I've been taken with the idea of running the Philly marathon this November. I'm a little late into the training cycle to do it gradually, but with a little luck and my body holding up I should be okay. I'm tired of training over the last few years with no races to show for it. My best memories of running in the last 5 years have all been the races I've done, despite loving the training and the communion with the Lord of life I find on my runs in the woods (which is the primary reason I run). My couple of attempts to run a marathon so far have been met with injury(due to changing my shoes in a training cycle) and getting pnuemonia (which I'm not sure I really had). I'm going to go for it, and see what happens.

Goal: OD 100 Cross Country Run

I have honed in my focus and I am going to be running the OD 100 next summer. It is in June so it's a hot and humid race. I have to qualify so I have to run a 50 miler in the time limit set prior to registering, so that will be my short term goal and focus. Right now I am just trying to build my fitness and volume of training. I will talk a bit about the structure of my training in a moment. I have copied the elevation profile and the list of the significant hills in the course. I will be training these most likely on the treadmill over the winter and spring as I can control the grade and distance and I don't know of any hills other than the Wiss. and those hills are not long enough. Maybe I'll look around but the treadmill is my plan at this point. Here is the list of the hills and there grade, as well as an elevation profile:

Climb	Start	End	Length	Start Elev	End Elev	Avg Grade
Cat 2	4.20 mi	6.88 mi	2.67 mi	715 ft	1,743 ft	7.3%
Cat 3	9.64 mi	11.26 mi	1.63 mi	1,178 ft	1,740 ft	6.5%
Cat 5	17.87 mi	18.88 mi	1.01 mi	946 ft	1,116 ft	3.2%
Cat 5	28.64 mi	29.29 mi	0.64 mi	1,052 ft	1,129 ft	2.3%
Cat 3	31.66 mi	33.71 mi	2.05 mi	1,211 ft	1,746 ft	5.0%
Cat 2	35.69 mi	39.95 mi	4.27 mi	1,357 ft	2,530 ft	5.2%
Cat 2	47.41 mi	52.79 mi	5.39 mi	1,279 ft	2,244 ft	3.4%
Cat 3	55.79 mi	57.45 mi	1.66 mi	1,827 ft	2,337 ft	5.8%
Cat 5	70.01 mi	70.87 mi	0.86 mi	1,116 ft	1,270 ft	3.4%
Cat 2	73.78 mi	75.54 mi	1.76 mi	819 ft	1,711 ft	9.6%
Cat 2	78.89 mi	82.01 mi	3.12 mi	607 ft	1,576 ft	5.9%
Cat 3	87.54 mi	90.87 mi	3.33 mi	943 ft	1,744 ft	4.5%

It looks like the significant climbs are the first and second, and 5-7, with the final 10-12 being shorter but steep. 11 and 12 are both 3 miles.

   To train for this, I'm going to shoot for running a 50. If I can do that without walking, I should be good to go for the OD at a slower pace. To run the 50, I will follow a marathon program but with longer long runs. I am using a pace based formula with a loosely structure plan where I do a few key workouts per week with recovery runs in between and 1 day off for total rest. Right now it's 1 hill day (though I may switch this with some speed work just to make the rest of the running feel easier), 1 tempo day, and the long run. I've been following this for 3-4 weeks, and I'm starting to feel the effects. I feel good, and my recovery runs are keeping my hr real low, which indicates growth in my aerobic transport system. My pace on my recovery runs wants to go fast too, and I have to reign it in a little, which is another good sign. My knees are a bit achy due to doing too much too soon (look at my log. In one month I went from 0-35 miles per week; not recommended, though I do have a good base of fitness). 0, 25, 30, 35, 32 (back off week). Tomorrow I will shoot for a 12 or 13 mile long run, maybe foolishly, we'll see. I'll check in tomorrow to see how I feel. I need to beef up my road shoes I think as my nueromas are hurting. Looking for a good road shoe. I'm a bit worried too as to whether my trail shoes have enough cushioning as I think 40% of the OD takes place on fire roads. My man Dean runs in one kind of shoe, regardless of terrain, which I might adopt too. I'm enjoying the loose structure of my training and the simple approach of pace based training as it keeps me from obsessing about hr etc... Seeing the quick adaptations in my body i realize I have wasted lots of training and racing  time over the last 5 years having bought into Van Aaken and Maffetone low hr training. It takes too long and is unnecessary. It's a good, albeit very conservative approach to building fitness but I do not have the patience, especially as there are quicker, just as safe, effective means to the same end. All that is to say I want to get a pair of shoes, and stop thinking about them, and just run, wherever my feet take me, road or trail. The 50K and 50 miler will be good tests as to the sufficiency of my current shoes, unless I change before them. We'll see. I have my eyes on a pair of Saucony's but can't find any good reviews on them. I forget the name. I haven't chosen the 50K or 50 miler yet but am looking to the spring, maybe more than one 50 as I need to do one early enough to be able to register for OD, which means I'll have to do a couple to keep my fitness up. Maybe after the official one I'll do a treadmill 50 with the hills in there !!!! That's seems a bit ambitious (read crazy). We'll see. So there is the general plan. Now the trick is to maintain my focus without becoming obsessed, and being consistent. I think my plan is a good one, and I'm stoked to do my first 100. I am getting too old to do well, so I am really focused and honed in on getting as fit as possible to run as much as possible to really give a good effort. Just to finish is not good enough, though I know this is always the first timers goal. I have enough knowledge to know what to do, and heart. It will come down to being mentally disciplined, consistent in my training, and heart. Let the fun begin!

