Training Update: Late March through April 17th

OK, so it’s been a little while since the last post. In six days is the Free State Trail 100k at Clinton Lake near Lawrence, Ks. Since my “crash & bonk” at the Pi-day trail half marathon, training has been going really well. I’m averaging 50 to 60 mile weeks and have had nearly 20 runs of at least 10 miles. I’ve ran with the Trail Hawks and Trail Nerds at Kill creek a couple of times but the majority of my miles have come from long solo runs with some short speed work thrown in. There's been an opportunity to hit a variety of terrain to keep challenging my legs. Hillsdale Lake’s rugged horse-trails, the Prairie Center’s smooth paths, Kill Creek’s variety, Shawnee Mission Lake’s technical single-track, Wyandotte County Lake’s vertical miles, and tons of others. Now that I live closer to Lawrence, its also been cool to be able to get some miles in on the actual race course. My loops there have been getting faster over the last two months. Hopefully, a little more familiarity with the course will pay off. (On race day, the goal is to hit the 40 mile mark in 9 hours, that should set up a good 100k time).  

I’m a little beat up. I sprained my left ankle on April Fool’s day (barely a grade 2), there's some tendinitis brewing on my left achilles, and I’m about to lose a toenail on my right foot. Wow…TMI. Anyway, I’m still going into the race in better shape and in better health (knock on wood) than last year, when I had an upper respiratory infection. I really had no business racing. It was supposed to be my 1^st 100k but I dropped at 40 miles and couldn’t run again for nearly a month. I'm pretty stubborn and it was the only time I’ve ever dropped down a distance in a race. It was also the sickest I’d ever been in my life. Just couldn’t tough that one out.

But, that which doesn’t kill us…

Let’s do this…hell or 100k!

Coming in May…

I’ll start doing some gear reviews. A couple of shoes from La Sportiva, Dry Max trail running socks (woohoo!), some North Face gear and anything else I can get my hands (or feet) on. I’ll also start doing Trails of the week, a review of trails that I run on in Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado.