COMFORT ZONE

It's pretty clear that I'm not exactly sure what I should be doing to train for this adventure. However, I think it's pretty important to get outside of my comfort zone and do things I've never done before. It's safe to say I did that this weekend.

Saturday's run started at 6 AM, 2 hours before my running buddies showed up at Ft. Snelling. I spent those 2 hours running snow-covered hill repeats from the trail near Pike Island to the dog park and back. Then I'd run up the steep hill leading to the Fort. Once my buddies showed up, I did a 14+ mile loop with Paul, which took another 2 hours. Hard to tell how far I ran on the snow-covered trails, so I'm calling it a conservative 27 mile day.

Is it bad when 50% of your weekly mileage is done in one run?

The last time I did a 4 hour run, I preceded it with a 2 hour run the day before. This time I decided to follow up my 4 hour run with a 'normal' long run the day after. Today that meant 17 miles in 2:33. After 5 easy miles I included 5 hill repeats up McAndrews hill near County Rd 5. That took me to about mile 12. It was the 3 mile gradual downhill stretch after that, when running down hill felt like running up hill, that told me I was outside my comfort zone. I finished the run off by running up the steep Camp Sacajawea hill 3 times.

All told that's 44 miles and over 6 /12 hours in 2 days. I was actually surprised by how good my legs felt this morning. Makes me wonder if I have a knack for all this running long and slow stuff.

Quote of the day;

"At the Canyon you will see so much and at times you have to remind yourself why you are there. At times it seems like this isn't a big deal endurance wise, but at other times you are reminded how serious you have to be there." - Double