I have completed 3 months of training for the Big Hill Bonk. The goal was to pile up some mileage, primarily to see if my body could tolerate the constant time on feet. There were issues and the thought process was to try and figure them out. December was a break in month of 404.7, followed by a solid January of 426.3, and I finished February with 451.7 miles. This represents the biggest block of miles I have ever run...by far. I say run. There was a far bit of walking parsed through there to get familiar with the backyard concept. As mentioned before, practicing for this format means a lot of slow moving so you basically run out of having anymore time to run when one is on there feet an average of three hours per day.
The process did make me faster. I ran John Dick in just under 4:41 on snow and finished 10th overall. That's primarily on 10:30 to 13:30 minute miles in training. Much was on tougher terrain than normal so I'm sure good strength training was taking place. My goal was to not worry about pace at all and just get in around 100 mile weeks. One real positive was I shuffled the shoe supports around enough as to were my right hip and back pain all but went away. As any winter running and mileage boosts begins happening you do have to watch other niggles that pop up. I have some of those, but nothing enough to prevent days of training.
At 4:27pm on February 28th I began my first of 10 loops of a distance of 4.3 miles in an hour. I finished at 2:20am on the morning of February 29th. I used the Backyard format of leaving right on the beginning of the next hour. I made the distance 4.3 because it was all run on the road and also because 43 miles sounded like a long ways. The times churned out were 52:55, 54:20, 53:33, 53:25, 52:28, 53:00, 51:57, 51:17, 51:58, 53:10. I did not run with a light so it was dark after the first 2 loops. It appears the running by feel had me running a bit hotter. I also think at some point as one tires they automatically speed up to compensate for the tiredness. That wasn't necessary, but I just let it go. It was not that difficult except for the fact that in the last couple loops my lower back was shot. So much so that I'll have to consider doing something, but I'm not sure what. I covered 14 miles today on 2 seperate runs with no back pain. That is good news. I have a couple more ideas which means I may have to do another test, but certainly not 10 loops.
The event is 33 days away. As a prolific eater I'll have to keep an eye on things. I am already down from 4 cups of coffee to a half cup. I do substitute decaf. Some say that is no good either. Neither are the bags of chocolate, or cola. Look...I'm cutting out the caffienated coffee. Get off me. This ain't no coon hunt.
How cool is it that Molly Seidel from Hartland (originally) were we live is on the Olympic team? Watched her race once or twice here when she was a kid. Congrats to her. She deserves it.
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