the game plan

alot of people i ask about what theyd like to see on here tell me the same thing. most wana know more about how to eat before, during, and after races. at some point id like to cover why i do fuel the way i do and what differs when i run a 5-10k compared to an ultra, but for now, as i go into another 50k, id like to share what my plan is for this weekend in a short, spark notes, version so people can replicate it easily.

-friday
>eat moderate portions of foods that i frequently eat. in my case that means brazil nuts and almonds, cereal, water, and probly some bread with nutella. the key is that whatever you eat needs to be staples of your regular diet: you arent gona get some boost by suddenly switching to an all kale diet the day before the race.
> in the evening i always eat a salad. either an apple harvest chicken salad from red robin or a caesar salad with chicken from pretty much anywhere. does this help? maybe not, but ever time i do it i dont have any GI problems during the race. (but remember: i eat salads multiple times a week, so its not unusual for my body)
-race day (saturday)
>more than an hour before start time: 1 brazil nut* and a few almonds along with probly half a nature valley bar
>1 hour before start time: sip a full-sized Vespa slowly, so it takes about 15 minutes to drink the whole thing. i love the stuff and it definately works, but dang it will make you sick as hell if you dont respect it. having run miltiple times with it, i now know where the line is for me: at about 7:00 pace. -if i try to run faster than that, it gets to me and i risk throwing up. at about 7:30 pace and slower i wont even feel it, so even with a "fast" start, i shouldnt have any trouble holing it down.
*i know one nut sounds insignificant, but i eat a few pretty much every morning, so why change. plus, just one nut has about 25 calories from fat, and i want my body to know that its ok to burn up the little bit of fat i have left. -the body isnt going to use up something that it doesnt know it can replace.
>about 2 hours into the race ill take my first few mouthful of gatorade (strictly water before that to get the full benefit from the Vespa) and continue to sip it until the end of the race
>about 2.5-3 hours in ill take either a vanilla bean GU or a 5-hour energy depending on how i feel. if my legs are starting to feel it, ill take the GU; if its just my mental clarity thats feeling it, ill take the 5-hour.
>3.5 hours in until the finish line im gona take whatever i feel like taking. if my mouth feels dry, ill drink. if my legs feel slow, ill eat some sugar or half a PB&J. if im feeling negative, ill take a 2nd Wind(which has 100 mg of caffeine and should get my head back in the game. -2nd Wind isnt really on the market yet, but i have a few and i plan to put up a review if i take it) or a Roctane

last lifting before the 50k this weekend

its difficult for me to balance the need to keep my hormones through the roof and ensure that im getting rested up for the race. so i usually have my last real resistance training day about 7-10 days before i race, with one more full body workout the week of.

heres both of those, so you can get a better feel for what i do leading up to a race:
-9 days out from race day
>50 clean and jerk @60-75% of bodyweight, for time*
>10 min rest
>tabata squats (narrow stance), holding an "air chair" during the 10 second rest
>400 single leg extensions, alternating legs each 20 for 200 each leg, @ 15-20 lbs
*so as fast as possible
-5 days out (the day after my last long ish run before the race)
>three sets 20sec on: 20sec rest of each: pogos, pushups, split jumps, arm circles, squat jumps with 180 degree turn in the air

even with the mild soreness that may result from an intense workout the week of the race, at this point in my running career at least, its worth it to ensure that i feel sharp instead of flat on race day.
my next post is gona have good news about this weekends race no matter what.

some dreams for the next few years

this post is more for myself to look back on, but its also a way for me to formally accept a few select challenges that are out there: to make my intentions clear to any readers i have, but also to myself.

with the move to Colorado, ill have access to trails and will therefore be able to train more than ever(due to decreased pounding compared to roads). ive always felt like i handled hills better than most people ive run/raced with, but that could just be a side-effect of living in Illinois. i just love the feeling of going up with each step. so my first goal is to run up all the 14'ers (mountains with peaks above 14,000ft) in Colorado. most likely my standard will be that i have to start below 10,000ft and run the entire way up for it to count. this is my "first" goal only because i plan to run the my first 14'er within the next six months. one of the biggest roadblocks, after the sheer altitude, is the simple fact that many of these mountains arent runnable for most of the year. so the goal is to run Mt. Evans at the end of this summer. that will most likely be it until next summer, and the achievement should solidify my opinion of myself as a true mountain runner. next summers goal will be to run the rest of the "Front Range" 14'ers: there are five, six including Mt. Evans. after that(summer 2013) ill have to start travelling to hit the rest of them, so the goal will be to clear out an entire mountain range during a long weekend vacation, for obvious financial reasons. there are over 50 14'ers in Colorado, so the goal of running them all should give my training purpose for years, without the constant need for a race on the horizon.

