads was my de facto running environment, and so even though I was training to run a trail 50k, it was a lot easier at the time to run roads more often than not. This time around, it’s virtually reversed. Most of my runs have been on trails or a slight road-trail hybrid, and I can only recall a couple long runs that I did on roads (and one simply because ARP was closed due to fire or environmental hazards that morning when I rolled up). As most anyone who runs both trails and roads can attest, more often than not, athletes will spend significantly longer time to cover the same distance on trails than they do on roads, simply thanks to the topographical differences between the two. In terms of training, I think it is advantageous because it forces runners to constantly “shift gears” between varying levels of running or hiking speed, and in that way as well, it decreases injury risk due to overuse or to hard-surface-damage (like from running on pavement excessively).

And reason 3.5: way more elevation exposure than before. Closely related to my earlier point is that with my spending more time on trails than ever before in the past ~18 months is that I’ve had the joy (most days; some days it’s less so) to play on way more elevation than ever before, too. I was terrified before Woodside in ‘14 because the race had like 4500’; this time around has significantly more, which is also still terrifying but also admittedly pretty intriguing, too. 2014’s Woodside Ramble was a great first 50k experience, and honestly, it feels like it was so long ago that I sorta feel like I’m doing this for the first time, all over again.  

I’ll end with a good ol’ fashioned chart because runners like numbers and because sometimes the quick and dirty calculations help to put everything into perspective. There’s always the wanting to have done more, but sometimes finding satisfaction (or peace) with what you’ve accomplished with everything else going on can be really powerful, too.  

Week	Distance	Elevation
Week 18: race week!!
Week 17: week of 11/1	30 miles	2,670’
Week 16: week of 10/25	50.1	6,177’
Week 15: week of 10/18	46.5	4,721’
Week 14: week of 10/11	65.3	8,372’
Week 13: week of 10/4	40.6 (felt a little unwell)	3,553’
Week 12: week of 9/27	60.1	7,723’
Week 11: week of 9/20	52.9	5,439’
Week 10: week of 9/13	55.2	7,247’
Week 9: week of 9/6	55.2	5,961’
Week 8: week of 8/30	46.4	2,608’
Week 7: week of 8/23	58.9	5,892’
Week 6: week of 8/16	50.2	7,234’
Week 5: week of 8/9	51.68	5,790’
Week 4: week of 8/2	50.2	4,498’
Week 3: week of 7/26	52.6	3,093’
Week 2: week of 7/19*	51ish	2,801’
Week 1: week of 7/12* Hadn’t actually decided until about week 3 of training (15 weeks out) to begin training, but these were my stats for the week anyway	55.6ish	2,749’

Just a few more sleeps separate me from the race … here we go, 50k, parte dos! Not much left to do but run the thing.

LFG!