One Week Until Capon 50K

We’re about a week away from the Capon 50K which means it’s taper-time. I like running, but after months of sticking to a training schedule, tapering feels like I’m cutting class... and I love it. Last night’s run with Mandy was a whopping 4 miles – a third of the distance of our mid-week runs from a few weeks ago. Even though I told her I wasn’t making a decision about running a 50-miler until after Capon, I think she’s trying to nudge me into Camp Crazy. She even sent me a modified schedule after I told her I didn’t want to run back-to-back long runs (e.g. 25 miles on Saturday and 25 on Sunday) because that would take up my entire weekend.

Even though more and more people are running ultras, finding a training schedule for a 50k or 50-miler is nearly impossible. The 50k schedule that we’re using is a modified version of the Ultra Ladies schedule from a few months ago. (They seem to have updated their recommended training schedule in the last week and have made some of the long Saturday runs a few miles shorter.) The most significant change we made was to up the 2-mile runs in the early weeks to 6-miles since we already had a decent base. I sure hope this was enough to prepare us for next week.

My new favorite yogurt.

My new favorite yogurt.
Originally uploaded by cherrydg

Great Falls and great failures

Ever have one of those days where it feels like everything you try to do ends in failure? As if the universe just didn't like you and wanted to see just how far it could push you until you broke down into a sobbing pile of mush?

Today began with what was supposed to be an easy 10-miler with Mandy. The last run of our 60-mile week. All was going well until about mile 6 when a sharp, stabbing pain shot up my left foot every time I tried to run up a hill. It didn't feel as bad going downhill - probably because I could put more weight on the back of my foot. Of course, the route we decided to run today was hilly so I ended up walking most of the last 4 miles back to the car. Discouraging and definitely cause for concern since our 50K is in 3 weeks. I'm hoping it's just a tired tendon or something minor and not a stress fracture or anything that would prevent me from running Capon. After all the time I've put into training, I would be really, really, really be upset if I couldn't run.

Later in the day I attempted to download data from my Garmin to Garmin's website. My miserable run from this morning downloaded fine and reflected my tortoise-like pace. But wouldn't you know it, my 28-frickin-mile run from yesterday refused to download. It's clearly on the watch because I can scroll through the data and see exactly how long it took me to run every mile. After almost two hours of research, it turns out that yesterday's file seems to be corrupt and the only way to download the data would be to have Garmin support fix the file for you. I sent Garmin support an email but I have little confidence that they'll get back to me in this millenium.

Speaking of yesterday's run, we ran from Great Falls Park to Algonkian Park and back. It's about a 24 mile loop so we had to tack on an extra 4 miles once we got back to Great Falls. Compared to last week's massacre at Sky Meadows, yesterday's run was relatively flat and at a better pace. A few pictures below including one of our very first stream crossing. (Capon supposedly has 40+ stream crossings.)

Since I'm trying to keep off my feet, I decided to upload some pics of our running group to Facebook. At least, that's what I attempted to do. FB decided it didn't want to cooperate and errored several times while I attempted to upload the files. When it finally seemed to cooperate, it looks like some of the files still didn't survive the journey. Bleh.

Steve isn't home and since I needed someone to whine to, I decided to blog. (Yes, you ARE the lucky recipient of my whining.) Even this blogging attempt has failed once already. I'm typing as quickly as I can so that I can post this before the evil forces of nature notices what I'm doing and puts an end to it all.

National Park Week 4/17-25

Starting this Saturday, entrance to national parks will be free for a week: http://www.nps.gov/npweek/. Go outside and play!

And I ran, I ran so far away

Ah yes, the Flock of Seagulls were so right. In case you're wondering why I've been such a slacker with the blog updates, it's because I've been running... alot. Mandy and I are in our "peak" training weeks before our 50K. This week, we ran 60 miles which includes a 26-mile romp through Sky Meadows State Park. This is the most I've ever run in one week in all of my life.

The park is in Delaplane, VA and has about 8 miles of trails. We ended up having to run two loops around the trail and adding on on the Appalachian Trail to get to our 26. From the parking lot, the hills don't look too bad; of course, they never look bad until you actually have to climb them on foot.


There was a good mix of scenery including some wooded sections.


Once we made it over the 1000' climb, you got a great view from the top.

After running through a big, open meadow and down through the forest, you had to go through a cow pasture to get to the bottom of the hill. These steaks, er, cows were literally walking around us and watching like spectators.

Almost 7 hours later, we finished our run, drove home, showered, and celebrated with birthday beers for Mandy.