another goal of mine is to set a CR (course record) at the http://www.arrowheadultra.com/index.php/race-inforegistration/race-rules(mile race, check out the link). i love the cold, i ive been able to tolerate it better than most for as long as i can remember and im somewhat notorious by this point for wearing what most would consider insufficient clothing during the colder months. my body just feels at home in the snow and the wind. ive made it through three Chicago winters now without covering my legs (although the past winter i used the treadmill a bit due to the shift in training style). even when sauna training regularly, i feel like the cold is something my body responds well to, unlike the heat which i doubt ill ever be able to handle to any significant degree. add that to the fact that i have more camping experience as a 19-year-old kid than most people get in their lives, and Arrowhead is the event for me. packing everything youll need for more than 30 hours of running into a sled and dragging it across rugged trails in the middle of winter has an appeal to me that i have trouble explaining. id imagine its how Anton Krupicka feels about Leadville, or Scott Jurek feels about Western States, or Zach Gingerich(if he had a soul) about Badwater, or more recently Ian Sharman about Rocky Raccoon. ill never be as fast as those guys, but Arrowhead could put me on the map. ultra runners become known for races that play up to their unique strengths, so even if i dont have speed, i can atleast be king of horrible, cold weather.
im hoping to run Arrowhead for the first time in 2013, then again in 2014 with a true record attempt by 2016. there are just so many variables in a race like this. and having never run a 100 mile race (or even a 50 miler!) the time frame may be a bit soon, but all i cna do its hope and train.

those are just two things that i hope to do before im 25, probly more to come. and the latest on my move as well.

thoughts going into the 50s For Your Momma 50k

with a section of dirt trails to train on (which i just found last week!) the idea of running another trail race is even more appealing than ever, and a chance to set a new PR always provides a ton of motivation. i have been feeling a bit flat, but some long slow distance (LSD) is gona feel great after the months of high intensity, and therefore high pressure, workouts. the simplicity of "going for a run" is lost when doing intervals and tempos exclusively.
so this week im planning a 2 hour trail run, with an 8lb weighted vest, through Saw Wee Kee Park. theres only about seven miles of trails there, but theyre mountain bike trails. the violent ups, downs, and sharp turns should keep it interesting. and hopefully i wont be alone. this run (of two hours) will be my longest training run in both time and distance since late last fall, but it should be all i need to be ready to run for five hours on may 7th. with good conditions and some caffeine, i should be able to average under nine minutes a mile for the 50k, which will give me a 4:15-4:45 and a new PR for 50k. -as sad as that is. my target race, the "50s For Your Momma" in Circleville, Ohio should be a pretty fast course. the 50k consists of eight, four-mile loops with aid stations every two miles, so mentally it should be the easiest ultra yet.
the plan as of now is to stay with the front pack for the first 4-5 laps and see what happens after that. i just hope that anyone thats running sub-7:00s just breaks away from the start. ill be taking Vespa before this race, so going out fast is not an option or i risk throwing it up.
ill be using any major hills as a chance to eat and drink as i walk up, but if the course is flatter than advertised, id love to run the entire thing.
the goals for this one are:
1) to finish and not get injured
2) to PR
3) to get some hardware -im freakin tired of winning age-group awards! so what if im the fastest baby!

right off the Crossfit Endurance page

i substituted my planned 1 minute intervals (6-8X 1 min on: 1 min rest, max effort) with a good looking workout i saw on Crossfit Endurance a few days ago: "the 30's." -a perfect substitution since i can use the same exact speed and incline for both of these workouts due to how similar they are.
the first round was pretty hard, but manageable. the second round had me digging deep in the last two intervals. and the third round had me quitting.
this is an awesome workout! the first one in a while that ive had to quit, which is a good thing. when im trying to work at 100% effort for my workouts, im bound to overestimate what i can do occasionally: trying to find the right speed, incline, and weights to allow me to finish the workout but not have anything left in the tank is the key, and its not easy to do.
the number one thing i do that helps me find my physiological 100%, without going over, is log every run. keeping everything in a log has made my high-intensity, low-volume, training work. if i was blindly guessing at the pace for each workout, id end up wasting interval sessions because the pace would frequently be too fast or too slow.

anyway, heres what it looked liked:
>6 min WU
>2.5 rounds of "The 30's" (fast speed with full incline on treadmill: 30 sec on, 30 sec rest*, 30 sec on, 25 sec rest, 30 sec on, 20 sec rest, 30 sec on, 15 sec rest, 30 sec on, 10 sec rest, 30 sec on, 5sec rest, 30 sec on, 2 min rest before starting next round)
>brief CD
>10 min rest
>tabata squats (wide stance), during 10 sec rest hold an "air sit"**
*during the rest periods, straddle the belt, but keep the treadmill going. its way too much effort to try to stop the mill and restart it in less than 30 seconds.
**yeah, the "rest" is worse than the "work" part of it; its aweful

i used an interval timer on my phone set to three 5:15 rounds with 2 minutes of rest between rounds and used a piece of paper to keep track of my shrinking rest times: crossing out "30" "25" "20" and so on. note that the speed and incline need to stay consistent throughout this workout, just because your rest time gets smaller, the speed shouldnt slow. the pace should be set at a speed(with full incline) that you could hold for one minute, if your life depended on it, two minutes, but no more. also this workout, like all treadmill ones, was barefoot. any treadmill running at over 10% incline is a great way to strengthen your feet and Achilles tendons.
this is a great workout for endurance athletes as well as any athlete that needs to give moderate-length bursts of all-out effort (soccer, mixed martial arts or wrestling, hockey, etc), as well as anyone looking to shed pounds fast. -nothing revs your bodys engine like intervals.

i followed this up with a decent trail run the next day:
-about 3-4:00pm
>7 mile muddy, rocky, trail run with 8lbs in the vest (in the Vibram Five Fingers; who says there not trail shoes!)
-late night
>50 clean and jerk @ 60-75% of bodyweight, for time*
*as fast as possible. record your time

try um out and throw your thoughts back at me.