Eugene Marathon/ 50 Miler RUNdown Week 8: 2/11-2/17

Happy Humpday! I’ve got my speedwork on the treadmill this morning, then hoping to get in the rest of my runs this week outside (if the weather cooperates!). How’s the weather where you are? I have no energy left to continue to dress in a million layers, with my spikes outside anymore. I’m perfectly content with just holing up on the treadmill and catching up on shows at the moment. I really do miss those perfect running temps and none-slippery surfaces though….

I ran 50 miles again last week and this is my last week before I have a cut-back recovery week! Yay! I’m feeling strong, focusing on getting a bunch of sleep, and refueling with GOOD nutrients!

Monday, 2/11: 5.3 miles easy at 11:20 851’ up & yoga to recover

Tuesday, 2/12: planned 7 miles @ tempo, but plantar fasciitis was not having it so cut it after 4.5 miles and got in extra strength.

Wednesday, 2/13: 6.15 miles easy @ 9:35 322’ up / yoga. Followed by the best dessert out there. Popcorn & Justin’s Dark Chocolate PB Cups.

Thursday, 2/14: Rest day! Went skiing!

Friday, 2/16: 14 miles split into 2 runs (7.3 miles in the AM / 6.75 miles in the afternoon/ strength to recover). I wanted to get it in all in the AM, but had the kitties vet appointment and ya know- life happens! So I adjusted and got it into two runs. Total elevation gain was over 1, 500’. Also YAY for muddy un-covered legs. Even though it was only one day, I know that spring is just around the corner!

Saturday, 2/17: 12 miles easy @ 10:02 pace with 150’ up. Another blizzard, another treadmill.

Sunday, 2/18: 8 miles with 1.5 warm-up / 3 x 1 miles (7:24 / 7:11 / 6:58) with .37 recovery between sets then 2 x 1 mi @ 5% incline at 8:48 pace? / then cool down until I hit 8 miles. Felt incredibly strong and I think I could have gone faster on those mile repeats, but happy with the results! 15 minutes of strength beforehand.

Total Mileage: 50.01 miles

Total Elevation gain: 2, 823’ up

Eugene Marathon/ 50 Miler Training RUndown Week 5: 1/21-1/27

Happy Humpday! I’m so glad we’re already halfway through this week. It’s getting close to our yurt trip and I’m so excited. I also just can’t wait for a few days off.

Monday, 1/21: 5.30 miles easy @ 11:40 pace with 838’ up. I definitely felt super tired & sluggish on this run, but was really surprised at the amount of elevation I gained. I’m starting to get stronger with those hills!

Tuesday, 1/22: 30 minutes of strength & 1.5 mi warm-up / 6 miles @ goal marathon effort (8:20) / 1.5 mi cool down. 9 miles total. originally had some 1k repeats on the schedule, but decided that this morning felt like a good one to get my tempo run in and I’m glad I did. I started out at a conservative pace (8:41) and bumped it up from there until my last mile was under 8 minute pace! All done at 0.5% incline and on the treadmill since it was an icy mess outside.

Wednesday, 1/23: REST DAY!

Thursday, 1/24: another snow day! 8 easy miles on the treadmill

Friday, 1/25: ANOTHER snow day! I did this speedwork on my treadmill at home (it’s not the best for going fast, but I made do). 5 x 1k with 400m Recovery between sets & 1.5 mi warmup & cool down. 7.5 miles & then strength work afterwards

Saturday, 1/26: 6 easy miles!

Sunday, 1/27: strength & followed by my longest run since July! 15 miles on a mix of snow covered trails & then slush-filled roads

Total Mileage: 50.82 miles!

Total Elevation Gain: 2,171’ up

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I Can't Wait For This, A New Tradition, & Effort vs Pace?

Happy Friday-eve! While I anticipated that this week was going to move at snail-speed, I honestly cannot believe that tomorrow is Friday. I can’t wait for the weekend- we’re planning to go ski at a new-to-me mountain here in Colorado! Yay! I love a good adventure. I’m also equally excited for Spring- it’s felt warm(er) here (aka it’s getting to the low 30’s during the day here) and I can’t wait to get out on some trails to explore again! Spring races cannot come soon enough. Plus, I also can’t wait to not take an extra 15 minutes putting on all layers, shoe cleats, mittens, hats, hand-warmers. Going out for an early morning winter run takes so much work. Honestly that’s why I also really love the treadmill in the winter- ha. It’s so freeing to just run with shorts and a t-shirt.

