Ever Hear of MIDOL??

Freakishly weird...a gorgeous day on Saturday for the HAT run, and now this:

Not enough to shovel, but again???

And today it is a balmy 35 degrees with crazy wind and it is MARCH 26th.  At this point I can only hope that for Umstead, good old Mother Nature doesn't slam me with a mixed up version of what she has been providing all winter and mistakenly send snow the weekend I run 100 miles.

Maybe this is Mother Nature's problem....

 Whatever, I intend to pack my car with everything I can possibly need for all four seasons and give my crew some long distance training as they run back and forth to my car.  Luckily, with 7 trips through the start somewhat near the parking area, that might be really what they have to do.

If the weather was somewhat more predictable, I might feel more confident in my packing skills, but the worse thing imaginable would be making my way through dark woods at 3:00 a.m. and being freezing cold.  Or roasting hot.  Both could happen.  So I will keep checking the 10 day forecast and adding things to my bags.  Or taking things out.  Maybe I am the one who needs medication!

Ultra Brain + Grading Papers = Hilarious

Mental Note  #1:  Don't grade student essays less than 12 hours after finishing a 50K.
Mental Note  #2:  Don't try to keep mental notes 12 hours after finishing a 50K

The day was heavenly.  It was my 4th running of the HAT run in Havre deGrace, Maryland and I was so happy!  After a well documented horrible winter, my lucky long run streak continued with the most fabulous weather and trail conditions.  It was as if someone had flipped a "spring" switch and suddenly all the months of snow, ice and freezing temperatures were long gone.  The smell of onion grass was strong as we ran through the first field area.  I was already planning the logistics of losing my light jacket, long sleeve shirt, and gloves at our first pass through the pavilion at mile 4.

I met my wonderful running buddies at 6:30 and we began the drive to the Susquehanna State Park.  Once again Coach assured us getting there in plenty of time (with 90 minutes to spare....WHAT??) but that was okay since he has heated seats in the back and they were oh so cozy!

We'll never forget you, old Team Bus (but damn, those heated seats are sweet!)

After packet pickup and a little milling around, we all sat in the luxurious team bus to await the start. At the last possible moment, Nanette and I left our butt warmers for a pre-race pit stop and timed it perfectly, leaving us only 5 minutes shivering at the start.  Once the call was sounded, we took off through a grassy field and the adventure began.

This was to be my last long run before Umstead and that fact kept me so happy throughout the entire day.  This was a double loop course with an extra 3+ loop at the beginning, and I am beginning to think I kind of like multiple loop runs (good for me since Umstead is 8 loops repeated)!!  There is something nice, comforting even, in knowing what comes next and it certainly makes the course easier to break into manageable sections.  Point to point does have the advantage of an adventure, so I guess there are arguments for both.  But on this day, after 10 weeks of running 20-30 miles every weekend, comfortable and predictable was exactly what I needed.

Once I stripped down to the bare minimum of shorts,  and a sleeveless tee shirt, I felt perfect well past 23 miles.  Cruising along, I made sure to bomb the downhills, since Coach reminded us they were a gift and not to get all ultra-shuffle-y on them.  Eating, drinking and taking s-caps were the order of the day, and I followed my same nutrition plan that has been serving me well throughout the winter.  There was one point where I took an s-cap that didn't make my tummy too happy, so I quickly chased it down with a banana and walked for a bit, and felt much better.  Since the aid station soon followed, I asked for a cup of ice, and chewed on that as I walked the steep uphills.  This worked perfectly and I will have to remember to make sure my crew has plenty of ice for Umstead!  An absolute highlight of this trail is this glorious tree:

Creative carvings for sure....

It reminds me of the Tree of Life from Disney World, so I knew I would have to stop and get a picture.
I debated taking other pictures, but really, I was having so much fun in the moment that I didn't want to spend any time behind the lens of the camera when I could see all that was right there in front of me.  The river was beautiful, small hints of spring were evident and the trail was just in such great shape that running was much easier than in a lot of late stage 50Ks, especially when 350+ runners have already traversed it twice. So I left my phone in my pack and just kept going!

Coming up to the finish was so nice, and as I collected my glass, towel, and really sweet neon yellow hat, I was reminded that this was it...the hard stuff was done.

Sweet HAT swag

Holy Shit, after training for 6 months, I have almost made it to the starting line of my first 100.  And this realization, plus the normal "after Ultra high" made it nearly impossible to sleep that night so I decided to just get up (way too early) and grade college essays.  Looking back later in the day at the comments  I made on student papers, I can't figure out half of what I wrote.  I wrote "aslo" instead of "also" and "inprotant" (which I can only assume was meant to say "important".)  Hopefully I have recovered enough to make sense in this post, but just attribute any errors to "ultra brain!" 12 days to UMSTEAD!

