I've been accepted into the 2010 Badwater Ultramarathon. 135 miles, Death Valley, July.
In other news, I've been hitting lots and lots of good running. Starting to get back into the "lots of long runs" style of training, but building up to it slowly thanks to Karl's awesome coaching. I'm doing 6 days a week, 1 day off, with 1 easy day, 2 moderate days, 1 hard day, and 2 moderately hard long runs (both on the weekend). Last week I hit 14 and 18 through very hilly mountain trails on Friday and Sunday with 9 miles in between, this weekend I hit 13 and 20 with 6 miles in between. Next weekend I'll bump up to 16s on both saturday and sunday, followed by 16/18 the next saturday/sunday. I'm doing a 50 mile the last weekend of march as well as one in late april, and probably one in may, and somewhere along the way, I'll be up to back to back 30 milers, which sounds like a pretty aggressive way to train my legs to be ready for long runs. On the "hard day" side of things, I hit that 13.1 trainer in 1:13:28. Last week, i somehow managed to hit 5 miles at a 3% decline (1.5% would account for the elevation, the extra 1.5 made it about 40 seconds fast) in 24:55. I hit the first mile in an easy 5:25 then upped the pace in miles 2-4 to 4:54, 4:56, 4:54. Realizing I could squeeze my way under 25 if I pushed it really hard, I pounded out a 4:43 last mile and finished up in 24:55. Not too bad. I was in the low 27s in 8 months ago for a 5 mile split in a poorly run and somewhat downhill 10k (with a couple legitimate uphills thrown in). I could've probably eked out high 26s at the time for 5 miles, but this was a nice surprise. I'm probably right around the shape I was in right before I got injured at this point and now it's just a matter of building my base over the next 4 months without overtraining.
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Hi Collin,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Becky and I was at the RRCA 10 miler Sunday (not sure if you were there but congrats to your team) and saw your post on the That's What She Said blog... yes, I'm a crazy runner and follow all that is about running, haha, and like to keep informed on my competition! Anyway, I was wondering if you're still looking for someone to help crew Badwater?
Hey Becky,
ReplyDeleteSorry I didn't see this for a few days; I don't usually check my blog for comments all that often. I wasn't at RRCA this year since I'm living in Salt Lake now. Actually, I missed it last year as well because I was visiting my grad program out here. I'm hoping to fly back out to Baltimore to run it next year though. Are you interested in eventually running Badwater or something? What type of races are you doing right now? Right now, the only person that is "for sure" on my crew is my girlfriend Jess. I have a couple other maybes, but I definitely need at least 2 people, preferably more than that since 2 will be pretty bare bones. As far as the race goes, we'll probably meet up in Vegas on Saturday July 10th and drive down to Death Valley early the next morning. The run starts on Monday the 12th and, if things go as planned, I should be finishing before dark on the 13th, somewhere in the low 30 hour range. The awards are on the evening of the 14th in Lone Pine (near mile 122 of the course) and we'd head back to Vegas after that so we could either catch flights that night or the 15th. If you want to crew and can get to Vegas (should be really cheap) I can cover pretty much everything from there, hotels, food, whatever else. Crewing is definitely hard work, as is pacing if you're interested in running any of the course, but it's a lot of fun.