I have incorporated a new habit before my harder weekday runs- getting up a bit earlier to enjoy some coffee while watching the news and cuddling under my heated blanket. It really is so fantastic and honestly worth it to get up a bit earlier. Anyone else do this or am I just crazy getting up at 4am rather than 4:30 just to snuggle downstairs instead of in my bed?

I also hit all of my paces on my speedwork on Tuesday and have a 6-mile goal marathon pace effort run this morning with a 1.5 mile warm-up and 1.5 mile cool-down. I’ve switched my mentality from having it be a “pace-specific” run to an “effort-specific” run because maybe it’s icy outside or maybe there’s a few hills or maybe I’m just a bit off today, BUT if I’m still getting to the effort (aka what marathon pace should feel like with my body) then I consider it a success. It’s all about working on that mindset for me this training cycle. Plus I’m reading this book (finally got it after being on the library waitlist for over 7 weeks!) and loving how she describes building her confidence.

Alex and I had a lunch date yesterday at Winona’s (they literally have the BEST buffalo chicken salad in town) and it was amazing. We used to do this all the time when we first started dating, but since living together it hasn’t been as often. I’m so glad we got to enjoy their salads again.

Also Stella had a very healthy lunch yesterday as well.

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Marathon Pace vs marathon effort- what do you think?

Best lunch spot where you live?

What’s the last book you read?

Eugene Marathon Training Week 2 RUNdown 12/31-1/6!

Back to above 40 miles per week! Also last week was SO COLD. Multiple negative temperature mornings, which meant getting a bit creative with when I could fit my runs in. I did my best to run outside when I can, but I generally do not run outside when it’s below 5* (give or take). I also have determined that it takes FOREVER to get all those layers/ stabil icers on my sneakers/ hats/ mittens/ hand warmers on, so sometimes sheer laziness wins out and I hit the treadmill. What can I say- somedays it’s just pretty nice to wear just a sports bra, shorts, and binge watch some Gilmore Girls. I’m human.

just too cold to really be doing anything besides cuddling with the cats and heated blanket.

Also got a belated Christmas gift from my mom- looove these lush bath bombs. I’m trying not to use them all at once (also trying not to take a bath every single night to save on our water bill, but it’s HARD because cold temperatures + soothing warm water + great smelling bath soaps = baths are so necessary).

It’s finally starting to quiet down a bit at work (so needed), but I also found that taking a runch break last week really helped de-stress me. Most days I’m unable to take a lunch break (due to teaching skating lessons in the afternoons), but when I can get out it feels pretty amazing. Let’s recap last week shall we?

Monday, 12/31: planned 6 miles easy, but wanted to get in a good ‘end of the year mileage number’ so I ended up with 6.81 miles at 10:45 pace on the treadmill because I just re-did my treadmill run and wanted to take advantage of it!

Tuesday, 1/1: planned 1.5 mi warm-up, 12 x 400m, 1.5 mi cool down, but actually did my strength and then called it a rest day. I was feeling really exhausted and had the complete day off of work so just decided to take advantage of it and listen to my body. It was amazing and so glad I did that. Not every run needs to be perfect and sometimes listening to your body will do wonders.

Wednesday, 1/2: planned rest day, but since I took my rest day on Tuesday I ended up doing 1/2 mi warm-up, 5 miles at goal marathon pace effort (because it was 5* outside at 2pm) 8:38 pace, 1/2 mi cool-down. Avg pace was 8:54 78’ up & also fit in some yoga. Felt pretty good until close to the end of the run, where I got so cold I had to check to make sure my nose didn’t fall off. Don’t worry it was still there.

Thursday, 1/3: 1/2 mi warm up, 5 miles goal marathon pace, 1/2 mi cool down, but did that yesterday so I stuck with 8.06 miles easy at 10:13 548’ elevation gain over my lunch break! Also fit in my strength (started a new strength routine on Tuesday and will stick with it until March then do a whole new one to prevent becoming stagnant) that morning before work. Sunshine + hills + 20* weather felt incredible.

Friday, 1/4: 12-14 miles easy, but had my first back-to-back long runs on schedule so to the treadmill it was (considering how it was -5* outside and I could only fit it in early in the AM)! Goal was anywhere from 12-14 miles and ended up with 12.5 miles. I varied the incline from 1% for the first 60 minutes then rotated through 1% -> 2% -> 3% rolling hills for the next 55 minutes. 9:40 avg pace. Also working on my nutrition! I tried out Huma Gels and LOVED them. I’ve got some Spring Energy gels coming too to test out. I also have found that sweet potatoes right before a run makes me feel AMAZING. I’m going to try out some sweet potato toast with almond butter before my runs this week and will let you know how it goes.

