I was nervous about my run today. I’m nervous about a lot of them, maybe that’s not such a terrible thing though. I used to be able to rattle off 10 mile runs like they were nothing. I started swapping cycling for running in the spring of 2018, spending a disproportionate amount of time on the bike was fine for my general fitness but when it came time to race 50km that December I was really unprepared.

I looked at my training in the 16 weeks leading up to that race this morning to see how I’m stacking up this time around, trying to make sure I don’t have the same race day issues. I only ran 344 miles to prepare for that race, with too many single digits mileage weeks. I’ve already logged over 150 miles in my current training block and I’m only halfway through the fifth week.

You’ve got to abuse your legs a certain amount before making them race an entire cross country season in one day. You’ve got to get them used to the idea of taking 50,000 steps through the forest or they get mad at you when you try it. Speaking from experience.

So this time around the training is going to be a bit harder to hopefully make the racing a little bit easier. I think it’s working so far. My interval times were quicker this week than last week despite being run on legs that just felt a little slower. I ran the same basic workout today that I ran last Thursday. I was jazzed with my results last week, being able to run right around my goal race pace for the last 15 of my 75 minute run, but it also felt like a lot of work. So I was a little nervous about how today would go but I was able to comfortably average 30 seconds a mile quicker than last week.

It’s almost like there’s something to this idea of having a plan. Running an ultramarathon is kind of a lot like life in some ways. It doesn’t really happen by accident. You’ve got to look a little bit down the road to sort out how to get where you want to go.