#Long Run #Sliding Board #Snow

Maybe now that my long runs are finished, it will finally stop snowing.  As has been the case ALL winter (really, since December), whenever I do a long run, it is quickly followed by a huge snowfall.  This is good and bad.  Good because the snow comes after the long run, and bad because the last thing I want to do after running 20-30 miles is haul out the shovel. 
This is how beautiful it looked on Saturday, when the temperature was 61 degrees and only the last bit of snow remained:

This is what it  looks like today, just two days later:

I would swear it was April Fool's Day rather than St. Patrick's Day.  But then again, it should come as no surprise, since this has been the MO this winter.
But its okay, since I finished my last long run, and have just the HAT run to complete before I head to Umstead!!!  I finally feel like I can say it out loud, since it looks like it is really going to happen!   For so long I just kept waiting for something to derail my plan, but it has been strangely calm and steady.  Last week I tested my mental capacity as well as my legs by planning a 30 mile route that included some trails but more roads, and then went out by myself and finished it!  Running for six and a half hours with no aid stations and no company proved to me that I am tough enough to just keep going and moving forward - the last piece in the puzzle to up my confidence for what I am about to do.

And this past Saturday, I was treated to a delightful 20 miler with a sweet friend who made the miles fly, treated me to some gorgeous scenery of my favorite mountains, and even took me by way of an historic wooden sliding board.  Of course we diverted from the route long enough to take a slick ride down the polished boards!  So fun!

Waxed wood + running tights = super fast!

Probably should have cropped out the graffiti on this one

So now the tapering begins.  I will still run one last 50K, but after all this time on the road, I am so looking forward to a day of purely trails in the company of my friends.  And then I will spend two weeks resting, eating, and obsessively planning and packing. 

Shoes....shirts....headlamps....gu....wait...did I put shoes on here???

This might be harder than the actual training.

Cold Butt and Self Control

Can you guess what this is?

Does the Gatorade Recovery Drink give you a clue?

Its how I have been recovering from my longer runs.  So much better than sitting in an ice bath, and as long as the snow is here, I will make good use of it.  This was especially helpful for my butt and hamstrings, although I was numb for a while.

Anything to keep healthy, that's what I am all about.  In a column she wrote for Runner's World,  Lauren Fleshman talks about the dangers of feeling really good in your training.  I especially like this:

"The better things are going, the more invincible you feel.   Keep getting better and you keep getting crazier."

This is how I am feeling right now and frankly, it is almost worse than being injured.  Feeling good leads to making really stupid choices, and with just 4 weeks to go until my race, I cannot afford to do that.  I am no stranger to these invincible feelings.  Just two years ago, and only two days before a race that I had trained well for, I decided to go to the gym and "just work my upper body."  I thought that if I just stuck with my arms, what could happen?  Well, a couple hours later I was madly searching google for orthopedic surgeons who could repair a ruptured bicep muscle.  Needless to say, I did not make that race.

This time though, I am not taking any chances.  While I feel amazing, and even though I have an obsession about making sure I am doing everything I can to be successful at Umstead, I do realize that part of that is not doing too much.  I have a busy weekend ahead of me that will include two very long days at work and a 30 mile run.  And even though I am feeling so good, I am fighting the urge to go out and "just do a little more."  At the end of the day, I would rather be adequately trained and healthy rather than overtrained an injured.  And there are worse things...

Give. Me. Food.

I am starving.  All the time.   Even though I am trying to maintain my healthy eating habits, I have really been messing up lately.  As in I have forbidden anyone from bringing peanut m&m's into my house.  My self- control is really that bad.

Devils in disguise

I know that the amount of running I am doing torches lots of calories, and I know I will be a better runner if I replace those calories, but I am just not use to eating this much.  On my 20 mile run yesterday I ate honey stingers, an entire pack of peanut butter crackers, some stinger shots, and a couple mini snickers.  Yeah.  And that was after a great breakfast.  But I have noticed that I run so much better when I eat.  All these years of running marathons on a pack of sports beans and half a banana.  How dumb.

Now the challenge is to strike the right balance between what I can and can't eat.  Some things are much more tummy friendly on the run than others, and unfortunately for me, they are not the same things every run.  What works one day might not the next.  And since I can't take a suitcase with me on the trail, I have to give a lot of thought as to what usually works most of the time.

Do they make shoulder straps for this?

So far I am having great success with any of the Stinger stuff, mixed with some real foods.  My go-to for the real long runs are turkey and cheese with a little bit of mustard on rye bread. (thanks Beth)  I know, who in the world would think you could eat this as you are running down the trail.  But I have trained my stomach to do this, in little bites, and it really works. The steady stream of nutrition keeps me from feeling yucky and does make my time on the trail and the roads so much better.  I think that for the first time in my life, I am really celebrating food as being fuel for my body.  It feels so good to think of it that way instead of "good" and "bad" and always out to get me.

On another note, another long run weekend must mean....more snow!  Not one to disappoint, Mother Nature has decided to deliver 10-14 inches tomorrow just so I can continue my shake out shoveling streak.  If you have lost count, this will make 4 weekends of long running followed by a massive amount of snow to get off the driveway. I actually heard on the news the other night that shoveling is considered "strenuous exercise".   If When I am successful at Umstead, my next goal should be to write a book outlining the benefits of shoveling as a form of 100 mile training.