Saturday, 1/5: 4 miles easy- ended up with 4.10 miles easy at 10:31 453’ elevation gain. We went snowshoeing in the morning (great crosstraining) and my butt was SO sore from my incline treadmill the day before/ hiking in the morning.

Sunday, 1/6: 1.5 mi warm-up, 12 x 400 (400R), 1.5 mi cool-down & strength- 1.5 mi warm-up, did my strength, did 6 x 400 then called it because I felt my knee starting to feeling a bit not so great (and our treadmill isn’t the best for speedwork), .75 mi cool down. I came up short, but I’ll get it next week!

Total Mileage: 42.74 miles

Total Elevation gain: 1, 079’ up

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Favorite Bath bomb scents or bubble bath?! I’m obsessed.

Coldest temperature you’d head out for a run? Am I a big baby over here?

Favorite crosstraining activity?

Training Tuesday: How I Managed To Stay Up All Night And Pace a 100 Mile Race

Keeping a schedule when your schedule has been CRAZY is so difficult. I’m going to try my best to get up early to get my runs in, but I know that if I choose to sleep in then I’ll find a way to get my runs in later (that’s training for you, right?!?). I also really don’t want to get sick, so I’ll listen to my body and honor it. So let’s dive right into my recap of my pacing for the Run Rabbit Run 100 mile race!

I was contacted about a month ago from a past MS Run The US relay runner asking if I would be interested in pacing someone for the 100 miler and I love to take advantage of opportunities so I said sure (having no idea how many miles I’d commit to or who this person was that I’d be pacing)! I ended up emailing with the runner, Kristen, who was ALSO a past MS Run The US relay alum and I knew I had to help her out. This would be her first 100 mile race and her biggest goal was to just finish (but also shooting for the 30 hour time goal so somewhere between 14-18 min/mile). I thought that I could definitely keep her around her goal pace and knew that pacers were allowed after the 50.7 mile marker (not before), so I offered to pace her during the overnight portion from mile 50.7-70.1 (I knew the trail systems pretty well on Emerald and Spring Creek so running them overnight was scary, but completely terrifying).

I also knew that my biggest challenge if I were ever to do a 100 miler would be the overnight portion, so I wanted to help her along during the darkest hours (despite the fact that it meant that I would have to stay up way past my bedtime ; ) ….). SO fast-forward to race day last Friday!

Kristen’s mom texted me throughout the day letting me know how she was doing and I anticipated meeting up with Kristen sometime between 7:30-9:30pm at Olympian Hall. I kept tracking her online and while the tracker sometimes didn’t seem to work super well, I saw that she was totally rocking it so far (staying in the top 75!). I was so confident that Maybe we’d start before it even got dark out and finish by 1am or so! That sounded perfect. Well, it didn’t exactly go that way.

Just chilling in my car before she came into Olympian! Read some of my book and closed my eyes for a bit!

I’ve never paced anyone (did I mention that yet?), but with my past experience volunteering at the RRR several years in a row and with the relay this year I had a pretty good idea of what a pacers duties were (plus Kristen and I talked on the phone beforehand just getting a general idea of what she would need from me to help her reach her goal). I waited around in my car from 7:30-9:30pm until I finally heard from Kristen’s mom saying that she had left Dry Lake at 8:20 and anticipated it taking her two hours before reaching Olympian Hall (yikes!). I shortly found her family (her support crew!) hanging outside at Olympian at 10pm and heard that Kristen was starting to struggle at Dry Lake (which would explain why the 6.2 miles were anticipated to take her ~30 minutes longer than I would think). She also didn’t have her headlamp or warm clothes yet, so I was worried!

so pretty. so blurry. so zero dark thirty.

She arrived into Olympian at 10:30pm (first time meeting her in person!) and changed, got her some soup, and then we were off! She was definitely starting to struggle a bit and the entire first 5 miles on Emerald are up hill, so we mostly hiked (saw a porcupine!) and got to know each other a bit. She confessed that she really hadn’t eaten anything most of the day, so I tried to get her to eat some Honey Stinger chews and reminded her to drink water every 15 minutes or so. At this point I knew that it was going to be a long night and just prepared myself. It wasn’t too chilly at this point (maybe 50s?).

