It's Wedenesday, August 7th. It’s been a big training year; it’s been a good training year. Since January 1st, I’ve run/hiked 1,022 miles and climbed by running/hiking/mountain biking/ski mountaineering 206,650 feet. The Ridge Run is Saturday; my training is at an end. I’ve done the tapering. All that remains is to stretch and rest.
My buildup over the course of the past 7-months has been pretty smooth, though not without its bumps--mostly back and foot issues. I’ve been more confident in my efforts this year. I’ve got zone training pretty well dialed in. Last year, when I was learning zone training, I regularly turned to “The Uphill Athlete,” and a variety of internet sources for advice. This year, I’ve been working much more by feel. Last year, I struggled to run slowly to build up my aerobic conditioning; this year, slow running is just what I do. I don’t even think about what the neighbors might say anymore as I trudge around, “Oh, I figured he’d be dead by now, but he still seems be moving, or is he.”
I’ve begun to work on a blog entry about what I’ve learned from 2-years of zone training, so I’ll save the details for that. For now, I’ll just make a point about things that I think really helped me keep going. The backpacking trips I’ve done and the day long trek to climb Granite Peak were psychologically uplifting. I’m only in two running races this year: the Old Gabe 30K back in June and the Ridge Run. The 3 backpacking trips along with the day long trek have been important intermediate payoffs for my training. Without the training, I couldn’t have pulled off these trips at my age; having trips on my schedule provided additional motivation to keep building up miles and vertical.
Overall, I feel great. Sure, it’s been way HOT outside for much of July and that added heat stress to general training stress which wore me down more. I came up short on miles in July, only 190, I wanted to match my 240 from last year, but I dramatically increased my July climbing from 38,600 feet last July, to 50,000 feet this July. The extra climbing and was in part due to the big vertical in my Enchaining the Bridgers and Granite Peak trips, but also due to the heat that had me running under the shade of trees in the mountains instead of out on roads. I try and run roads 3-4 days a week and trails 1-2 days, as I find road runs less taxing. But with the heat I spent many more days in the mountains, and that meant more climbing and fewer miles.
I also strained my back in early July. Pain that resulted from Enchaining the Bridgers highlighted that something was missing from my stretching workouts. I hadn’t been stretching my thoracic spine. It was tight and for a few days it felt like I had torn whatever muscle/ligament/fascia lies in the space between two of my ribs. A couple of trips to the PT to get the problem identified and addressed followed by trips to the gym to stretch and strengthen my upper back seem to be doing the trick. I had to take 4 days off, which also impacted my mileage total for the month.
The forecast for the Ridge Run looks spectacular. So, after all this work, what am I expecting for Ridge Run day. Mostly, I am hoping for a good night of sleep the night before, so that I don’t have dead legs for the race. If all goes as well as could be expected I would like to do the run in under 6 hours. If I break 5:54:50, it will be my fastest Ridge Run ever. That would be amazing given that I did my first Ridge Run 8 years ago. But if I don’t go that fast, and I just have an enjoyable run, maybe find some folks to talk with like I did last year, I think that will be enough.
Maybe it's that I am, finally, mellowing somewhat with age. Maybe it's that with the trips I've completed, and the trips I have planned, I feel like I am getting enough in return for all my training even without great success in the Ridge Run. I'm happy to just keep being able to be out Raging While I'm Aging.
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