This might be a little boring, but I need to write this out to make sure that I document some of my thoughts from a recent night training run.
Burning River 100 is getting close quickly (<4 weeks) and I am pretty confident in my race strategy. Ultimately the goal is to finish strong, regardless of the timing. I would like to be somewhere around 24 hours. Last weekend a bunch of folks met up for Mike George's annual Firecracker 40 BR100 training run that started at 7pm and ended for my little group a little before 4am (it's NOT A RACE :).
The start was muggy and very sunny, we made a few last minute changes to handhelds, shirts, food, etc...then took off. After an hour or two we ended up with a group with a girl named Chris, Marco, Mike N., and myself. My headlamp promptly gave out and eventually died, but I managed to run on someone's shoulder without biting the dirt. The trails were absolutely beautiful, weather was near perfect, we had aid stations along the way. I could write a play by play here, but this is a training run...the important thing was to determine what I learned from it.
Shoes - I am 100% certain that I am going with the Adidas Adizero Boston road shoes.
Hydration - 1 Ultimate Direction handheld, & maybe a little spy belt. NUUN tabs and Coke in the end.
Socks - smartwool PhD
Headlamp - picked up a PETZL Tikka
Shorts - Pearl Izumi FLY
Shirt - Pearl Izumi FLY
Food - probably the biggest portion of what I learned on the run, I did not take in enough whole/real food like I normally do on 50 milers. It wasn't until the last mile of the run where we pushed it a little bit and I started to feel a little nausea. I backed off for a couple hundred yards and felt fine. I've got to make sure that I eat my PB&J's, rice burrito's, cookies, etc....as I would normally. Aside from the nutrition and the headlamp, the simple fact that we were running through the night an absolutely essential training run.
So, next week we are heading to the Smoky Mountains and with regards to training, I will do a couple easy runs and I have planned out a 50k that hits the 4 highest peaks in the park. The trail guide suggests covering the route in 4 days. I'd like to do it in 6 hours, taking photos, self aided, should be awesome!!
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