Once we arrived at the first check in point at Lane of Pain, Kristen was definitely starting to struggle, but I tried to keep her mental game strong (the best I could do!) and once she refueled a bit we climbed up higher and then made the turn onto Stairway to Heaven and looped back around to the second check in point at Lane of Pain. At this point, she was experiencing a bit of nausea and dizziness so we slowed our pace a bit. I managed to get some more food in her and we were off heading towards the bottom of Emerald for 5.2 miles!

Runners all around! Sorry for the blurry photos - turns out taking photos in the middle of the night on a trail is pretty difficult

It was a slow descent and she would experience waves of feeling strong (mentally) and then completely down (mentally). It was really hard for me to find a good balance of staying positive, but also understanding (I’m such a positive polly to begin with! plus I still was trying to feel out how far I could push her before she broke…ahhh the wonderful duties of pacers!).

The lights and views of Steamboat below as we descended were so beautiful, I tried to take as many mental pictures as possible. At several points, I definitely heard some animals pretty close by, but I just chose to keep moving forward and to not look (ha - not sure if that is the best tactic or not?!?). Kristen started mentioning that she may be thinking of dropping out when we got to the bottom of Emerald (back at Olympian Hall) because she was pretty frustrated that she couldn’t go any faster and was getting passed quite a bit. I completely understood, but also tried to remind her that her biggest goal was to just finish and that it was dark so that could also account for her slowest miles too. I felt pretty bad that I couldn’t do anymore and just tried to keep a good pace and chat every-so-often with her to get her mind off of the pain (not sure if it was annoying or if it helped?).

With a mile left to go on Emerald, it got SO COLD. There was definitely a major inversion going on and I had taken off my ear warmers and mittens earlier because it was so warm, but we both could not get warm (so glad we both had the extra layers to pop on - they were a lifesaver!). We got back to Olympian Hall sometime around 3:30am. I thought for sure that Kristen may not want to continue on, but after 20 minutes and some soup, cheese and crackers, and coca cola, she was ready to go.

I was feeling pretty good (tired, but not nearly as exhausted as I anticipated) and happy that she wanted to keep going! The next mile or so went by pretty fast (it’s along the Core Trail and then lower Spring Creek), but it got super chilly out (we had to keep moving to stay warm!). After the first 1.5 miles, Kristen started to slow down pretty considerably. She was wanting to take a nap beside the trail (It was so cold and I was really adamant on her to keep moving because I was worried that if she took a nap and got too cold she wouldn’t be able to keep going and then we’d be stuck on the trail) and at some points her sentences were definitely incoherent. I just kept pushing forward at a considerable pace (but close enough to her so she could follow and I could hear her if she stopped at any point).

I tried to get her to eat something with caffeine (which didn’t really seem to help too much) and we just kept putting one foot in front of the other. She definitely started hallucinating a bit, which was pretty scary for me because not knowing her too well I had no idea what I would do if she hit her breaking point. I tried not to think about that and just enjoy the scenery. The sun was starting to come up and I was so thankful that we had made it through the night and also got to experience the upper portion of Spring Creek in the light! The fall colors were spectacular and around 6am, Kristen started making more coherent sentences and I was so relieved. I texted her mom letting her know that it would be around 7am when we’d arrive at Dry Lake (we originally anticipated it being around 6:30ish).

Tired and not the cutest face, but look at Kristen rocking it!

so beautiful.

Here she comes!

I know at one point, she was very hesitant to keep going after Dry Lake (she would be without a pacer for the next 31 miles until the finish), but to my surprise after 20 minutes at the aid station she was ready! I so badly wanted to keep going with her, but the way the course was this year I would have to do the next 31 miles with her (no other points for crewing or pacing to drop off because it was so remote) and I didn’t think that was in my physical capabilities.

almost to Dry Lake!

It was so exciting to watch her head off and I kept tracking her throughout the remainder of the day (both excited and nervous - hoping that everything was going OK). She ended up having a small difficulty the last 5 miles of the race but finished 17 minutes under the 36-hour cut-off for her first 100-miler! I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to help her reach her goal and it really challenged me in so many (good) ways! I learned so much about myself in those 8 hours on the trails in the dark and highly recommend anyone thinking of pacing to DO IT! Life-changing experience for sure.

I think I got my step count in for Saturday (ha) and the funniest part? It reset at midnight so I got way more than 40k steps in!

Have you ever paced an ultra? How was it?!?!

Ever ran an ultra?!? How far? What was it like???