Mid week:

I ran a tough hill workout on Tuesday, then yesterday a tougher than expected 1 hour run due to not having my training philosophy squared away. I read on the blogosphere some more and after reading on the McMillan running site, and the irunfar site (one of the authors of which contributes to the latter for ultra training info and is a good ultra runner) I've decided I will be doing a modified pace based system, including key workouts such as speed (though this will likely be the first to go), stamina, and long runs. In light of my ultra goals, I will most likely do hills as speed work and tempo runs for the stamina while focusing on volume and long runs as much as possible, both of which will be run at slower paces, though not the low hr's (I don't think; still ambiguity there in my thinking) that accompany Mitteman and Maffetone. I say ambiguity above because the hr's associated with the paces prescribed in the system adhere to the same parameters of Van Aaken/Maff/Mittleman for recovery runs. Fitzgerald provides the structure for my schedule and I will use that as a foundation and compare his system with McMillans. I like McMillans because it's loose. He has some great articles on his site on how to construct a training regime, assessing your strengths, weaknesses, and goals as well as target race and structuring your training accordingly. I do this informally, but it's nice to see it in print and have a system for doing it. I will be outlining my goals and schedule out my training in another post soon. Loosely, I want to run a hundred next summer and fall, or next summer OR fall. That means some interim 50K's and 50 milers. I'll update soon. I'm also going to try and post some picture from my local locales as soon as I take the time to download them out of my phone. See ya.

    Early Saturday morning I went for a "long run" once again. I got up early, made some expresso, and prepared my gear. I strapped on a headlight, dug out a little hand held flashlight, and got dressed. I chose not to bring any food or drink as I was only going for two hours. I also chose to stay close to home for the same reason. I didn't see the need to go to the Wiss jsut for a two hour run. Also, I wanted to get in more distance before I start  hitting the hills on my long runs as I have to walk them, thus cutting my distance, if I want to keep my long runs low intensity. I was also eager to keep exploring this trail as I haven't run the whole thing yet. The other day I ran North on the trail, having to cross a creek, but quickly had to turn around due to running out of time. So I ran on the Green Ribbon trail close to my home. I can get on the trail in about a quarter mile from my house. If I wanted, I could link up to the AT and theoretically go all the way to Maine or Georgia. But I digress.
    Tonight had a full moon, but it was a little cloudy, limiting the ight a bit. It was still light out though, with a beautiful silvery light bathing the woods and path. It was fairly cool, low 70's I think, and humid.  I'm not going to give a blow by blow of the run. It was great to be back in the woods again at night. All of the old associations of getting ready and running by my light just resonated within me and made the whole experience just wonderful. There is something very peaceful about running in the woods at night. I tried to focus in on the sound of the crickets throughout the woods around me as I ran, which is a sound I always associate with summer Younglife camp in Frontier Ranch in Colorado. I bought a tape there by a local artist that was so peaceful. One of the songs had an intro on it that was just crickets which then soft guitar music slowly began to play over. I remember the name of the song: Hill Counrty Crickets. I regrettably taped Pink Floyd's The Wall over it and then threw it away about 15 years ago.
   I ran along in silence, enjoying the night. I crossed the creek again, the only creek crossing on the trail not supplied with stepping stones for crossing, and ran on into the part of the trail that was new to me. At one point, I got off the trail and got turned around. I was only off trail for maybe two to three minutes but I started to get scared as everything looked the same to me. It's a bit irrational to be scared, but I still get bothered by thoughts of ghouls and ghosts and such in the dark in the woods at night, making my hairs stand up. Shows like Ghost Adventures don't help, which I often watch on the weekends the night before as I'm falling asleep. I found the trail in  a few minutes and started running again. However, I had gotten so turned around that I was running in the wrong direction, back the way I had just come! I realized my error pretty quickly and turned around. I saw where I had gotten off track and kept on going in the right direction. In a few minutes I reached the point at which I would be turning around. Here was RT. 202, the furtherest I had run from the opposite direction, linking up the every section of the trail now that I had run. At some point I will run the whole trail in a Fat Ass event, probably in the late winter for a 50K. I turned around and headed home. I saw a lot of wildlife on this run; two raccoons, a deer, couple of huge slugs, and a bat that flew past my ear making fluttering noises. I typically see bats, but never so close. They tend to swoop down into my cone of light and scare me, but never has one flown so closely to my head. I don't often see raccoons either, which was kind of neat.
    I am disappointed with how much speed I have lost in such a short period of time. I guess cigars and gaining 10 pounds and going off the vegan diet coupled with weight lifting will all add up to hurting endurance and aeorbic function. Oh well. I'll keep trying to look forward and and not back and keep training while dropping my weight back down and building my endurance.
    Overall this was a real nice reintroduction of my early morning long runs in the woods.