And just how am I supposed to train for an ultramarathon?

I’m running the Long Creek 60k in Virginia Beach, VA in 11 weeks. That is roughly 37 miles, and the longest distance I have attempted to run thus far. And I am super excited! I have no idea what to expect for a race of this magnitude. And while I love to run, A LOT, I am not used to racing this kind of mileage. The farthest I have run to date is the Seashore Nature Trail 50k, which was, three years ago. I have been competing in marathons for about 5 years, but ultrarunning on trails is a little bit different. And I like that, and am up for the challenge. My goals for this race are:

1. finish the race (because after all it is 38 miles….course is long)
2. finish around 5 hours (approximately an 8:00 min/mi)
3. podium finish (I have no idea if this is realistic, but I’m going for it!)

My training over the next 11 weeks will prepare me to fulfill these goals. Each week, I am going to focus on one aspect of my training to hone in on and perfect (i.e. nutrition, mental game, warmups etc.) and will address results in the following weeks blog post.

Currently, I have been working on building my base mileage. I took some recovery time after the Richmond Marathon in November and have been slowly rebuilding over the past six weeks. Recently, my focus has been increasing my fitness through mostly slow running with a few strides thrown in twice a week. I am at 50 miles a week now and increasing to about 100 miles/wk during peak. I have been doing this by increasing weekly mileage roughly 10%. Eventually, I will be adding speed work, but not quite yet. My weekend long runs are starting to increase in distance (30 miles over 2 days), so I thought this would be the perfect time to work on post run/workout recovery. I am probably the worst when it comes to recovery. Really meaning that I do none. I know this is bad, but I have three little boys and its hard for me to find time to run, nevermind do warmup stretches, drills, cool down, stretching, and recovery. But I need to make some time. This week, I am going to focus on foam rolling techniques, legs on wall and ice baths (cringe). Check back in next week to see if I lost feeling in my whole body or just my legs!

-S