Back on the Saddle

The break, while necessary to heal and recharge batteries, set me back quite a bit from a fitness perspective. January was a brutal month, and I didn't quite succeed in resuming my routine of four, 2-hour runs during weekdays with two longer, 3 to 4 hour runs on weekends. Even my stomach revolted. My first long run resulted in having to throw my underwear out and so did my last long run of the month. Go figure!

February has been a little better. I'm running about 14 hours per week now and should be able to push that to around 16 per week by March. I also did the 50K Cool Trail Run in Cool, CA, which turned out to be 34 miles and not 30. Four extra miles might not seem like much, but any additional mileage at the end of an ultra is always arduous. A portion of this run takes place along the Western States trail, so it was a good training run.

I'm scheduled to run another 50K run in February and then:

March: Two 50K's and one 50 Miler
April: Two 50 Milers
May: One 100K, one 50 Miler, and the WS Training Runs (70 miles over 3 days)
June 5th should be my last race (a 50 Miler) before Western States later that month.

But in ultras, things don't always go as planned... so let's see how things turn out.