Major training is over!

Three weeks out from Western States and I’m done with my serious training. From here, I’ll taper; gradually winding down the running so that (at least in theory!) I show up at the start line well rested and ready to go. This last week was the most I’ve run in a seven day period, and went like this:

Monday: 20km, 2 hrs 23 mins

Tuesday: 10km, 1 hr 1 min

Wednesday: 19.3km, 2 hrs 9 mins

Thursday: 10.3km, 58 mins

Friday: 41.2km, 6 hrs 44 mins

Saturday: Rest!

Sunday: 30.2km, 4 hrs 15 mins

Total: 131.1km (81.4 miles), 17 hrs 33 mins, 4700m vertical ascent

And all this with the weather having hit tropical summer: 30°+C, 80-95% humidity. There will certainly be fitter people lining up on the start line than me, there will be people who’ve run a lot more than me, but there won’t be many who’ve trained in such adverse conditions. After about two hours of running, no matter how slow you go, the humidity causes you to overheat, and it is very hard to keep moving forward. You need to keep eating to maintain energy, but the last thing you want to do is put anything in your stomach.

So I feel like I’m in a pretty good place in terms of my general fitness and ability to deal with adverse weather conditions. Western States is likely to be hot (this week it hit 40°C at the start line), but dry, and so hopefully easier to cope with.

The main concern is whether I’ve put enough miles on my legs. 100 miles is a long way to run, and it is going to hurt. The hot weather makes it hard to have run enough to get my legs ready for continual motion for 30 hours. It being my first (and last?) 100 miler, I really have no idea.

Still, I’m pretty happy to get to the end of the major training block and still be injury free (touch wood!). Also, my very long suffering family is ready for me to stop disappearing for hours on end in my solo pursuits. They even let me have a nap this afternoon after a 5.30am alarm woke me up today.

Today’s run was with Andre Blumberg and Jose Nicolas, two other Asian runners who will show up at Squaw Valley in three weeks. Great to meet some other people crazy enough to do this. The hard work is done – it’s now time to rest, recover, and get excited for what lies ahead.