Tussey Retrospective: Pre-Race

Now that I've had a couple of weeks to recover physically and mentally from Tussey, I thought I should put together a retrospective. "Why bother?" you might wonder. Well, let's just say that I might have to refer to this information at a future date. For today, I'll just focus on the pre-race lessons learned. 

First, the biggest factor: training. Overall, I think the training plan worked out pretty well. I was running five days a week. The entire training plan was 23 weeks long. (UGH - I just realized that's almost six months. No wonder I was ready to be done.) Two of the three weekday runs were between 5-8 miles, while the third weekday run ranged anywhere from 6-12 miles. Those mid-week 12-milers during the peak weeks were a bit cumbersome, but I think they helped with the mental "stick-to-it-ness" training. Saturday long runs included eight runs of 18 or more miles. Sunday runs ranged anywhere from 6-12 miles. Looking back at my log, I seem to have only missed 17 of the 115 scheduled runs during the 23 weeks which means I did 85% of the runs I was supposed to do. That's pretty darn good in my opinion.

The 50-mile training plans available online vary so much. Some have you running back-to-back long runs on the weekend (e.g., 20 miles on Saturday, 20 miles on Sunday). I think the thought behind this approach is that you train yourself to run long that second day to simulate the exhaustion you'll feel toward the latter part of the race. PHOOEY. Mandy and I both thought that that approach would SUCK since we'd basically be giving up most of our weekend. Instead of back-to-back long runs, we opted for the longer mid-week run. We did run three, back-to-back long runs over Labor Day weekend (25, 10, and 14 miles) to see how our legs felt after running a total of 50 miles over the span of a weekend. I personally didn't feel much more tired after Labor Day's run so I took that as a good sign.

After a few mishaps early in the training, I finally found a nutrition plan that worked and stuck with it. Basically, taking in a gel or 3-4 Gu Chomps every 30 minutes after the first hour of running. I think that works out to be somewhere in the range of 190-200 calories an hour. When it was convenient, I'd substitute a banana for a gel or Chomp to mix it up and just to eat real food. I decided to just drink water during the runs and skip the Gatorade. Before Saturday's run I'd also eat a bagel with peanut butter 1-2 hours before we actually started running. Post-run I'd either have Endurox or chocolate milk.

Other things I think I did right:      

• Buying a new pair of shoes about three weeks before the event and breaking them in over the course of 3-5 runs. My shoes felt bouncy, but broken in for Tussey.
• Not lifting at all the week before the event. For past events, I would just skip my leg workout the week before but this time, I decided to not lift at all. Not sure how much this helped physically, but I think it did help me sleep more since I wasn't worried about getting up to get to the gym. Which leads me to...
• Getting plenty of sleep the week before. I think I slept 8-10 hours the week leading up to Tussey.

As for things I could do better...

For Tussey, I probably could've gotten away with running fewer technical trails and instead run more hills (versus walking them). I did a couple hill workouts, but probably could have benefited from running more hills. Some of the hills at Tussey weren't so steep that they couldn't be run (remember the older gent who passed me?), but I didn't have the confidence to run more of them for fear that I'd bonk later on.