Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Thoughts going into The Moab Trail Marathon and beyond

This is going to be my last major race until until after the winter. I need a few months to focus solely on training.
For this race, I'm going to get my nutrition perfect. everything else is just icing on the cake. Over the 26.2 miles I'm going to take in 2-3 gels and atleast one electrolyte pill along with atleast 20 ounces of water. If i take all that in and don't have any stomach issues then the race was a success. Also, breaking four hours should be doable on this hard course if my nutrition is dialed in. We'll see what happens but it's gona be a blast.

I'm pleasantly surprised that my recent racing hasn't seemed to drain me at all. -I'm loving my running more than ever, and as the weather gets colder i can feel myself wanting to speed up, which is exactly the plan.
I'm going to run 80 miles during the last week of November and go up from there. By the end of March I should be close to 100 miles a week for a few weeks, and might end my winter training with 2 or three weeks at 100 depending on how i feel. At this point in my ultra career I have done a few good training weeks but I have yet to put in the months and months of consistent high mileage that it'll take to get me to the next level.
I'm going to run more than 80 miles a week (each week) for all of December, January, February, March, and April. 80-100 is hardly high mileage by ultra standards, but the consistency should make the difference and the plan isn't to do junk miles. Each week should have: a speedwork session with intervals of 400-800 meters, 20 miles at 5:50-6:30 pace (half marathon-marathon race pace) spread throughout my easy runs, and a 20 miler without any water or food.
By the time that May rolls around I'm gona be 1600+ miles faster and ready for a great summer racing season.

2 comments:

  1. You're a beast. I'll be lucky to hit 70 four or five times between now and the 50k.

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  2. did i tell you i'm doin the 50k too?
    with the Colfax Marathon the following weekend, im not gona have time to recover from 50 miles and i'm lookin to hit 2:50, so i need to be fresh.
    after another 100 miles at 6:30 pace or better in the next 5 months, i should be ready to comfortably break 4 hours at 50's
    -which would make me almost as good as Zach...

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