With the North Face 50 done, I turned to training for the Sardona
Ultra in Switzerland. I recovered pretty
quickly in part because my stomach slowed me down during the race. I was able to start running again right away
and was back in full swing in 1.5 weeks.
This gave me a bit over 2 months to get ready for Sardona.
This race is going to be a different beast than anything I
have ever done. It racks up 20,000 feet
of climbing in 53 miles. That is as much
or more climbing than many of the mountain 100s out west (e.g. Western States)
in half the distance! Now mind you I live
in a relatively flat city. The
Shenandoahs are 1.5 hours away but don’t exactly offer the same kind of
steepness and terrain as the Alps. How
am I going to train for this, you ask?
Well that is an excellent question!
Since I don’t exactly have facemelting climbs in my
backyard, the treadmill has been a big part of it. I’m lucky to have a nice Nordic Track
treadmill at home that can handle a 15% incline. I’ve been regularly adding on a few miles at
15% at the end of a run and also doing a 1 hour sustained effort once or twice
a week. I’ve gotten to the point where I
can run at 5mph for an hour at 15%, which racks up over 3,800 feet of climbing
in just an hour. Aside from sweating
more than any human being should and possibly making it so no one else can ever
enter our workout room, it’s going great!
It has made me much stronger and much better on the climbs as well as
generally more fit.
I am running the hilliest routes I can find around home, and
as far as real mountains I had a fantastic time going out to the Shenandoahs
for the VHTRC’s annual 4th of July run with the Browntown loop. I did an extended version and covered 25
miles with over 5K of climbing. I pushed
the pace hard the whole way (especially on the downhills) and felt very
strong. Even better Dylan happened to be
nearby and came out for the run! It was
awesome to see him as always. I’m
planning to get back to the mountains several more times before Switzerland
since the treadmill isn’t quite the same as real trail running (and mountains
are awesome). I’m already planning some
diabolically steep routes out there.
The last thing I have been doing is starting to run more
with my pack. I will have a lot of
mandatory gear and at best my loaded pack will weigh in at 15 pounds. While
that is relatively light, I still need to be ready to run with that weight and
used to carrying it. I started with a
mostly empty pack and am starting to slowly add in the gear I will need to
have.
So where has all of this left me? I am running 70 miles a week (which I am
pretty used to) and getting 10-15K of climbing each week (which I am definitely
not used to). I am super hungry all the
time and pretty tired, but I feel like I am getting fit and strong really
fast. It is amazing how much tougher 70
miles can be when I am also doing 15K of climbing, but I guess that is the
point right? Lots of my runs have also
been in brutal heat, later at night, and generally not at optimal times and in
pretty tough conditions. In other words
my 10 month old son has kindly been planning his nap times and bed times to
make me even tough and stronger. He’s
always looking out for me.
Next week will be a much needed down week before the final 3
weeks of big training before I taper. So
who knows what this race will bring, but I think I am doing everything I can so
far and preparing pretty well. Can’t
wait to actually get out there!
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